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Chapter 4: Vehilce Creation (+ part list!)
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<blockquote data-quote="BlackJaw" data-source="post: 441931" data-attributes="member: 888"><p><strong>NEW ideas, and what to keep....</strong></p><p></p><p>As far as I can tell, these are the ideas that worked, more or less:</p><p></p><p>1) A vehicle is limited in how much equipment, like guns, engines, power sources, living space, and cargo space, it can hold. This limit is equal to its number of Hit Dice. Some equipment is bigger then others and take up more space. The size of a component is measured in component slots. A vehicle’s number Hit dice is its maximum number of component slots. Some components use 0 component slots, but still cost money and apply to the vehicle’s stats when compiled.</p><p>2) Components generally provide either a positive or negative number to functions like power, speed, maneuvering, armor class, etc. These numbers are latter added up by type and compared against a chart (based on vehicle size) to give maneuverability ratings, speed scores, etc. This chart method means that a small but powerful engine might make for a fast fighter-craft but putting the same engine in a large cargo ship isn’t going to give the same amount of speed.</p><p>4) Some components also directly add other features. Having a Brig component gives space to securely lock up people or creatures, and the listing for that component also holds information on breaking out of the brig. It works some what like a special quality like a creature might posses.</p><p>5) Weapons and defensive system also have a few special stats because they, like the sword or shield or wand in an adventure’s hand, can be targeted directly. They have a separate number of hit points (10 + 10 per component slot in size) and use a separate size modifier for AC (but otherwise uses the vehicle’s AC)</p><p>6) It is not possible to attack primary ship systems directly. You don’t get to call shots on engines, life support, or power systems anymore then you get to call shots on heads, hearts, or kidneys in normal D&D. It is assumed that an attack is intended to do damage, and anything doing Hit Point damage is hitting vitals to some degree. Similarly, criticals and sneak attacks do more damage because they are hitting said vitals better. Basic D&D/D20 concept.</p><p></p><p>NEW/MODIFIED IDEAS:</p><p>Designing a vehicle should work along these steps:</p><p>1)Pick a Type and Size. This gives BASIC creature like stats for it. Hit Dice ranges, type of hit dice, base “natural,” etc. This is considered the Hull of the vehicle. These base stats have no speed, maneuvering, glide, min speed, etc to them. It also posses no attacks or other real powers. What base Attributes (str, dex, con, etc) provided at this level are determined by type. Constructs have few, but organic ships might have more, including Con or even Int and Wis.</p><p>1a) Types: Aberration… any type of living (organic) ship including animal like ones through giant bloated spidery Drow ships. Plant… all those Elf ships made from living plants grown into the shape of a vehicle or magically shaped into it. Construct… A ship made form artificial parts and materials then animated (through magic, machines, or psionics) so that if moves. A normal airplane for example. Types give the basic immunites associated with them, so constructs are immune to poison and negative energy, while living ships can be “fixed” with Cure spells but can also gain negative levels or be poisoned.</p><p>1b) all the above posses the “vehicle” type. This type has certain properties as of yet, undefined. One note might be that they can be piloted… thus a living ship can still be piloted because it is made/grown to do so even though normal mounted rules don’t work that way. (how many griffons have cockpits?) Another feature of the vehicle type is no immunity to critical hits, sneak attacks, favored enemy damage bonuses, or related powers… although death from massive damage is still ruled out along with some similarly inappropriate attacks.</p><p>1c) Aberration and Undead vehicle might be able to fly themselves (pilot ranks with their own Dex scores) but because they have the Vehicle type, they can be over ridden by an actual pilot (and the ship’s own minor intelligence becomes an automatic co-pilot). This kind of vehicle with intelligence might also be a good case of when Wis based piloting is used instead of Dex based piloting?? Obviously construct and plant types don’t have these built in piloting systems… although that could be a component that can be added (IE: golem ships). The “vehicle intelligence” and stats are built into the base hull stats.</p><p>1d) Construct ships also get to choose a hull material. This provides the vehicle with a hardness score. To the few material types I’ve already started using I should also add Bone. This would be for vehicles made from skeletons of large animals/etc but not actually animated with necromancy.</p><p>1e) plant ships and organic ships get to heal like living creatures (maybe fast healing as a feature for one or the other)</p><p>2) Components are purchased and added to a vehicle (with a cap at the vehicle’s # of HD). These components provide the speed and manuverabilty, and the glide speed and maneuvering. The Min speed, however, comes from the ship’s size from step 1(altered by lift). Thus when you go to chose components, like engine(s), you know where you stand from the start as far as how much you need to buy for the vehicle to work at all.</p><p>3) The components are all compiled into the vehicle’s final stats (and the vehicle’s maker may apply a special vehicle focus feat at this time) Most components simply go into the standard stats.</p><p>3a) Added to the normal stats of a monster/creature are the following: Glide speed + maneuverability, Minimum speed, crew, power, supported, vehicle wepaons (see 3c) and handling modifier. (did I leave anything out?)</p><p>3b) Some components do more then provide basic stats. These features of a component should be marked as “special qualities” and be put in that proper section. (and listed with those functions as special qualities in the component description.)</p><p>3c) similar in nature to a creature’s “special attacks” section of stats is a new area called “vehicle weapons” this lists all of the vehicles weapons, their attack modifier (made from the weapon’s accuracy, the vehicle’s size modifier, etc) their range increment, damage + type, etc. Also in the description of the creature/vehilce the full stats for each weapon, including operators, reload time, individual armor class (made from the vehicle’s armor class but using the weapons own size instead of the entire vehicle’s size) etc are listed… much like how the description of a dragon has a paragraph on its breath weapon.</p><p>NOTE: as an added bonus, this system becomes closer to making a way to give a vehilce an ECL. (the vehilce increases the difficulty of fighting its crew... but the base challenge still has to do with the skills/powers of the crew)</p><p></p><p>Things that need discussion:</p><p>1)Vessels with a speed of 0... what are the rules if they are even considered vessels (let alone vehicles)</p><p>2) vessels with maneuverability of less then clumsy (do we consider them vessels, and if so, do we want to make up rules for a NEW maneuverability ratting?)</p><p>3) what are the other features of the [vehicle] type besides allowing direct piloting and allowing critical/etc. can we just slap that type on just about anything and make it a pilot-able vehicle? (I both like and dislike that idea... if adding the vehicle type gives you the power to pilot something instead of just “riding it” it becomes a much nicer system for some DMs already familiar with monster making. Keep in mind that we already have rules for determining the min. speed for monsters, and can fairly easily say that most monsters have a glide speed the same as their standard speed… but what about handling modifiers for things that we otherwise would have said piloted themselves with a +8 bonus?)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BlackJaw, post: 441931, member: 888"] [b]NEW ideas, and what to keep....[/b] As far as I can tell, these are the ideas that worked, more or less: 1) A vehicle is limited in how much equipment, like guns, engines, power sources, living space, and cargo space, it can hold. This limit is equal to its number of Hit Dice. Some equipment is bigger then others and take up more space. The size of a component is measured in component slots. A vehicle’s number Hit dice is its maximum number of component slots. Some components use 0 component slots, but still cost money and apply to the vehicle’s stats when compiled. 2) Components generally provide either a positive or negative number to functions like power, speed, maneuvering, armor class, etc. These numbers are latter added up by type and compared against a chart (based on vehicle size) to give maneuverability ratings, speed scores, etc. This chart method means that a small but powerful engine might make for a fast fighter-craft but putting the same engine in a large cargo ship isn’t going to give the same amount of speed. 4) Some components also directly add other features. Having a Brig component gives space to securely lock up people or creatures, and the listing for that component also holds information on breaking out of the brig. It works some what like a special quality like a creature might posses. 5) Weapons and defensive system also have a few special stats because they, like the sword or shield or wand in an adventure’s hand, can be targeted directly. They have a separate number of hit points (10 + 10 per component slot in size) and use a separate size modifier for AC (but otherwise uses the vehicle’s AC) 6) It is not possible to attack primary ship systems directly. You don’t get to call shots on engines, life support, or power systems anymore then you get to call shots on heads, hearts, or kidneys in normal D&D. It is assumed that an attack is intended to do damage, and anything doing Hit Point damage is hitting vitals to some degree. Similarly, criticals and sneak attacks do more damage because they are hitting said vitals better. Basic D&D/D20 concept. NEW/MODIFIED IDEAS: Designing a vehicle should work along these steps: 1)Pick a Type and Size. This gives BASIC creature like stats for it. Hit Dice ranges, type of hit dice, base “natural,” etc. This is considered the Hull of the vehicle. These base stats have no speed, maneuvering, glide, min speed, etc to them. It also posses no attacks or other real powers. What base Attributes (str, dex, con, etc) provided at this level are determined by type. Constructs have few, but organic ships might have more, including Con or even Int and Wis. 1a) Types: Aberration… any type of living (organic) ship including animal like ones through giant bloated spidery Drow ships. Plant… all those Elf ships made from living plants grown into the shape of a vehicle or magically shaped into it. Construct… A ship made form artificial parts and materials then animated (through magic, machines, or psionics) so that if moves. A normal airplane for example. Types give the basic immunites associated with them, so constructs are immune to poison and negative energy, while living ships can be “fixed” with Cure spells but can also gain negative levels or be poisoned. 1b) all the above posses the “vehicle” type. This type has certain properties as of yet, undefined. One note might be that they can be piloted… thus a living ship can still be piloted because it is made/grown to do so even though normal mounted rules don’t work that way. (how many griffons have cockpits?) Another feature of the vehicle type is no immunity to critical hits, sneak attacks, favored enemy damage bonuses, or related powers… although death from massive damage is still ruled out along with some similarly inappropriate attacks. 1c) Aberration and Undead vehicle might be able to fly themselves (pilot ranks with their own Dex scores) but because they have the Vehicle type, they can be over ridden by an actual pilot (and the ship’s own minor intelligence becomes an automatic co-pilot). This kind of vehicle with intelligence might also be a good case of when Wis based piloting is used instead of Dex based piloting?? Obviously construct and plant types don’t have these built in piloting systems… although that could be a component that can be added (IE: golem ships). The “vehicle intelligence” and stats are built into the base hull stats. 1d) Construct ships also get to choose a hull material. This provides the vehicle with a hardness score. To the few material types I’ve already started using I should also add Bone. This would be for vehicles made from skeletons of large animals/etc but not actually animated with necromancy. 1e) plant ships and organic ships get to heal like living creatures (maybe fast healing as a feature for one or the other) 2) Components are purchased and added to a vehicle (with a cap at the vehicle’s # of HD). These components provide the speed and manuverabilty, and the glide speed and maneuvering. The Min speed, however, comes from the ship’s size from step 1(altered by lift). Thus when you go to chose components, like engine(s), you know where you stand from the start as far as how much you need to buy for the vehicle to work at all. 3) The components are all compiled into the vehicle’s final stats (and the vehicle’s maker may apply a special vehicle focus feat at this time) Most components simply go into the standard stats. 3a) Added to the normal stats of a monster/creature are the following: Glide speed + maneuverability, Minimum speed, crew, power, supported, vehicle wepaons (see 3c) and handling modifier. (did I leave anything out?) 3b) Some components do more then provide basic stats. These features of a component should be marked as “special qualities” and be put in that proper section. (and listed with those functions as special qualities in the component description.) 3c) similar in nature to a creature’s “special attacks” section of stats is a new area called “vehicle weapons” this lists all of the vehicles weapons, their attack modifier (made from the weapon’s accuracy, the vehicle’s size modifier, etc) their range increment, damage + type, etc. Also in the description of the creature/vehilce the full stats for each weapon, including operators, reload time, individual armor class (made from the vehicle’s armor class but using the weapons own size instead of the entire vehicle’s size) etc are listed… much like how the description of a dragon has a paragraph on its breath weapon. NOTE: as an added bonus, this system becomes closer to making a way to give a vehilce an ECL. (the vehilce increases the difficulty of fighting its crew... but the base challenge still has to do with the skills/powers of the crew) Things that need discussion: 1)Vessels with a speed of 0... what are the rules if they are even considered vessels (let alone vehicles) 2) vessels with maneuverability of less then clumsy (do we consider them vessels, and if so, do we want to make up rules for a NEW maneuverability ratting?) 3) what are the other features of the [vehicle] type besides allowing direct piloting and allowing critical/etc. can we just slap that type on just about anything and make it a pilot-able vehicle? (I both like and dislike that idea... if adding the vehicle type gives you the power to pilot something instead of just “riding it” it becomes a much nicer system for some DMs already familiar with monster making. Keep in mind that we already have rules for determining the min. speed for monsters, and can fairly easily say that most monsters have a glide speed the same as their standard speed… but what about handling modifiers for things that we otherwise would have said piloted themselves with a +8 bonus?) [/QUOTE]
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