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Starship level system proposal
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<blockquote data-quote="BlackJaw" data-source="post: 1479116" data-attributes="member: 888"><p>I don't think of them as exceptions. Using the character building analogy I thought of them more as feats. basicaly everything you describe were already exceptions to the rules of vehicles I was using in my point buy system. Point buy or a class like system, it is still an exception. Yah the sails one is complicated because speed is attached to wind (although it works well for solar, psychic, etc) Rockets are best built using 2 seperate vehicles. One is the rocket the other the capsul (or attached shuttle, etc). I have a system for crafts that are connected to others... although its a simple system it does work. submarines and mines are more to do with the medium etc, and I agree with you on that one. Motorcycle... I don't see the complexity here... it all has to do with basic design dealing with the number of people a vehicle can hold/etc. Now the animal pulled/powered crafts... ugh. That is hard stuff to deal with. I'll level with you, I have no idea how to pull that off right now. I remember talking about it once and I think I blanked it all out after the last time I worked on it. </p><p></p><p></p><p>I never said they were used in military blimps (or I shouldn't have said that). I said no sane PC would want to use it. Germans did use them, but I recall it was because they couldn't get the Hellium that the USA latter used in it's airships. (Did you know the US had 2 flying aircraft carriers in the 30s!)</p><p></p><p></p><p>I have yet to see a system that covers all vehicles in a good way. Yah my system has some holes in it, but reality is a very complicated thing, I can't imagine it covering everything well. somethings will work fine with odd rules if they are needed. How often would single use break away rockets come up in flight combat system?! The animal power system is more likely and something I may have to think on a bit.</p><p></p><p></p><p>I'll level with you: I loved the point buy system of Alternity. I loved making robots and space ships in that system. loads of fun had with that. i started out trying to make a point buy system for ship building (I argued againts systems that were along the lines of vehicles being base craft types + templates... which isn't a bad idea either but makes it hard to build truly custom ships) and we tried working with point buy for a long time. we had a lot of problems with it. I was trying to remake alternity point buy for things that were just space crafts. It was hard because flight is treated difrently in D&D and in our system then it was in alternity. One thing that was always bad in Alternity vehicles was that power sources fueled things, and engines once powered provide movement points, which in turn provide speed... adjusting power levels or engines (one is shut down or destoryed or over or under powered... or god forbid you use power sails etc) ment recalculating all the vehicle's movements etc. That slows down play a lot. I tried to avoid that for faster play. i was also have trouble applying a system with all powered ships to a setting that likely won't etc...</p><p></p><p> </p><p>I'd say building a good system is hard. I was having a hard time with point buy, and I'm having an easier time with the level system as design goes... the fear I have is that making it simplier to build a vehicle system might be to simplified... something that point buy is not in danger of doing at all (I figured it was too complicated!). You sort of put a voice to fear... I might have taken a bit of an agressive reaction to that, but then I've also been told I'm just a bit agressive in general. Sorry if was attacking you. Rest assured I don't know you enough to attack you, and you are helping me out with each post you make (even if we arn't seeing eye to eye on all of it.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>Thanks for the guide lines here... the bits of interesting examples made it clear to see what is going on in your style of play. I'll see what you have:</p><p>1) good layout and index so when you need a rule you can find it. I personaly hate the 3.5 DMG because I have a hard time finding the topics I need. I'll be sure to look at the book I have durring the editing and try and and make it cleaner and well layed out because it's just a good idea to do.</p><p>2) I was hoping to balance the vehicles mostly as an equipment thing because giving CR (or ECL) to a player in item for is just such a bad idea under basic D&D DM type rules. On top of that, a vehicle's power is tied to it's pilot's and gunners' skill. a nice ship with a bad pilot, or a big gun with a commoner level 1 as a gunner is not that so bad... on the other hand a deth star with a bad pilot and crappy gunners is still a death star. I'll likely use price as a balancing factor for PCs, but list a CR for use by NPCs (enemies). I'll also take another look at the Dragonstar & DMG rules for modifiying a CR/Encoutner level based of extra or powerful gear.</p><p>3) The danger of Stupid design is part of the reason I was moving away from point buy... it was quickly becoming apparent that you could all to easly make vehicles that could not fly in gravity! UGH. It reminds me of how you could make ships in Alternity that didn't have enough power to use more then half it's systems (like engines or life support but no guns)... in a few situations it was cool, but it got real complicated real fast. The advantage of the character like system is that it's like making a PC: Sorcerer Half-orcs in full plate are not a good idea, but it's not like they can't walk or don't have enough magic power or have no spell slots... ships system is the same way. You can make a lot of vehicles... some won't be all the powerful or effective, they will all fly and do the basic stuff. Side bars are still a good idea though (side bar: don't make wizard half-orcs in plate male unless you like casting lots of still spells!)</p><p>4) Ok, this is a hard one to do, but it should be easier then using an alternity-spider moon combo (wow!). Still building a system that would be easy to reverse would be hard. Mostly it comes down to picking a size, Hit Dice, and picking a number of Engine levels. Faster and more manuverable vehicles have more ranks of Engines. (Sails are special systems!)</p><p></p><p></p><p>I've been working on getting it to work well in D&D, and I recently looked at D20 Modern's built in vehicle rules (no creation rules but vehicle rules) and they are remarkably similar to the vehicle rules we have ended up making here. Only thing needed to make the system compatible with d20 modern would be purchase DCs. Beyond that I haven't worried about it. I looked at and talked to d20 starwars players to learn what they liked and didn't like about that system. I also looked at Dragon Star (I own a lot of it) and felt it was ok for spacecrafts but wasn't all that great outside that and was bad if you wanted to usign anything other then space crafts (dragon vs space ship, or space ship vs wizard in a tower, etc) I haven't worried about making it combatible with starwas d20's existing vehicles or stats... but I did worry about dragon star's teleportation magic system because it affects the setting. I've found that Sci-Fi settings with faster then light travel systems are effected by it's rules. Alternity had a chapter talking about that in it's ship building book. instant travel takes have a diffrent effect on designing a culture (and military tactics) then one that involved more time to get somewhere. the stardrive system is diffrent then space folding etc. Dragon Star has it's teleport system which I figured was about the only Dragon star thing I needed to be able to deal with on Dragon star terms.</p><p></p><p> </p><p>Once your acostumed to this system you could mostly do it on the fly. I present it in steps to make it easier to understand becuase right now I'm the only one with it all in my head right now. It should be fairly easy to make stuff on the fly (just like with making D&D npcs on the fly) guess a size and a HD then figure out how much of a focus it has in various things... gun ship? lots of weapon levels. high AC? lots of armor levels. Lots of high-tech or magic systems/powers? lots of support levels. Fast and/or manurable? lots of engine levels. Figure the details latter. I can't imagine it being any harder or easier then making just about anything else, but I don't make things on the fly that much myself. (I figure stuff in and adance and if I do make someting on the fly I don't worry about how much it fits latter when I rebuild it correctly. I'm not even sure how to build a system that is easy to reverse build unless I make it so simple it becomes hard to build interesting or complex ships.</p><p></p><p> I'm sort of thinking this won't be any worse then a making an NPC... I felt the point buy made it too complicated. I don't figure this will be bad on GMs. It's a good point to bring up though. DMs often go into something with a target concept in mind, and it should be easy to build this in reverse. I figure it will be ok because we arn't talking about true levels, but something simplier then that. Simple things shouldn't be hard to judge? Did the builders focuse on engines, armor, weapons, or special systems... and in what amounts? Assign levels accordingly. Easier then trying to figure how to connect a target monk undarmed damage with a target rogue sneak attack bonus damage and ability to cast invisiblity with out making an NPC too far over your NPC's character level!</p><p></p><p></p><p>Is there any reason to not tie it to something? If hit points have a bassis that is done entirerly on price (in say points in a point buy system) you could make massive ships with small hit point amounts or tiny ships with massive hit points... that breaks my suspension of disbelief and making players buy hitpoints is just another thing to get complicated. I tied it to size because it seemed like a good idea, a larger vehicle would have more hit points. Other have argued that it should be tied to thickness of hull (the material per inch rules for objects in D&D says that hitpoints for a material is based off the thickness in inches x the hitpoint value for the material) but I figured that didn't work so well for vehicles as it did for static objects like walls, doors, and floors.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BlackJaw, post: 1479116, member: 888"] I don't think of them as exceptions. Using the character building analogy I thought of them more as feats. basicaly everything you describe were already exceptions to the rules of vehicles I was using in my point buy system. Point buy or a class like system, it is still an exception. Yah the sails one is complicated because speed is attached to wind (although it works well for solar, psychic, etc) Rockets are best built using 2 seperate vehicles. One is the rocket the other the capsul (or attached shuttle, etc). I have a system for crafts that are connected to others... although its a simple system it does work. submarines and mines are more to do with the medium etc, and I agree with you on that one. Motorcycle... I don't see the complexity here... it all has to do with basic design dealing with the number of people a vehicle can hold/etc. Now the animal pulled/powered crafts... ugh. That is hard stuff to deal with. I'll level with you, I have no idea how to pull that off right now. I remember talking about it once and I think I blanked it all out after the last time I worked on it. I never said they were used in military blimps (or I shouldn't have said that). I said no sane PC would want to use it. Germans did use them, but I recall it was because they couldn't get the Hellium that the USA latter used in it's airships. (Did you know the US had 2 flying aircraft carriers in the 30s!) I have yet to see a system that covers all vehicles in a good way. Yah my system has some holes in it, but reality is a very complicated thing, I can't imagine it covering everything well. somethings will work fine with odd rules if they are needed. How often would single use break away rockets come up in flight combat system?! The animal power system is more likely and something I may have to think on a bit. I'll level with you: I loved the point buy system of Alternity. I loved making robots and space ships in that system. loads of fun had with that. i started out trying to make a point buy system for ship building (I argued againts systems that were along the lines of vehicles being base craft types + templates... which isn't a bad idea either but makes it hard to build truly custom ships) and we tried working with point buy for a long time. we had a lot of problems with it. I was trying to remake alternity point buy for things that were just space crafts. It was hard because flight is treated difrently in D&D and in our system then it was in alternity. One thing that was always bad in Alternity vehicles was that power sources fueled things, and engines once powered provide movement points, which in turn provide speed... adjusting power levels or engines (one is shut down or destoryed or over or under powered... or god forbid you use power sails etc) ment recalculating all the vehicle's movements etc. That slows down play a lot. I tried to avoid that for faster play. i was also have trouble applying a system with all powered ships to a setting that likely won't etc... I'd say building a good system is hard. I was having a hard time with point buy, and I'm having an easier time with the level system as design goes... the fear I have is that making it simplier to build a vehicle system might be to simplified... something that point buy is not in danger of doing at all (I figured it was too complicated!). You sort of put a voice to fear... I might have taken a bit of an agressive reaction to that, but then I've also been told I'm just a bit agressive in general. Sorry if was attacking you. Rest assured I don't know you enough to attack you, and you are helping me out with each post you make (even if we arn't seeing eye to eye on all of it.) Thanks for the guide lines here... the bits of interesting examples made it clear to see what is going on in your style of play. I'll see what you have: 1) good layout and index so when you need a rule you can find it. I personaly hate the 3.5 DMG because I have a hard time finding the topics I need. I'll be sure to look at the book I have durring the editing and try and and make it cleaner and well layed out because it's just a good idea to do. 2) I was hoping to balance the vehicles mostly as an equipment thing because giving CR (or ECL) to a player in item for is just such a bad idea under basic D&D DM type rules. On top of that, a vehicle's power is tied to it's pilot's and gunners' skill. a nice ship with a bad pilot, or a big gun with a commoner level 1 as a gunner is not that so bad... on the other hand a deth star with a bad pilot and crappy gunners is still a death star. I'll likely use price as a balancing factor for PCs, but list a CR for use by NPCs (enemies). I'll also take another look at the Dragonstar & DMG rules for modifiying a CR/Encoutner level based of extra or powerful gear. 3) The danger of Stupid design is part of the reason I was moving away from point buy... it was quickly becoming apparent that you could all to easly make vehicles that could not fly in gravity! UGH. It reminds me of how you could make ships in Alternity that didn't have enough power to use more then half it's systems (like engines or life support but no guns)... in a few situations it was cool, but it got real complicated real fast. The advantage of the character like system is that it's like making a PC: Sorcerer Half-orcs in full plate are not a good idea, but it's not like they can't walk or don't have enough magic power or have no spell slots... ships system is the same way. You can make a lot of vehicles... some won't be all the powerful or effective, they will all fly and do the basic stuff. Side bars are still a good idea though (side bar: don't make wizard half-orcs in plate male unless you like casting lots of still spells!) 4) Ok, this is a hard one to do, but it should be easier then using an alternity-spider moon combo (wow!). Still building a system that would be easy to reverse would be hard. Mostly it comes down to picking a size, Hit Dice, and picking a number of Engine levels. Faster and more manuverable vehicles have more ranks of Engines. (Sails are special systems!) I've been working on getting it to work well in D&D, and I recently looked at D20 Modern's built in vehicle rules (no creation rules but vehicle rules) and they are remarkably similar to the vehicle rules we have ended up making here. Only thing needed to make the system compatible with d20 modern would be purchase DCs. Beyond that I haven't worried about it. I looked at and talked to d20 starwars players to learn what they liked and didn't like about that system. I also looked at Dragon Star (I own a lot of it) and felt it was ok for spacecrafts but wasn't all that great outside that and was bad if you wanted to usign anything other then space crafts (dragon vs space ship, or space ship vs wizard in a tower, etc) I haven't worried about making it combatible with starwas d20's existing vehicles or stats... but I did worry about dragon star's teleportation magic system because it affects the setting. I've found that Sci-Fi settings with faster then light travel systems are effected by it's rules. Alternity had a chapter talking about that in it's ship building book. instant travel takes have a diffrent effect on designing a culture (and military tactics) then one that involved more time to get somewhere. the stardrive system is diffrent then space folding etc. Dragon Star has it's teleport system which I figured was about the only Dragon star thing I needed to be able to deal with on Dragon star terms. Once your acostumed to this system you could mostly do it on the fly. I present it in steps to make it easier to understand becuase right now I'm the only one with it all in my head right now. It should be fairly easy to make stuff on the fly (just like with making D&D npcs on the fly) guess a size and a HD then figure out how much of a focus it has in various things... gun ship? lots of weapon levels. high AC? lots of armor levels. Lots of high-tech or magic systems/powers? lots of support levels. Fast and/or manurable? lots of engine levels. Figure the details latter. I can't imagine it being any harder or easier then making just about anything else, but I don't make things on the fly that much myself. (I figure stuff in and adance and if I do make someting on the fly I don't worry about how much it fits latter when I rebuild it correctly. I'm not even sure how to build a system that is easy to reverse build unless I make it so simple it becomes hard to build interesting or complex ships. I'm sort of thinking this won't be any worse then a making an NPC... I felt the point buy made it too complicated. I don't figure this will be bad on GMs. It's a good point to bring up though. DMs often go into something with a target concept in mind, and it should be easy to build this in reverse. I figure it will be ok because we arn't talking about true levels, but something simplier then that. Simple things shouldn't be hard to judge? Did the builders focuse on engines, armor, weapons, or special systems... and in what amounts? Assign levels accordingly. Easier then trying to figure how to connect a target monk undarmed damage with a target rogue sneak attack bonus damage and ability to cast invisiblity with out making an NPC too far over your NPC's character level! Is there any reason to not tie it to something? If hit points have a bassis that is done entirerly on price (in say points in a point buy system) you could make massive ships with small hit point amounts or tiny ships with massive hit points... that breaks my suspension of disbelief and making players buy hitpoints is just another thing to get complicated. I tied it to size because it seemed like a good idea, a larger vehicle would have more hit points. Other have argued that it should be tied to thickness of hull (the material per inch rules for objects in D&D says that hitpoints for a material is based off the thickness in inches x the hitpoint value for the material) but I figured that didn't work so well for vehicles as it did for static objects like walls, doors, and floors. [/QUOTE]
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