Interesting. There's an old AD&D 2e "blue book" with that title: Of Ships and the Sea
This article says airships travel at 9 MPH. In prior editions, the airships moved at between 20 and 24 MPH. 9 MPH is just shy of 80 feet per round - meaning that thy're slower than your average barbarian. I'd prefer the faster speed.
What's funny is that I really wouldn't expect FR ships to have cannons especially, but not really ballistae either (at least not fired via taut cord). Instead, I'd expect all ship weaponry to be magically based... the "cannons" are magical items that have beefed up Catapult spells or Fireball spells that fire ship-to-ship.
When you have a world where magical destruction rains down all the time, but gunpowder has barely made any substanitive appearance... why any warship would try and make black powder cannons work as the default method of combat is beyond me.
I think it is intentional. The Wisdom (Nature) roll involves perception of the natural hazard rather than analysis while the Intelligence (Medicine) roll involves applying medical knowledge instead of treatment.
Probably intentional. We have to remember that Mike & Co. occasionally add things into the playtests that are not "normal"... not because they mess up, but because they want us to think about doing things "abnormally" and whether we're okay with it. By doing this alternate ability score bit, they are asking us to comment whether we like the idea or would rather just stick with the default 5E rule for one score / one skill.
I think people sometimes get way too hung up on wanting everything in a playtest document to be "absolutely correct!" from the get-go so that they can just use these playtest rules as-is without having to "fix" them... which is not what these are for. It the same reason why they release playtest docs wiithout having "the math" necessarily correct... because as they say, fixing the math is the easiest thing to do and what they can do right before they declare the product done. But yet folks on the boards still constantly complain and say stuff along the lines of "How can they release such shoddy work?!? Give the game to a company that cares!"
It's kind of ridiculous that people still don't realize this.
I also don't think an effective Artificer class can work without basic item crafting rules. So I hope that the crafting rules are forthcoming and the Artificer will build upon those.
Making the Artificer a full caster is a cop-out (at best!) and it seems they are realizing that. The class needs to work and feel differently, and the crafting angle is a huge part of what it requires.
What's funny is that I really wouldn't expect FR ships to have cannons especially, but not really ballistae either (at least not fired via taut cord). Instead, I'd expect all ship weaponry to be magically based... the "cannons" are magical items that have beefed up Catapult spells or Fireball spells that fire ship-to-ship.
When you have a world where magical destruction rains down all the time, but gunpowder has barely made any substanitive appearance... why any warship would try and make black powder cannons work as the default method of combat is beyond me.
I couldn't possibly disagree more. It should be a full caster, and it should imbue spells into things. The Xanathar's crafting rules are fine, but the Artificer could certainly have some exceptions to those rules in some fairly limited way, like making consumables in the half the normal time, or spending a spell slot to recharge items.
I'd rather a bunch of new spells that hit the mark of how infusions and imbued items worked narratively, than an entirely different system for one class.
But there you run into the fundamental problem I have with the 5e wizard/subclass setup: for at least one level, the wizard casts spells, just like any other. So with the Artificer, what happens? You cast spells for a level or two then stop being able to because you use the spell slots for something else? That's doesn't feel right to me.
And it's part of why wizards in general don't feel right to me in 5e: they're too much of all the same. A "speciality" that's as a much a ribbon ability as anything else notwithstanding.
My opinion carries little to no weight. But I strongly feel that an Artificer simply won't work right by hanging it on the bones of an existing class - particularly the 5e wizard.