spearing a ship until it sinks

[Dausuul]

That's a good question. I think the implication is that PCs can damage large objects like ships, using things like (their inevitably) enchanted swords, bows, and weaponized philosophy and faith, ie, magic powers. Because they're big damn heroes, kin to Lugh, Rama, Conan, and Elric --or Remo Williams, McGyver, and John McClane, if you prefer.

This could be stated more explicitly, and should be.

In that case, we're back to the "knock-down-the-dungeon" problem where the PCs routinely draw their swords to cut their way through stone walls. If that is in fact the intended use of the rules... I guess I'm just weird for liking the idea that dungeon crawls involve exploring a dungeon instead of boring through it like a purple worm, or hacking at it till the whole thing collapses (depending on whether you treat the dungeon as a single entity or a collection of wall segments).

This is why I don't accept the "Just don't allow players to abuse the rules!" and "Just use common sense!" arguments in this context. Applying the rule in the obvious way in a typical adventuring situation should not constitute abuse; common sense tells me the rule itself is ludicrous.

 

[Mirtek]

No. That's just silly.

I never quite got why some people find it interesting to pretend the DM is a computer which executes the rules-as-code, without the aid of common sense, fuzzy logic, and the rest of the cognitive traits that separate us from the digital computers.

Do we really need a set of procedures to handle this? Can't we just agree to use common sense? Besides, any set of procedures/modeling systems simple enough for use at the table will inevitably have loopholes/exploits which deliver results equally as ludicrous as the mooks with spears holing the ship.

Actually it's no more silly than a medium creature hurting a gargantuan creature like a dragon.

 

[Cyronax]

The thing about sapping, mining or vehicle combat is that the caveat that the AC and hit point levels are only if the appropiate tools are used.

e.g. cannon for ship to ship combat or whatever, not hand weapons.

Yes, in general I agree with you, but you then assume that most ships only have ship-to-ship capable weapons equipped up to a certain point. That gets pretty boring -- it assumes a lot of the background fun of combat becomes mere support for the SINGLE piece of equipment/person who can deal damage to a big-ass vehicle.

Let's assume we use the airship scenario I presented earlier:

I established the baseline airship in my campaign to be the RAW airship from AV1. I considered that type of ship to be the standard mercantile ship of the only airship-building nation in the known world. That nation -- let's call it Archaven for expediency -- also had military, spy, and exploration vessels. I established that the 'standard' Archaven airship normally had only one, if any, ballista. The more state of the art ships could have up to three. So there, by those specifications I can establish an entire order of battle for the world (which I did).

1) And so let's say the standard amount of damage one ship could do to another ship was between 1-3 ballista worth.

/unnecessary details ------
From there I went on to establish that the Archaven airships were more alchemical and artifice in nature, and thus could be retro-engineered.

So then, I then established that the Archaven airships have only been out of their R&D/prototype phase for less than twenty years.

In that time only about 25-30 standard/mercantile ships had been built and there were only about 10 more superior designs.

Therefore I could have a military PC knowledgeable in History (i.e. military knowledge)/ or someone outside the Archaven line knowledgeable in Streetwise (i.e. leaked military intelligence) in account for all of the airships in the world up to a certain (difficult) DC.

I also established a single rogue shipyards of an evil nation that was in the process of retro-engineering a few stolen airships.

Skill Challenges or simple skill checks could therefore be used to figure out the association of any given airship spotted (especially if airship was seen up close).
/end unnecessary details.

2) So we establish that only ballistae or some other similar type weapon can do significant damage to an airship (while flying and manned; not talking about a clandestine sabotage, etc.).

But the big question is what the heck do we do about opposing spellcasters? Do they just buff their respective boarding parties and then the object becomes to hover adjacent to another airship while the two crews hack at each other to death (ala Greco-Roman style)?

Or do we allow for the possibility that spellcasters of a certain kind (maybe wizards or ranged strikers -- sorcerers, warlocks) can figure something out?

Those are the ad hoc questions I quickly came to have trouble with during my airship campaign.

I ended up have airships turn more into floating landscape by the end, because I realized that for every PC who could set fire to an airship with Flame Seed or something similar, I could have NPC enemies do the exact same.

Anyway, I know its a corner case, but it made me realize that the 4e vehicle combat rules had problems depending on the 'degree of magnitude' size of the vehicle.

If any of you are still reading this screed, you can see the old website for the campaign in question: The Spire & Abyss.

C.I.D.

 

[Mallus]

In that case, we're back to the "knock-down-the-dungeon" problem where the PCs routinely draw their swords to cut their way through stone walls.

Not exactly. Assigning HP values to sailing ships is still kinda/sorta useful. It not hard to imagine PC heroes damaging even a large vessel made of wood, cloth, and rope with their swords and spells. Ditto objects like doors and iron bars.

Now solid rock walls are another matter. Simply giving them HP values is just asking for trouble.

Actually it's no more silly than a medium creature hurting a gargantuan creature like a dragon.

Realistically speaking, yes. But remember, we're talking about a 'realism' rooted in certain kinds of fiction. Stories which routinely feature heroic protagonists slaying mighty dragons and giants.

Note these stories don't often feature peasant work-gangs destroying ships with knives on sticks or knocking through dungeons walls with their bare hands.

Hey, I just thought up a simple rule: Heroic Tier characters cannot damage large objects/structures with their powers and hand-held weapons. Paragon and Epic Tier characters can. PCs start off as more-or-less realistic, but graduate to being folkloric heroes a la John Henry. Pretty elegant, eh?

 

[Bluenose]

I say okay. You've hacked a hole in the side of the ship wide enough for you to board through. Are you going to? If that makes you think of vikings, congratulations.

See, my approach would be that you can only do damage to the 5' section you're attacking at that time (or a larger section if you use an area attack. If that happens to be somewhere vital then yes, you might 'destroy' the vehicle. If it's a ship, then you've hacked a hole at the water-line and it starts to sink. Or you've taken out the mast, brought the sails down, and the ship is now wallowing and useless. If you want to try it with something bigger, go ahead. It's not as if people didn't bring down bridges and other structures with hand tools historically.

 

[Dausuul]

Not exactly. Assigning HP values to sailing ships is still kinda/sorta useful. It not hard to imagine PC heroes damaging even a large vessel made of wood, cloth, and rope with their swords and spells. Ditto objects like doors and iron bars.

This still means that no kind of door or bar will ever stop any party, no matter how low level or poorly equipped, from getting anywhere. A large adamantine door has 200 hit points according to the rules; a typical 1st-level party could batter it down in maybe half a minute. This seems deeply wrong to me. A medium-sized stone door would almost certainly fall in a single round.

Now solid rock walls are another matter. Simply giving them HP values is just asking for trouble.

All right, I'll concede that point. But the distinction gets a little arbitrary. If we can hack through a solid stone door, players are likely to ask, why can we not hack through a stone wall of similar thickness?

Hey, I just thought up a simple rule: Heroic Tier characters cannot damage large objects/structures with their powers and hand-held weapons. Paragon and Epic Tier characters can. PCs start off as more-or-less realistic, but graduate to being folkloric heroes a la John Henry. Pretty elegant, eh?

If you feel it's important that your PCs be able to emulate Hercules (John Henry had mining tools, not a sword). If I were going to do such a thing, I'd constrain it to Epic tier. Mostly, though, I'd just go with something like the hardness system I outlined above, or simply say "You can't break down doors with swords" and leave it there.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I actually agree with Dausuul. Giving Hp for a ship for a rare cornercase is ridicuous.

but when you think about fireballs etc., some measure for a DM to determine how long it takes to burn down is useful.

But will a fireball also do ongoing damage to a ship?

The sad thing here is: neither giving hardness nor giving no hardness and HP is really satisfying, as every HP/Hardness measurement can be (ab)used for silly outcomes.

So simple 300 HP dealt by appropriate weapons/tools before a ship has so many holes that it sinks seems like the best approach.
With hardness to simulate adamantine plating etc.

Contrary to normal combat you want those people using daggers not doing damage at all.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think we have two issues, the general rules to attack stuff, the most updated version of which are in the RC, and the more specific vehicle rules in the AV.

The specific rules for attacking vehicles simply say "if you manage to apply the following conditions to a vehicle, here is the result". It never changes any of the rules for how to apply those conditions at all - just clarifies what would happen if a vehicle were immobilized. The general attack rules still apply, and they state that vehicles aren't creatures, enemies or allies, and therefore any interaction between them and attack powers is purely at the whim of the DM.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

Personally I think it would be completely awesome if the PCs rowed up to an enemy ship and hacked it apart* so that it sunk. It only takes 30 seconds -- yeah? So what? The PCs are heroes; they do over-the-top heroic stuff.

Or more likely, started hacking it apart, then got noticed by the enemies on the ship and got attacked, so they (PCs) had to keep destroying the ship while fending off the enemies.

4e is that it is not even trying to model reality. Is it realistic that you can sink a ship with a spear or punch a dungeon into rubble? No. It's not realistic. It's just awesome.

Well, it's awesome in a RIFTS kind of way. But not in a D&D kind of way.

 

[Bluenose]

Personally I think it would be completely awesome if the PCs rowed up to an enemy ship and hacked it apart* so that it sunk. It only takes 30 seconds -- yeah? So what? The PCs are heroes; they do over-the-top heroic stuff.

Or more likely, started hacking it apart, then got noticed by the enemies on the ship and got attacked, so they (PCs) had to keep destroying the ship while fending off the enemies.

4e is that it is not even trying to model reality. Is it realistic that you can sink a ship with a spear or punch a dungeon into rubble? No. It's not realistic. It's just awesome.

Is it realistic that you can chop down a tree with an axe? Take a big hammer and knock down a wall? Well, yes it is. Arguably, it's too quick and easy to wreck a ship with hand weapons, but no-one can seriously argue that it's physically impossible.