Spelljammer Spelljammer Ships and Damage

[Chaosmancer]

So, I was recently reading through my the copies of the new books, and I saw something that.... annoys the crap out of me. And I'm wondering if maybe it is just me, or if there is something here, and if other people have solutions.

So, I noticed it first with the Bombard, the Giff ship. It has a massive cannon that fires 16 TON metal shot at an unsuspecting ship, and the art is incredible, showing it flying away from an utterly destroyed ship. They even have limited ammo, their ships cannot hold more than 16 shots due to the incredible weight. Then I got to the cannon itself. It does 16d10 or an average of 88 damage.

That's it?

Thing is, on the next page you get the Damselfly, the ship with the absolute lowest hp (very high AC though) which, you would think the most powerful ship based weapon in the game would be devastating to it. And it sort of is, but the Damselfly has 200 hp. That means it takes about 3 shots from the Giff to destroy a Damselfly... really?

And most of the weapons do far, far less. Most ships only have a Ballista, which does 3d10 or 16 damage. That is thirteen hits to even attempt to destroy the WEAKEST ship.


And this isn't just an extension of the ships. The Murder Comet is an amazingly cool enemy, and again that art of them blasting through a ship is so cool! But... accounting for siege monster, a Murder Comet does about 50 damage a turn. So, again, the smallest weakest ship in the game takes it four turns to destroy, if it hits every turn? And it doesn't have a charge attack?!

None of this feels right to me. It feels like the narrative wants these ships to be weaker, or these attacks more devastating. Because, remember, this is all based on the Damselfly. Most ships are actually around 300 hp, not 200 hp.

Is this just me?

 

[dave2008]

There is a lot of weirdness with D&D and HP and damage. It comes from the abstract nature of them and trying to apply it to objects makes that more obvious. Because, yes, a 16 ton cannonball would do more damage. However, all of that damage is not a direct hit it is abstract. A direct hit (IMI) would a critical, so 32d10. However, if that is unsatisfactory to you, just increase the damage, or give the those cannons the "Siege Monster" trait and say they do 2x damage to buildings and structures (aka ships). Instantly makes those cannons a real threat.

 

[Leatherhead]

To be fair, if you destroy the ship, you can't plunder it. Disabling the ship is a better option most of the time.

 

[FarBeyondC]

Keep in mind that 18d10 is the amount of damage they officially suggest for being hit by a crashing flying fortress and 24d10 is what they suggest for being crushed in the jaws of a monster the size of the moon.

16d10 is generous for that cannon's damage; it's the ships that are either absurdly tough or have inflated hit points.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I like Dark Matter's take on spaceship combat. You essentially scale all the numbers up by a factor of 100, so ships have "mega" hit points and ship weapons do "mega" damage. This allows to play out ship combat very similarly to regular combat.

There is an excellent 3rd party supplement that does this for Spelljammer available for free on Reddit. I urge anyone dissatisfied with any part of WotC's offering except the monsters to check it out.

Wildjammer: More Adventures in Space - Google Drive

drive.google.com

 

[Chaosmancer]

I like Dark Matter's take on spaceship combat. You essentially scale all the numbers up by a factor of 100, so ships have "mega" hit points and ship weapons do "mega" damage. This allows to play out ship combat very similarly to regular combat.

This doesn't help the problem though, since the ratio stays the same.

Edit: This also either makes the Murder Comet impossible to fight (sad) or even more worthless at killing ships (even sadder)

There is an excellent 3rd party supplement that does this for Spelljammer available for free on Reddit. I urge anyone dissatisfied with any part of WotC's offering except the monsters to check it out.

Wildjammer: More Adventures in Space - Google Drive

drive.google.com

I'll try and check it out later

 

[Chaosmancer]

Keep in mind that 18d10 is the amount of damage they officially suggest for being hit by a crashing flying fortress and 24d10 is what they suggest for being crushed in the jaws of a monster the size of the moon.

16d10 is generous for that cannon's damage; it's the ships that are either absurdly tough or have inflated hit points.

I'm desperately trying to not remember that the Solar Dragon lists a mere 24d10 (132 om average) for flying into a star. Or starting your turn there because they KNOW people will survive that.

But part of the problem for me I guess is we also can easily see that these damages aren't even that high. Meteor Swarm is an average of 140 damage. I think the high end scale of damage just utterly falls apart. Because I don't think the HP values of people are that crazy, when you compare them to the types of monsters they need to fight.

 

[Weiley31]

It feels like the narrative wants these ships to be weaker,

Considering there is a legit sidebar in the book that pretty much goes "Yeah you got shipboard weapons, but honestly your PC's weapons/spells are totally better so stick with those unless the target is too far away.* I'm not surprised.

Then again, this is also coming from a book that is saying that Wood (AC of 15 for Spelljammer ships) is way stronger than Ceramic(Which is an AC of 13 for Spelljammer ships. But I'm not exactly sure how "fragile" Ceramic is in general so perhaps that's why and I'm just not realizing it.)
Of course, if your entire crew is composed of Giff, which ignore disadvantage on long range attacks due to their Firearm Mastery, then you can pretty much snipe fools with a Cannon. (Don't judge me, the mental image is hilarious and terrifying all at once)

Hmmm, now I'm wondering if crew races matter on a ship in that regard.
The only thing I can say on the matter of Ship HP damage is that it's treated like the whole notion that "HP isn't meat" debates that were all the rage amongst the hot topic kids on here. Treat it like that.

Honestly too much technically detail/thinking about these just eats up too much mental energy and slows down dice rolling.

 

[R_J_K75]

I just read chapter 2 of the Astral Adventurers Guide. Unless I missed something in the Spelljamming ship descriptions it lists Damage Threshold but never explains what it is, does it? I'm guessing it means that a ship ignores whatever its DT is before it initially starts taking damage or on each subsequent hit, or just the first? IDK, pretty crappy design IMO. But hey they give rules on fishing, give me a break.

 

[Weiley31]

I just read chapter 2 of the Astral Adventurers Guide. Unless I missed something in the Spelljamming ship descriptions it lists Damage Threshold but never explains what it is, does it? I'm guessing it means that a ship ignores whatever its DT is before it initially starts taking damage or on each subsequent hit, or just the first? IDK, pretty crappy design IMO. But hey they give rules on fishing, give me a break.

That's pretty much EXACTLY what Damage Threshold is in 5E: You have to beat the Damage Threshold when you do an attack to do damage. If you can't meet/exceed the Damage Threshold, you deal zilch damage to it.