Dragon Warriors

Any thoughts on how FIRESTORMS might inflict ship points? Maybe a crude rule of 10 hand to hand damage to 1 ship point? I suppose the damage a storm inflicts on a ship would take a lot of axe blows to create the equivalent mess.

And has there been any guidelines on fire damage? I was glancing over some old posts about throwing lantern oil in one of the yahoogroups. To what extent would DRAGONBREATH set a guy alight? Might be possible if you're wearing a lot of silks or flammables...

_________________
Speech!





And so the show begins!!!
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dwp ... ssages/640

If there was a medal awarded to the member that's made the most effort to keep this forum active, I'd nominate you to receive it, Kharille. I think you've started the most threads and your contributions are always welcomed and sometimes controversial - just what you need to stimulate debate!

I've not seen any conversions between ship points and health points, and think it would be interesting to have a table of AF/HP for various materials (hard wood, soft wood, stone, etc.) that could be applied in a number of situations where the characters want to damage an inanimate object rather than a squishy opponent. D&D has the concept of hardness and hit points, which translates quite nicely into AF/HP. Although a ship is more than just the materials from which it's made, so I reckon there should be structural points on top of that (which would apply to buildings, vehicles, etc.), although the more I type this idea out, the more I'd probably just resolve the effect of a firestorm in the narrative .

_________________
Cobwebbed Dragon (Lee)

https://www.cobwebbedforest.co.uk/
https://www.dragonwarriors.uk/
https://twitter.com/CobwebbedDragon
Now on YouTube!

I've spent years on forums. One of the reasons why I type so fast. Always good to talk about stuff you like, and I'm active on a lot of pc game forums.

I had a feeling maybe a door might be worth a ship point. You can either hack away at it with a battle axe or charge at it. I just get the feeling that expanding on this will help define rules for interacting with inanimate objects.

Looking at the THUNDERCLAP description, I see that you can create a hole 2m wide and half a metre thick in stone. Imagine if that was done to the hull of a ship? I think if we can make some generalizations, like d3 ship points for THUNDERCLAP we can make naval combat more interesting.

And with that, the basis of siege engine damage, and expand on the rules for Sappers....

_________________
Speech!





And so the show begins!!!
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dwp ... ssages/640

This is the kind of thing I loved to ruminate on once upon a time. Back in the day my logic would probably work like this:

If a large cog has 32 ship points and displaces a little over 150 tons (which seems in the right ballpark for a mediaeval cargo vessel capable of carrying about 20% of its total displacement as cargo) then you get about 5,000 kg per ship point. Based on my impression from the Okeman, wood has about the same number of HP for a given weight as flesh (although you can give it an AF of 4 or 7 depending on the kind of weapon you're attacking it with). Given the values for an average human (70kg and 7hp) we can conclude that 10kg equals 1HP. Ergo 500hp equals one ship point. A massive wooden door might have 1 ship point but probably won't be much above that.

This also means the displacement of ships ranges from 50 tons for a small longboat to 160 tons for a large cog.

Science!

Cheers,

-Kyle

About the door, I guess you only need to smash the lock and not to totally disintegrate the structure. Palladium had guidelines on that. Although a wall had a fixed amount of structural damage capacity/sdc you could pick holes out of it.

I suppose the density of the wood is a big factor. Heard some of those hard woods are really harsh on chainsaws. Also if you know the difference between a good bokken and a kiddo practice version... the good bokken will break skulls before it snaps...

This might be the beginning of siege warfare rules, and a formula for converting conventional non magical damage into 'magic' damage for use against dragons and malgashes....

Need to read up on those ship point rules, but I suppose 1 ship point means extensive damage and days to repair by a whole crew of sailors. That is quite a lot of axe blows. I'm sure a crowd of partying barbarians can also create a lot of ship point damage but it still takes time...

Maybe special rules for 'area of effect' spells. The FIRESTORM smacks everything within its radius so surely that would be equivalent to a few hours of partying landlubbers in damage....

_________________
Speech!





And so the show begins!!!
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dwp ... ssages/640

My post was somewhat facetious (my conclusion about ship size, for instance, is definitely wrong given that medium-sized longships like the Gokstag ship displaced far less than 50 tons and some cogs would have been much bigger than 160 tons) but it does touch on the problems with trying to understand what ablative damage systems actually mean when you try to make sense of them in a real-life situation.

Ships are like people, in that they might survive with lots of damage if none of it is critical, or go under in a moment if a hit is to a vital place. The Dragon Warriors rules have a lot in common with other games of their era in that they don't do a good job of reflecting this fact.

I'd like to see a reworked damage system that covered this.

Cheers,

-Kyle

Well, yeah, reworked but it still has to be smooth. I think in the interests of storyline rather than any actual wounding or permanent damage. All it takes to sink a ship is a hole and insufficient materials to repair that damage. Realistically a garotte ought to be quite quick to resolve if someone is unaware of the attack or otherwise unable to stop it. Same with using a dagger on sleeping individuals. Guess the rule doesn't cover that.

There are things I'd like to revise, like the shooting rules and cover, but we can save that for a later thread, I remember the old stuff we put up on the yahoo groups.

I also think we should try to expand on terrain rules. What if a Barbarian needs to take a door down in one round? What if several?

I also think we should create more of those 'no need to roll' charts. You know, like climbing. Only need to roll for certain individuals and under certain circumstances.

_________________
Speech!





And so the show begins!!!
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dwp ... ssages/640