A wine-dark void (campaign idea)

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The trireme in LTC2 looks like it's about as heavy as they get, then (57 tons empty, 77.7 fully loaded), and has 194* HP and Move 1/5 with oars (as would be used in combat). Assuming comparable performance with an equivalent skyreme, it can close a 200 yard distance in only 40 seconds at full speed. There is the issue that the enemy may be able to keep its distance, but there are solutions to that, even in a featureless void (the airship equivalent of the featureless plain). In addition to the fact 200 yards is within bow range, meaning the heat ray crew may be dealing with arrows, it may be interesting to require the heat rays to be mounted on the sides of the ship (rather than the front and back, possibly due to needing more space than the latter would provide) and not allow them to rotate enough to actually face straight ahead/straight back (perhaps give them a 60-degree arc). This requires the vessel to expose its side, at least to some extent, to use the weapon, making it unable to flee directly, and thus allowing the pursuing skyreme to catch up. Smaller heat rays, perhaps dealing 1d-4 burn (averaging 0.5 damage), might be in use on the front and back of the vessel (and likely used more for signaling than combat).

Heat ray mirrors pointing off to the side sounds like a good design choice. Better than putting them on top, anyway - you want to be able to burn ground troops and cities and fields and things. And you can't put them on the bottom, because there's no sun there.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Of course, the LTC2 trireme also has DR 3, which will prevent anything less than maximum damage from your 1d-2 burn heat rays. Simply letting the heat rays ignore wooden armor (because wood burns, naturally) might not be a horrible idea (I'd suggest boosting the heat rays to 1d+1 burn, but I think that would make them too effective against crew - or infantry in an assault on a city).

We could use the rules for Making Things Burn (Campaigns pg. 433). Assuming the skyreme's hull is Resistant, after 10 hits you could roll 3d and it will catch fire on a 16 or less, which will cause 1d-1 burn damage thereafter. You could make a case for 10 consecutive hits, depending on how you read the rules. Or maybe you need to hit the same hex on the skyreme 10 times. Or 10 times in a row.

Hmm, I'd been thinking that heat rays would cause damage as a hex of flame, but mis-remembered how much damage flame caused (1d-1 rather than 1d-2). A 1d-1 heat ray would average 2.5 damage against an unarmored target, but 0.5 damage against a hull with DR 3. Which wouldn't be very effective unless it could catch the ship on fire. I would probably let a heat ray shooting at the same hex on a ship treat the DR as ablative, but once it burned through the DR it couldn't do more than 1/10 the ship's HP in damage using that one burned spot (because then you're just shining your sun beam through the hole you already burned right through the ship).

Would this work? Our approaching skyreme has 200 yards to cross, moving at Move 5. Ignoring everything except for the opposing ship's heat ray, assuming the heat ray always hit, assuming the enemy ship was stationary, and giving the skyreme 170 HP, the attacker would take 20 rounds to go from 200 to 100 yards, taking (1d-1)/2 each of those turns. On average that's 1.25 damage per turn, or 25 damage over those 20 turns. The first 3 points burn through the DR, then the next 17 can actually affect the skyreme's structure, and you get one roll to set it on fire (at 6 or less, because of the low maximum damage) before going on to the next spot (with 5 damage, leading to 2 points of damage taken). Or, you could shine the beam at a spot for only 10 seconds at a time in order to maximize the chance of ignition rather than going for maximum penetration. This would give 2 ignition rolls, and cause the same total of 19 points of structural damage.

Then, when the approaching skyreme got within 100 yards, it will take full damage at 1d-1 per turn. Again, it gets 20 turns to burn the approaching ship, but causes an average of 2.5 damage each turn. Huh. This leads to the curious case that the more focused heat ray won't actually ignite the ship, because it will only take 8 seconds to burn a hole through the ship but it will take 10 seconds to ignite it according to the rules. I'll need to think about that. In any event, the skyreme ends up taking 41 damage getting past its armor in those 20 turns. Or 60 points total out of 170 HP. Plus maybe a bit more from the fires that were started, but it certainly seems like an attacking skyreme could reach its target to ram and board it even under continuous heat ray fire. And that's not even counting defenses and clever use of terrain (skyrain?).

Luke

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

We could use the rules for Making Things Burn (Campaigns pg. 433). Assuming the skyreme's hull is Resistant, after 10 hits you could roll 3d and it will catch fire on a 16 or less, which will cause 1d-1 burn damage thereafter. You could make a case for 10 consecutive hits, depending on how you read the rules. Or maybe you need to hit the same hex on the skyreme 10 times. Or 10 times in a row.

I'd say 10 hits to the same hex is sufficient - you're basically drying it out, charring it, etc, leaving it more susceptible to burn with each hit. A hex that has been doused with water probably has additional ablative DR (maybe up to +3), and the crew can use this to temporarily restore the DR of affected sections during combat. Of course, actually hitting somewhere near the bottom of the ship (the heat-ray will probably want to aim low, unless specifically trying to attack crew) with water dumped from the top while moving at 10 mph isn't exactly easy!

Originally Posted by lwcamp

I would probably let a heat ray shooting at the same hex on a ship treat the DR as ablative, but once it burned through the DR it couldn't do more than 1/10 the ship's HP in damage using that one burned spot (because then you're just shining your sun beam through the hole you already burned right through the ship).

That makes sense. Regarding the later issue with the more-focused beam burning through before it can set fire, I'd say just disregard the 10-hit requirement there and let the vessel risk catching flame as soon as the hull is burned through.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

In any event, the skyreme ends up taking 41 damage getting past its armor in those 20 turns. Or 60 points total out of 170 HP. Plus maybe a bit more from the fires that were started, but it certainly seems like an attacking skyreme could reach its target to ram and board it even under continuous heat ray fire. And that's not even counting defenses and clever use of terrain (skyrain?).

Hmmm.... that seems like it may make the heat rays a bit too weak - we're very nearly talking the optimal situation for the defending skyreme (it would be a bit better off if it were running away, but that wouldn't add a lot of time, seeing as at most it can keep the target 30 degrees off of perpendicular, and it probably wants to keep it closer to perpendicular than that so the enemy can't duck into its shadow), and it manages to do only about 1/3rd of the approaching vessel's HP in damage. Assuming the crew isn't able to effectively douse any of the flames, and the heat-ray goes for maximum chance of burning during the 1/2D phase, we've got two 9.25% chances of starting a fire, one at 10 seconds, one at 20 seconds. During the full damage phase, each burn-through risks starting a fire (using my above suggestion), although I'm not certain what the probability should be - it's not quite 3 points per second, but is very close at 2.5 per second; I think 14 or less (90.75% chance) is appropriate. Those chances occur at 28 and 36 seconds. Multiplying the average damage of a fire (1d-1) by the probability of it starting and the seconds it will last prior to the vessel reaching the defender gives us the average damage it will cause. The first fire causes 2.5*0.0925*30 = 6.9375 damage, the second causes 2.5*0.0925*20 = 4.625 damage, the third causes 2.5*0.9075*12 = 27.225, and the final causes 2.5*0.9075*4 = 9.075, for a total of 47.8625 additional points of damage, for total damage a bit shy of 2/3rd of HP. Considering many battles would involve multiple ships on either side, so effective coordination would be enough to seriously damage, possibly even take out, one or more ships during the initial forward rush, this is probably acceptable. I'd suggest typically restricting each ship to a single heat-ray on each side, although there may occasionally be some special ships (crewed by heroes, and undoubtedly with names of their own) that mount two or even three to a side.


Note an alternative to the above is to not roll for damage - or roll but not have the DR ablate - and instead of having the beam burn a hole through the hull and maybe start a fire, it instead serves only to start a fire. I'd suggest reducing the amount of time needed to do so compared to RAW, however. Perhaps beyond 1/2D the ship must make an HT roll every 10 hits or a fire starts, while at full damage it must make the HT roll every 5 hits. A fire would deal 1d-1 burn each second and ignore DR, and optionally every 5 seconds the fire burns the ship must make another HT roll or the fire spreads to an adjacent hex. Each hex can only burn for 10 seconds (with two risks of spreading) before the fuel is exhausted (leaving a hole in the hull). This is probably less powerful, but leads to well-maintained (and named) vessels being less likely to catch flame. Trying to work out the probabilities is a lot more complex, unfortunately, although if we arbitrarily assume each fire that starts will spread to one other hex just as it exhausts its fuel (basically meaning once one starts, it effectively keeps burning, but never gets any larger), we see damage to an HT 12 vessel is around 2.5*0.2592*(30+20+15+10+5) = 51.84, which is markedly weaker than the above (an HT 10 vessel would suffer nearly twice as much damage, putting it comparable to the above).

[Daigoro]

I think if solar rays are widely being used as weapons that there'd be a few easy counters to them. Hulls could be covered or hung with reflectors- even a partial covering should be effective. Or they could hang bundles of wet grass over their hulls, cutting them loose when they start to burn and then dropping over a fresh bundle.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'd say 10 hits to the same hex is sufficient - you're basically drying it out, charring it, etc, leaving it more susceptible to burn with each hit. A hex that has been doused with water probably has additional ablative DR (maybe up to +3), and the crew can use this to temporarily restore the DR of affected sections during combat. Of course, actually hitting somewhere near the bottom of the ship (the heat-ray will probably want to aim low, unless specifically trying to attack crew) with water dumped from the top while moving at 10 mph isn't exactly easy!

I like the idea that dumping a bucket of water adds DR 3 to a hex. If the hex is already on fire, they you can say that if the next round's fire damage does not exceed the water DR, you've extinguished that hex of flame. This let's the crew mount effective fire-fighting operations. But you might need to roll against Professional Skill (firefighter) to do this effectively!

Originally Posted by Varyon

That makes sense. Regarding the later issue with the more-focused beam burning through before it can set fire, I'd say just disregard the 10-hit requirement there and let the vessel risk catching flame as soon as the hull is burned through.

I was thinking that if you burn through, you can start burning the hex above it to work on accumulating your 10 turns of burning damage for the catching fire roll. After all, the flames generated by the heat ray will be flowing upward, helping to heat and dry out the hex above it. Either way probably works.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Hmmm.... that seems like it may make the heat rays a bit too weak - we're very nearly talking the optimal situation for the defending skyreme (it would be a bit better off if it were running away, but that wouldn't add a lot of time, seeing as at most it can keep the target 30 degrees off of perpendicular, and it probably wants to keep it closer to perpendicular than that so the enemy can't duck into its shadow), and it manages to do only about 1/3rd of the approaching vessel's HP in damage. Assuming the crew isn't able to effectively douse any of the flames, and the heat-ray goes for maximum chance of burning during the 1/2D phase, we've got two 9.25% chances of starting a fire, one at 10 seconds, one at 20 seconds. During the full damage phase, each burn-through risks starting a fire (using my above suggestion), although I'm not certain what the probability should be - it's not quite 3 points per second, but is very close at 2.5 per second; I think 14 or less (90.75% chance) is appropriate. Those chances occur at 28 and 36 seconds. Multiplying the average damage of a fire (1d-1) by the probability of it starting and the seconds it will last prior to the vessel reaching the defender gives us the average damage it will cause. The first fire causes 2.5*0.0925*30 = 6.9375 damage, the second causes 2.5*0.0925*20 = 4.625 damage, the third causes 2.5*0.9075*12 = 27.225, and the final causes 2.5*0.9075*4 = 9.075, for a total of 47.8625 additional points of damage, for total damage a bit shy of 2/3rd of HP. Considering many battles would involve multiple ships on either side, so effective coordination would be enough to seriously damage, possibly even take out, one or more ships during the initial forward rush, this is probably acceptable. I'd suggest typically restricting each ship to a single heat-ray on each side, although there may occasionally be some special ships (crewed by heroes, and undoubtedly with names of their own) that mount two or even three to a side.

Yeah, I kind of like the way it is working out. Heat rays are somewhat useful, but don't dominate. You can cause some damage to an enemy ship, potentially set it on fire, but ramming and boarding will still dominate. And as you mention, concentrated fire from several warships can take out an individual ship before it can close, reducing the strength of enemy forces somewhat. Their main use may be to target the crew of attacking skyremes in order to reduce their fighting ability once they get to you. And, to use your heat ray, you need to turn broadside to the attacker, which gives the attacker the perfect geometry in which to ram!

The main thing I'm thinking now is that 40 rounds of rolling heat ray hits and damage before the real fighting will really drag the game down. I'll think about some way to break it into, say, 10 second rounds. I'll look at GURPS: Action to see if any of the abstract chase rules might help, and might look through GURPS: Spaceships to see how they do it.

Other random thoughts - making rules for how fires spread (probably every 10 seconds, to make it easier to use with the longer airship combat turns). Also, while heat rays treat shots to the same hex as ablative for wood (and probably also leather, linothorax, bone, and other organic materials), metal armor would only be semi-ablative - you can melt it, but it has a rather high melting point and will take a while. Curiously, the melting temperature for common rocks are also in the same range as the melting temperature for brass, bronze, copper, steel, iron, gold, and silver (in the 1200 to 1800 K range), so rock could also be treated as being semi-ablative. A heat ray could, if given enough time, melt holes in enemy walls. Special materials like firebrick, tungsten, and graphite would be immune to heat rays - while firebrick has long been used for kilns, to get tungsten or graphite you would probably need help from Hephaestus. So wealthy cities might make their walls out of firebrick to resist heat ray attacks.

Luke

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

I think if solar rays are widely being used as weapons that there'd be a few easy counters to them. Hulls could be covered or hung with reflectors- even a partial covering should be effective. Or they could hang bundles of wet grass over their hulls, cutting them loose when they start to burn and then dropping over a fresh bundle.

Also, if you are approaching to ram, you only need your defensive covering on the front, making it even more reasonable.

Luke

[martinl]

Skyremes that get too close to Mt. Olympus get smote with lightning.

The void is usually full of heat distortion, swirling dust, flies, and so forth so you can't see deep into it. In fact, the depths are dim and the abyss is dark. It is said that all the way down there, where sunlight never penetrates, the skydead walk.

Terrible creatures live in the hot abyss come up to terrorize good Greeks on hot summer nights.

Aergonauts swear they see glowing ghost dolphins in the void at night.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

The main thing I'm thinking now is that 40 rounds of rolling heat ray hits and damage before the real fighting will really drag the game down. I'll think about some way to break it into, say, 10 second rounds. I'll look at GURPS: Action to see if any of the abstract chase rules might help, and might look through GURPS: Spaceships to see how they do it.

The heat rays aren't the only issue you'd run into with 1-second rounds - keep in mind any vessel within heat ray range is also within arrow range, which risks having to roll for all the archers on each side every 3-4 seconds (in theory, you could have a roll every second, alternating Fast-Draw and Attack, but if the Greeks are attacking in volleys rather than free-firing, this seems unlikely).

10-second rounds sound like about the right amount to aim for (note if using a battlemap, 10-yard hexes will work well with this). Something I've suggested in the past is to roll 3dF (a dF is a 6-sided dice with two -'s, two +'s and two blank faces) and apply the result to the effective skill level, then use the probability associated with that skill level to determine how many hits you got. For example, with an effective skill of 12, a roll of +1 (2 +'s, 1 -) changes this to 13, so 83.79% of the attacks hit; that works out to 8 hits from 10 seconds of heat ray, or 50 total arrows* out of three 20-arrow volleys, or whatever. You could probably do something similar to avoid all those damage rolls.

*Arrows are a potential issue. I wouldn't expect an archer to have effective ST below 12, and higher is likely (particularly considering the Strongbow Perk, which gives any professional archer +2 to ST for using a bow), but we'll go with that. Greeks would probably use either Composite or Reflex bows (heroes, of course, use Philoctetes' bow, from Fantasy Tech), for a minimum of 1d+1 imp. This would average 1.67 Injury per hit (10 HP every 6 hits) against an Unliving target with DR 3, which can result in arrow volleys destroying enemy vessels in rather short order (102 arrows are enough to drop a 170 HP skyreme to 0 HP; depending on how many archers you have, this may well be markedly faster than trying to board). One solution is to treat the skyremes as having IT:DR against arrows and the like, cutting average Injury to something more manageable (giving them Homogenous for purposes of Injury, but keeping HP based on Unliving, could also work).

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Other random thoughts - making rules for how fires spread (probably every 10 seconds, to make it easier to use with the longer airship combat turns).

As I noted previously, I think 1d-1 would have a roll against 14 to successfully spread after 10 seconds. As that's the damage a fire does once started, using the same roll to check for spreading to an adjacent hex is probably appropriate. If a hex gets "burned up" (reaches HP/10 worth of Injury) before a check would occur, I'd let it still get a chance to spread at the 10-second mark from the last check; failing to spread means that fire goes out. Optionally, you may even allow the fire to spread to more than one hex at a time - perhaps every MoS 2 spreads it to an additional adjacent hex, to a maximum of spreading to all 6 adjacent hexes with MoS 10+.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Also, while heat rays treat shots to the same hex as ablative for wood (and probably also leather, linothorax, bone, and other organic materials), metal armor would only be semi-ablative - you can melt it, but it has a rather high melting point and will take a while.

I'd be tempted to treat metal armor as DR 0 or 1, or have it temporarily ablate only for purposes of resisting the heat ray - basically, the heat ray serves to heat up the armor, cooking the character inside. Heroic characters might have Advantages that ignores this, such that they could indeed continue fighting as their armor literally melts. Armor polished to a shiny finish, of course, don't ablate/heat up at all, as they deflect the heat rays spectacularly.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Curiously, the melting temperature for common rocks are also in the same range as the melting temperature for brass, bronze, copper, steel, iron, gold, and silver (in the 1200 to 1800 K range), so rock could also be treated as being semi-ablative. A heat ray could, if given enough time, melt holes in enemy walls.

That would certainly be interesting, and I like the idea of wealthy cities having special heat-resistant walls. Skyremes have a particular advantage when assaulting a city, as they can keep themselves in position to reflect the sunlight as the day goes on, which conveniently also keeps them out of position for the city's impressive heat rays from engaging (unless you let cities have the heavier, improved variant that doesn't care about the sun's position, so long as there's sufficient light). Considering the skyremes can also stay out of arrow-range while still engaging (thanks to gravity), the only reliable defense against a skyreme siege may well be sending your own skyremes to engage - ideally before they ever reach the city, so crashing ships don't fall down on the city.

On the topic of crashing ships... would something like etherwood actually crash? It seems like the debris would, if anything, float upward (as it's no longer weighed down by all the attached non-etherwood bits). It would be interesting if the aftermath of a battle was floating etherwood debris in the sky, with the more mundane components - including the crew - having fallen to the ground.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by martinl

Skyremes that get too close to Mt. Olympus get smote with lightning.

Well obviously. (quickly scribbles down notes; hides notes)

Originally Posted by martinl

The void is usually full of heat distortion, swirling dust, flies, and so forth so you can't see deep into it. In fact, the depths are dim and the abyss is dark. It is said that all the way down there, where sunlight never penetrates, the skydead walk.

Terrible creatures live in the hot abyss come up to terrorize good Greeks on hot summer nights.

Aergonauts swear they see glowing ghost dolphins in the void at night.

Ah, yes yes YES! Nice stuff here.

From a realistic point of view, if dust or clouds kept sunlight from reaching the Mediterranean depths, you would get an inversion layer which would inhibit convection so without the adiabatic compressive heating of the descending air it wouldn't get as hot. And also without light to fuel to extremophile phototrophic microbes in the briny sea you wouldn't get the gnat clouds. But realism? In this setting? Pha!

I do imagine you would frequently get stratus cloud layers across at leats parts of the Mediterranean basin, and when they clear up the heating of the Mediterranean bottomlands would evaporate water flowing in from the continents, leading to huge convective thunderstorms rising up out of the basin. So with frequent cloud cover plus vast clouds of gnats (and their attendant swarms of birds that feed on them) the Mediterranean floor might often be obscured.

Anyways, neat ideas! Thanks.

Luke

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The heat rays aren't the only issue you'd run into with 1-second rounds - keep in mind any vessel within heat ray range is also within arrow range, which risks having to roll for all the archers on each side every 3-4 seconds (in theory, you could have a roll every second, alternating Fast-Draw and Attack, but if the Greeks are attacking in volleys rather than free-firing, this seems unlikely).

10-second rounds sound like about the right amount to aim for (note if using a battlemap, 10-yard hexes will work well with this). Something I've suggested in the past is to roll 3dF (a dF is a 6-sided dice with two -'s, two +'s and two blank faces) and apply the result to the effective skill level, then use the probability associated with that skill level to determine how many hits you got. For example, with an effective skill of 12, a roll of +1 (2 +'s, 1 -) changes this to 13, so 83.79% of the attacks hit; that works out to 8 hits from 10 seconds of heat ray, or 50 total arrows* out of three 20-arrow volleys, or whatever. You could probably do something similar to avoid all those damage rolls.

*Arrows are a potential issue. I wouldn't expect an archer to have effective ST below 12, and higher is likely (particularly considering the Strongbow Perk, which gives any professional archer +2 to ST for using a bow), but we'll go with that. Greeks would probably use either Composite or Reflex bows (heroes, of course, use Philoctetes' bow, from Fantasy Tech), for a minimum of 1d+1 imp. This would average 1.67 Injury per hit (10 HP every 6 hits) against an Unliving target with DR 3, which can result in arrow volleys destroying enemy vessels in rather short order (102 arrows are enough to drop a 170 HP skyreme to 0 HP; depending on how many archers you have, this may well be markedly faster than trying to board). One solution is to treat the skyremes as having IT:DR against arrows and the like, cutting average Injury to something more manageable (giving them Homogenous for purposes of Injury, but keeping HP based on Unliving, could also work).

Yeah. I'll need ways to group arrow attacks as well. I'm having a hard time rationalizing arrows doing much of anything at all against a skyreme's structure. Arrows are likely to be effective at knocking out crew, but I'm just not seeing them do much when they get stuck in the hull.

Originally Posted by Varyon

As I noted previously, I think 1d-1 would have a roll against 14 to successfully spread after 10 seconds. As that's the damage a fire does once started, using the same roll to check for spreading to an adjacent hex is probably appropriate. If a hex gets "burned up" (reaches HP/10 worth of Injury) before a check would occur, I'd let it still get a chance to spread at the 10-second mark from the last check; failing to spread means that fire goes out. Optionally, you may even allow the fire to spread to more than one hex at a time - perhaps every MoS 2 spreads it to an additional adjacent hex, to a maximum of spreading to all 6 adjacent hexes with MoS 10+.

That sounds quite reasonable. I was considering something a bit more convoluted, rolling against different numbers for spreading upward, laterally, or downward - but you know what? I don't want to turn this into an exercise in fire suppression engineering so keeping it simple is good.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'd be tempted to treat metal armor as DR 0 or 1, or have it temporarily ablate only for purposes of resisting the heat ray - basically, the heat ray serves to heat up the armor, cooking the character inside. Heroic characters might have Advantages that ignores this, such that they could indeed continue fighting as their armor literally melts. Armor polished to a shiny finish, of course, don't ablate/heat up at all, as they deflect the heat rays spectacularly.

I'm going to rationalize this as the shininess of the armor and padded garments you wear to keep it from chaffing give it the normal DR, just to keep things from getting too complex. Plus, I want heat rays to be neat niche weapons rather than the equivalent of machine guns in WW I, so we can keep that heroic feel.

Originally Posted by Varyon

That would certainly be interesting, and I like the idea of wealthy cities having special heat-resistant walls. Skyremes have a particular advantage when assaulting a city, as they can keep themselves in position to reflect the sunlight as the day goes on, which conveniently also keeps them out of position for the city's impressive heat rays from engaging (unless you let cities have the heavier, improved variant that doesn't care about the sun's position, so long as there's sufficient light). Considering the skyremes can also stay out of arrow-range while still engaging (thanks to gravity), the only reliable defense against a skyreme siege may well be sending your own skyremes to engage - ideally before they ever reach the city, so crashing ships don't fall down on the city.

Ah, excellent! Neat tactics.

I'm thinking that certain special heroes who are favorites of Helios could be gifted magic sunstones. If you put one of these at the focal point of a heat ray, it can operate no matter whether the sun is shining or not, or in whatever direction it is pointed. You would need to keep them in asbestos boxes, of course, from all the solar heat they put out (say 1d-1 burn damage, area effect 2 with dissipation, for the kind of sunstone that could power a skyreme heat ray. City defense heat rays would need bigger sunstones (or just operate as a skyreme heat ray while using a smaller sunstone). Sunstones would, of course, be very rare and not just the sort of thing you can buy with money - quests and the like would be needed. That would be like Perseus walking down to Ye Olde Magic shop and plunking down some drachma for his cap of invisibility or flying sandals (or even the gorgoneion, bypassing his adventure altogether).

Originally Posted by Varyon

On the topic of crashing ships... would something like etherwood actually crash? It seems like the debris would, if anything, float upward (as it's no longer weighed down by all the attached non-etherwood bits). It would be interesting if the aftermath of a battle was floating etherwood debris in the sky, with the more mundane components - including the crew - having fallen to the ground.

And excellent visuals, as well. Disintegrating flaming airships, with parts of them falling upward while other parts plummet to the ground. Sounds like fun!

Luke

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Yeah. I'll need ways to group arrow attacks as well. I'm having a hard time rationalizing arrows doing much of anything at all against a skyreme's structure. Arrows are likely to be effective at knocking out crew, but I'm just not seeing them do much when they get stuck in the hull.

Yeah, just fiating that they don't cause any Injury to the skyremes is probably fine. As for the attacks themselves, I'd be tempted to treat each volley as an area effect with Bombardment. Probably the easiest way to handle it is to have it affect an area equal in size to the group of archers and be a roll against the commander's Tactics+4, with a reduced (halved? quartered?) penalty for Range. On a success, the area is centered as the commander wanted; on a failure, use the rules for Scatter. Every character within the area is effectively hit by a skill 10, Rcl 2, RoF 3 (with 10-second rounds) attack. Roll independently for heroes, aggregate the rolls somehow to get a casualty count for lesser characters (and keep in mind the characters get a defense).

Originally Posted by lwcamp

I'm going to rationalize this as the shininess of the armor and padded garments you wear to keep it from chaffing give it the normal DR, just to keep things from getting too complex. Plus, I want heat rays to be neat niche weapons rather than the equivalent of machine guns in WW I, so we can keep that heroic feel.

That works. And, yeah, really don't want the heat rays to be too powerful; part of me even wants to have them unable to directly damage infantry, instead serving to temporarily blind them and make them collapse from heat exhaustion, but that doesn't really jive with the fact they need to be able to set ships aflame.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

I'm thinking that certain special heroes who are favorites of Helios could be gifted magic sunstones.

I really like this. I suggest the sunstones not work at night (they're more for when the sun is in the wrong location relative to your reflector, or hidden behind the clouds, than when Helios isn't driving it across the sky). In theory you could have them produce illumination more akin to moonlight (useful as a light source, useless for burning things), but that seems more appropriate for moonstones gifted to favorites of Selene. Some meteorological phenomena might override Helios' favor as well, such as a massive black thundercloud sent by Zeus or a solar eclipse.