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| A Huge Battleship: Spelljammers, Is Approaching; Strikejamming Systems | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 24 2015, 09:41 AM (771 Views) | |
| Aryustalim | Jul 24 2015, 09:41 AM Post #1 |
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(I'll finish polishing the class stuff later, but it does seem I'd forgotten to 'populate' the classes with regular feats. Perhaps someone more competent could fill them out so it balances better? Consider this a 'beta' and partly an amalgamation of notes though I've been cleaning it up all morning. I know my writing can be a chore to trudge on through. Feel free to discuss how to 'smooth it out', it probably would help. The current text includes some bits of reasoning, etc after all that probably does not need to be in the book itself.) Hybrid Combat Vessels: A common Cliche of Kenku love poetry, "Destroy the Core" incidents resound across the planes as a bitter reminder that Exalts can punch well beyond 'above their weight', and also that only *your* equipment was built by the lowest bidder. Battleship-Raid is a certification given to non-capital vehicles equipped with both Munchausen Drives and Hybrid Weaponry. These 'Strike Jammers" are nothing more (or less) than high-performance strike craft entirely capable -if designed and handled properly- of hunting Spelljammers no matter the dimensions. To a GM, this simply means the vehicle and its occupants operate at a different level than a normal vehicle. Just as a level 5 exalt will mow through mooks and deal with greater daemonry, a Strikejammer turns jeeps and interceptors to confetti if they're lucky, on its way to a real fight with things that threaten cruisers full of hope (and ten thousand crewmen). Characters beware: To field a Battleship-Raid certified vehicle is to present yourself as a menace to big ships. In Crossing the Rubicon, one has openly displayed their readiness (real or delusional) to 'core' entire frigates head(nosecone)-on. Also be aware that even the most spacious strikejammer will sorely lack in comfortable facilities, and a wise ace will fly out a full-sized mothership. Probably one the rest of his allies own. Which he can hide behind in battle. Hint. Hint. Exalt-Controlled Strikejammers at Ship Scale operate quite similarly to strike-craft. As a result of the different scales, a few things do differ from normal vehicle stats: -Maneuverability is as the vehicle's, +5. At Spelljammer Combat Scale, the vehicle's speed does not negatively impact its maneuverability rating -Acceleration: Multiply the vehicular factor by 4 to obtain your Ship Scale value. The average Strikejammer thus handles similarly to 'bombers' for its speed, but with better maneuvering and enough firepower to equal entire wings. -Speed: Replace the Crew Rating with the Pilot's Level, otherwise as per the vehicle's normal speed - including components such as XL engines of course -Static Defense: As a single, individual strike-craft rather than full wing, the strikejammer's static defense is equal to 4x the pilot's level, plus Maneuerability. Specific increases to vehicle static defense (such as class completion bonuses) are added to this as normal. One-Shot Wonders: Strikejammers and their Exalted pilots are capable of incredible reflexes, exhibiting split-second dodges or even well placed ablative sacrifice. Nevertheless, against their favored prey, the weapons brought to bear are of apocalyptic nature. Even Plot Armor (a known, quantified substance nowadays1) has significant limitations in such situations. Spelljammer weapons outright ignore the smaller craft's Resilience and Armor values, though Shield Generators will offer a single hit buffer, crashing utterly in exchange for this single moment of respite. Additionally, Every successful damaging hit doubles as an automatic critical, thus going head to head with battleships is a dangerous proposition even for the greatest ace. Dishing It Out: A Strikejammer's combat options include all available Strikecraft Modes. Auguries and Jamming may be performed through sensors or active ECM, and even non-hybrid weapons or Orgone Arrays may be used for interceptor turret duty. Use the pilot's skill pools as appropriate rather than the standard 'Crew+X' abstraction, much as for characters in Bridge positions on a spelljamming vessel. A strikejammer exalt may act as bridge officer for Interceptors or Bombers, at -1k0 to all piloting tests (command or otherwise) per squadron thus led beyond the first. Strikejammer weapon ranges equal 3 plus the Appropriate Weapon Skill in VUs. Strikejammers equipped with Orgonne Arrays have a spellcasting range of 1VU, or 2VU when firing spells through high-grade (+1k1 or better) Antennas. Ignore phenomena, but be aware that many spells may be of no utility at Ship Scale. Evocation Spells are particularly well suited if modified for combat in the depths of space, however, and increase their effective range by an additional Void Unit. When attacking standard Strike Craft, the Strikejammer operates as a Spelljamming Vessel so long as its Hybrid Weapons are not disabled or destroyed. This includes automatic destruction and multi-kills from good raises. Meanwhilie, strike-craft are limited to resolving attacks and damage normally against the strikejammer, acting against its hitpoints, armor, aura and resilience as normal. Hybrid Weapons deal identical damage to both Vehicles and Spelljammers. These weapons are deliberately overengineered to perform ludicrous mass-destruction, and are almost invariably priceless artifacts or planetary-budget-prototypes purpose-built for exactly this kind of uphill battle2. Finer Hybrid details are available below. Let it also be known that Capital-Scale Megaparticle and Wave Cannons do in fact exist as well, but their associated pricetags and 'alderan-like' tendencies restricts their use and production to something of a rarity. Few can be trusted with such devastating power after all, and their sheer mass prevents just running off with the thing in a forklift. In other words, It's cheaper and safer for general purposes to use the resources and funds to just build another Spelljammer. Notable examples of existing Capital Hybrids include Zerg Exathrope "Amber Eye", the Tau's Ugarda Loki fleetkiller, and the highway-friendly Geth 'Moritz-G', reputed to depopulate entire ecospheres in mere minutes3. It may be safe to assume each species has hidden away 'just one'. Battleship Raid When fired at Ship Scale, the far higher base rates of fire in Vehicles is abstracted a bit. Strikejammers get two attacks, or just one if on a 'recharge' turn for weapons suffering from this. Roll damage just once: Each successful hit deals 1/3 (rounding up) the total damage, the remaining third is lost. Strikejammers cannot cause more than a single point of total hull integrity loss to spelljamming vessels from damage rolls alone (apply this limit only at the very end, when marking down hull-loss after every other calculation or effect). However, for every 10 full points of damage against the hull, add +1 to the critical roll. Crew, System and Integrity losses from the attack are all applied as normal. Strikejammers must 'shoot the core' as it were, annihilating larger ships piecemeal. They cannot cleave an escort ship in two (except with some very very lucky shots on very very small frigates), but can rapidly transform their target into an uninhabitable mess plasma-venting space hulk. Conversely, a Spelljammer can easily turn a strikejammer into a radiation-venting cloud of disjointed-atoms, so it's still not a good idea to play fair against big ships. Bombardment Strikejammers are capable of surface bombardment. Any weapon capable of tearing the engines off a super-dimension fortress is guaranteed no less armageddonish when aimed at steel girders. These weapons can surely depopulate a planet, and the environmental aftermath of multiple teraton strikes is undoubtedly severe, but for purposes of having a game to play, it's either going to involve far too much opposition to just "class-5" a place, or one should just fast-forward through the tedious process. While far less devastating on a per-shot basis, the higher rate of fire and ability to actually aim from up close on the sufrace ensures superb close-air-support. Strikejammers can operate bombardment at Vehicle timeframes, with the following modifications to their power: Deviation: misses are off by 1k1*100m in high orbit, and use grenade-scatter numbers if you're actually firing at vehicle-scale ranges. Energy weapons act as a Lance Strike: Reduce the kill radius to (5+1/2d)x10m, with a blast radius roughly 100m beyond this. The damage in the blast radius is equal to the weapon's base dice (without the +20 or +30 static modifier). Torpedoes (Arrow IV, Balmung 'photon' warheads, etc): As with lance strikes, but with the extended blast radius equal to 500m. Hybrids and Personal Scale First off a warning to players: this should not happen. A warning to GMs: The players should never have let this happen. A warning to character sheets: Bend Over. Vehicular Hybrid and above don't really attack people. In fact, they can't. You can't snipe a goblin with a wave cannon. Sounds great for the goblin, but the reason why it can't is somewhat more demoralizing: Assume a cylinder the size of the vehicle is being exposed to forces beyond mortal ken, all the way up to the actual target point (if that happens to be nearby, see the Bombardment rules and pray to all the gods). Really Important Characters like PCs and end-bosses get to 'only' automatically suffer the weapon's damage if they're even partially in the area, and lose additional Resource up to an amount (if available) equal to lost HP. Plot Armor does not help those who refuse to help themselves. In case of Spelljammer Hybrid weaponry, the only applicable rule here is "game over man, game over". Things used to kill planets don't even leave enough of you to even reincarnate, and that assumes you were hiding in nearby demiplanes and avoided some of the reality destruction's wake. 1] Reactive Destinic-Ablation Quantification; Statistical Karmic Capacitance As A Function Of Supra-Yamato Thresholds Under Capella-Anomaly Parameters/ GTVA-B-BLD2-2499-12; Pailsen,Y ; Wily,A ; Bosch,A 2] It should also be very strongly noted by GMs and Players alike that their price-tag is a spectacular balancing factor here: These weapons *cost* about as much as what they're fired at, and their relative performance is a necessity for a purpose-trinity of balance, fun and merit-dot-sanctity. A strikejammer capable of hunting a destroyer is easily as expensive a holding as the destroyer, and yet packs less weapons, has less actions per round, contains no massive labs or manufactorums, lacks diplomatic quarters as easily as cavernous hangar bays, and can provide neither a thousand angry marines nor a million tons of cargo space no matter how much the pilot wishes to. 3]A Spelljammer's Heavy Motion Wave Cannon is NOT a standard starship gun. For one thing, they're far more likely to have been destroyed than a piece of small vehicle equip. It's something that HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people could potentially activate in the wrong hands, and most would probably argue that there ARE no right hands for this anyways. These aren't things in ship combat, these weapons are campaign events of the worst kind. These horrors don't just wipe out floating continents the size of australia, they 'initiate' entire atmospheres - or would if they weren't so decisively overloading gravitational binding energies that the entire mess was performing class-x "uh oh"s. When one of these things leaves its fleet's homeworld, it's half the wheel that's going to mobilize in panic. But since this will come up eventually... For purposes of resolution, their damage applies evenly to "Ship" and "Planet" scales and apply "spelljammers firing at strike craft" rules to attacks against spelljammer fleets as well. Devout clerics report visions of unnerving dread when staring at these things, though the reasons for this remain unknown. If you're wondering why there's no missile 'ship hybrids' its because any missile that big's going to be a ship itself, and you can abstract some "planetary collision" rules yourselves I'm too lazy. |
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| Aryustalim | Jul 24 2015, 09:42 AM Post #2 |
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Warp Rattler Class Option > Arrowhead > Delta > Wise-Man > Wave Master Requirements: Drive OR Pilot 2/3/4/5- Ballistics 1/2/3/4- Regular access or ownership to/of vehicle qualified for Battleship-Raid Conditions Characteristics: Dexterity, Wisdom, Charisma Arcana, Ballistics, Command, Drive, Forbidden Lore, Perception, Pilot, Tech-Use Mastery Bonus: +1 to Arcana actions of vehicles you pilot or handle Arcana-systems Cross The Rubicon: Any vehicle you pilot or command may fully operate in Spelljammer Scale. You may purchase and use any 'ship' feat you own while in a vehicle and count as any currently 'unfilled' bridge position needed, including strike-craft wing commander. However, any vehicle you operate, even if lacking Battleship-Raid certifaction, is noticeably abnormal in some way (generally 'behavior' to sensor operators) and sure to attract attention. This feat is prerequisite for Option, and may be taken by any character of any class. Option: Defensive Force: Once per combat, you may negate a single successful damaging hit. In Spelljamming scale, you may also instead negate one instance of crew loss to a sacrifical Intercept within 2VU - including using your own vehicle Arrowhead: Gravitic Drive Unit: When piloting a vehicle equipped with Munchausen Drives, you may use them as VTOL systems within an atmosphere. The drive's standard punch-it mode remains in place for transatmospheric interface, however. Delta: Dimension Beast Solution: Once per sortie, you may expend this feat to protect the entirety of a vehicle you are piloting from any one single non-damage effect. Anything from daemonic crewman-possession to catastrophic control losses can be violently purged this way. Only a *single* effect is negated this way however: If an event (such as Critical 5) would cause multiple effects, you must choose which of the lot is negated. You *must* declare Dimension Beast Solution immediately, before any effect (or re/double-roll) is actually resolved. Wise-Man: Full-Dose: If the vehicle you pilot equipped with an Orgonne Array, as part of an attack, you may burn-out your Orgone Array to unleash an additional attack if the target is within 2VU(or 250m vehicle scale). This counts as a System Failure critical for the array: Treat the Full-Dose attack as a Hybrid attack, using Evocation+Charisma, +Array if applicable. Wave Master: Hyperdrive: You may ignore the Recharge hindrance on Hybrid weaponry you fire. Hybrid Missile Launchers instead add +0k1 to damage and +2 to crit rolls. |
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| SporkMaster5000 | Jul 24 2015, 11:30 AM Post #3 |
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really glad to see this stuff on the forum. I'd love to get an editorial eye on it once I can look at it onsomething bigger than my phone. two things jump out: Amber Eye should probably be a Kython creation per current races and Cross the Rubicon being accessible by any class and being a prerequisite is really out of place in the class/feat system. I'm sure there's a better approach for what you want here. |
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| Aryustalim | Jul 24 2015, 11:47 AM Post #4 |
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Hopefully there is, I just can't think of one off the top of my head. Effectively Cross the Rubicon should almost be a post character creation 'trait'. It's not actually really offering much beyond something that's almost more a clarification of what you can do at the scale. It's meant sort of as a "yes, I'm up for this" toggle. Maybe it's not even needed? |
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| Eisenritter | Jul 24 2015, 11:53 AM Post #5 |
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Old Iron Knight
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Probably better to keep it a "prestige" bit... "ship" feats don't come into play until Level 3 (barring homebrew I may have overlooked), which might affect the primary benefit of the feat. Also, I like the Dog Latin naming conventions for Kython stuff.
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| Methodia | Jul 24 2015, 02:35 PM Post #6 |
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Mediocre Overlord
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I'm super hyped to see this up on the forums, you have no idea. That being said, it is time to whip this up into shape to be polished and such. There are a few things we can do for padding it out with normal feats for the class tracks. Here's a rough list of things I think could go into it. - Weapon Proficiencies (Vehicle, Hybrid, Basic) - Armor Proficiency (Light) - Skill Focus (Drive, Pilot, Tech-Use, Perception) - Blind Fighting for ignoring visual impairments - Heightened Senses - Luck - Weapon Focus/Specialization (Vehicle/Hybrid) - Match Frequency - Zen Shooting maybe? EDIT: I'm sure there are a few feats in book 3 you could drop in here as well, but I'm lazy! Edited by Methodia, Jul 24 2015, 02:41 PM.
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| SporkMaster5000 | Jul 24 2015, 03:07 PM Post #7 |
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there's a helmsman class in book 3 isn't there? might be some borrowable bits from it. |
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| Aryustalim | Jul 24 2015, 04:57 PM Post #8 |
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Ah that reminds me one of the things I remember having covered was something of a slow grind; when archives aren't dead anymore I'll fish it back out. Effectively, Spelljammers are NOT invulnerable to regular vehicular weapons, but it takes massive massive damage. If you're stuck with your shields off on a planet, enough artillery WILL EVENTUALLY wear you down. Eventually. |
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| Eisenritter | Jul 24 2015, 10:27 PM Post #9 |
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Old Iron Knight
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Just artillery? Isn't this sort of thing exactly what Melta/MASER weaponry is for?
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| Doc | Jul 24 2015, 10:43 PM Post #10 |
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Just a Guy
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It's really a matter of scale at that point, I think. Like, you're right that Melta weapons and such are meant to bust holes in basically anything, but going up to a spelljammer with a personal scale Melta weapon is kinda like a mosquito biting into a person - it certainly gets through, but the damage is so small as to basically be negligible. Of course, the Melta Locust swarm, now that's a different problem.
Edited by Doc, Jul 24 2015, 10:44 PM.
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