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Post by blakeryan on Jun 26, 2016 23:39:44 GMT
Gooday
i've never used airships in games and was wondering if people think they're worth including or not.
i know they are in world of warcraft, but haven't come across them in paper/pencil games much.
also are they magic powered or just chemistry-gas?
i always figured they were a valuable commodity and taking out an enemies airship base would be an important strategic goal in a war.
anyone had good or bad experiences with airships in games? too unbalanced? freekin cool?
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Post by lasersniper on Jun 27, 2016 5:10:28 GMT
In my world they are common trade vessels and are powered by bound genie. They are potentially dangerous though because if the containment for the genie is broken you would get a huge elemental explosion and a very pissed genie at the end of it. My last party ended up with a TPK when they decided to mess around with the engine, without knowing how it worked, while flying miles above the ground  . Though my use of airships is little beyond that. I like them personally though. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 30, 2016 17:45:40 GMT
"The only time the party gets an airship is when the DM plans to take it away." That's a comment made by one of my players a long time ago. The experience he's speaking to is that many DMs treat them as convenient plot devices to get characters from point A to point B, then remove them from play. The same thing could be said of a regular ship, too. Doing this is a bit like handing a kid a lollipop then smacking it out of his hands after a couple licks. With that in mind, I did run one campaign that featured an airship. Exploration was a major theme, and the party needed a way to quickly get around the entire continent. I certainly put their airship in danger a number of times, but it was never my intent to permanently deprive them of it. Worst case scenario, they could affect repairs for any damage incurred. The important thing to remember is that an airship trivializes a lot of "classic" obstacles (random encounters on the ground, impassable terrain, etc.) If you're comfortable giving up these options, an airship can be a lot of fun. In fact, it even creates opportunity for some new obstacles. Here are some fun events that occurred during that campaign: - PCs were exploring some ruins, and attracted the attention of a purple worm just as they completed their objective. They were only level 4, so they knew it wasn't a winnable fight. They raced out of the ruins, with the worm crashing through walls and floors to give pursuit. They made it into the open and shot off a flare to signal an emergency extraction.
- The PCs carpet bombed a tribe of vicious minotaurs using an old cache of explosives.
- They had to navigate a field of "air mines" while being swarmed by flying demons.
- They engaged in a mid-air transfer of a rescued prisoner in the midst of a large scale aerial battle
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dmmoleman
Commoner
Carving stone buildings in the caverns of the underdark
Posts: 7 
Favorite D&D Class: Psion
Favorite D&D Race: Human
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Post by dmmoleman on Aug 30, 2016 3:39:18 GMT
One of the characters in my longest running campaign was a goblin rogue (Sparsnick) who really wanted a flying ship. It gave him something to work for and pine over, and I made him work really hard to get the gold together to have one built.
I let him enjoy it for several game sessions, and then I used his previous thefts as the seed for these people chasing him, who eventually catch him and knock down his poorly defensed prize. Big battle, long fall, feather fall/acrobatics, ground battle, and then the "GOSH DARNNIT MY SHIP" moment.
Survival quests/ followed by more thievery,ship gets repaired,then ship gets ironclad-ing. Then they get to enjoy the ship, until a sorcerer dispels the magic in their ship and they have to make it alchemiac, or they fight a dragon, and get knocked into the ocean. There's really a lot you can do to reward and punish them. If flying ships are exceedingly rare, then having them docked in sight of smal/medium cities could cause fear and concern, maybe they have to let the people in their home town know "Hey this is our ship, if you see it, don't worry, cause you know we're around and we'll be looking out for the town" or whatever, right? Then if they're out and about maybe some of their enemies know their hometown isn't safe because the ship's not up in the sky... Maybe in the future they enchant it so it can turn invisible, as long as it's not moving, or something like that. Maybe they create some kind of permanent illusion of their ship over their hometown... I feel like it can be done really well, but the REALLY important thing is to make sure the characters are going to be really into the ship, it's design, it's feel- they need to love their ship like a child. That will make or break the whole concept.
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lemiel14n3
Squire
Posts: 25
Favorite D&D Class: Sorcerer
Favorite D&D Race: Half-Elf
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Post by lemiel14n3 on Nov 12, 2016 18:42:22 GMT
In my setting the world is broken up with a mess of islands in the sky, with the majority of civilization occupying these spaces. Because of this, the entire setting depends on the use of airships, so I've made a lot of consideration on how air travel impacts the world. People need different kinds of life vests that can slow descent. Sailors need to consider altitude as they're sailing, too rapid an ascent or descent and people can suffer from altitude sickness. Airships can't carry nearly as much cargo, so they'd have lighter weaponry and fewer crew members. Airships, if they're going to be able to handle like sailing ships, need enchantments on their keel to make air resist like water, otherwise they'll have very slow turns. Storms are much more dangerous on an airship, but it's potentially possible to fly over them with enough warning. There's more I covered in the sourcebook I linked, so feel free to look through it for airship inspiration. But... those inspirations mostly fit in settings where airships are common
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Post by DM Exitium on Dec 8, 2016 23:33:15 GMT
It's hard to say whether they are broken or not, but so far it has been rewarding with the way I have used it. The gnomes are "extinct" in my homebrew setting, but they only left behind artifacts. A group took an improved airship into space and left the planet behind in a Noah's Ark kind of mentality. The ones that stayed behind were turned into undead by a gnomish lich named Filibastor that drove the other gnomes away. So my players know about the airship now via a very important book they found in the ruins of the gnomish university. Still, all these wonderful inventions are no longer around as the gnomes disappeared nearly 600 years ago and the players never have gotten to use or see an airship themselves.
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