Probably the only real gain would be increased tonnage that could be carried as it would displace less water...probably not by that much...
The Hull is still the same size and area so water resistance would be the same.
In game terms really all I would see is maybe a 20% increase in tonnage available for cargo...no extra speed
In game terms, *all* it would do would be to decrease the weight of the ship. My knowledge of the necessary physics for nautical engineering is a little light, but I imagine that would be both a boon and a burden in different ways. I think I recall something about a ship needing a certain something or something below the waterline something something. Or something like that. I'm sure more enlightened souls could probably give you a mathematical breakdown on it.
But in game terms, no change other than weight.
If you want it to do something special, talk to your DM. He's going to have to OK the use of this monumental amount of darkwood, anyway, so work with him and see what benefits he'd be OK with giving you. That's better than any RAW ruling, any day, anyway.
Good luck. :)
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A ship made of lighter wood would run the risk of rolling over unless the built accounts for the difference.
Presumably they would. But, yes, it would have some rather severe problems without a specific design plan. That's what it is. I think there has to be a certain amount of weight (mass?) beneath the waterline. A ship made out of a wood with too much buoyancy might ride too high on the waterline, increasing the risk of capsizing.
Maybe? Bugger, I forget.
You could use it in a catamaran-style ship, but that pretty much negates any cargo hold.
True. I suppose I did assume "standard medieval fantasy ship" when he said ship, heh.
Clearly I'm no engineer, but I would think lighter wood wouldn't be all that useful...strength is far more important. I would think that the amount of water displaced is far more important that the weight of the material used to displace it.
I would think lighter wood wouldn't be all that useful...strength is far more important.
Strength, stiffness, resistance to rot, degree to which the wood expands when absorbing water, flammability, availability of specific lengths and thicknesses, availability in general, ease of use, costs, degree to which the wood will warp...
It's quite well possible that ships are already partly made out of Darkwood, as well as a dozen other types. A large vessel is a complex machine, after all.| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've written custom sailing ship construction rules for several gaming systems, based on actual maritime engineering principles, so I've done a little reading on it. Here's the extremely abbreviated version:
1) Sailing ships have a maximum speed they can attain, called 'hull speed' that is related not to how light they are but to how *long* they are. As a ship moves forward, it creates a bow wave, which elongates the faster you go. Go fast enough, and you're effectively sailing "uphill," up your bow wave. Some of the super awesome carbon fiber racing boats of the modern age can exceed hull speed, but nothing from the Golden Age of Sail could. So that's the first thing to realize. The equation is as follows:
Max Speed = 1.34 * (length)^0.5 ... speed is in knots, length is in feet.
Early sailing vessels couldn't attain hull speed because their power to weight ratio was too bad, I think the English Frigate could under favorable conditions, and the 1800s Clipper Ships absolutely could do so, routinely.
2) Force to move the boat comes from the sails, obviously, which are above the deck, so you must have righting moment to keep the wind from tipping the boat over. This is partially from the weight of the wood in the boat, usually heavily augmented by ballast. They used lead ingots in the bilge, or sometimes just big rocks, to weight the boat down and keep it from capsizing.
3) Attaining hull speed is a force-to-drag issue. Power comes from sail area and sail plan. Form drag comes from how blocky or slender the hull is. Skin drag comes from how much surface area of hull is under the water, and how how rough or smooth the hull is. (barnacles)
..
Now, how all that maps over to Pathfinder is clearly up to the GM, but in truth making an entire boat out of Darkwood would take a veritable *forest* of the stuff, at a value so insane you'd rather just spend it crafting a custom Staff of Wishes. The only thing I could see making any sense would be to possibly craft your mast and your yard arms out of the stuff, so you don't have as much weight above your line to have to compensate with ballast, which would increase your speed a fraction but still at a very heavy cost.
In truth, if I were a Pathfinder Maritime Engineer on a large but not insane budget, I'd be looking at the following:
1) Copper hull sheathing below the water line, to prevent barnacles from attaching and increasing my drag coefficient,
2) Permanency - Gust of Wind
3) Animate Dead, oars
4) zombie whale
The best thing of all, though, is just hire a druid henchman. He can not only control the weather, but have an aquatic animal companion to patrol the subsurface for any angry Mermen with Hand Drills, which are about the most deadly thing in the whole Pathfinder ocean, honestly.
For anyone that wants the formula beej lists above in miles per hour, rather than knots, it's 1.54 * (length)^0.5
How about using the Ironwood spell on a normal ship?
... and all of a sudden I'm wondering what kind of electrical potential you could get out of a few dozen slugs of mithral and adamantine sandwiched together in lemon juice.
... BUT I. ... THIS IS.... WHERE DOES ....
...
I'm totally going to use this for my steampunk setting. :o
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... and all of a sudden I'm wondering what kind of electrical potential you could get out of a few dozen slugs of mithral and adamantine sandwiched together in lemon juice.
Less in the grand scheme of things than you'd get from much simpler machines and RAW magic. Why, for instance, create an electrical battery to power a light when you have the light spell?
More to the point, the (permanency)(gust of wind) trick does wonders for all sorts of machinery in-game, because you can put it in front of a half dozen windmills tied to a drive train, and use that for running machinery.
Perpetual energy is way too easy to achieve in pathfinder.
Definitely using this. wonderful ideas
I've written custom sailing ship construction rules for several gaming systems, based on actual maritime engineering principles, so I've done a little reading on it. Here's the extremely abbreviated version:
1) Sailing ships have a maximum speed they can attain, called 'hull speed' that is related not to how light they are but to how *long* they are. As a ship moves forward, it creates a bow wave, which elongates the faster you go. Go fast enough, and you're effectively sailing "uphill," up your bow wave. Some of the super awesome carbon fiber racing boats of the modern age can exceed hull speed, but nothing from the Golden Age of Sail could. So that's the first thing to realize. The equation is as follows:
Max Speed = 1.34 * (length)^0.5 ... speed is in knots, length is in feet.
Early sailing vessels couldn't attain hull speed because their power to weight ratio was too bad, I think the English Frigate could under favorable conditions, and the 1800s Clipper Ships absolutely could do so, routinely.
2) Force to move the boat comes from the sails, obviously, which are above the deck, so you must have righting moment to keep the wind from tipping the boat over. This is partially from the weight of the wood in the boat, usually heavily augmented by ballast. They used lead ingots in the bilge, or sometimes just big rocks, to weight the boat down and keep it from capsizing.
3) Attaining hull speed is a force-to-drag issue. Power comes from sail area and sail plan. Form drag comes from how blocky or slender the hull is. Skin drag comes from how much surface area of hull is under the water, and how how rough or smooth the hull is. (barnacles)
..
Now, how all that maps over to Pathfinder is clearly up to the GM, but in truth making an entire boat out of Darkwood would take a veritable *forest* of the stuff, at a value so insane you'd rather just spend it crafting a custom Staff of Wishes. The only thing I could see making any sense would be to possibly craft your mast and your yard...
While the presence of magic and magical creatures would sure make it seem such, I would argue that ultimately there is a complex Conservation of Mass/Magic/Energy Law that must be maintained, possibly across multiple dimensions, planes, spaces, etc.
Certain magic items seemingly do something for forever, and if that something provides kinetic energy, it could be harnessed as a basis for other engines.
Two quick examples that come to mind are the rotational energy of an Ioun stone and the potential energy which rapidly becomes kinetic if one was to have a Decanter of Endless Water stationed at a height above the ground. Either could be harnessed in different fashions to drove a rotational engine which could then translate its power into other directions, etc, and then provide endless power of different sorts.
Possibly more difficult is the light energy from a continual flame, but no less valid, as light IS energy, even if there is no heat.
In some version of the game, I recall ther being a rule that a continual flame object is SLOWLY (like over millions of years) degraded to fuel the luminous quality of the object, so in some analog to E=mc^2 the mass is becoming light energy.
The Decanter example is probably stealing water (and thus mass) from another location (the plane of Water?), which might seemingly have an infinite supply, but would eventually run out if given enough time I'd wager.
The Ioun stone might work similar to the continual Flame by SLOWLY dissolving the stone to furninsh the energy for the rotation, OR maybe it sucks 100 calories a day from the wearer, an amount most wearers may not ever notice having left them, but which clearly demonstrate a lack of permanency to the flight.
So, just like in our world, where perpetual motion is a figment, I believe that while it can be seemingly demonstrated within a Pathfinder world, that it probably doesn't exist, otherwise the great empires...
Nice post. :)
Perpetual energy is way too easy to achieve in pathfinder.While the presence of magic and magical creatures would sure make it seem such, I would argue that ultimately there is a complex Conservation of Mass/Magic/Energy Law that must be maintained, possibly across multiple dimensions, planes, spaces, etc.
Meh, if you just go relativity on it, then the cost of permanency in gold pieces will buy a lot of uranium. The conservation of energy issues never bothered me.
Well the Guide to Darkmoon Vale talks about the Lumber Consortium being the only legal timber company to harvest Darkwood in the Vale, and that wood mostly goes to Andoran ship builders.
Sooo wether it fits real world physics of ships or not one reason that Andoran ships are prized is Darkwood, and one of the chief reasons smugglers run darkwood to Cheliax is for ship building.
Am I the only person thinking about the Black Pearl here?
You heard it sunk in hurricane Sandy, right? The Black Pearl was filmed on the HMS Bounty replica that sank off the coast of Cape Hatteras last month.
I was thinking the live ships from the Robin Hobb series.
also... the energy question makes me think of the Ebberon model... steam engins powered by elemental's and the like.
If you want a cool special ship in pathfinder you could try and make one using the magnus effect instead of sails.
Should be possible with pathfinder technology. You only need a spinning cylinder. This could be achieved by animals running in a treadmill.
Sorry to have derailed the thread.
In the 'real world,' ships based on the Magnus effect don't really save you any energy over propeller driven ships. I could see them being of some benefit for ships that travel over substrates thicker than water, though, or if you had a rotational power source that was more efficient than permanent gust of wind. I'm not sure I can think of one in the rules, though.
As I say, ordinary sailing vessel + level 13 druid = win.
As soon as I saw the Coral Golem in the Skull and Shackes AP bestiary I immeadiately thought that a couple of those running hamster wheel style could turn a padle wheel.