I am designing an encounter where the characters are on a sky ship and see another sky ship way off in the distance. The distant ship belongs to giants, and is built proportional to the giants' size. There are no objects or landscape features that the party can use as a frame of reference to determine the size of the ship; therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that until they close within a certain distance, the size differential will not be readily apparent.
Technically the giants are Large (based loosely on fire giants). These giants otherwise look human.
Questions:
- At what distance should I allow perception to reveal that the other ship's size may be different than their own?
- What should be the DC of that perception roll?
- At what distance should it be pretty much obvious without a roll that the ship is giant-sized?
- What (if any) relevant questions have I failed to list here?
I am tempted when asked to describe the ship by saying something like, "It is a large ship with two masts" etc., then later, "I told you it was large!" Suggestions are welcome here.
The GM is the players eyes and ears on the world. Unless there is a darn good reason you shouldn't fool your players with wordplay like your last idea. They have to be able to trust you to relay the world as their characters perceive it.
That said, your first concept isn't a bad one at all. Size and Weight don't scale the same, so a bigger ship would be heavier, and each part of the ship would be heavier as well. I'd have the first roll be a profession(sailor or skysailor) do notice that the ship doesn't move/handle etc. the way it should.
The GM is the players eyes and ears on the world. Unless there is a darn good reason you shouldn't fool your players with wordplay like your last idea. They have to be able to trust you to relay the world as their characters perceive it.
"Large" is a temptation I will avoid...just thought it was kind of funny as I was typing it out. Neutral terms are better, like it's a sloop or galley, number of sails/masts, what standards it's flying, etc.
That said, your first concept isn't a bad one at all. Size and Weight don't scale the same, so a bigger ship would be heavier, and each part of the ship would be heavier as well. I'd have the first roll be a profession(sailor or skysailor) do notice that the ship doesn't move/handle etc. the way it should.
This is good. Being that they're in the air, nothing will give their weight away unless they turn, which could very easily come to pass, in which case they'll turn slowly.
I'm also thinking that if the party tries to hail the crew, their own voices might not carry at the distance they think they're at relative to the opposing ship. And when a hail finally is returned, the voices will be deeper than their own.
I'm still not sure what distances to apply various rolls at.
Ask for a knowledge: local check to notice that the 'humans' have slightly off proportions or something like that.
First, determine the distance they would spot a normal sized enemey. Now double that distance for large, triple it for huge, etc.
When they first spot it say "It's a large ship with two masts." You have have x rounds to prepare.
After x rounds tell them "It's actually much bigger than you thought, now you think its x rounds away.
People have a tendency to assume that things are "normal" until proven otherwise. So a faraway ship will be assumed to be human sized until other details make themselves known.***
*** as an aside, I think that sentence is the future-perfect-present tense. Which is a lot less awkward than I thought it would be.
To aid in that last option, you could have a cloud pass between than briefly and then when it's past teh ship will seem to have changed more. It might just give them a mechanical +5 or something to notice that it's not average.
As to the weight not being apparent, I think you're misunderstanding, Because the Giants are bigger, the ship will have to be designed differently from the PC's own. It's a simple principle of engineering. The structural properties of materials don't scale up well simply by using thicker pieces. They would have to have either some different materials or different structural supports within the vessel so that the bottom does not come off, just as an example.
The hull is likely to not look that different at long range, but as they close on the vessel it should become apparent that certain aspects are out of proportion to what they should be. Simply asking your players for the Knowledge and profesison rolls should give them and their characters a sense that something is not quite right, even if you don't have a DC they can hit, they should know that something is up.
ALSO, if the Giants are Hostile, you could have them start firing at your PC's while still WAY beyond hitting. As a boulder-sized cannon shot passes by it'll be a good indication what they're up against. :)
As to the weight not being apparent, I think you're misunderstanding
Correct, I was misunderstanding. This will definitely inform my description of the ship and what various skill checks will reveal.
Hmmm, let's see.
The DC to see a creature is 0. On a perfectly clear sunny day, we could call that "favorable conditions" and give it a -2 modifier. The giants are large so if we borrow from the Stealth skill, that's a -4 modifier which arguably does not apply when trying to perceive un-stealthy giants but we'll include it just for the heck of it.
So, at best, our DC to see the giant is -6 if he's adjacent to us. Move him 260 feet away and our DC to see him is 20. Move him another 200 feet away and our DC to see him is 40. At 660 feet, we need a DC 60 perception check to SEE the giant AT ALL.
How many of your PCs can make that check?
Now, their ship might be considered to be "colossal" sized. That means it gets a -16 modifier (instead of the giants' -4) for size. That means we need a 60 DC perception check to even SEE the colossal ship at 780 feet away, not even a quarter of a mile.
Given how perception works in this game, it's a safe bet that any ruling you make based on actual rules will be ridiculous.
And given that, you might as well just tell them, initially, "you see another airship far away" (no need to talk about size or scale or even distance when they have no easy way to calibrate their perspective) and then when the ships are close enough for an encounter to begin, hostile or friendly or whatever, that's the time to maybe toss out a perception check to notice the odd scale of the approaching ship.
that's no moon
it's a space station
Technically, Luke, Han, Chewie, and Ben couldn't see the space station until they got about 800 feet away, although maybe Ben's Jedi powers helped him see it sooner.
In fact, nobody on Golarion can even see the moon (not even close), nor the sun or stars. I mean, even astrological size modifiers cannot make up for being -1,000,000,000,000,000,000 on the distance modifier to the perception check.
Thanks all for the great input!