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Treat the rigging as if it gives cover for an AC bonus and let the crew fire him. If the crew(you) roll well he will get to do something cool and use a rarely used ability.
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Give the person firing a hit roll as if they were firing at the enemy ship, decide how close he gets to where he wants based on that, perhaps using the scatter table for grenade like weapons to see where he goes if it misses?
You could require him to make a DC 15 (or whatever you feel appropriate) Initiative test, or maybe Wisdom to activate the ability at the right time, if he fails the degree by which he does so represents how early or late he is in activating it (maybe dropping him into the water on one side or another of the enemy boat).
This doesn't sound like a great plan. Even if he can slow the fall he'll be travelling horizontally very fast, so if he hits anything there's still heavy damage potential. Also - the consequences of missing (any it's not exactly easy to change direction in midair) are that he's stuck up to a couple of hundred metres from the ships, in the water, without immediate rescue coming, vulnerable to the elements and aquatic animals. Generally it's a bad plan.
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Sounds awesome. I'd allow it based on the rule of cool. My only concern would be that launching one character ahead of anyone else would allow them so much solo action that it could detract from the game, but as long as you have a way around this (maybe everyone else is a caster/archer/gunsmith/has long ranged attacks?) then it's pure awesome sauce.
Mechanically, I'd treat it as the group attempting to launch a similarly weighted boulder. There are mechanics for aiming indirect-fire seige weapons, so use those. The target would be the sails of the ship. If the monk hits the sails, then an acrobatics roll (with negative modifiers for difficulty) to allow slow fall seems reasonable. if the crew misses or if the monk fails his rolls, then falling damage (with some added dice for momentum?) seems reasonable.
Once the crew gains enough notoriety, I can even see enemy ships trying different tricks to ruin the tactic. After all, everyone would know of the infamous Captain Hood and his Amazing Flying Monk by then. ;)
As there are no specific rules to adjudicate this, I'd suggest using the Siege Weapon rules from ultimate combat for aiming. Assuming the monk "hits" a good space, you could ask for an acrobatic check to "reduce fall damage" depending on which surface (mast/rigging/sail) he strikes. Go with a slowfall if he succeeds, take more falling damage if he fails and plummets to the ship/water below.
Sounds badass! Hope it works out for him!
And Corvino! Adventurers don't get into their line of work by playing it safe! How's he supposed to make a name for himself?
I am going to be running Skull and shackles soon. I know the player a monk is going to want to be launched from a siege engine as means of boarding an enemy vessel.
Pretty sure a huge trebuchet can launch him but I am not sure how I should run the actual mechanics. He wants to end up near the rigging and use slow fall to avoid damage.
I would definately allow it, but he would almost certainly take damage. Slow fall doesnt help when being purposely hurled both horizontally and vertically at great speeds. That said I'd probably allow some very high DC acrobatics checks to mitigate some but not all of that damage.
The idea is cool, and I definitely think you should find a way to make it work. Depending on how much realism and balance you want in the game though their are a few things to consider.
In order to prevent horizontal movement, the shot would have to have a very steep trajectory, almost straight up and down. I would guess that the height it reaches would have to be at least 3 times the horizontal distance traveled. So if your boat is 30' from their boat, you have 90 feet of falling to deal with. If you were within 10 feet, you can do it with a only a 30' drop. This probably also eliminates the Monk all the boarding alone from a long way away, which keeps the whole party part of the boarding action.
I would have some sort of pretty fairly easy attack roll for the crew firing the Monk-Launcher to place him properly, and some rules for what happens if missed, probably including being over the water and being over the ship, but too far from the rigging to slow fall (ouch.) He would also have to design or commission a special siege weapon for this, as the standard indirect fire siege weapons have minimum distances and wouldn't fire such a high trajectory (craft: siege engines or knowledge: engineering).
In the scull and shackles game I played in we were able to create some custom magic items with the glide spell usable for 1 round once a day, that worked well, but this is far more epic.
One way to try and compensate for any miss-aiming and to slow him down could be to use a grappling hook/rope combo to snag the rigging and then swing through to kill any excess momentum. Swinging around in rigging is a pretty iconic image, and pirates did use grappling hooks for boarding actions, so it makes thematic sense.
Firing youself out of a catapult is definitely cool. It's a bit high-risk to use as a regular tactic though.
Remember, the purpose of a trebuchet is to try to hit a target with a projectile while said projectile is moving as fast as it can. Depending on the type of trebuchet (light or heavy) there is some scatter effect on where the monk lands.
That said, Newton says the monk should take as much damage as a projectile as the ship would take from a projectile. So a heavy catapult does 6d6 damage, but I'd consider giving the monk a 'reflex for half' save as he grabs for rigging or twists out of the way of crossbeams. The slowfall should let him ignore the falling damage.
Of course, if they miss or he scatters off the ship's area of coverage, he wouldn't take any impact damage but he would hit the water rather hard from rather high up. That would require some adjudication on how far he actually fell, but I'd conservatively say 10d6-15d6. Not optimal for the monk.
Of course, if you don't want to make it punitively painful, restrict the falling damage to a lower number and say he bounced across it like a skipped rock; so instead of 15d6, he takes 6d6 and moves an additional 30 feet further along the trajectory.
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What kind of seige engine is this? A catapult would be much safer than a trebuchet. Trebuchets work by slinging their projectile completely around the throwing arm which can cause serious injury from the act of being launched regardless of what happens when you actually hit. A catapult or onager however lacks the slinging effect and would be much safer.
I am going to be running Skull and shackles soon. I know the player a monk is going to want to be launched from a siege engine as means of boarding an enemy vessel.
Pretty sure a huge trebuchet can launch him but I am not sure how I should run the actual mechanics. He wants to end up near the rigging and use slow fall to avoid damage.
Sounds like pure cinematic awesome. Let it work.
Boots of cat should help and you are right about the horizontal speed needing an acro check to reduce. Any thoughts on damage to the monk and reducing it?
You could use a modified version of the falling damage rules. For example, since the DC for straight vertical jump is 4x the horizontal jump DC, you could take the horizontal distance, divide by 4, and do 1d6 for every 10 feet (e.g, 160 ft/4 = 40 ft, so 4d6). Or you could use the "height = 1/2 horizontal distance" rule, divide the distance traveled by 2 and assign falling damage that way.
Let Acrobatics shave down the dice, like it does now. (Although you might want to make the base damage of the trebuchet be the minimum damage he'd take...I haven't looked that up.)
You could also have the damage be non-lethal if he hits something soft, like the sails. If he hits something hard, like the mast, do lethal. Something kind of in-between, like the rigging or people or something, maybe split the damage half and half?
Side question:
If the monk already has Slow Fall, does he also have High Jump? If so, much of what he wants to accomplish could probably be done through high jump. With a ki point and taking 10, his minimum standing horizontal leap is 35 feet (39 ft if he didn't trade out Fast Movement, and that goes up to 44 ft at 6th level), and that's assuming his Acrobatics bonus is 0. Give him a ring of jumping for another 5 ft or an Elixir of Tumbling for +10 for an hour. Not as cool as being fired out of a cannon, I guess, but still...
If he has High Jump, you could consider reducing the distance traveled by the amount of his High Jump instead of a plain Acrobatics roll. Essentially, you be ruling that he could control his motion up to the distance he could have jumped. If the trebuchet carries him farther than that, he takes damage for the amount of "uncontrolled" movement.
Wow combine the from a siege engine with glide. The problem is glide only lets you travel 60 feet a round a ship can go far faster.
Yes. We used to as a boarding maneuver, not a long range attack. Basically our ship would get into position to grapple, and we would glide onto the deck of the enemy ship while our crew went over the rails. Mostly, we wanted to avoid the whole flat footed after climbing over the railing issue.
If your monk is going to try this from several hundred feet away, it is more problematic. Besides hitting the target and dealing with the horizontal velocity, it is assumed that your ships crew is fighting their ships crew while you deal with the significant guards and officers of the enemy ship. If you don't have any crew there, that would change things.
If he has High Jump, you could consider reducing the distance traveled by the amount of his High Jump instead of a plain Acrobatics roll...
I picture this as a means for the monk to ride an arbalest bolt like a surfboard and then leaping off the bolt as it passes (intentionally) wide of the ship. Which would be awesome.
As for smashing into things when fired by the trevuchet... the whiplash would probably kill him, but they have far less horizontal velocity than vertical fall. It is basically a catapult that arcs stones at a steeper angle to hit targets behind walls and such; thus a target hit would involve raining the stones down onto, rather than smashing them through, the target point. Definitely should consider scattering the monk's actual hit point upon landing.
I would rule that you cannot fire a trebuchet from a ship unless the ship is (a) large, (b) not sail driven, and (c) specifically designed for the purpose.
It's just too much weight swinging around to be safe on a wooden ship. You can have cannon on a reinforced gundeck so a specially designed ship should be able to handle the stresses, but a normal ship will not any more than you can just stick cannon on a galley.
Then there's the rigging problem. A trebuchet substantial enough to be worth using over an onager is going to need quite a bit of space to swing. Something that you don't have on a sailing vessel.
An onager is much more reasonable, but it would have to be a fixed cup onager so range would be reduced from the numbers given in the book.
I think the arbalest (giant-ass crossbow) was the weapon of choice for boats in the Greco-Roman era, but I'm not sure how you would ride one...
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I think the arbalest (giant-ass crossbow) was the weapon of choice for boats in the Greco-Roman era, but I'm not sure how you would ride one...
I would see it like Slim Pickens from Dr. Strangelove, only horizontal as opposed to vertical.
http://www.gonemovies.com/WWW/Drama/Drama/StrangeloveBom.jpg
Either the trebuchet or arbalest are awesome ideas!
This is straight out of Orcslayer, a Gotrek & Felix WFRP book. In that, Gotrek the dwarf tries it.
Provided you hit the sail, you might be OK (though you might want to tuck your arms and legs in). Hitting anything else would be worse. Bring out the True Strike, certainly.
Of course this still leaves you in the uncomfortable position of being a lone 4th level monk on board an enemy ship, surrounded by people with cutlasses and nothing else to do.
Yes.
But requires special magic trebuchet.
Only engineer-mage able build captive of a BBEG.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/environment.html#_falling-into-water
Falling into Water: Falls into water are handled somewhat differently. If the water is at least 10 feet deep, the first 20 feet of falling do no damage. The next 20 feet do nonlethal damage (1d3 per 10-foot increment). Beyond that, falling damage is lethal damage (1d6 per additional 10-foot increment).
how much damage does he takes when his firing crew completely miss the boat.
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Make the check to fire the siege engine aiming for the rigging, monk makes reflex save to not get tangled in the rigging, success means he runs down the rigging failure means he's entangled. If he runs down a distance farther than his slow fall he takes damage as if he fell the remaining distance with him being able to make an acrobatics check to reduce the damage as per falling rules.
If the gunner misses roll to determine where he lands. If he hits water treat it as falling into water from the maximum height of his travel arc. If he hits a solid surface (like say any other part of the boat) he takes damage as if he was hit by the trebuchet. The thing he hit takes 1/2 that damage.
The monk isn't the weapon, he's the ammo. The trebuchet is the weapon and it fires piles of whatever is placed into the firing sling, not just rocks.
There might be some damage from whiplash from the launch, or you could roll it into the rule of cool. It sounds like the monk has a plan for the landing. Trying to steer yourself en route should probably require practice if it's possible at all though.
I am going to be running Skull and shackles soon. I know the player a monk is going to want to be launched from a siege engine as means of boarding an enemy vessel.
Pretty sure a huge trebuchet can launch him but I am not sure how I should run the actual mechanics. He wants to end up near the rigging and use slow fall to avoid damage.
1)
Make sure you roll to hit to see if the trebuchet does indeed get him to the rigging. Follow the siege weapon rules.2)
Calculate the height of the trajectory using this:
http://www.virtualtrebuchet.com/
(you can save your boat's trebuchet characteristics with a link at the bottom)
3)
Slow fall comes off that total height, as does anything he gets from rolling with the fall using acrobatics.
4)
Don't be a dork. Let him do it if the numbers work out. It's a pretty cool idea.
Here's how I'd run firing a PC out of a catapult at an enemy ship...
1) Siege engine crew fires at the enemy ship. The acceleration itself deals 2d6 bludgeoning damage. On a successful hit, the PC successfully lands where he wanted to be.
1a) On a failed hit, consult the grenade scatter table to determine where in the water the PC ends up. Landing in the water does 3d6 nonlethal damage.
2) Determine whether you wanted to be fired at the deck or at the sails/rigging...
2a) Deck: The PC crashes into the deck. Consult the grenade scatter table, considering the center of the deck to be the target. The PC should take 5d6 bludgeoning damage from the impact (Reflex save DC 15 for half damage), and he will be prone.
2b) Sails/Rigging: The PC flies through the rigging. Slamming into the rigging deals 3d6 bludgeoning damage (Reflex save DC 15 for half). He should then make an Acrobatics check (DC15) to catch hold of the ropes/sails. He will then be 1d4x10 feet above the deck. (Failure of the Acrobatics check would indicate that the PC hits the water on the other side of the enemy ship, 1d6x10 feet away. He also takes 3d6 nonlethal damage from hitting the water at speed.)
That's how I'd run it.
Needless to say, realistically it is a brilliant plan only for becoming a bloody stain. If nothing else, the acceleration at the start is probably enough to smush you. Still... with a cube of force...
Never has a PC needed an immovable rod more than this guy.
(Y'all do know you can sink boats with those things, right?)
I'm not sure why people seem to think the launch would kill someone. Unless you are using an absolutely massive siege engine I would be surprised if the monk experienced more than 2-3g. I would expect a mystical ki warrior to be able to handle quite a bit more than that.
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I'm not sure why people seem to think the launch would kill someone. Unless you are using an absolutely massive siege engine I would be surprised if the monk experienced more than 2-3g. I would expect a mystical ki warrior to be able to handle quite a bit more than that.
Because people have had broken bones and died from being shot out of a trebuchet into a safety net.
Most Dangerous Human TrebuchetHuman Catapult, Middlemoor Water Park, United Kingdom Human Catapult, Middlemoor Water Park, United Kingdom
Some rides are just a bad idea. Case in point: the human trebuchet at Middlemoor Water Park in the U.K. For £40 ($66) a pop, riders could crawl into the cradle of a massive medieval-style catapult and be flung at 60 mph through the air into a net positioned 75 feet away.
While previous riders suffered injuries such as a broken pelvis, the catapult ultimately proved how dangerous it could be in 2002 when 19-year-old Oxford student Dino Yankov took his turn. His launch missed the landing net, and he was killed.
Off topic, but...
Years ago in 3rd edition I was playing a monk and wanted to Jump from our ship to an enemy ship that was firing at us so I could disrupt that and buy us some time. No one else in the group could have made it. My Jump check was so high that the DM ruled I flew right over the top of the ship and landed in the water. I argued for a bit about it, but in the end had to Swim over and Climb the side.
You must weigh the odds using the following factors:
Is it cool enough? If so, what is stopping you!!!
Could this result in a Crowning Moment of Awesome?
If so, why are you even debating doing it then???
What's that? The rules don't allow it? Screw the Rules!
It involves a random die roll?
Pssshh...I laugh in the face of danger!
It's not the same caliber as what is mentioned above, but we were playing a certain AP and my Inq of Saranrae (Valor) was up in the rigging and had to get down to the deck (boat on fire). I could have jumped in the water (and fought off some nasties swimming around); or climb down and take some fire damage. I took a third option instead. I grabbed a rope hanging from the crow's nest, holding the rope in one hand and my ECB in the other I did a swan dive off the mast and slid down the rope to the docks. Sure I had to make an Agi check (rather hard too iirc), but I made the roll and it was MAGNIFICENT!.
Point is...nothing should ever stop a player from doing something outrageous, cinematic and awesome. Have fun man. /high five
Sounds awesome, but forget shooting the monk, they make terrible ammo.
Launch Trolls, they quickly regenerate any damage and are NASTY! Plus if you miss one of the PC's doesn't drown.
Troll-a-pult baby!
and or azers because they count as flaming shot!
edit: everything