The Core Rulebook says you can't put capital weapons on turrets. Yet, the supercolossal ships in Dead Suns 6 have them.
Is that a mistake, or are they an exception to the rule?
Also, ships larger than Huge can only have four weapon systems in any given arc (plus four more in a turret). However, supercolossal ships are shown with 5 weapons in some cases! Again, a mistake, or an exception?
Supercolossal ships aren't at all available for player creation. As a result, it makes some sense they may have a number of exceptions baked in, as a GM tool, or for the sake of Paizo making a tough boss.
Whether it's the players or the GM making the ship, the rules still need to be clear.
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Whether it's the players or the GM making the ship, the rules still need to be clear.
NPC/Starship/trap/item creation rules for GMs.
Is it a fair challenge? Is it something that will advance the storyline? Is it something your players have been hoping for or that will make them say “that’s really cool!”?
That isn't really helping to find an answer...
I think the answer (thogh not clearly stated in the rules anywhere) is:
Super-colossal ships aren't a PC option, and they use different rules (which are not explicitly explained).
I think you should probably tag your posts/change subjects appropriately to avoid Dead Suns spoilers.
It's a spoiler to say their are really big ships in a module? Surely the cover alone gives that away!
It's a spoiler to say their are really big ships in a module? Surely the cover alone gives that away!
Yes, particularly with statements like these ones:
The Core Rulebook says you can't put capital weapons on turrets. Yet, the supercolossal ships in Dead Suns 6 have them.
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However, supercolossal ships are shown with 5 weapons in some cases!
In just those two phrases you're, whether intentionally or otherwise, saying
My group has actually only finished Dead Suns 1, I am now aware of some of what's coming, and have to play around that knowledge to the best of my ability. This isn't the only thread under rules or advice that has minorly spoiled things:
I'd like to believe I'm an alright roleplayer enough to not metagame it, but some of the surprise and wonder is taken away, unable to be recovered. I can't have the "That thing's f***ing huge! How are we supposed to deal with that?" moment in the same way.
...some of the surprise and wonder is taken away, unable to be recovered. I can't have the "That thing's f***ing huge! How are we supposed to deal with that?" moment in the same way.
This is the only thing you've said that really has any validity, and I'm sorry for having taken that from you. All the supercolossal ship stuff is in the appendix anyways, and isn't even part of the adventure, so I didn't consider it a spoiler to talk about it. It's like those monsters they always put in the back, that never really appear in the adventure (usually).
I suspect the supercolossal classification really even only exists just so the designers could try and patch some of the hard feelings generated for the really bad math of Core Rulebook ship sizes, as well as their inability to field lots of smaller ships in their hanger bays.
Any clarification on how radiation weapons affect large crew complements? It would be a good place for that information.
Specifically what are the level/cr of all the crew, what level armor do they have, and did they really expect GMs to roll that many saves?
No, nothing.
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Specifically what are the level/cr of all the crew, what level armor do they have
This is going to be included in the long post I am about to make, but I wanted to answer this individually.
CR of a crew member (premade stat block) - usually equal to Tier of shipNPC saves - array already includes all gear benefits (AA page 127)
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Any clarification on how radiation weapons affect large crew complements? It would be a good place for that information.
Specifically what are the level/cr of all the crew, what level armor do they have, and did they really expect GMs to roll that many saves?
I gave some thought to this when I realized just how nasty radiation is. When the PCs are using a radiation weapon against a ship full of NPCs, it is way too hard to track all the NPCs. There's two ways to handle this.
1. Assume the officers are the only ones who can actually do the task and just roll for them. (See "Large and Small Crews," CRB page 316). This isn't the best solution as even the largest ships usually have only one Pilot officer, so a bad save could effectively end the combat in just a few rounds.2. Calculate the average number of failures vs. the weapon and approximate from there. It takes longer to explain the procedure than it does to do it.
- When the GM creates her own enemy ship, the NPCs on the starship will likely have an average CR that is the same as the level of the PCs ("Crew Level," CRB page 326). For premade stat blocks, the average CR is the same as the Tier of the ship.
- Using the "combatant" array from Alien Archive page 129, we find that the Fort save bonus will be equal to the CR. Note that this number "already represents the benefits of its statistics or any gear it might have" (AA page 127).
- The percentage of the crew that fails equals ((Save DC - Fort Save Bonus -1) * 5%). Minimum of 5% (natural 1) and maximum of 95% (natural 20).
- Multiply the percentage of the crew that fails by the total number of crew. Roll 1d4 (representing the number of rounds of radiation) and move the failed crew that many steps down the con poison track. *see footnote 1
- Important note: for purposes of the immediate starship combat, the Con poison track has no practical effect on an individual until you reach the 4th step (unconscious) unless the combatants are of low enough level that the HP loss may be important.
- The enemies will always use their least affected combatants, so crew loss will have no practical effect until there are not enough conscious NPCs to man all stations.
Example:
The PCs are fighting a Vindicas Tyrant (Tier 16, CRB page 315) with a complement of 300. The PCs fire their Supergraser with the Irradiate (high) property and hit.
- With a DC of 22 and an average Fort save of 16, approximately 25% of the crew will fail the save.
- The GM rolls for the number of rounds and rolls a 4! 25% of the crew is headed towards unconscious!
- The next round the PCs fire again and hit again. The GM rolls and it is only 2 rounds. Now about 25% of the crew will be unconscious, 25% will be impaired (no real effect), and 50% is getting very nervous.
- Round 3: another hit! Another 4! 50% soon to be unconscious, 25% impaired, and only 25% unhurt.
- Rounds 4-6: the NPCs finally maneuver out of the arc of that supergraser. Meanwhile the round 1 and round 3 victims get all the way to unconscious.
- Round 7: another hit from the supergraser, and another 4. In three more rounds, 75% of the crew will be unconscious.
- That will drop the total crew below the 125 minimum required to operate a Dreadnought, so the Vindicas Tyrant is effectively dead in space at the end of round 10.
Footnote 1: This is clearly a rough approximation. The failed saves aren't necessarily going to be a fresh group each time and some of the NPCs will fail vs. the first save but succeed against later saves in a multi-round attack. If you want to make the combat a bit more accurate (but longer) just require one or two more hits from the radiation weapon before too many crew are unconscious to operate the ship.
Footnote 2: You probably do want to roll the captain seperately, as most large ships have only one creature with that role.
I wouldn't bother with all that.
Only the officers taking ship actions would likely be of equivalent CR. All of their teams allowing them to do their job would be far lower level mooks.
That way, when four 10th-level PCs board an enemy ship, they aren't suddenly faced with 100 CR 10 adversaries, but rather, a handful of CR 10 adversaries and a whole bunch of nobodies.
When an enemy ship gets blasted with radiation, run the normal starship rules for radiation, then damage, then system glitches.
The glitch penalties will be indicative of system failures, and weak team members succumbing to the radiation.
Kind of hard to work a system when half your team didn't make it to their radiation suits in time. The ship glitch penalties represent that quite well enough I think. No need for all that added complexity.
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When an enemy ship gets blasted with radiation, run the normal starship rules for radiation, then damage, then system glitches.
The glitch penalties will be indicative of system failures, and weak team members succumbing to the radiation.
Do you mean run it like an EMP that bypasses shields? The only reference to radiation in the starship rules (so normal, I guess) is the Irradiate weapon property, which specifically affects only living creatures.
One of the reasons that I asked is because I know just how nasty radiation is in spaceship combat. I made a computer model one weekend. It resulted in a gentlemans agreement at our table to never use radiation weapons.
I had to assume that not every single npc on a 300 crew ship was cr 16 with appropriate armor and weapons. So I tried a scheme that doubled the number and halved the level. For example with 12 cr16 you had 24 cr8, 48 cr4, 96 cr2, and the rest cr1. Three hits from a high radiation weapon would cripple the ship through crew loss.
Unless said crew loss is represented through glitch penalties...
Gotta love simple abstraction!
I wouldn't bother with all that.
Only the officers taking ship actions would likely be of equivalent CR. All of their teams allowing them to do their job would be far lower level mooks.
That way, when four 10th-level PCs board an enemy ship, they aren't suddenly faced with 100 CR 10 adversaries, but rather, a handful of CR 10 adversaries and a whole bunch of nobodies.
When an enemy ship gets blasted with radiation, run the normal starship rules for radiation, then damage, then system glitches.
The problem is that radiation delivers a fixed amount of unavoidable hit point damage based on the DC. If a huge crew is mostly made up of CR1-3 mooks, then lots of them are going to die after 2-3 rounds of radiation and the officers won't be able to do their jobs anymore.
For serious navies it's imperative that all crew have level 7 armor (assuming that radiation weapons that penetrate ship armor/shields don't penetrate that, too) and never get hit by High radiation weapons. Otherwise one or two radiation hits is a mission kill on a Large or bigger ship.
I assume that the implication of the rules weren't thought out and that we should just assume that the radiation only matters to PCs/NPCs with stats.
...radiation only matters to PCs/NPCs with stats.
This is my thoughts on the matter as well. In most starship combats, it never matters, as the only statted combatants are the PCs and the ships themselves.
The problem is that, this would end up making radiation weapons absolutely useless for PCs, since enemy ships don't have crew stats. I suspect it is an oversight which will be filled in later.
I think you're half right.