I am starting to feel better about my little passion project here. We wrapped up Part 3 with some stat blocks and now we need to sort out Crew Actions and some of the parts that make up our Caravan. Direct comparison to the Saltmarsh ships is not something that is in the cards at this scale, but there is a lot to learn and apply at this scale. Lets start with actions the vehicle can take, when crewed of course. In our case being crewed is just a matter of a single capable creature at the reigns. I think the best way to rule is it as: “On its turn, It can’t take these actions if it is not Crewed.”
Well I was going to start talking about what actions it can take, but the bigger question is when? With one crew member it feels logical that is should fall to their initiative. With some thought on what those actions could be, all that makes sense is maneuvering actions of a driver. So lets stick with the idea that the driver takes a vehicle action at the start of their turn and then proceeds with their own action and bonus actions, essentially trading their movement to function as crew for that round. There should also be a limit to a single action per round. Just a little CYA in case a “Creative” player finds a way to attempt additional actions. So lets make an amendment: “At the start of the Crew’s turn, a single vehicle action can be taken for that round. These actions cannot be taken if it is not Crewed.”
Bam
Ok so let us talk maneuvering actions and starting with the simplest one, the “Move” action. Glamorous I know… but its an essential one. We discussed the movement speed in the last part being directly drawn from the animal that is pulling, but we didn’t talk Range of Motion as it applies to a turning radius. Do we dive into physics of the pivot point of this four wheeled vehicle or do we have an in game reference? I had no luck finding one, but we learned that I may not be as thorough in my reading as I could be… But I was thinking about how cumbersome it would be to take turns moving at full speed. Then it hit me, perhaps the “Move” action should be handled less as an action, and more like movement. The direction I was originally going for was to have actions determine the maneuver taken by the driver and the impact it would have on movement speed and direction. Lets consider the following movements:
Flat-out: Move in forward arc (cone) up to the full movement speed
Turning: Expand forward arc to 180 degrees, and move up to half of the movement speed.
Evasive: Move in forward arc (cone) up to half of the movement speed, +4 AC for vehicle and riders
For the most part this makes sense to me, the thing that will determine the standard turning radius of a vehicle would be the movement arc I mentioned in all 3. I noted cone for now with the logic of 90 degrees of turning (45 degrees left or right). To make a harder turn, you have to be going slower. But I have some thoughts on that as well I need to hash out as well. Being able to expand that arc to a full 180 degrees makes sense and keeps the meticulous details to a minimum but opens the question, could it make a hard turn in a single space? Maybe hard turns like this would need some kind of check for the driver to maneuver the horses, or perhaps the vehicle makes a CON or Damage Threshold Save against the strain? The concept of DT playing a part here makes the most sense, but why not have that paired with Driver “Skill”. For some reason my mind draws a parallel to drift racing, where a drivers skill could be the deciding factor in a successful maneuver and disaster. Let us apply that logic here, a Vehicle Handling check. This should not be locked in to a specific ability score, DM discretion and Player ingenuity. An intelligent character may quickly analyse the situation and use terrain to their advantage, where as a brutish one may just use athleticism to force the horses to bank.
Well… Having said that I feel like that brute force method just may cause excessive strain and would, against the intent of having a check first, auto fail and move on to DT. I don’t like it but I might have to determine what skill really applies here. I touched on the terrain as well which will play a part as well. crap. We are going in circles a bit. I think that we take skill out of the equation, mostly. We don’t have values for DT yet but perhaps the best way to approach this is to take Vehicle Proficiency (Land) as a means to “boost” the DT for maneuvers but the drivers proficiency bonus. Downside here is that we are entering the realm of convolution. Perhaps its for the best if we just stick to what I laid out above and revisit this when we are ready to polish.
Lastly the Evasive movement is something I am happy with, representation of defensive driving to make the vehicle (and passenger) harder to hit. I picture this as still moving full speed with some bobbing and weaving. Not much else to say about this one, unless we question the AC bonus. This feels right since the vehicle is still a fairly large target, and this is just generalized. I plan to dive into the different parts of the vehicle in the next part to figure out the AC, HP and DT of each. If for example the AC of the main body is 10, this becomes a 14 when being evasive. Quite the bump. Let’s also say the AC of the wheels is 14, making this 18 by being evasive is not as dramatic but still significant.
I think that gets us to a solid point as far as actions and how they are used. We may need to expand on this further but let us count this as a victory and move on!
See you in the next part!
Leave a Reply