FASA Games, Inc.

I don't have much to say about it right now, but there are two big items on the list for the revised airship/riverboat rules.

1) Better integration of the Air Sailing talent into airship combat.
2) Dealing with issues of scale between airships/riverboats and Namegivers.

Please keep up the discussion. I'm making mental notes for when I can turn attention on it more directly.

Awesome, glad Josh has popped in here. I've been reviewing older material, and previous game notes. There is definitely a problem with the scales of Airship/Riverboat mechanics, and the personal/namegiver scale mechanics. 1st edition basically treated it as a war-game with very little connection to the rpg rules, except "ships as the characters" and the Step Ranges are all the same as the RPG rules. It seems the Classic/3rd edition's advice was "Just use the ship's Firepower Effect step for each individual cannon, bigger ships have bigger cannons." While I like the range of weapons that produces, it was totally arbitrary and failed to answer the opposite side of the question, "A 10 Circle warrior punches the Airship... how much 'Airshp Damage' did that do?"

Interesting questions here. I'm also investigating the math in the Step System to see if I can find any good scaling functions that may work.. even if that means you are rolling Step 50 when rolling Damage from that Behemoth's guns

Since high step stuff might be a little mind-blowing, an alternative would be some sort of "scaling layer" put between Namegivers and ships. Say, all ships have damage reduction against Namegiver attacks and maybe do the same amount of extra damage to all Namegivers.

That's assuming you want a Troll Sky Raider to be able to hack apart a drakkar. But does that make sense? Perhaps instead there are "Ship-scaled" weapons, and they can deal damage directly to the health of a ship, to be compared to that ships death rating. Additionally, each ship should have a barrier rating such as found on GMG 164-166. Say a sneaky Thief plants a bomb: probably ship-scaled damage. Maybe a T'skrang Warrior swims underneath a boat and begins hacking away: use barrier rules. Both could effectively sink the ship, but one does it mechanically (bomb deals damage above ship's death rating) while the other is more narrative (Warrior makes a hole that lets water flow in).

I just don't see a person smashing up a ship directly. But they could really mess it up by breaking down walls.

Specific ship weapons, though, should have special abilities against Namegivers (like pinning them down, auto-knockdown rolls, etc.) in place of or in addition to the extra damage.

I've been thinking more on this and am further convinced on my position of separate scales of damage, using barrier ratings for Namegiver-scale attacks.

I've not read any of the previous editions of airship combat, so I don't have any pre-conceived ideas. However, it seems that they need to be reformed from the ground up.

So, no idea if old editions have this, but I'm thinking ships should have health ratings like unconsciousness and death, but "dead in the water" and "sinking" instead. Repairs will probably be with the Air Sailing Talent (or appropriate skills for riverboats), and on a longer time scale. I would call these "structure ratings" and not health.

Weapons should operate on the scale of rounds, but may have delays for things like reloading (e.g.: reloading takes a standard action or two, firing takes a standard action, etc.). Each weapon would have their own barrier rating which can be used for players to destroy them. They also should have ship-scaled structure ratings for attacks from other ship weapons targeting them. This damage should not count against the ship's structure, as this creates a cost-benefit analysis. Hitting weapons should also be harder to do, and misses either miss entirely or have a chance to hit the ship. I'd say miss entirely, for simplicity.

Extra successes can be spent on various things. Each extra success does +2 structure damage. Two extra successes can instead be spent to hit a weapon instead of the ship. Two extra successes could instead be spent to reduce the movement of the ship, or some other stat (such as maneuverability, see later). These extra successes cannot be used for extra damage.

New stats:
Maneuverability: a stat that operates like physical defense.
Precision: adds step value to all weapon attacks.
Shielding/Mystic Defense: not sure what it should be called, but it's the mystic defense of the ship (not sure I'd any weapon attacks this, but I think there should be, perhaps even artillery spells).
Others?

The way we usually do it in our game, is putting the 2 kinds of damage on a different scale.
Airship damage is 5 times greater than Character damage. So if a ship hit a ship, normal damage. If a ship hits a character, multiply damage by 5 (yeah that's deadly, but that's what it's supposed to be...), and divide damage by 5 if a character hits a ship (good luck breaking a behemoth hull with just an axe...). We substract armor before doing the multiplication/division by 5 (more for giving players a chance than for realism).
If a ship hits a character but not directly, the multiplier is not applied, as it is only collateral damage.

It's a bit complex as you need to calculate things, but we didn't find any way better to simulate this, yet.

I'm putting together more concrete rules for ships (because it's fun!), and I have two questions.

(1) Sangius, did my pricing numbers help you?

(2) What powers ships and airships in Earthdawn?

It depends what you call "powers ship".
Do you mean for going forward ? If yes, iirc, depending on the ship, we have a combination of sails and/or oars, or pure magic for the kila / behemoth.
If you meant the levitating part, it's True Air woven into the hull.