Airships how to.

[Lord Kain]

I was trying to figure out the cost to say make the various ships listed in stormwrack fly.

Now the stronghold builders guide lists the cost to make a stronghold hover as 15,000gp per section. (locomotion is a seperate cost)

Now we have a problem. For example a Junk ship.
Has 32 hull sections. (sink 8 sections)
The ship is 80ft long and 20ft wide. With a 10ft ceiling and a 10ft draft.

So in essense its cheep to make a stone tower fly then to make a ship fly under this set up

So I did some math.

20x20ft equals 400ft. So a strong hold space is about 400 square feet with a 10ft ceiling.

Lets go back to the junk

80ftx20ft =1600 the total height of the ship top to bottom is 20ft so thats 2 ten foot ceilings so we multiply 1600 by 2. That equals 3200. We then divide that by 400 and end up with 8 (the same number as the sink sections)

So a junk takes up 8 stronghold spaces. This works for anyship. In the stormwrack book. Just look at the listed hull sections and to the right should be (sink x sections) x will also be the number of stronghold spaces.

So to make a Junk hover in the air would cost.
120,000gp The ships own sails would be needed for forward locamotion and an more enchantments would be needed for up and down motions.



For your guys ship to make it hover would cost 105,000gp but as your ship isn't sail powered, Its a more of a paddle wheel you'd require fully magical locomotion.


It would cost a total of 280,000gp to make your ship fly and then move at 10 miles an hour.

Your ships current speed is about 4 miles an hour.

[Lord Kain]

I'd also rule that a ships cargo capacity is cut to a 10th of normal perhaps a 20th.


Looking over the cost relation when compared to say a flying carpet and a Halruaan Skyship. (which is a basic sailing ship listed in Magic of Faerun)

I'd say the twice sink hull sections is a better idea.

This allows you to more or less duplicate the cost involved in the Halruaan Sky ships if you assume its a Carval.

[Sargon]

ahh
that is a very intresting system that you have there thanks kain, you see me and fey are doing that ameal world thing in which we are trying to make ships fly and this is goign to take some math to do, so haveing this as a guide should help a lot i think.

[Lord Kain]

Ok I found this far easier way to do it. Apparently in arms and equipment there'sa vehicle augmentation called Cloud Keel, that allows a ship to fly at a speed of 40ft, A sailing ship can also fly on the wind. It costs 200,000gp
I'll just use that.
www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20030302a

Can't find it in the book but the excerpt on the wizards website had it listed.
Arms and equipment also has info in gliders both mundane and magical.

[Master Spellblade]

That first one of yours seems a lot more reasonable acttually. It changes the price based upon the size of the ship and not just a standard price for both a small row boat and a Galleon.

Feh, flying rowboat. Heh, heh.

[Lord Kain]

Yeah but it was a royal pain in the ass to figure out how big the ship would be in stronghold spaces.
Plus the fact one could easily just make a flying stone building, under the stronghold guide rules.

[Master Spellblade]

That's a fair point. What we should do is just figure out what the cost would be after or inbetween sessions. Granted that wouldn't always work, and it might be more cost efficient to just use the standard price. Just a thought.

Feh, why do we always stop the game to figure these things out anyways?