I woke up around 3AM this morning from a really fascinating dream about sex and time travel, and before I could even get my bearings my brain immediately dumped 4 or so additional problems with gravity in Spelljammer into my consciousness. As ridiculous as I'm sure this seems, it really does bother me!
But before I raise those points, I'd like to delve further into the chapter, since there are more matters of gravity I should cover.
The more I look at it, the more I think that this chapter is laid out in a completely asinine way. The layout is:
Unlabeled introductory section:Introduces idea of wildspace, phlogiston, crystal spheres
Celestial Bodies: Discusses planets, asteroids and suns
Wildspace: Mentions that celestial bodies float in wildspace, and spends rest of section discussing lack of air and air envelopes
Gravity: Introduces gravity plane concept, makes Woot ragequit
The Helm: Introduces helms
Crystal Shells: Introduces Crystal Shells or Crystal Spheres (synonyms) and their implications, particularly in regards to gods and extraplanar travel & beings
The Phlogiston: Discusses the phlogiston, or “flow” and how it will kill you
Breathing in Space: Largely restates what was stated about air envelopes in Wildspace, but ends up briefly discussing how such envelopes work in regards to ships
Air Quality: Air can be fresh, fouled, or deadly, which Woot Has Opinions about! Followed by a discussion of how to do simple math.
Matters of Gravity: More discussion of gravity, with subsections on Drifting, Overlapping Gravity, Falling, and Combat.
Temperature: What it says on the tin
Time: Also what it says on the tin.
There's also the ever-present black sidebar throughout the chapter, which discusses “Ships and Gravity Planes” to further confuse the issue, and talks a bit about the interaction of two ships' gravity planes and how you can use it to be a smartass – match gravity planes with the other ship but with opposite “up” sides.
Why they feel the need to break up the discussion of air into two different places and gravity into three different places is frankly beyond me. The whole chapter is basically a dump of setting details, which is necessary, since no one before this was published was really familiar with “ships in spaaaaaaaaaace!” as a concept, but it chaps my ass how poorly assembled it is.
But, let's get back to the second half of chapter 1. Between trying to write this and discussing wedding stuff with my fiance, I've poured myself some rum on the rocks. As someone who drinks a lot of rum, I have to say, Zaya is definitely my 2nd favorite of all the many rums I've tried. So, this portion of the review is brough to you by Zaya rum!
The Helm
Not too much to say here. The helm is simply a device that turns mystical energy into motive force. The most common ones (the major and minor helms) require a spellcaster, such as a cleric or mage, but other races have their own variants, such as the illithid's series helm that uses their psionic blast ability in lieu of levels in a spellcasting class.
In addition to motive force, it provides for “basic maneuvering” which isn't described further here, but elsewhere there are references for sails, rudders, oars etc. all being used for maneuvering purposes. The physics nerd in me wonders how vectoring the motive force works, i.e. if you're pushing the ship “forward” (in the direction the bow points) can you suddenly change vectors such that you're pushing the ship to starboard at the same speed? If you do this, is there any “inertia”? I'd assume not, since the ships are described as dropping out of spelljamming speed when they encounter an object with significant mass without there being any inertial effects. As is sadly so often in the case in this setting that purports to present a “'fantasy physics' true to it's own rules and laws” there is no answer provided by our authors.
This section rounds out by stating that many voyagers in space merely roam around, looking for ruins of lost civilizations, ghost ships, “treasure rocks” (I'd guess asteroids with a high precious metal or gemstone content?) or other objects one might find adventuring away from civilized lands. It also explains that pirates and monsters live out in the wilds of wildspace. This is all well and good, but why should this be in the helm section? Finally it ends with what appears to be leftover information from early in the design cycle:
Concordance of Arcane Space wrote:
Finally, there are a surprising number of monsters living in wildspace, surviving by being so large that they carry a significant air supply with them wherever they go (such as space dragons), by retaining air within their bodies (gas fish), or by not needing to breathe at all (the neogi).
Space Dragons as such are never defined anywhere, but charitably, it's a reference to the Celestial or Radiant Dragon. While it's true that such dragons carry air with them - 4-40 turns worth, if later text is to be believed (which maybe it shouldn't!) - that's still not really a useful amount of air for a creature that lives in space. Even at spelljamming speeds, 400 minutes of air doesn't get you that far. Inspired by this, I took a look at at the Radiant Dragon entry from the
Lorebook and things get sillier yet!
As radiant dragons age, they gain a number of innate abilities. Juvenile dragons can restore or corrupt air as per the spell.
First off, there isn't a spell called either of those things. Being charitable, we can take that as a reference to the spell
create air and it's reverse,
destroy air from Chapter 2. This is a first level spell that can refresh an air envelope, though it's area of effect is 1 person, with more people affected at higher levels. Again applying a principle of charity, we'll assume that if it's cast by a dragon it refreshes a sufficient quantity as to cover the air envelope of the dragon. Still, younger dragons can only cast the spell twice per day, which wouldn't be enough to cover their air needs.
Now, it could very well be that as creatures that aren't merely large, like giants, but actually ship-sized, they carry ship-sized amounts of air. But I'm fairly sure that there's never an explicit difference made anywhere to differentiate where the dividing line is. It probably
is reasonably to assume that space monsters are that big – they wouldn't be space monsters for very long, otherwise.
Moving further along, there's also no explanation anywhere as to what a “gas fish” is. Probably the closest we get to fishlike creatures is the scavver, which definitely breathes air, and survives long periods without air by putting itself into hibernation until it has access to air again, according to the monster entry.
Finally, there's no reference at all in their monster entry about the neogi not needing to breathe. None. However, the monster entry does go on at length about how the neogi have a great need for their umber hulk slaves, which, to quote Mitch Hedberg, are “damn sure used to air.”
It certainly occurs o me that maybe this is just me being nitpicky, and I've just found text that's a leftover from an earlier part of the design, but... come on, Grubb.
Crystal Shells
We are again told that crystal shells and crystal spheres are just synonyms. To the best of my recollection, crystal sphere becomes the dominant term and crystal shell is hardly ever seen in later works. Anyway, crystal spheres are truly gigantic – typically they have a diameter that is twice the furthest celestial body. They are made of some dark ceramic material that defies categorization and is basically impervious to everything;
wish spells and the will of outer planar powers don't seem to harm it. They also have no gravity associated with them.
Five methods for passing through the crystal spheres are mentioned:
Teleport or
dimension door allows you to bypass the shell
Phase door can make a portion of the shell immaterial long enough for a ship to pass through
Naturally occurring portals can be used; these occur randomly and finding them can be a time consuming task. Fortunately, magic can be used to generate artificial portals, or perhaps just trigger a natural one in a location of your choosing
In some spheres, the stars are portals
The legendary ship
Spelljammer as well as creatures like radiant dragons and create portals, which can then be used by other creatures.
The text goes on to explain that the portals as described are merely doors; not gates and they do not allow transit to other dimensions.
The text wrote:Magic that relies on other planes or other dimensions is notoriously unreliable when cast in close proximity to the shell
But apparently
dimension door is a-ok!
We then are told that the crystal sphere forms the outer limit of a god or other extra-dimensional being's power, as I've mentioned earlier. Magic that draws from such beings typically won't work outside of the crystal spheres, though priest spells of level 1 and 2 are specifically exempt – apparently no matter where you are in the universe, your god can give you a little juice.
Finally, we're told that the stars themselves can be all kinds of things: portholes to the phlogiston, painted lights, alien cities, bowls of fire, etc.
The Phlogiston
The Flow is a turbulent, extremely flammable ocean of glowing rainbow-colored ether. The crystal spheres float in this ocean, and it has regions of higher and lower density; this effect produces “rivers” in the flow which can aid or abet travel between crystal spheres.
Da book wrote:A ship can speed up and slow down by penetrating deeper into or raising itself out of these phlogiston rivers. Stellar distances can be covered quickly in such areas. Further, the speed of the ship is at least partially dependent on the surface area it presents to the flow, so many ships carry sails to increase their speed in the interstellar ocean.
One of the things the book never makes clear is exactly how the flow interacts with the normal air envelope. Or perhaps more precisely, it just quietly assumes that the air envelope is permeable to the phlogiston, without having any effect on the oxygen content of the air envelope, without really ever stating that. Otherwise the remark above about sails would make exactly zero sense. The point is, I don't believe it's ever actually explicit about it. It is
once again clear that the authors have a firm picture in their heads of how all this works, but they seem to have forgotten to inform us of some parts of that puzzle.
We're told that gravity works in the same way it does in wildspace (i.e. completely fucking illogically) and that phlogiston is not composed of any of the four recognized elemental matters. Further, any physical or magical means of containing the phlogiston and bringing it inside a crystal sphere will fail – it seems to disappear when it crosses the crystal sphere boundary. This is most likely to prevent enterprising PCs from using it as a weapon, because...
Phlogiston is extremely explosive. A lit candle in the phlogiston produces a 1d fireball, with larger fires producing greater magnitude effects.
Fireball itself, the
non plus ultra of 2nd Edition damage dealing spells, produces a blast centered on the caster of the spell, with damage tripled. I can't find the reference at the moment, but I know somewhere I've seen a reference to dwarven citadels using an airlock mechanism to keep the flow out of the forge rooms on their citadels, which otherwise would blow up.
The flow naturally glows; if further light is needed, glowing moss, jars of fireflies, or magical light is used. Dwarves (and presumably other races with infravision) just rely on that in their citadels.
The crystal spheres do move slowly in relation to each other. Landmarks can't always be relied upon to be stable. Also, if two spheres move towards each other, the flow between them thickens and tends to push them back apart. Finally, we're told that there are flow rivers connecting Krynnspace and Greyspace, and Greyspace and Realmspace, and that a traveller from Toril wishing to reach Krynn would be able to do so much more quickly by traveling through Greyspace along the way, rather than going straight from Realmspace to Krynnspace.
Breathing in Space
Again we're treated to an explanation that atmospheres thin as one ascends above the planet, until finally one reaches the vacuum of wildspace. We're told a human brings 2-20 turns worth of air, but if that human is standing on a rock 100 cubic yards in size (which they describe as being roughly 40 feet in diameter*) may provide enough air to survive for several months.
(* - This seems to be off by an order of magnitude; unless they're talking about some other property other than volume by describing “100 cubic yards in size,” assuming a spherical rock a radius of 40 feet would give us a volume of around 1240 cubic yards. But then, at this point, is anyone surprised at Grubb & co's inability to do fairly basic math?)
We are told that larger than man-sized creatures (like ogres and giants) bring enough air for 4-40 turns. Apparently the reference in the
Lorebook to giants bringing only 2-20 rounds of air must have been a... clerical error.
Larger objects, such as ships, are rated for their tonnage. Each ton represents 100 cubic yards of space, which brings enough air for a human-sized crewmember for 4 to 8 months under normal conditions. Therefore a 30 ton ships can support 30 crew members for 4 to 8 months, yadda yadda. The minimum usable space is 1 ton (100 cubic yards) and the maximum size of a ship is limited by other factors, primarily what kind of spelljamming drive can power it.
As I'm working on this, it suddenly occurs to me I wonder if they weren't initially thinking about ships in terms of square feet or yards, and then didn't think about the ramifications of just switching to three dimensions instead of two. 10 yards by 10 yards is 100 square yards. If they just thought, “Oh, we'll just change that to cubic yards!” without thinking that adds another dimension... hm. It might explain why in the example they give above they're off by an order of magnitude. Just a random (quite possibly incorrect) thought.
This section is over, but there's still no explanation as to how all this affects radiant dragons or other space monsters, though. This doesn't make me buttmad, merely buttsad.
Air Quality
An air supply can be in one of three states: fresh, fouled, or deadly.
Clearly deadly
For an individual's air envelope, it's fresh for 2-20 turns, or 4 months if following the “one ton per person” rules. After that it's fouled; breathable but unpleasant. For the individual, it becomes fouled from whenever the 2-20 period ends and remains so until the end of the 30th turn since the air was last made fresh (or more mathematically, 30 - $turns_of_fresh_air = $turns_of_foul_air). For air measured in tons, the 5th-8th months are fouled air. After that, in both cases, air becomes deadly. Each turn, a saving throw versus poison must be made; the first failure causes the character to pass out and the second failure causes death.
Beyond that, we're given two methods to track this. The first is based on rough percentages, i.e. 25% more crew than standard takes one month off your fresh timer. The second is to do a bit more math and track things in terms of person-days of air available and consumed. (Naturally, I prefer the second method!)
We're told that when two bodies meet in space, their atmosphere envelopes are exchanged. The smaller body gets the larger bodies' air quality, and there's some juggling based on the ship's sizes relative to each other, all done in a rather handwavey way. Ok, whatevs.
Finally, instead of dying, when a being in a deadly air envelope in the phlogiston fails it's second save versus poison, a special property of the flow takes over. The persons flesh becomes gray and stonelike, and they enter a state of suspended animation until they're rescued. Apparently the neogi and mind flayers are known for robbing and then enslaving people they find in such a state.
Okay, I've been sitting on this rant for a while, and it's finally appropriate to bring it out: I think the entire set of rules regarding air is stupid and a waste of everyone's time. If they'd just gone with space being full of “a breathable ocean of air” like they mentioned in the foreward, they could have saved everyone a lot of time and effort, and nothing of value would have been lost. Wildspace being a vacuum is, I submit, something they felt they had to do, because “everyone knows” that space is a vacuum. Given that they're building their own fantasy physics here, however, they could have totally ignored that fact and no one would have said boo. Air in Spelljammer exists simply as one more consumable resource, but it's redundant: everybody is familiar with two other consumable resources that already exist in sailing stories – food and water. Adding a third gains us nothing but more bookkeeping. And to those who would object that things like the
Decanter of Endless Water and
Murlynd's Spoon or various spells allow the PCs to sidestep those things, I'd point out that magic exists that lets clever and diligent PCs refresh their air envelope as well, and later Spelljammer works introduced other ways (items, plants, an entire race, etc.) that add new ways to sidestep the problem. Even adding the occasional airless planet or asteroid would have been OK as an environmental challenge, but making air be One More Goddamn Thing To Keep Track Of All The Time gains us nothing at all. Even the “asphixiated statues” effect of the phlogiston, which is a good way to introduce NPCs who were stranded without provisions, possibly hundreds or thousands of years ago, could have been introduced in some other way.
There. I said it and I'm not sorry. Moving on.
Matters of gravity
The last big section of the chapter, and on a topic I'm fired up about. Here we go!
We're told that gravity works the same way in wildspace or the flow. A plane of gravity exists through the long axis of any body with an axis at least 25 feet long. For example, a human could walk along the back of a 25 foot high giant. Gravity, whether on the back of the giant, a small asteroid, or a huge gas giant planet, always functions at 1 standard G. (Later works would tweak this rule a bit.) A body too small to have it's own gravity plane still holds on to an air envelope via gravity, but to attract solid objects, a gravity plane from a 25-foot or greater object is needed. The gravity plane exists only as far as the air envelope extends. (This begs the question of why celestial bodies travel in orbits around other objects!)
Drifting
Unrestrained objects resting in the plane of a ship's gravity experience a small force that push them towards the edge of the air envelope. This center plane, where objects are weightless except for a small push towards the edge of the envelope, is therefore often used to launch heavy missiles or prepare boarders to attack other ships. Aside from this slight push, there is no relative motion within the air envelope. An object floating overboard will remain in the same position relative to the ship (modulo the small push towards the edge) even if the ship turns and begins traveling along a different vector.
Overlapping Gravity
When the gravity planes of two ships intersect (i.e. they are within each other's atmosphere envelope) the gravities of both ships remain in effect, “up to the point where they physically intersect.” A floating object is under the influence of whatever gravity plane is closer. A character could leap between two passing ships, altering his down direction as he crosses the midpoint between the two.
When two ships come into direct contact (ramming or landing) the gravity plane of the ship with the higher tonnage wins. An elven flitter has it's own gravity field until it lands on an elven armada. A larger ship can rotate it's axis before ramming a smaller ship, causing everthing on the smaller ship to suddenly tumble around.
Falling
A weightless object which enters the air envelope of a larger body is immediately affected by it's gravity. Normal falling damage applies; a mile or more of uncontrolled descent will also cause the object or person to catch fire from air friction. Otherwise weightless people can throw objects in one direction to move in the opposite direction (hi, Newton!), up to a movement rate of 3.
Combat
Combat in weightlessness is a foreign environment for those not familiar to it; incurs a +6 initiative penalty and a -2 attack penalty. Characters native to space, or nonnatives who take the Weightless Combat proficiency are exempt. Missile fire works as normal in gravity fields; outside of them, there's nothing to stop a missile from traveling forever. All missile weapons in space therefor get an extreme range which extends from the edge of long range to the limit of the characters vision; this incurs a -10 to hit. Such a missile travels twice it's long range increment per round. This only applies to handheld weapons; catapults and other devices are designed with these ranges in mind.
Ok, that's the meat of the topics, but there are several points that aren't really well explained here. For starters:
How, exactly, to objects large enough to have point instead of plane gravity interact with plane-gravity objects? For example, is it that the moment the spelljamming ship stops touching the ground (or sea), is everything on board suddenly subject to the gravity plane of the ship instead of the planet's gravity?
The difference between “has a gravity plane” and doesn't is a totally arbitrary 25 feet. Ok, that is totally arbitrary, but I can live with it because at least it puts a definite number on where the boundary lies. Where's the boundary from “has a gravity plane” to “has a point-like center of gravity”? That question is never answered.
As I mentioned earlier... why do celestial bodies tend to travel in circular orbits? Granted that not all of them do – there are references to crystal spheres where the planets remain stationary relative to each other, or ones where they move chaotically, but circular orbits around a central mass seems to be typical. Why? It can't be gravity that does it, since a bodies gravity ends at the end of the air envelope.
Possibly a minor point, but how does docking work? At the Rock of Bral (an asteroid base with a gravity plane, described in more detail later) the docks are along the gravity plane, but given wide configuration of ships, there's no “standard” of “gangplank is x feet above ship's plane of gravity” which means that touching the docks is going to wreak havoc on ships that don't have gravity planes that line up perfectly.
Temperature
Generally, wildspace (and the flow) is room temperature or a bit warmer, though exceptions exist. Krynnspace averages 16 degrees Fahrenheit and has small, lethal clouds of ice. It also gets warm near fire bodies! Ok.
Time
Local time varies a good bit depending on what planet you're on, which should be unsurprising. Typically on spelljamming ships, a standard day is 24 hours, broken into 3 watches – first, second, and night (or graveyard.) A standard week is 7 standard days, and a standard month is 4 standard weeks i.e. 28 standard days. There is no larger standard unit of timekeeping, since years tend to be tied to the orbital characteristics of individual planets. Fair enough.
And... that's it. That's the end of this fever-swamp info-dump of a chapter. Whew! I'm going to bed.