Thanks,
Galen
About as buoyant as argon, while one can get a paper boat to float in it anything heavier is going to the bottom (gotta love the Mythbusters). If a less then 10 foot tall person falls in to your silt hole I'd start the rules for drowning right there, silt is a real killer in my opinion.
That's why Silt Skimmers have giant wheels and giants wade in the shallows. If it operated like water or had any boyancy, they'd be able to float and swim in it.
You can wear Silt Sandals and do likewise, 1 fight/day.
The city of Balic has silt skimmers that can float in deeper silt; they have a psionic device on board to allow for this.
So if you want to give your PCs a quote silt life vest unquote, you can. But getting it should be a real piece of work; after all, everybody else is gonna want one, it's so obviously useful, why aren't there millions of them floating around (pardon the pun) out there already?
My DS character is willing to be your sales agent, should you come up with a manufacturing process.
Moving through silt would effectively be like moving through quicksand.
This is why things like Silt Horrors Have burrowing speeds instead of swim speeds.
If you wanted your PC's to be able to swim in the Silt, Devize a special body suit or psionic object that gives the PC's a burrow speed equal to half of their speed to their speed.
Falling in without specialized suits, magic items, etc. should not be a death sentance. You should allow PC's to make increasingly difficult athletics checks to stay on surface and burrow upwards, but should not be allowed to move from the square they are in.
Or you have to more traditional wagons with the huge wheels that run on the same buried roads the Giants use to traverse the silt.
Thats how I'm playing it anyways.
I am just starting to have the need to work on this for my campaign...
I hope you mean Ashes of Athas.
The larger silt skimmer in DSCS is about the length of 1 truck trailer and 3 trailers wide, the whole thing on REALLY BIG wheels. Somehow, I still can see a Viking longboat type vessel chasing the freighters around. The small skimmers are smaller yet, and are supposed to be able to go wherever they want. Maybe this works like snowshoes?
If you can find a contour map of a swampy area, you can "dry it out" (so to speak) and get a map of 'safe' and 'unsafe' areas for the big wheeled ships to go.
I like the quicksand suggestion up above, or try this: after you fall into the silt, you are halfways covered. You sink into the silt at 1 ft per round. (This gives everybody else 3 chances on average to throw you a rope.) During this time you are immobilized. After you submerge, you can hold your breath CON rounds. After that, you go to -1 HP and the normal rules are applied.
Possible motive power
- sails plus big wheels (freighter)
- treadmill attached to the axle for big wheels
- big crank attached to the axle for big wheels
- sails plus psionic device to float (small skimmer)
- treadmill attached to side-mounted paddlewheels. (Viking longboat) RUN yew maggots!
- stern-mounted paddlewheel attached to crank and gears. drummer: Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!
- got coal? hot air creates a breeze for sails when becalmed
I am working on modified Silt Runners who can naturally stay on top of the silt - as long as they keep running - and throw things at you. I think they will have to use slings, or else they lose all their ammo - bad plan in DS. I also need a way to indicate they can't stop or turn a sharp corner.
Emergency ship propulsion: tie a heavy object (an anchor) on a lo-o-ong rope. Send a team of half-giants - yes it needs to be THAT big - to walk the anchor out to the end of the rope. Drop the anchor and return. Have a crew on the boat pull the rope in. If the object does not drag back to you, the boat will move forward to it. VERY slow and effort-consuming, but better than nothing. Was your normal motor broke in a fight?
(Based on a real event during the War of 1812.)
If the silt is thick and gooey enough to hold you up, it may be too thick to drive through.
If the silt is thin enough to drive through, it may NOT be able to hold you up.
And we know that you CAN move things on wheels through silt. The thing is, I don't want to set up where "fall in the silt = inevitable death". Not that I expect any PCs to enjoy starring in a "drowning in silt; going down for the third time" scene.
Does anybody know some weird physics that would help?
Something I should have thought of while I was typing up my previous post:
If the silt is thick and gooey enough to hold you up, it may be too thick to drive through.
If the silt is thin enough to drive through, it may NOT be able to hold you up.
And we know that you CAN move things on wheels through silt. The thing is, I don't want to set up where "fall in the silt = inevitable death". Not that I expect any PCs to enjoy starring in a "drowning in silt; going down for the third time" scene.
Does anybody know some weird physics that would help?
Don't try to bring physics into this. Silt skimmers are an abomination of physics. The silt has strange properties, in the shallows you basically have a low drag boat shaped wagon powered by slaves and a bit by wind when favorable. In the deeps you need psychic/magic stuff to make it remotely plausable. And even in the the shallows, I really think that "normal" dust would stick the skimmers in place, it is only the quasi-magic properties of the silt (it was once water) that makes this stuff work.
But you don't want to get physics within 10 foot pole reach of any of this stuff. Its nonsense in real world terms.
If a character falls in I would give them a chance according to what others do to help him... use drowning rules for timer.
A DM has full control over the lethal aspects of an encounter... no need to rack your brain on reasonings for your decisions.