Talk:5e Mounts and Vehicles

Vehicle Ability Scores

Howdy, all. While making the Better Mounts, Vehicles, and Ships (5e Variant Rule) variant rule, I realized that not a single rule exists in 5e that states that vehicles do not have ability scores. However, in both Descent into Avernus's vehicle rules and Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Unearthed Arcana's ship rules, and less impactfully the above variant rule, vehicles do have ability scores. While this is an easy mistake to make given the lack of area in the template, it is a rule that we must follow for these items to be playable. While I will not be in a place to make such sweeping edits for a few hours due to irl responsibilities, I would love to not be the only one making such changes. --Ref3rence (talk) 13:21, 4 February 2021 (MST)

It has been awhile, but I have added the option to add ability scores to mounts and vehicles. Animal mounts should have all their ability scores while vehicles/ships should have str/dex/con. Either way, the boar can serve as an example for how to go about adding ability scores to these mounts and vehicles.--Blobby383b (talk) 12:52, 21 July 2021 (MDT)

Busted ! Section

While checking over this page, I was surprised there weren't any ! vehicles. Turns out, there are, they just aren't listed here. Upon closer inspection, the following appears to be the problem.

|category=Vehicle |category=Equipment |category=Mount |category=Drawn Vehicle

This means that only pages with all four categories show up, when all stubbed vehicle pages have at least 1 of these removed. After dinking around with the dpl on a personal workspace, it would appear replacing the above line with the following would fix the issue:

|category=Vehicle|Mount|Drawn Vehicle

As the page is (and should continue to be) admin locked, I can not make such an edit and would appreciate assistance.--Ref3rence (talk) 22:07, 27 April 2021 (MDT)

Thanks for catching that, the incomplete vehicle section has been fixed.--Blobby383b (talk) 22:37, 28 April 2021 (MDT)

Vehicles and Creatures

From my musings at Talk:Steam Tank (5e Creature), I think that the creature template would be a good fit to represent a vehicle, modified to remove all the things a vehicle wouldn't have, like Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma scores, the ability to make skill checks or speak a language etc. SirSprinkles (talk) 17:08, 20 October 2021 (MDT)

That does sound like it would fit much better then retrofitting the {{5e Equipment}} template. If done, you should either keep the Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma scores section to allow for the creation of mounts too or separate the creation of mounts and vehicles into two different templates where the vehicles one would also have damage threshold, crew, and carrying capacity. As recently discussed here, it would make sense to retrofit the {{5e Mounts and Vehicles}} template for this purpose. --Blobby383b (talk) 16:34, 11 February 2022 (MST)

Template Split/Overhaul

Currently, the template used by our vehicle pages does not match the formatting set by official material, or arguably even the rules set by them. In order to rectify this, I think the template should be split into three templates: one for vehicles with large crews (major vehicles), one for vehicles with small crews (minor vehicles), and one for mounts:

• For major vehicles, the ships present in Ghosts of Saltmarsh (and the UA that playtested it) set a good precedent. Template:Spelljammer Ship currently acts as a proof of concept for how we could format this.
• For minor vehicles, the infernal war machines present in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus likewise set precedent. Template:Infernal War Machine currently acts as a proof of concept for how we could format this.
• For mounts, any official mounts section that I've read only list cost, speed, and weight capacity as an aspect of a creature with a stat block elsewhere, which is to say it lacks an individual description and ability scores. I think it would make sense to reduce the template mounts are given to a simple list of cost, travel speed (so as to not list movement speed in two different spots on the same page, slightly deviating from precedent), and weight capacity, and rather than that template occupying its own page, simply tack it on to creature pages. The only circumstances that I could imagine causing problems is in pages that reference SRD material, in which case a simple page like "Boar Mount (5e Creature)" that lists the template and links to the SRD page would do, or for group pages like Young Dragon (5e Equipment) in which case the same could be said for linking back to Dragons (5e Creature).

I would be more than happy to spearhead this overhaul in the near future, but I can't edit this page or the preload myself, and would like some more eyes on the templates and the idea itself before deciding that they're worth using.--Ref3rence (talk) 12:50, 18 July 2024 (MDT)

Interesting. The examples specifically of the spelljammer and infernal war machines definitely warrants such attention, since they are very special kinds of vehicles. But mundane vehicles like wagons and carriages I think do not need the bells and whistles. Like the official wagon and carriage don't even have scores and just use base PHB rules (I don't believe this has been errata'd). So, I feel like these kinds of very special vehicles would use their own new category, and it would be retroactively fitted onto the ones that apply. I do like putting a mount section on the actual creature page instead. Perhaps with a "true" statement so that it also just auto-appends itself.--Yanied (talk) 11:44, 20 July 2024 (MDT)

The spelljammer template mostly just exists as a proof of concept for the template that I made for Spelljammer (5e Campaign Setting) based on the GoS rules, which technically apply to traditional ships, but can easily be used for any vehicle that requires a large crew (admittedly, this would mostly still be ships of various kinds like Battleship (5e Equipment)). I agree that drawn vehicles like wagons and carriages don't need the bells and whistles, and could probably use the current templates cut down a little (I suppose this would split it into four sections: mounts, drawn, minor, and major), but IWM rules would make using self-propelled vehicles like most modern ones much more defined (the devil's ride is effectively just a motorcycle powered by souls instead of gas anyway). If we do include mount info in the creature template, I think it would make the most sense to put it in a table beneath the description.--Ref3rence (talk) 12:44, 20 July 2024 (MDT)

I'm also going to throw small dinghies like rowboats in the same boat as carriages and wagons. Rowboats and keelboats do have a more comprehensive block and are written with passengers in mind instead of crew and have ACs and DTs, but still lack some things like scores. These, I guess, are things without actions, so they are strictly "cargo carrying" or transport kinds of things with a crew, compared to the more complex and special vehicles like warships...--Yanied (talk) 13:02, 20 July 2024 (MDT)

Including dinghies in with drawn vehicles sounds like a good idea, since beyond mechanical justification you mentioned, such small vehicles are drawn by rivers or other vehicles, or in some cases pushed by creatures in the water, not to mention the history of horse-drawn boats.--Ref3rence (talk) 14:06, 20 July 2024 (MDT)

Modern tanks power

Modern tanks are, in many cases, stronger than Futuristic tanks/mechs. Same for some other Futuristic vehicles. So, many of Futuristic combat vehicles need buffs. --95.167.182.133 07:56, 4 November 2024 (MST)