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My players have acquired a Folding Boat in which they are about to go out on their first adventure on. Whilst I've been prepping the adventure I've started thinking around the magical properties of the boat that they will be travelling on.

Leaving aside the advantages and disadvantages of using a folding boat to travel the high seas, my question is specifically around what damage the boat does and does not take, specifically:

  • Is there any RAW about whether this boat can be sunk, damaged by cannon fire etc
  • If it is damaged, is that damage "persistent", i.e. does it stick with the boat when it is folded and unfolded

The DMG is very sparse in details about the Folding Boat, I think the majority of the details are captured on Roll20. My main concern about damage is that this is obviously a magical item, and will therefore have magical properties.

Rubiksmoose
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GPPK
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    There is no such thing as "general" or "untyped" damage in 5e afaik. – Szega Feb 19 '18 at 21:23
  • @Szega You are correct all damage has a type. Also, related: Can a Magical Net be Destroyed – David Coffron Feb 19 '18 at 21:53
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    there is typeless damage, actually. If you check out the stirge's continuous damage after it attached to a target, you'll see there is no damage type specified. (MM p. 284) – PixelMaster Feb 19 '18 at 22:17
  • Per the Stirge's description: "While attached, the stirge doesn't Attack. Instead, at the start of each of the stirge's turns, the target loses 5 (1d4 + 3) hit points due to blood loss." Interesting. I don't know whether the HP decrease from blood loss is technically considered "damage"... – V2Blast Feb 19 '18 at 23:30

1 Answers1

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The Folding Boat description says that it can unfold "into a boat 10 feet long..." or "into a ship 24 feet long...", so we would normally treat it as such for most purposes (including the Damaging Objects rules, and the DMG p.119 Vehicle rules), except where noted otherwise (unlike Instant Fortress or Apparatus of the Crab, which explicitly note how they can be damaged). One exception from DMG p.141 states that "Most magic items, other than potions and scrolls, have resistance to all damage". This means that:

  • The Boat would either be AC 11, 50 HP (DMG p.119 rowboat) or AC 15, 27 HP (large wooden object), and have Resistance to all damage.

  • The Ship would mostly ignore normal weapons (since "Normal weapons are of little use against many Huge and Gargantuan objects"), but versus siege weapons (DMG p.255) and such it would likely have AC 15, 300hp, 15 damage threshold (DMG p.119 Sailing ship), and have Resistance to all damage.

Either should be repairable via the Mending spell. However, there is no indication that the vehicle(s) self repair when folded up, so I wouldn't assume this.

Matt Vincent
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