D&D 5E I figured out why all 5e ship rules suck

[Lanefan]

Interesting. Some real thought went into this, I can tell.

I came up with my own nowhere-near-as-detailed version many years ago, and one big difference from that to yours is I didn't bother giving ships actual hit point values. Instead, each big-weapon (i.e. cannon, ballista, etc.) shot that hits does damage of a specific type to a part of the target ship e.g. "Hit sail, sail torn" or "hit hull above waterline" or "direct hit on significant crew e.g. captain, helm, etc."; and after a certain amount of this the ship starts needing to make saving throws or start sinking, stop moving, etc.

You'll need to spec out what damage a cannonball does should a person get hit by a shot, unless I missed seeing that in there somewhere.

One minor quibble: under weapons it says "Crew: 1". I read that to mean a weapon only takes one crewperson to operate, but further down in the example ship it says one crew unit is required to operate a weapon. I would suggest that anytime you in fact mean "crew unit" you spell it out using both words, leaving "crew" to indicate a single sailor.

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

Well, this got posted before I even got through the first answer, so it'll be awhile before it's finished. Didn't know TAB posted -.-
Ok all caught up, post is good to go.

Alright, so I wanted to get to some of these yesterday but i couldn't remember my password from my phone and it was too late to fire up the old PC (Europe).

I'm just going to make a super long post for everyone, so look for your quote in here if you get notified.

Also, I'm going to outline some things I have planned that are way too rough to make it into the doc for now, so skim through if you think anything vital is missing because it may just be in development.

1. Different size ships reflect different sized bases (sloop=small, galleon=Huge.

2. Small ships more maneuverable.

3. Wind direction (you certainly had this)

4. How does magic work with the system. In our pirate hunting themed campaign my storm sorcerer was also the captain and used many spells to influence sailing in combat.

1) There's a couple of reasons I didn't do this:

• ships are mostly ranged damage entities, they don't need a melee threat bubble or a way to have more people fit around them to hit them.
• The way ships are built, it would make little sense to quadruple the area of a larger ship into a square, since ships get taller, longer and more heavily set in the water but rarely get significantly wider, especially once you hit warship size. Reflecting the growth in length of a ship by making it, say, two squares long and one wide would make it wildly clunky to calculate turns and movement. So I just made the square big enough that masically any sailing ship ever made would fit (200x200ft) and just said all ship occupy one square.

2) That's definitely a factor (a ship's turn rate, determined ny its control component(s). Smaller, nimbler ships will usually have a better turn rate, but it's still a case to case basis.

3) Yup

4) I know I certainly have to add this, but I wanted to detail ships as their own thing before getting in the nitty gritty of PCs affecting them with class abilities.

Looks good for the Captain

But what do the other characters do while the ship is manoeuvring? The boatswain and Navigator and other officers seem redundant

The officers described at the beginning are mostly a flavor thing for now. I have a Naval Feats section in mind, which will give characters access to additional or improved actions on board the ship, but even without those, all character can act by taking the actions described in the Ship Combat section. Activities during travel are still a ways off from being planned though.

I’ve only glanced at it, but so far looks good.

It might be worth considering reversing the “Points off Heading” though, with Aft having the lowest number and Bow having the highest. In combat, you could then use the Points off Heading to determine your movement rate - with the wind to your Aft, you get 1 to 1 movement points, while as you turn into the wind it costs more and more to head into the prevailing wind. For example, if the wind is directly to Port or Starboard, your “Points off Heading” of 2 may mean that for every 2 points of Wind Strength, you would only move 1 (or you subtract 2 from your speed?). With the Bow being “Points off Heading” of 4, you would only move forward 1 (assuming some kind of tacking is happening) for every 4 points of Wind Strength.

Also, this came up in a Spelljammer thread - what if someone wants to target the crew, sails, helm or something else on the ship besides the hull (in case they want to cripple instead of sink the ship)? Is this something you want to consider, possibly with a “hit location” table?

1) This is a bit too granular for my taste, since it would require wind strength to be an actual thing in combat (for now it's only mentioned for skill checks during travel). I handled the wind on a ship to ship basis because if a ship has more sail area it'll gain more benefit from the wind than a ship that has less (since the assumption is that the wind blows the same way for everyone).

2) That is for sure a part of the notes I put down when starting this project, but I still haven't gotten around to describing it. Probably one of the next things I'll add though.

Nice rules and nice presentation. I really like it. However…

… it won’t work for D&D 5e. Simply because people don’t want to go to the trouble of learning a system that suitably captures the tactics and majesty of ship to ship combat.

I ran a skull and shackles campaign for pathfinder and used the ship rules in from the excellent razor coast setting. A book designed for dynamic ship combat that involved all the party as your system does.

Unfortunately the players just couldn’t be arsed… it was simpler and more satisfying for them to just ram the ship - board it, and kill whoever was controlling the ship. It didn’t matter if it was a small a Aspice Consortium slave ship or a giant Cheliaxian Galleon. Board and attack. Ship to Ship combat doesn’t give players the tactical flexibility to use the full range of their character abilities so it just isn’t as satisfying to the players as a straight up combat would be. Sad but true.

Maybe you have the one in a thousand groups that wants to enjoy the mini game of it, as I hoped my group would. Unfortunately I doubt it.

I’d love to be a player in a game that makes me feel like I’m staring in Master and Commander though.

Definitely considered this problem. It's understandable that players just thinking they'll meet and have a nice game of D&D will not want to learn a whole new system just to have the couple of sessions where they pretend to be pirates. However, I think if

1) You check in with them before doing the whole actual naval combat thing and know they're theoretically into it.
2) Run a few practice ship combats on their own, as if it were board game night rather than session night to get them used to the system.

You could pull it off.

Also, a thing to consider would be that they could encounter a stronger, faster, better commanded ship that kicks their ass (just like in M&C) and they need to actually learn the naval part of the game to be able to catch the guy and do what they like doing (though this might feel like punishment rather than incentive).

Also also, now that you make me think about it, once the full system is set, it wouldn't be too hard to make a D&D compatible board game out of it. You have premade characters with D&D ability scores and give them the abilities a good naval feat for their position would be (I still don't have naval feats, but they'll be a thing). If you can get them to play a session of that and they enjoy it, once their characters get a ship, the board game experience should translate pretty easily to the session (right?).

I find that what works for my group is to make the ship a tool the players use to do thier players character stuff, rather than really it’s own thing.

5e already does this a little bit with how the ship takes actions, but I go further, and do stuff like if a character is at the helm and they have a speed bonus, the ship gets a speed bonus. If the Battlemaster is manning the mangonel, they can use manuevers with it and treat ships as enemies and allies. The Rogue can sneak attack a ship. Etc.

Then since I run a more magitech advanced game, ships can emplacement crystals that are beefed up wands, and extend the range and increase damage of spells cast through them.

i think 5e is within an arrow shot of a good naval gameplay system.

Interesting. I don't think I have the will to think of all the possible implications of applying class features to ships (and it might make it feel too D&D-y, which is probably the point, but would ruin the "we doing ship battles today" part of it for me). The spell empowerment isn't a bad idea either, I'll keep it in mind when writing the magic rules.

Interesting. Some real thought went into this, I can tell.

I came up with my own nowhere-near-as-detailed version many years ago, and one big difference from that to yours is I didn't bother giving ships actual hit point values. Instead, each big-weapon (i.e. cannon, ballista, etc.) shot that hits does damage of a specific type to a part of the target ship e.g. "Hit sail, sail torn" or "hit hull above waterline" or "direct hit on significant crew e.g. captain, helm, etc."; and after a certain amount of this the ship starts needing to make saving throws or start sinking, stop moving, etc.

You'll need to spec out what damage a cannonball does should a person get hit by a shot, unless I missed seeing that in there somewhere.

One minor quibble: under weapons it says "Crew: 1". I read that to mean a weapon only takes one crewperson to operate, but further down in the example ship it says one crew unit is required to operate a weapon. I would suggest that anytime you in fact mean "crew unit" you spell it out using both words, leaving "crew" to indicate a single sailor.

Hit location effects make a lot of sense. I wanted to not deviate too much from the basic d&d framework though, to make it as compatible as I could.

Cannons do indeed have a damage table hidden somewhere in the "not ready for external eyes yet" doc.

Good catch on the crew, I'll need to tighten up my wording .

 

[aco175]

My big question is, how does the PCs and players fit into the ship system? Are the players sitting at the table while the DM makes a bunch of rolls and describes how the ship tacks back and forth trying to escape the pirates and how the Captain directs the crew to fire cannons and how the wind slows the ship. My players would be a bit bored with this and just want to ram and swing over to attack like what was mentions upthread.

If the ship is kind of like a PC or sidekick than it might make the players more engaged. The crew is part of the 'monster' statblock for the ship and as the ships takes damage, you lose things like speed or other parts of being effective. I think this is part of the larger problem you are trying to address.

 

[nevin]

Nice rules and nice presentation. I really like it. However…

… it won’t work for D&D 5e. Simply because people don’t want to go to the trouble of learning a system that suitably captures the tactics and majesty of ship to ship combat.

I ran a skull and shackles campaign for pathfinder and used the ship rules in from the excellent razor coast setting. A book designed for dynamic ship combat that involved all the party as your system does.

Unfortunately the players just couldn’t be arsed… it was simpler and more satisfying for them to just ram the ship - board it, and kill whoever was controlling the ship. It didn’t matter if it was a small a Aspice Consortium slave ship or a giant Cheliaxian Galleon. Board and attack. Ship to Ship combat doesn’t give players the tactical flexibility to use the full range of their character abilities so it just isn’t as satisfying to the players as a straight up combat would be. Sad but true.

Maybe you have the one in a thousand groups that wants to enjoy the mini game of it, as I hoped my group would. Unfortunately I doubt it.

I’d love to be a player in a game that makes me feel like I’m staring in Master and Commander though

Part of me agrees completely with this but when you start trying to make any kind of combat past one on one martial combat you run into the reality that most combat with vehicles, is a long slow boring slog punctuated by moments of extreme terror and then back to the long slow moments. 99 percent of it is standard mundane boring and then the weapons start firing and then it's over. That's why it's hard to make more complicated rules. The closer to real the closer to mostly boring they become. remember Master and Commander took something like half a year in the course of that two hour movie. in 2 1/2 hours you got the fun stuff.

 

[NotAYakk]

So I made a stab at this recently.

My goal was make mechanics generate narrative if I could.

Rather than map-based simulation, I used zone-based ranges:
Contact
Along side
Bow-shot
Cannon-shot
Horizon
each of these have a narrative difference in what you can do in them.

We can then simulate the wind-gauge as giving one side or the other maneuvering advantages, and have maneuver contests to control engagement range. Turning broadside on most ships ups your firepower, but costs you maneuvering.

For the ship, rather than a bag of HP, I decided I wanted damage to impact the narrative as soon as possible. So the ship is divided into Stations, and those Stations have Officer(s), Crew and HP. When you damage a ship, you damage a Station. This kills crew, does HP damage, and could kill officers.

To handle different scales of ship, how many crew are in a squad varies by ship. Bigger ships have bigger stations, and larger crew squads. The size of the crew squad acts as a pool of HP for a squad, in that damage to crew is measured in "dead crew".

Hooking it into 5e, I gave Crew a Proficiency Bonus (+2 to +6). For officers, there is a command check they do (which is an appropriate attribute check, with a bonus equal to the CR/Level of the officer) that gives a another bonus; this ensures that a PC acting as an officer has significant impact, even if they cannot use their class abilities. The idea is a seasoned commander gives your crew a boost, even if they are just saying "go to it swabbies!"

There is no rules for how to build a ship. Each ship is a unique snowflake.

This mainly deals with in-combat mechanics. Out of combat we can hand wave it based on in-combat stats. Like, I need a system for overland travel time depending on wind. Neither does it have hold mechanics, rations, etc. It is just a combat engine for at most a few ships fighting each other.

Spoiler

Ships can support a certain number of Officers. PCs make excellent officers, because you add your level to a number of checks (!).

Ship ranges are as follows:

Contact
Along side
Bow-shot
Cannon-shot
Horizon


Contact means rammed or grappled.

Clumps of ships can be along side each other, and be bow/cannon from other clumps of ships. If a group of ships tries to stay together, it uses the worst maneuver check of the group.

Basic ship stats are:
Crew: (# of squads)/(size of squad)
Crews have a proficiency bonus (+2 to +6).

Warships are often over-crewed; more squads than they need. This makes up for lost crew and helps with boarding.

Hull: HP per Station
Officers: # of officers
Stations: A table of stations. Bigger ships have more stations. Also used as random to-hit table; so 4, 6, 8, 10 or 12 stations.

Stations have actions.

When you resolve a Station, the first thing that happens is an Officer check. They make an attribute check based on what they are doing (with advantage/disadvantage depending on DM's decision) with a bonus equal to the officers level or CR (ie, a level 20 officer has a +20 bonus on top of everything else). Divide the check by 5 and round down; every 5 points they grant the Squad of Crew there a +1 bonus.

However, if your Command check bonus doesn't match the Crew's proficiency bonus, you get in the way; the Squad's station check is at disadvantage.

The entire Crew has a proficiency bonus (+2 to +6). When a station makes a check (cannons attack, etc), it uses the Crew proficiency bonus.

If a Squad is under 1/2, their proficiency bonus is halved. If a Squad is under 1/4 of a squad, they are ineffective and the station is uncrewed.

If a Station is under 1/2, all checks are at disadvantage. If a Station is destroyed, it cannot function.

On some ships officers can do more than one thing at a station. They can only do one of them per turn.

Turn phases:
Command: The captain makes an officer check (attribute check, appropriate skill, +1 per level of the captain): every 10 points on the check get to give 1 order. In addition, 1/turn they can expend their reaction to give an immediate order so long as the Command Station is fully crewed with a squad.

Any station or officer following such an order gets advantage. The immediate order allows both a reroll and advantage.

The commander has disadvantage on this check to give orders if they don't have a First Officer.

Crew: Crew and Officers attempt to change jobs or replace wounded crew; if they make a DC 20 check, they avoid spending their turn in transit, rending the station they are moving to unmanned for the turn.

Repair: A station can choose to repair rather than function. If the ship has a Damage Control station, it can also repair a different station. Make a check; the station gets (check/10)d4 temporary HP, but no more than its current damage. These temporary HP count to get it over the 1/2 way point to prevent disadvantage.

Maneuver: Opposed checks between competing ships. Winner gets to change range by up to 1 unit, and can grant a reroll to 1 check this turn (either of this ship, or enemy attacks on the ship).

If you win the check and don't change range, you can instead switch to broadside. Being broadside gives disadvantage on your future maneuver checks, but means more cannons can be in play.

Whichever ship has the wind-gage gets advantage on their check.

Fire!: Each Cannon Station pointing in the correct direction fires. (aft if you are fleeing, fore if you are closing, a broadside if you have maneuvered so your broadside is pointing at the foe).

DC is 20 at Cannon-shot, 15 at Bow-shot and 10 at Along-side. Cannons cannot fire if you are in Contact.

Roll to hit a random station on the enemy ship. If the station is on the wrong side of the enemy ship, reroll location once.

Damage is applied to the Squad at that Station as well as Hull. Some weapons do more Crew or Hull damage.

Any Officer at the station must make a dexterity saving throw against the attack roll. On success, they take the full Cannon Damage. On failure, they take 5x that damage; that will kill most non-heroic officers.

Sinking!:
The Bilge is a station that cannot (usually) be attacked directly. (unless ramming)

At the end of each turn, if any Station is damaged (half HP) or destroyed (0 HP), the ship must make a Bilge check using the crew's proficiency bonus. The DC is 10 plus the number of Damaged and twice the number of Destroyed stations.

If it fails the Bilge station takes 1d4 damage on the first failure, 1d6 on the next, etc (until it takes 1d20 damage per failure). If your Bilge is reduced to 0 HP, the ship sinks.

If you succeed 3 times in a row without taking further damage, you stop sinking on a per-turn basis and don't have to make further checks. If you do make further checks, each success reduces the Bilge die by 1 step (down to 1d4), but failure starts the sinking process again.

----

Bow-shot:
While at Bow-shot or closer range, Squads can be assigned to fire on the enemy ship. Make an attack roll using their proficiency bonus against AC 10+Enemy Proficiency*2; the Squad at that station and any officers takes 1d8 damage if hit. (reroll below-deck stations; they can't be hit with ranged weapon fire).

Officers can also fire at Bow-shot range if they aren't busy commanding, or if the Squad they are commanding is doing bow-shot. Roll a random station (reroll below-decks stations). They can either hit crew (AC 15, killing 1 crew per hit) or attack an officer at the station (dealing damage to the officer). If they want to pick a specific target, roll the attack at disadvantage.

Short-range weapons (hand crossbows, thrown weapons, etc) can only be used at Alongside range or closer.

An officer can use their turn to cast a spell in order to kill crew or damage the ship if appropriate. They'll generally do 1d6 damage for Cantrips, +1d6 damage per level of the spell expended, at ship-scales (assuming they are effective); spells that are specialized to damage only crew or hull deal d8s instead. The defender can make a saving throw (using the crew's proficiency bonus). Spells targeting officers use standard mechanics; area effect spells on a crew at a station will also hit the officer.

This occurs during the Fire! phase.

Ramming and Boarding:
If you win Maneuver at Alongside range, you can choose to Ram (if ram-equipped) or Grapple and become in Contact.

While in Contact, Cannons cannot be fired.

Ships Ram has a damage rating; attack a station as if it was a cannon shot, but during the Maneuver. The damage is also applied directly to the Bilge.

Once in Contact with the enemy ship, boarding can occur during the Fire! phase.

Each Squad attempting boarding (or retreating) must make a DC 20 check to cross to the other ship. (On a 10 or under, 1d10 crew die from a failed crossing). Then roll a random station (as if it was a cannon attack) to find out where they are attacking.

At an unmanned station, they can deal 1d12 hull damage until it is destroyed, or move to a station of their choice.

If there are defending squads, both sides deal 1d12 crew damage to the other. If one side is has twice the crew at the station of the other, they roll twice and take the better result. If one side has higher proficiency it takes half damage.

Squads repelling boarders move to stations and only act to defend the crew there. When a station is under attack or has extra squads ready to repel boarders, its checks are at disadvantage.

Commanders of squads can grant their bonus to the crew damage (the d12s) instead of the usual d20s. In addition, they can use attacks to kill enemy crew (because fun). AC is (10+2*Proficiency). Each hit kills a single crew (don't bother with damage). They can instead attempt to attack an officer; use usual game mechanics in that case.

...

Sample ships:

Doomsday - 4 master warship
Crew: 20/20 (400) (note: warship, overcrewed by 7.) +3 proficiency
Officers: 8 (undermanned by 3)
Hull Points: 40 per station (520 total)
Stations:
1-4 Masts x4 (+4 maneuver each if crewed)
5-6 Port cannons x2 (2d12 damage)
7-8 Starboard cannons x2 (2d12 damage)
9 Fore cannons (2d12 damage)
10 Aft cannons (2d12 damage)
11 Damage control
12 Command Deck (Command and Maneuver)
Bilge
Ram: 4d12
Broadside Damage: 4d12

Bloody Raven - Fast 2 Master ship
Officers: 5 (undermanned by 2)
Crew: 5/10 (50) +4 proficiency (undermanned by 2)
Hull Points: 20 per station (140 total)
Stations:
1-2: Masts x2 (+6 maneuver each if crewed)
3: Port cannons (1d8 damage)
4: Starboard cannons (1d8 damage)
5: Fore Turret cannon (1d6 damage; 2x damage against crew) (cannot fire aft)
6: Command deck
Bilge
Ram: 2d12
Broadside Damage: 1d8+1d6C

Dung Beatle - 2 Master merchant ship
Officers: 2 (undermanned by 3)
Crew: 3/12 (36) +2 proficiency (undermanned by 2)
Hull Points: 20 per station (100 total)
Stations:
1-2: Masts x2 (+4 maneuver each if crewed)
3: Turret cannon (1d6)
4: Command Deck
Bilge
Broadside Damage: 1d6

Thunder Phoenix - Enchanted 3 master "hero" ship
Officers: 8 (fully staffed)
Crew: 10/5 (50) +5 proficiency (overcrewed by 1; magic makes the ship easier to control)
Special: Warded: The crew has a 50% chance of being protected from any attack or other off-ship hostile effect. Crew also take 1/2 damage from all such effects and attacks and have advantage on saving throws against such effects.
Hull Points: 30 per station (270 total)
Stations:
1-3: Masts x3 (+7 maneuver each if crewed)
4: Port cannons (2d12 damage)
5: Starboard cannons (2d12 damage)
6: Turret (2d10 damage) (special: can pick between 2x damage against crew, or 2x damage against hull)
7: Damage Control
8: Command deck
Bilge
Ram: 3d12
Broadside Damage: 2d12+2d10[C|H]

---

The goal is, as much as possible, to have everything tell a story. So damage applies to stations, not to generic hull points. Crew die and get depleted. Ships parts stop functioning.

It is way way way too detailed for fleet to fleet combat.

PCs as officers are effective, as I made level important. They also make the decision of what their station does. Direct PC action is allowed, especially against officers.

I might have made it too fiddly still. Probably need:

Simplified Officer:
PROF*10 HP
10+PROF AC
+PROF command (no check)
+PROF saves
1d8+PROF damage (melee)
(PROF/2) rounded up attacks
+PROF attack modifier

PROF 2 officer is 20 HP/12 AC/+2 command/+2 saves/+2@1d8+2 damage/1 attack
PROF 3 officer is 30 HP/13 AC/+3 command/+3 saves/+3@1d8+3 damage/2 attacks
PROF 4 officer is 40 HP/14 AC/+4 command/+4 saves/+4@1d8+4 damage/2 attacks
PROF 5 officer is 50 HP/15 AC/+5 command/+5 saves/+5@1d8+5 damage/3 attacks
PROF 6 officer is 60 HP/16 AC/+6 command/+6 saves/+6@1d8+6 damage/3 attacks

This means a simplified officer assigned to a station doubles the proficiency bonus of the crew there.

...

A level 20 barbarian with 24 strength using athletics to help aim and reload the cannons has a +33 modifier to their command check, average 43, so averages +8.5 command. So a +6 prof "generic officer" is not as good as a L 20 barbarian. That is what I was aiming for.

A dX ship with Y masts needs X+1 crew squads and X-Y+3 officers to be fully manned.

Command Decks have the Pilot (maneuver) officer, the Captain and the First Mate officer positions.
Masts don't have an officer position (nor do they make checks), as that is folded into the Maneuver check.

 

[Argyle King]

Part of me agrees completely with this but when you start trying to make any kind of combat past one on one martial combat you run into the reality that most combat with vehicles, is a long slow boring slog punctuated by moments of extreme terror and then back to the long slow moments. 99 percent of it is standard mundane boring and then the weapons start firing and then it's over. That's why it's hard to make more complicated rules. The closer to real the closer to mostly boring they become. remember Master and Commander took something like half a year in the course of that two hour movie. in 2 1/2 hours you got the fun stuff.

In other systems, the vehicle turn represents a longer amount of time than 6 seconds.

 

[LordEntrails]

Anyway, here's my take on writing some ship rules that loosely tie into 5e: Ship rules 4 Feedback

It sucks.
But I only say that because you said:

I figured out why all 5e ship rules suck​

(above was humor)
Some thoughts:

• 200 foot squares is big. Most ships are not that large and most weapons do not have ranges that long. And 200ft/6 seconds is your speed increment? Seems very high...
• Wind... not sure why Wind a Beam impacts navigation checks, that's bizarre. How close to into the wind a ship can sail is going to depend on the ship design, and some ships certainly have 0 speed wen headed into the wind.
• Damage from tacking? That's bizarre. It should at most be a +/- 10% of speed effect. (after calculating in increased distance due to tacking). Even a rudimentary sailor can tack a ship, and even when screwing up it doesn't damage the ship.

All the phases reminds me of some of the war games I used to play. Enjoy!

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

Some thoughts:

• 200 foot squares is big. Most ships are not that large and most weapons do not have ranges that long. And 200ft/6 seconds is your speed increment? Seems very high...
• Wind... not sure why Wind a Beam impacts navigation checks, that's bizarre. How close to into the wind a ship can sail is going to depend on the ship design, and some ships certainly have 0 speed wen headed into the wind.
• Damage from tacking? That's bizarre. It should at most be a +/- 10% of speed effect. (after calculating in increased distance due to tacking). Even a rudimentary sailor can tack a ship, and even when screwing up it doesn't damage the ship.

All the phases reminds me of some of the war games I used to play. Enjoy!

• Rounds are 1 minute. It should be mentined in there. Cannons will have a range that's probably measured in squares as well ft (and will be way high, unlike current 5e siege weapons).
• Having strong wind hit the side of your ship brings a not remote chance of capsizing the ship, you're going to have to be careful to do anything but stay alive in those circumstances (at least that's the flavor). There not really a huge amount of granularity allowed by a system that only lets you go in 8 directions, so better tacking is just going to have to come down to a ship's Dex.
• Needed to add some stakes to the skill challenge, plus spars and masts can break if stressed enough under wind.

Big fan of Warhammer, recently started playing Battlefleet Gothic

 

[Lanefan]

My big question is, how does the PCs and players fit into the ship system? Are the players sitting at the table while the DM makes a bunch of rolls and describes how the ship tacks back and forth trying to escape the pirates and how the Captain directs the crew to fire cannons and how the wind slows the ship. My players would be a bit bored with this and just want to ram and swing over to attack like what was mentions upthread.

Ideally the players would be, in effect, taking on the role of Captain of the ship they are on; or put another way would be running their ship collectively as their "character" in the battle until such time as individual PC actions could become relevant.

That said, the OP hasn't yet dug into magic and its effects on ship-v-ship combat; and having just recently played through a few ship-v-ship battles with our party having a couple of qualified mages on board, I'll merely say magic makes a complete mess out of the age of sail. Imagine, for instance, a ship that's just reached ramming speed when some mage flies over and drops a Wall of Force in front of it.....

If the ship is kind of like a PC or sidekick than it might make the players more engaged.

Yes, exactly.

 

[Stormonu]

• Rounds are 1 minute. It should be mentined in there. Cannons will have a range that's probably measured in squares as well ft (and will be way high, unlike current 5e siege weapons).
• Having strong wind hit the side of your ship brings a not remote chance of capsizing the ship, you're going to have to be careful to do anything but stay alive in those circumstances (at least that's the flavor). There not really a huge amount of granularity allowed by a system that only lets you go in 8 directions, so better tacking is just going to have to come down to a ship's Dex.
• Needed to add some stakes to the skill challenge, plus spars and masts can break if stressed enough under wind.

Big fan of Warhammer, recently started playing Battlefleet Gothic

As an aside, Warhammer had Man'O'War, a rather popular ship-to-ship system for its time. Unfortunately, Dread Fleet was not so popular. Might be worth taking a look at it for rules ideas (as well as other ship games like Black Seas, Sails of Glory and Oak & Iron).