Sailing without a crew

[Saeviomagy]

I don't know, right off, what the official ruling on this one might be, but I think that getting lost, as the idea pertains to the act of navigation at sea, should be more a function of sailing than survival. Attempting to maintain a specific course without landmarks, other than the stars when they are visible, would likely be well beyond anyone who lacked experience with naval navigation. Just a thought.

No, I think the rules say that a DC 15 survival check prevents you from getting lost (regardless of your current environment - underground, on another plane, out at sea) and also avoids natural hazards (landslides, rains of fire, reefs), and that all that profession(sailor) does is allow you to earn some cash being a sailor.

Oh, and allow the DM to screw you over for being at sea because he doesn't understand the rules.

I mean really - do you force all adventurers to get profession(adventurer) before their skills function while adventuring?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Saeviomagy, that is the absolute worst possible reading of the rules I have ever, ever heard.

A Profession skill does not merely allow one to make money at a given job.

Like Craft, Knowledge, and Perform, Profession is actually a number of separate skills. You could have several Profession skills, each with its own ranks, each purchased as a separate skill. While a Craft skill represents ability in creating or making an item, a Profession skill represents an aptitude in a vocation requiring a broader range of less specific knowledge.

Check: You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession’s daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems.

...
An attempt to accomplish some specific task can usually be retried.

If all a profession skill can do is make you money over the course of a week, it wouldn't surprise me if none of your players ever, ever took it.

Sailing the ship is a Profession (Sailor) check to accomplish a specific task - and is most likely based off the modifier of the ship's captain, with circumstance modifiers for the training and presence (or lack thereof) of a full crew.

Alternatively, base it on the check of the officer of the watch and the crew on that watch.

Survival allows you to determine which way is north at 5 ranks.

It does not confer upon you the knowledge of how to steer the ship, how to use the various lines, sheets, halyards, pulleys, capstans and other accoutrements of shipboard life, nor how to effect emergency repairs on a vessel underweigh. It does not help you keep a ship on course on an overcast day with no visible landmarks. It does not teach you how to read a nautical chart.

Don't fear the DM out to "screw you over for being at sea because he doesn't understand the rules" - fear the player who can't stand to have his uber-landsman flounder at sea and so wants to bend the rules in his favor.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Broadsides gives the skeleton crew for a 135', 3-masted galleon at 50. Adequate is 75, Optimal is 100.

 

[SkidAce]

While I respect the "survivial" viewpoint I say "phooie" to using it to keep from being lost while at sea. IMHO.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

To add:

Sav: Would you rule that a PC locked in an out-of-control carriage could make a DC 15 Survival check (Avoid a natural hazard) to prevent it from going over the edge of a cliff?

 

[Saeviomagy]

To add:

Sav: Would you rule that a PC locked in an out-of-control carriage could make a DC 15 Survival check (Avoid a natural hazard) to prevent it from going over the edge of a cliff?

No, but I'd allow him to know that there was a cliff coming up without having to look out the window of the carraige.

Also, having fallen off the cliff in the carraige, if he survived he'd be able to make a check to find his way back to town.

DC 5 gives you north. DC 15 says "you don't get lost".

Even at sea.

In my book - profession gives no mechanical benefits beyond possibly a synergy bonus, and that only in very specific areas.

Note that well. MECHANICAL benefits. You still get all the roleplaying aspects. You know what things are called. You know how much you should be paid. You know the names of ports etc.

Otherwise profession is the be-all end-all of skills.

Take profession(cat burglar) and you've got virtual ranks in pick locks, move silently, hide, bean person over the head with sap, search, appraise and anything else you can think of.

And if your solution is to say "aha, but it doesn't work if you're not breaking into someone's house and taking their stuff", I'll present you with profession(adventurer).

Survival provides a mechanic for not getting lost, for predicting the weather, and for avoiding storms, reefs and the edge of the world.

Craft(boat) provides a mechanic for fixing your boat.

Climb lets you climb rigging.

Balance lets you stand on a pitching deck.

Profession(sailor) gives you the appropriate background

The NPC class "expert" lets you do all these and still have 1 skill rank per level left over to do whatever you want with.

Letting NPC's away with just having profession(sailor) to do everything is cheating, and telling your PC's that their skills don't work just because they're on the sea is even worse.

 

[CarlZog]

I have only rudimentary knowledge of sailing, and no real-life experience on the subject. But what is right, here? How long, and well/safely, can an ocean-going ship sail without a crew managing the sails?

In our game situation, the ship was having to tack against the wind. This fact is what brought up the idea of just stopping the ship, to give the PCs enough time to decide how to handle the situation.

Quasqueton

Previous posts have replied with reference to various rpg rules systems for sailing ships. Which, if any, game mechanics you choose to apply to the situation is up to you, but here's my take on the reality of sailing square riggers.

You said the ship is a 140-foot-long, three-masted ship. Historically speaking, there are a variety of rigs that this could describe -- each with a different standard of manning and sailing. For the sake of the argument, we'll assume this means a mid to late 18th-century, full-rigged ship with square sails set on all three masts, fore-and-aft heads'ls and stays'ls, and a gaff-rigged spanker on the mizzen. In other words, your stereotypical pirate ship.

You said the ship was tacking upwind. Assuming the ship is rigged with courses, tops'ls, and t'gallants (no royals) and was sailing close-hauled (beating to windward) at the time the PCs took over, there are up to eight squares'ls set and eight stays'ls (not including the spanker) flying. This is a max of 16 sails under light wind conditions; heavier winds mean they'd be flying fewer sails. By the way, about 200 different ropes control those sixteen sails.

The weather conditions would make a HUGE difference in your inexperienced PCs' ability to run the ship. Under light conditions, they can make mistakes with little or no damage to the ship. It also takes fewer people to handle the lines in lighter conditions. In heavier weather, the consequences of their inexperience will matter more.

Even steering requires a lot of experience sailing close-hauled, or "tacking against the wind". If the helmsman turns too far upwind (a nominal degree when close hauled), he'll back the sails, which stops the ship, just as your players suggested. However, if the wind is blowing more than 15-20 knots, it is quite possible that backwinding the sails can damage or take down the rig. (Nearly all the support for masts on square rigs is designed for the force to be applied from aft -- pushing the boat forward. Backwind the sails and a LOT of force is suddenly inflicted on the forestays, which are meager compared to the shrouds and backstays).

More significantly, if the helmsman does back the sails and stops the boat with no damage, the crew must now adjust the sails to get the ship back underway; the helmsman can do nothing to help. So now your PCs must man the braces on the squaresails (the ropes that adjust the angle of the yards to the wind) and the sheets on all the stays'ls. Coordinating their action and understanding what must happen is beyond the capacity of most people without any square rigged sailing experience. So they're going to be stuck, and drifting downwind.

Now, you said the ship was beating to windward. This means tacking ship. How frequently this must be done depends on where they are: open ocean vs. coastal sailing. No matter, it is safe to assume that your neophyte PC crew will be unable to tack the ship at all. The first time they need to turn, they won't be able to. Period.

I don't say this lightly. I've sailed professionally on tall ships and traditional rigs for more than 10 years, mostly teaching neophyte trainees and students. If you set them loose to figure out how to tack a full-rigged ship on their own, they just can't do it. At best, it will take them more than a hour to struggle through the maneuver (and that's when a majority of them have some sailing experience). A full-rigged sailing ship is one of the most complex machines of the pre-Industrial Revolution. It takes a LOT to sail them.

So the short answer to your question is that your inexperienced PCs are not going to be able to go very far at all without having to adjust the sails, particularly if you have an equally inexperienced helmsman and the ship is trying to sail upwind. How many people they need to adjust the sails will depend largely on the wind strength. In lighter winds, a few people can move from sail to sail, adjusting one at a time. In stronger winds, the sails need to be trimmed together or the ship will suffer the effects.

By the way, you seemed most concerned about their need to go aloft. Climbing the rig is only required to unpack (unfurl) sails that were previously tied up (if you're going to set them), or to tie up (furl) sails that have been struck. Square sails work like old-fashioned theater curtains -- rising up and down with the help of ropes and pulleys. Those ropes are controlled from the deck, so you can stop the sail from catching the wind without leaving the deck, but a portion of it will still be flapping in the wind unless you climb up to tie it to the yard. In short, they can go a long way without having to go aloft.

In general, most RPG rules grossly underestimate the complexity of square-riggers and the experience of the sailors needed to operate them.

Carl

 

[painandgreed]

My personal take is that survival should be broken up into various environments such as: Surivial(desert), Survival(forest), Survival(high seas), etc etc. But anyway, I'd say that Survival would let you know how long your food and water will last, perhaps make it last a little longer, or find more. It would let you know which direction you're going and that there is a reef ahead of you and running into it would be bad. Actually, doing anything with that knowledge with anything besides the most basic of tools would be beyond it. Suvival might tell you that there is a reef ahead, but actually doing anything about it would require Profession(sailor) to actually amke the ship function. It might give you a rough estimate on which direction you're going and where you are but your DCs are going to be much lower using Profession(navigator). I'm fully willing to allow overlap between skills. Balance would work but so would Profession(sailor) if the check was on a ship at high seas. Synergy bonus if they have suficient ranks in both. Perhaps different Dcs according to the whim of the DM. While the Player's Handbook lists no applicable action for Profession because it "generally represents a week of work", other sources such as the Arms and Equipment Guide use Professions for checks in such cases as driving vehicles. Since there's no Sail skill listed and I don't want to make one, I'd say that Profession(sailor) would be what you would use for most things dealing with sailing a ship at sea. Other things might work also, such as a Sail skill but its up to the DM to decide the details just like its up to the DM to on whether to allow Professions like "Cat-Burgler".

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

I don't have Carlzog's experience with tall ships, but I have almost 30 years of experience of dinghy/yacht sailing.... which is enough to know that I'd be lost on a tall ship even as an experienced sailor of smaller boats.

I have also had the privilege of sailing across the north sea. Most tall boat sailors would scoff at me calling that proper blue-sea sailing, but we're talking about anywhere from 24-36 hours at sea (depending on conditions), almost all of which is out of sight of land.

Credentials out of the way....

There is absolutely no way that I would allow someone to use their survival skill to avoid getting lost at sea... unless that survival skill was specifically set (as part of the character's background/style/etc) as water based survival. If the sky was clear I would allow him a survival to know which way was north from the stars... but that would just tell him which way he wanted to go - not how to make the boat go that way!

If for any reason the stars weren't pretty much completely visible then it's going to be profession (sailor) for pretty much anything. The water looks the same in all directions, the wind can gradually turn from one point to another during the course, even a compass only tells you a relative direction, it doesn't point to 'home port', so whilst it may have been north of you 5 hours ago, now it might be north east and you simply don't know.

The reason for all of this - tides. Unless you know which way the tides are going (or ar sufficiently insight of lands that their effects can be deduced) tides are invisible. Knowledge that tides exist is no help in understanding where they are going right now, here in this particular part of the water... only having sailed those waters is going to really let you understand the tides. Even looking at the wave's doesn't help as waves are just the rolling of the surface in response to the winds (i.e. they can go in the opposite direction of tides).

And on the actual manning of the ship - count me in with Carlzog... any skeleton crew is going to need to be incredibly good at what they do to man a ship of that size - particularly if they also have to watch over escape attempts by the slavers they've captured. I'll leave predictions of numbers to him, having only the barest experience of tall ships (having watched them being sailed)

 

[Michael Morris]

Square sails work like old-fashioned theater curtains -- rising up and down with the help of ropes and pulleys.

Ah, something I do know something about - theatre. As an aside...

There's a reason for that. In port sailors where hired to construct the rigging in theatres right up to the 19th century, and much of the equipment of a sailing ship can be scene backstage of a theatre to this day including belaying pins for example - though a theaters use counterweights that would be dangerous to unworkable at sea due to the ship's pitch and roll.

Ever heard the superstition that you're not supposed to whistle in a theatre? This was due to the fact that sailors use whistles as signals, and a misplaced whistle in a theatre could confuse one of the sailor/stagehands into dropping something on you

EDIT: Not just curtains are rigged this way in a theatre - lights, hanging scenery and even actors have been "flown in" using the fly rails.