D&D 5E So...keelboats

77IM said:

I couldn't help myself: More Ships of the Sea

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Looks awesome!

Two questions:

1) Were the ship lengths determined in reference to the sailing ship's listed length of 100', or it's actual deck plan length of 80'? (The deck plan is likely the correct value, since the warship is supposed to be larger, and it has 100' for both it's listed length and it's actual deck plan.)

2) Was the Strength of 20 for the sloop intentional? It seems odd for such a small ship to have higher strength than most of the larger ships.

77IM said:

Great questions!

1. My intention was that the sloop statistics would handle all small sailboats of this type (even though many such sailboats are technically not "sloops"). It's like how you can use the statistics for a glaive to represent a wide variety of polearms.

If we want to differentiate ships further, we can do it with minor tweaks, rather than entirely new stat blocks. You know how some monsters in the Monster Manual have sidebars with variations? The swarm of insects is a good example: you can turn it into a spider swarm, wasp swarm, etc. just by adding or removing a few traits. So if a cutter is substantially different than a sloop, we could have a sidebar that says something like, "Cutter: Reduce the passenger capacity to 1, decrease the hit points to 50, and increase the speed to 35 feet." (I am just making those stats up: I don't really know how a cutter, or any other pilot ship, differs from other small sailboats. Although I do suspect that it doesn't need to be super "fast" because I'm guessing most ships don't come racing into the harbor at top speed.)

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Definitely going with sidebars for variants is the right call. It follows 5e patterns and keeps the material more manageable.

2. For turning radius: My favorite system for this that I've ever seen was Star Wars d20 Revised. Every ship had the exact same turning radius, acceleration, etc. But you could overcome those limitations with a piloting check, and each ship had a maneuverability modifier to this check. I love it because it was very easy to remember (each ship gets a number -- a modifier -- instead of a new set of turning rules) and because it was extremely flexible (any wacky move a pilot wanted to try -- it was way easier to do with a tie fighter than a star destroyer).

For ships, I'm planning to adopt a similar system. Simply applying the ship's Dexterity modifier to such checks would be good, except that ships have very little variation in their Dex mods (they cluster tightly around -3). It make sense to base these checks on the ship's length, since longer ships should be harder to turn, and ship lengths are generally multiples of 20 (DC 5 per 20 feet of length works well). Or, we could give some ships a special trait, probably as part of the helm/tiller: "Maneuverable. When you make an ability check or saving throw for this ship to turn sharply, avoid an obstacle, change its speed suddenly, or perform a similar fancy nautical maneuver, you make the check or save with advantage."

What makes the most sense to everybody else? I'm really trying to avoid "retconning" the statistics from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, but I'm open to doing that as a variant/optional thing, if it works.

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I'd absolutely go with the route of least changes. A special trait seems like the way to go here. 5e play assumptions would already imply that the DM might be doing things like asking for ability checks (and applying water vehicle proficiency where applicable) to exert fine control over ship movements, so a trait that gives a bonus if that is happening works well and doesn't add any additional design space layering.

I've come to the conclusion that to both "fix" the problems we see with the ships presented in GoS and to *not* presume to mess with what they've presented there (warts and all), that the best course of action is to "fill in the gaps" with enough cool boats and ships to make it so that one could use *our* ships with the ones in GoS, or instead of the ones in GoS.

So I'm working on a complete range of boats and ships. I'll get back to you all when I've finished the deck plans.

BTW, have you folks looked at The Naval Code?

https://www.reddit.com/r/5eNavalCampaigns/comments/bjv5av/the_naval_code_resource_hub/

You really should. It's pretty well done.

Can’t help but notice you didn’t give stats for firing with round shot.

Alphabros A. said:

Can’t help but notice you didn’t give stats for firing with round shot.

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Page 255 of the DMG.

Has anyone read https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/239871/Ultimate-Ships-5E? Any comments about it?

I thought I'd check back here and see if there have been any updates.

Taking @77IM 's More Ships of the Sea doc as a baseline, the remaining points seem to be:

Ship length discrepancies. I'm going to make a little table explaining what the printed material gives us, along with the copy of More Ships of the Sea (v.1.0) that I have. I'm not including the rowboat nor the problematic keelboat, I'll address the latter later. Discrepancies are bolded.

Ship Lengths
* The deckplan is found on page 314, and I assume it was intended to apply to the sailing ship on page 119




As you can see, it seems like the listed length of the sailing ship is simply wrong, and should be 80'. However, that leaves the Sea Ghost, which should be smaller, actually having a larger deck plan. I can't think of any really good way of dealing with that issue. Upsizing everything else relative to the Sea Ghost (since it has a detailed deckplan it would be a waste to replace) is one not terribly satisfying solution. Changing the map scale of its squares to 3.5 - 4 feet per square gives us a better length, but makes it more crowded than the other deck plans. Still, that may be the better option, since downsizing it allows it's deckplans to work with the caravel and cog and fixes their relationship to the sailing ship deck plans.

I suggest using the actual deck plans (probably scaled down for the Sea Ghost, and hence caravel and cog) in favor of the listed length in all cases. If writing up a document, I would straight up include "errata" to the official books to indicate the correct lengths based on the deck plans.

Shipwrecked keelboats. The apparent facts of the problem are:
-The DMG keelboat (p.119) describes a pinnace
-The deck plan in GoS depicts a riverboat style cargo keelboat
-The text description in GoS refers to a pinnace when indicating a single crew member and 10' mast
-The rest of the text description in GoS refers to a riverboat style cargo keelboat
-The stat block in GoS is an unsalvageable mess describing a mashup of these incompatible ships

I suggest adding a new statblock to fit the riverboat style cargo keelboat deck plan (and it doesn't have to be limited to riverboats--it should be applicable to any ship that could fit that deck plan), and a recommendation to ignore the one in GoS. The sloop from More Ships should do the job for a pinnace (although I'm not sure what the actual Strength score was intended to be, so that should be cleared up).

As an aside, I'd love to see a write up of the DMG's folding boat updated to these rules.

Well, those are my thoughts.

I've been meaning to get back to this some time. I drew up a bunch of small craft that might be useful in the game (canoe, kayak, raft, small outrigger) and I was working my way up in size, doing maps for each, but I fell behind and got busy doing other things.

Ah, so I wasn't the only one confused by the Keelboat description/deckplan. Good to know.

My current conundrum is deciding whether to use the DMG's statistics for sailing ships or Ghosts of Saltmarsh's when it comes to the Sea Ghost... The crew capacities in both books (20 and 30 respectively) seem too large for the Sea Ghost's deckplan. And there are only 12 crew members aboard in the adventure itself. Hum...

Sword of Spirit said:

I thought I'd check back here and see if there have been any updates.

Taking @77IM 's More Ships of the Sea doc as a baseline, the remaining points seem to be:

Ship length discrepancies. I'm going to make a little table explaining what the printed material gives us, along with the copy of More Ships of the Sea (v.1.0) that I have. I'm not including the rowboat nor the problematic keelboat, I'll address the latter later. Discrepancies are bolded.

Ship Lengths

Ship	Listed Length	Deck Plan Length	Masts	Compared Ship
Galley	130'	130'	1
Longship	70'	70'	1
Sailing Ship	100'	80'	3	Carrack
Warship	100'	100'	3
DMG Ship*	100'	80'	2
Sea Ghost	-	90'	1
More Ships
Caravel	80'	90'	1	Sea Ghost
Cog	80'	90'	1	Sea Ghost
Galleon	100'	100'	3	Warship
Schooner	80'	80'	3	Sailing Ship
Sloop	20'	-	1

* The deckplan is found on page 314, and I assume it was intended to apply to the sailing ship on page 119

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I think the easiest way to reconcile this is to treat the listed length as an average length for a ship of that type, and allow the actual length to vary +/- 10 or so feet as desired. This doesn't actually explain away why there was an inconsistency in the first place, but at least makes the inconsistency livable.

On the keelboat issue, that's just borked.