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

[Lanefan]

• 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).

Even a one-minute round might end up being unrealistically short in many situations. My suggestion is to make the round length highly malleable to suit the situation.

• 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.

The wind, however, will not always be "strong".

• Needed to add some stakes to the skill challenge, plus spars and masts can break if stressed enough under wind.

There's no escaping it - you're going to have to add more granularity here to account for the effects of different wind speeds. Very light winds, for example, are going to greatly stretch your round length* as the ships take longer to get into position, but cause zero damage to the ships. Strong or gale-force winds, however, can pose a real problem...and make it more difficult to aim weapons as the ship will probably be heeled over some if sailing at any angle to the wind. (that's one thing that's always really bugged me about the climactic battle in the maelstrom in Pirates III: they're blasting each other with cannons but, given the angle of the ships' decks, at least 99% of their shots at each other would go straight into the water)

* - unless two or more ships are near-stationary and just whaling away on each other with broadsides; in which case the round length will be determined only by how long it takes to reload their weapons.

 

[Tonguez]

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?

the system I brewed divides the ship into four sections
Hull Con - balance of the ship, pumps, integrity of the hull
Propulsion (Sails) Str- controls velocity and acceleration
Helm/Steering Dex - controls Steering and Manouveres
Deck/Crew Wis - manning the ropes, look out, signals and guns

players could assign themselves to sections and do skill checks for various ‘ship actions (the more complex needing success in two or more ship sections)
each section also has its own HP so can be targeted separately leading to status effects of adrift (0 sails), crippled (0 helm), unmanned (0 crew), breached (0 hull) - all 4 need to be 0 to declare the ship wrecked

 

[LordEntrails]

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).

But then how does this play into the existing character action economy? The archer only gets one shot off to try and snipe the captain or helmsman or ballista crew? And casters can only drop one fireball? Or...

Find something that works for you, but the path you are going means that all the D&D rules are going to have to be dropped for a complete set of ship-based rules.

 

[Lanefan]

But then how does this play into the existing character action economy? The archer only gets one shot off to try and snipe the captain or helmsman or ballista crew? And casters can only drop one fireball? Or...

Simplest just to assume that without flight or other means of getting closer, archery and spellcraft just don't have the range. And once the ships do get close enough together for these things to be viable, they you'll have to go to standard-length rounds with the ships only firing every once in a while. (but if they're closing like that it probably means someone is trying a ram-and-board action anyway, which will make it a far more standard combat only in unusual terrain)

Find something that works for you, but the path you are going means that all the D&D rules are going to have to be dropped for a complete set of ship-based rules.

 

[LordEntrails]

Simplest just to assume that without flight or other means of getting closer

But none of those are uncommon...

 

[Laurefindel]

It's hard enough to make a passable naval combat system.

It's basically impossible to make a passable naval combat system that is still recognizably D&D and is also close enough and simple enough to pick up that WotC would print it, seeing their "we want d&d to be accessible to new players and not scare them away with lots of different rules with very specific applications" design philosophy (which is fine and has worked very well for them).

(Un) fortunately, I am not WotC, and have none of their qualms making a system that you can slap onto the one they have created so I can scratch my age of sail naval battle itch.

This is very much a work in progress, but I'm hoping to at least gather some feedback here on how to word the rules as less of a clustermess and how to group them together in a way that makes more sense, since right now it seems to me like important rules that interact with each other consistently are explained too far apart. Also, any values you see will absolutely not be balanced right now.

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

Lots of good work and nice idea there, but I couldn’t find what you figured out that sucks in all 5e naval combat systems.

 

[Lanefan]

But none of those are uncommon...

Not in a system with upcasting, no. Ideally, every Fly should be one less Fireball in your arsenal; but when you can use all your 3rd-level slots for Fly and all your higher-level slots for upcast Fireballs, it breaks.

The game I'm playing in right now has been doing some naval-combat stuff, and I'm learning first-hand just how broken mages are in that type of combat. A typical age-of-sail or age-of-oars ship doesn't stand a chance against a well-prepared blast mage who can fly (and I'd posit this to be true in every edition the game has had), and I think the game is poorer for it.

And I say this as the player of our company's number-one mage!

 

[NotAYakk]

Not in a system with upcasting, no. Ideally, every Fly should be one less Fireball in your arsenal; but when you can use all your 3rd-level slots for Fly and all your higher-level slots for upcast Fireballs, it breaks.

The game I'm playing in right now has been doing some naval-combat stuff, and I'm learning first-hand just how broken mages are in that type of combat. A typical age-of-sail or age-of-oars ship doesn't stand a chance against a well-prepared blast mage who can fly (and I'd posit this to be true in every edition the game has had), and I think the game is poorer for it.

And I say this as the player of our company's number-one mage!

Ship Cannons (or other weapons) that do 100+ damage to individuals make "I fly and shoot fireballs at them" like a bad idea.

Ship weapons that do 2d12 hull damage and typically kill 2d12 crew as well, and do 10x that damage to officers who fail the save, are in my model of ship combat.

Artillery can be really nasty. If it requires a large crew and a ship, it won't break non-ship/fort combat.

It does mean serious warcraft need invisibility detection and the like. Or at least the ability to triangulate spellcasting; I am thinking a ley sextant compass thing.

Ships are beefy in this model. A fireball is decent; could kill multiple crew. But ship broadsides are death incarnate.

 

[Lanefan]

Ship Cannons (or other weapons) that do 100+ damage to individuals make "I fly and shoot fireballs at them" like a bad idea.

Most cannons can't fire very far straight up and many can't even be brought to bear straight up due to the design of the "trucks" they are mounted on. And even if they could aim upwards they'd be firing through their own sails and spars, so I still win.

And even then, hitting a small flying moving target is way harder than hitting a ship.

It does mean serious warcraft need invisibility detection and the like.

Not just that, but detection that goes well beyond the usual range for such things.

Or at least the ability to triangulate spellcasting; I am thinking a ley sextant compass thing.

Not sure how that would work - explain?

Ships are beefy in this model. A fireball is decent; could kill multiple crew.

And more importantly set the sails and rigging on fire, thus leaving the target ship mostly dead in the water.

 

[jdrakeh]

I've long been of the opinion that ship/naval rules for all editions of D&D pretty much suck (which is also why I think there is a dearth of true seafaring adventures for all editions of D&D). I like what you've done here and, if I ever run 5e again, I'd use your rules.