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

[Paul Farquhar]

Or you abandon squares and hexes completely and just use straight-line distances (really old-school idea: measure with pieces of string!). Unless there's rocks or other navigational hazards, the "battlefield" is wide open; might as well take advantage of that.

An appropriately scaled grid makes the game faster and more fun. Simulationist is the antithesis of fun.

I'm talking from experience of (space) ship combat in various RPGs.

 

[Lanefan]

An appropriately scaled grid makes the game faster and more fun. Simulationist is the antithesis of fun.

Not for everybody.

I'm talking from experience of (space) ship combat in various RPGs.

I've never played a spaceship combat but have a few times tried playing out sea-ship combat, to iffy results - which is why I hope the OP's system can work its way up to being viable while remaining at least a bit realistic. If it can, it'll be the first one I've seen that did.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not for everybody.

Try playing Traveller with vector acceleration.

 

[Zardnaar]

Your basic premise is correct. I've used 2E, 3E and 5E rules and they basically suck.

It's not limited to D&D either the Star Wars rules not great either.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Which Star Wars rules? I found WEG Star Wars D6 was good for theatre of the mind, and the Star Warriors tie-in boardgame good for minis.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Which Star Wars rules? I found WEG Star Wars D6 was good for theatre of the mind, and the Star Warriors tie-in boardgame good for minis.

Different person but: the Star Wars d20 rules helped me narrow down a couple key problems.

1. If every pc is in their own ship/fighter, it's fine. Everybody gets a whole turn. But if all the pc's are on the same ship, there's only one turn to share amongst the whole party. Usually one pc ends up being the captain, making the main tactical decisions. Other players get to roll attacks or sometimes reactions. It's basically built for quarterbacking. I have yet to see a system that even looks like it would solve this.

2. The system requires feats to be good at piloting fighters or ships - it doesn't let you use standard-blaster-battle class features while in a ship. Even in the case of fightercraft, this means you have to pick at character creation/level up which pillar of play you'll be able to engage in - which is not something I think a game should do. If it's a pillar of play (and space battles are a pillar of Star Wars), every pc should be able to participate. This is relatively simple to solve - even 5e avoids this trap by assuming everyone can ride a horse well and fight from horseback, rather than making you invest feats or whatever to be able to use class features while riding.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have yet to see a system that even looks like it would solve this.

FASA Star Trek is this, and it worked great. The engineering station allocates power to other players, as well as carries out repairs. Ops distributes their power allocation to shields, and has science folded in (unless you have lots of players); Security fires the weapons with their power allocation; helm moves the counter with their power allocation (and probably has captain folded in).

The only drawback it is a lot of management for the GM running the enemy ships.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Different person but: the Star Wars d20 rules helped me narrow down a couple key problems.

1. If every pc is in their own ship/fighter, it's fine. Everybody gets a whole turn. But if all the pc's are on the same ship, there's only one turn to share amongst the whole party. Usually one pc ends up being the captain, making the main tactical decisions. Other players get to roll attacks or sometimes reactions. It's basically built for quarterbacking. I have yet to see a system that even looks like it would solve this.

2. The system requires feats to be good at piloting fighters or ships - it doesn't let you use standard-blaster-battle class features while in a ship. Even in the case of fightercraft, this means you have to pick at character creation/level up which pillar of play you'll be able to engage in - which is not something I think a game should do. If it's a pillar of play (and space battles are a pillar of Star Wars), every pc should be able to participate. This is relatively simple to solve - even 5e avoids this trap by assuming everyone can ride a horse well and fight from horseback, rather than making you invest feats or whatever to be able to use class features while riding.

In WEG Star Wars RPG ships that held multiple people (like the Falcon for example) divided up the jobs amongst the crew. In Star Wars for example Han and Luke were shooting different guns, Chewie was piloting, and R2 was doing repair and navigation. 3PO was just in the way. Obiwan wasnt really shown doing much but was probably copiloting.

In game terms this let two players shoot guns, one player repair/navigate, and two other players in the cockpit handle piloting, sensors, and shields.

In practice the fish out of water character on the ship was in charge of shields since it was the easiest station to hit the target numbers without much skill. I always manned the shields (I was an alcholohic failed Jedi with little skill) and joked it was the SW equivalent of turning a light switch on and off.

SW small ship combat isn't really similar to sailing vessels, though, so we are kind of straying from the course so to speak.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah, Star Trek is more influenced by naval combat. Star Wars is influenced by WW2 dogfights. This is very apparent in Star Warriors, which is basically a reskinned Battle of Britain game.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I have yet to see a system that even looks like it would solve this.

GURPS 3E Space (the original printing at least, they revised space rules almost as much as they did extraordinary Strength in that edition) had a pretty 'what are the player's doing?' kind of ship combat system. Each character could be pilot or captain or gunner or damage control, and each role the ship didn't have covered would be a serious detriment. Consequences of combat were more focused on when/whether the main adventure could continue (cost to repair, how long the ship would be inoperable/without a function) than actually taking them out. Sure, ships could eventually destroy each other, but that would be more akin to 'Okay, you need to make 3 damage results checks and 2 grievous damage results checks on the power-plant chart. What? a crit fail? Okay, that's... uh oh' than 'your ship takes 3 more hit points damage, it's at zero. Looks like your character goes with it.'