Another Airship Encounter

[Saagael]

Note to my players of At World's End, if you want to be surprised, turn back now.

EDIT: To clarify, I put this in the house rules section because this combat is using a mostly customized format. I wasn't sure which forum to put it in, so I went with this one; hope i made the right choice.

I'm setting up an airship encounter that will pit six level 12 players against several waves of flying monsters, culminating with them facing off against 2 black dragons. The purpose of posting this is to get some feedback as well as help others who might want to do something similar but don't know where to start. The main gimmick of this fight is that the players will mostly use ship-based weaponry to attack the enemies, using the idea of "terrain powers" introduced in the DMG2. The players will be able to control the weaponry on the ship: two cannons, a ballista and an electricity generator. Below is a summary of the terrain powers I have so far.

Dwarven Airship
HP 200
AC 4; Fort 20, Ref 2
Speed 0, fly 12 (hover), overland flight 15

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cannons

Fire Cannon
At-Will - Standard Action - Ranged 20/40
Target: One creature
Attack: +17 vs AC
Hit: 5d10+25 damage, and the target is pushed 1d6 squares. If this attack bloodies the target, it is knocked prone.
Special: On a critical hit, the target is dazed until the end of the operator's next turn.

Explosive Shot
Encounter - Standard Action - Area burst 2 within 20
Target: One creature
Attack: +13 vs Reflex
Hit: 2d10+15 damage, and the target is pushed 4 squares.

Aim Cannon
At-Will - Minor Action
Effect: The next attack made with the canon gains a +2 bonus to its attack roll. This can only be used 1/round.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ballista

Fire Ballista
At-Will - Standard Action - Ranged 10/20
Target: One creature
Attack: +17 vs AC
Hit: 3d10+25 damage.
Special: On a critical hit, the target takes ongoing 10 damage (save ends).

Harpoon
At-Will - Standard Action - Ranged 10/20
Target: One creature
Attack: +17 vs AC
Hit: 3d10+15 damage, and the target is grabbed (until escape). The DC to escape is 22.
Sustain standard: 2d10+5 damage and the target is pulled 4 squares.

Aim
At-Will - Minor Action
Effect: The next attack made with the ballista gains a +2 bonus to its attack roll. This can only be used 1/round.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pilot

Sharp Turn
At-Will - Standard Action
Target: Each creatures perched on the airship
Attack: +15 vs Fortitude
Hit: The creature is pushed 5 squares away from the ship.
Effect: Each creature on the ship slides 1d4 squares.

Ramming Speed
At-Will - Standard Action - Close blast 5 (origin is the front of the ship)
Target: Each creature in blast
Attack: +15 vs Reflex
Hit: 3d10+15 damage and the target slides 5 squares.

Order Crew
At-Will - Minor Action (1/round)
Effect: The ship regains 3d6+5 hit points. The pilot grants combat advantage until the start of his/her next turn.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lightning Generator

Electric Discharge
Recharge 5 - Standard Action - Close burst 5 (around ship)
Target: Each creature in burst not on ship
Attack: +13 vs Reflex
Hit: 2d10+15 lightning damage and the target is immobilized until the end of the operator's next turn.
Special: Roll to recharge this power at the beginning of the current operator's turns.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Enemy Powers

Grab Ship
At-Will - Free Action - Melee 1
Target: The airship
Effect: The creature is perched on the ship.

Shake
At-Will - Minor Action (1/round)
Requirement: Must be perched on the ship
Target: Each creature on the ship
Attack: +13 vs Fort
Hit: 1d6+5 damage and the target is knocked prone.
Effect: The ship takes 3d6+5 damage.

Tilt
At-Will - Minor Action (1/round)
Requirement: Must be perched on the ship
Target: Each creature on the ship
Attack: +13 vs Fort
Hit: 1d6+5 damage and the target is pulled 3 squares.
Effect: The ship takes 3d6+5 damage.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


There's the basic idea. Any opinions or criticisms is greatly appreciated. Suggestions on new types of weapons the players can use, or other type of "terrain powers" the players can use to interact with the ship and attack with would be great.

 

[Amaroq]

Love. It !!!

Do enjoy that you keep posting your airship ideas, and I hope my DM is reading them.

You've got six players but your cannons do a metric boatload of damage, more than a typical Daily, which might be 3[W]+10 at that level.

Do you want to try consuming a bit more of their actions to run it? Remember how many men it takes to run a cannon on a real sailing ship: Fire, haul back, clean residue, stuff powder in, roll ball in, push back into place, aim, light fuse, wait a moment, fire.

Not saying you want to model every aspect of that, but you might actually get a real kick to the action economy by modeling it as:
- Push into our out of firing place as a Move action (even, Easy Athletics check?)
- Reload as a Standard, only if out of place
- Fire as a Standard, only if IN place.
- Aim as a Minor - instead of "+2", maybe it gives the cannon a "Crit on a 19 or 20" power?

That's bringing the damage-per-Standard back down to a bit more inline, while still retaining the "WOW" factor for your players .. you wind up using two players to fire a cannon once per round, or one player every other round.

You may also want to give the cannons an inherent plus to hit, or maybe a "minimum plus to hit"; I know my fighter is so optimized for his longsword that he's +19 to hit with it, and a whopping +9 if he has to revert to his longbow .. which would be, what, +7 with a ranged weapon he doesn't have proficiency for?

If he wound up manning a cannon, it might be nice if the cannon had a "minimum plus to hit of level + 2", which pushed him up to a +14 to hit - still not perfect, but not low enough that we'd feel like we were missing too often. You could even target that bonus towards the right "chance of hitting" for the black dragons, e.g., somewhere around "hits on an 8 or higher", or whatever you think is right.

Speaking of criticals, do you want to give the cannon an explicit "on crit" power? Maybe it knocks the target prone on crit, so you wind up with the chance of a lucky hit knocking one dragon out of the sky for a round or two, and your players suddenly LOVE their cannons ..

. . .

On the ballista, I like "Reload Move" and "Aim Minor", they're cool things for the characters who don't have lots of Minors to use, and somebody running the ballista is probably going to skip their Move anyways.

You might want to give it a different range than the cannons - seems to me the cannons might have a disgustingly long range, like 40, while the ballista remains at 20.

. . .

Do you want to model "height"? Its a classic feature in old-school aerial combat, the bad guys attacking out of the sun, diving past, strafing, etc. Plus, our gaming group keeps forcing height tracking on our DM, so it may help to have rules in place for flying creatures both good and bad.

If so, you could abstract it as a 7-stage system with "Far below", "Well below", "Below", "Deck Level", "Above", "Well above" and "Far Above".

A flying creature can increase its level by 1 per turn in which it spends at least one Move action flying. A flying creature can decrease its level by 1 per turn in which it spends at least one Move action flying. A "diving" or "falling" creature decreases its level by 2 per turn, but must continue to dive or fall by 1 more level on its next turn .. if it dives into an enemy 2 levels below it, it gains a +2 to hit and inflicts 3d10 falling damage to both the target and the diving creature.

The cannon might be able to target "Above" to "Well below", while the ballista might only target "Deck Level" to "Below".

 

[Saagael]

You've got six players but your cannons do a metric boatload of damage, more than a typical Daily, which might be 3[W]+10 at that level.

Do you want to try consuming a bit more of their actions to run it? Remember how many men it takes to run a cannon on a real sailing ship: Fire, haul back, clean residue, stuff powder in, roll ball in, push back into place, aim, light fuse, wait a moment, fire.

<snip>

That's bringing the damage-per-Standard back down to a bit more inline, while still retaining the "WOW" factor for your players .. you wind up using two players to fire a cannon once per round, or one player every other round.

That's a good idea, except that I want these to do lots of damage, every round. The problem I see with making it reload standard is that every time the weapon is fired, one player ended up sitting out a round. That runs counter to the idea I'm going for.

As to the higher damage, this combat will include ~30 minions, ~10 normal monsters, ~4 elites, and 2 solos. Estimating, that's about 5 encounters worth of monsters in one combat. Not to mention that they'll be facing the two solos at the same time! Normal monsters should go down in 1-2 hits, elites in 3-4, and solos in 5-6. Not only that, but if the players are all using some kind of ship-weapon, the damage will all be similar, relatively.

You may also want to give the cannons an inherent plus to hit, or maybe a "minimum plus to hit"; I know my fighter is so optimized for his longsword that he's +19 to hit with it, and a whopping +9 if he has to revert to his longbow .. which would be, what, +7 with a ranged weapon he doesn't have proficiency for?

Yup, cannons will be their own powers, and will probably have a +15 to hit, since that's average at this level.

Speaking of criticals, do you want to give the cannon an explicit "on crit" power? Maybe it knocks the target prone on crit, so you wind up with the chance of a lucky hit knocking one dragon out of the sky for a round or two, and your players suddenly LOVE their cannons

Great idea! I'll add that to the list

You might want to give it a different range than the cannons - seems to me the cannons might have a disgustingly long range, like 40, while the ballista remains at 20.

True. I envisioned the ballista being used like a fishing pole to reel the enemies in or keep them from getting away. The closer range compensates for the extra control.

Do you want to model "height"? Its a classic feature in old-school aerial combat, the bad guys attacking out of the sun, diving past, strafing, etc. Plus, our gaming group keeps forcing height tracking on our DM, so it may help to have rules in place for flying creatures both good and bad.

If so, you could abstract it as a 7-stage system with "Far below", "Well below", "Below", "Deck Level", "Above", "Well above" and "Far Above".

I had planned on just narrating height, and saying it takes x amount of turns to get back, but I like this idea too, since it leaves numbers out. Thanks for the advice.

Any other ideas about ship-based weapons would be great! The first half of combat will feature 3 main weapons with a recharge-able weapon, leaving 2-3 people stuck with their powers in a given round. Not that it's a bad thing, but with the cannons and ballista doing so much damage, their powers will likely seem lackluster in this situation.

 

[Amaroq]

Hmm, I guess that's what I was going for with the "reload Standard" idea, giving our non-cannon characters a good "something to do" .. but you're right, its not an awesome something to do.

What if the battle almost faces two directions at once: the dragons are coming, but pounding the ship from range .. whilst at the same time, some other bad guys are boarding?

Our good guys are torn between firing a cannon, and defending those who are firing the cannons .. we can't all take a round off to fight the boarders, because somebody needs to be firing those cannons .. which gives us multiple tensions and interesting tactical choices every time up.

You could also have things set up which aren't quite ready to use, but might be improvised into something .. the cargo netting, for example, which we normally use to load multiple crates at once via a little crane system, could conceivably be hauled out and repurposed to entangle somebody .. it could be thrown over the side as a net for short range, or maybe even affixed to a ballista harpoon for long range!

Unfortunately, there's only one net ..

Yup, cannons will be their own powers, and will probably have a +15 to hit, since that's average at this level.

Do you want a dynamic number, so that the high-dex archer is also a good shot with a cannon? I'm thinking of Sogeking, of course ..

Great idea! I'll add that to the list

You might also go with a '1 jams it' or '1 knocks it out of place' mechanic to counter; out-of-place could be fixed with a Move action Athletics check as earlier ..

I had planned on just narrating height, and saying it takes x amount of turns to get back, but I like this idea too, since it leaves numbers out. Thanks for the advice.

Narrative is certainly more flexible, which you may appreciate given the difficulties in balancing such an epic encounter. You might keep this in your back pocket if they force it on you, but adjust recovery times so that they take longer if you feel like the party is losing, and go to quicker recovery times if the party are winning too easily.

 

[Saagael]

Here's a run-down of what I've got so far

<snipped the power section and put it in the OP to save people from reading a few pages of comments before getting to meat of the thread, so to speak.>

Whew, that was a lot of typing. This is what I've got so far for the ship's powers. I know it's a lot to sift through, but any critiques on the powers is appreciated. Especially the secondary effects that don't seem to fit in line with what most powers can do. Also, any addition to this list would be great. I'd love to be able to fit 1 more weapon on the ship so that 4-5 of my players will be using a weapon at any given time.

Another idea: Critical failures on the weapon rolls disable to the weapon until the players pass a dungeoneering or thievery check to repair it. Think it'd work?

 

[Saagael]

What if the battle almost faces two directions at once: the dragons are coming, but pounding the ship from range .. whilst at the same time, some other bad guys are boarding?

Already got ideas for that. The ship isn't very large, though, so any melee combats will be very close-quarters. It'll also give the melee guys something to do before the "Pilot" option becomes available.

You could also have things set up which aren't quite ready to use, but might be improvised into something

Great idea. I'll plant things for the characters to use, but it's up to them to be creative. Hopefully the style of the combat will get them into that "think outside the box" mode.

Do you want a dynamic number, so that the high-dex archer is also a good shot with a cannon?

Oddly enough, this group doesn't have a high-dex character. There's a predator druid and wild sorcerer, which use dex as secondary stats, but no archer-ranger. I had thought about the roll being augmented by skill checks, but then only the characters with the proper skills would end up firing the weapons, and I want everyone to get a chance here.

Not to mention, this is paragon tier we're talking about. The characters are world-altering heroes, and i would think that aiming a weapon is fairly mundane enough to give to the players for free. If this was heroic tier at level 5 or 6, then yeah, this'd be all about the skills. But at level 12 i want the players to feel right in the middle of combat, not abstracted out of it.

You might also go with a '1 jams it' or '1 knocks it out of place' mechanic to counter; out-of-place could be fixed with a Move action Athletics check as earlier

I added this to the possibilities in my previous post

 

[Amaroq]

This thread makes me very sad because my campaign is paragon and we let the bad guys steal our airship. Just reading these ideas makes me want it back all the more!!

I think the "Net" idea works really well with the dragons grappling the ship, for example.

What else might an airship have? Rope lines for mooring. Heavy anchor for mooring. Grappling hooks on ropes? Heavy iron cables? Mast and sails? Rigging? Harpoons with ropes (possibly thrown as per a Javelin)

What about making Shake a Move Action? That prevents the dragon from doing Breath Weapon + shake + shake, for example, and guarantees the party one turn to react to get the dragon back off the ship before it can shake them. In fact, if you think about a bird landing on a wire, you might almost see "Perch" as a Minor.

You might also let "perching" a mildly risky move for the dragon, that costs it "falling 1" in our little height table .. e.g., if you dislodge a perched dragon somehow, it drops under the ship and has to circle back around and up to get back to the party.

Hmmm ... this makes me think you may also need to have given a bit of thought to "riding a hostile dragon" rules. I know MY fighter would blithely leap onto the dragon's back in the middle of a fight like this - he's done it to gargoyles already!

(E.g., dislodge attempt vs athletics/acrobatics? .. can a dragon reach around to bite somebody riding on it, or does its neck not bend that far? ..)

... That also gives your not-firing-cannons characters something to do, namely, keeping the poor fighter from falling to his death after he falls. Because he will.

 

[Rachel]

This thread is very creative! We don't have airships in my game, so I don't think I can really add anything except to say airships get me thinking of Final Fantasy (and that's always a good thing!) Specifically:

Remember in FFIII (FFII U.S.) where at the beginning Cecil is with the Red Wings and he is on an airship that gets jumped by monsters and the player has to repel all these rocs, bombs, and floateyes?? Classic!

 

[Saagael]

What else might an airship have? Rope lines for mooring. Heavy anchor for mooring. Grappling hooks on ropes? Heavy iron cables? Mast and sails? Rigging? Harpoons with ropes (possibly thrown as per a Javelin)

Chains, rope, sails and a few cables. Dwarves are sort of steampunk in my setting. Imagine the hardiest dwarf fighter with 2 suits of armor and carrying 8 types of weapons. Now turn that dwarf into a ship. THAT is what this ship looks like.

What about making Shake a Move Action? That prevents the dragon from doing Breath Weapon + shake + shake, for example, and guarantees the party one turn to react to get the dragon back off the ship before it can shake them. In fact, if you think about a bird landing on a wire, you might almost see "Perch" as a Minor.

I imagine perching to be like stealthing: it occurs at the end of a move action when you move into position. In this case, the dragon flies next to the ship, then perches as a free action. The dragon can only use Shake once per round (it's in the power block), so that overuse is out. My group is grossly overpowered (I like it that way), so I don't feel bad pulling out the bad-ass dragon tactic of: spiral into view and perch on the ledge to surprise the players, then shaking the ship to knock them prone, then using dragon breath to catch them all in it.

You might also let "perching" a mildly risky move for the dragon, that costs it "falling 1" in our little height table

Right now the only way to dislodge the dragon is to push it away with a power or use have the pilot make a sharp turn. Both of those are easy to come by in this group, so the dragon will likely only be perched for one round at a time. Fine by me, as those will be the "oh crap!" rounds.

Hmmm ... this makes me think you may also need to have given a bit of thought to "riding a hostile dragon" rules.

My fighter has done this with a blue dragon (fighting inside a giant library, jumping from the third floor onto the dragon, it was awesome) and a wyvern, so thanks for reminding me. In this case, I think it'll be a regular grab attack to grab the dragon, then an athletics/acrobatics check to climb up (while the dragon is perched). While the dragon is flying, leaping onto it will be the regular athletics check coupled with a grab attack. Failure will mean the player is hanging, but for dear life (to save the creative player from plunging to their death).

Remember in FFIII (FFII U.S.) where at the beginning Cecil is with the Red Wings and he is on an airship that gets jumped by monsters and the player has to repel all these rocs, bombs, and floateyes?? Classic!

That's where I'm drawing a lot of my inspiration from. That and Stardust, since I love the airship in that movie.

 

[Saagael]

EDIT: I removed the huge map picture because it took up a lot of page space. Click the link to see the whole map

Just to give a better idea of what I'm envisioning, here's the map I'll be using (I host my game through Maptools.

Here's the thread this came from.

For reference, I'll be adding a ballista either at the center of the bow, or on each side at the stern (I can't help but make it symmetrical).

I'll post updated rules on dragon-riding, improvised weaponry and an overview of the combat tomorrow.