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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 2009426" data-attributes="member: 2209">Broadsides is a $19.95 128 page softcover book devoted to naval adventuring. It sets out in-depth rules for sea voyages, statting vessels, naval combat, underwater and high atmosphere travel. It also presents new prestige classes, magic, and monsters as well as some NPCs and short scenarios.  It is designed to be a stand alone product of naval rules and an expansion and support product for the Twin Crowns campaign setting's world of Ptalmanar. It presents an excellent set of naval rules but has some issues as both a stand alone product and as a world expansion.The naval rules really impressed me. They use profession sailor, pilot, and navigator skills as the basis for running ships and the numbers have meaning. The rules incorporate weather, sail type, speed of the ships, wind direction, etc. They model ship sailing very well in a manner that is useable in game. There are diagrams giving examples of possible ship movements based on maneuverability, speed, and wind direction which help demonstrate the multiple factors in play on a ship.29 separate realistic ships are statted, ranging from small fishing sailboats to Viking longbats to galleons with hundreds of crew and dozens of cannon. There are twelve fantasy based ships ranging from racial variants of historical ones such as the Dwarvish knorr to the two ships designed to fly and the three underwater vessels.There is information on getting lost, sailing coasts versus open ocean, and how much food is necessary to keep the crew going and how much cargo space that food will take up. The only thing not covered seemed to be press ganging actions. The system seemed to break down a little for smaller craft such as canoes and it has a weakness in making Viking fighters and barbarians the worst sailors of any class due to the cross-class profession skill availability, but overall it is quite a good system. If you want to run a ship based campaign, this is an excellent system to use.There is a hex combat system using three different time and distance scales for prolonged ship chasing (ten minute rounds), tactical ship combat (in minute rounds) and finally for boarding actions(normal six second melee rounds). Firearms covered range from pistols and muskets to hand-held bombards to cannon of various sizes. There are different types of cannon shot from standard to heated to sail cutting chain to antipersonnel grapeshot. Note that cannons and ballista/catapults use profession artillerist and siege engineer instead of weapon proficiencies, so again fighters lose out on all ship combat except boarding actions. Also there is a new skill called sea legs which handles shipboard balance and avoiding getting seasick. These situations could probably be handled better by use of the balance skill and con checks or profession sailor checks modified by con, but those are easily modified by a DM.The underwater and high atmosphere rules present pressure acclimatization mechanics and serious environmental factors for consideration. Cold, limited visibility, and combat and spellcasting considerations (such as the effects on fire, electricity, acid, and sonic spells, and even the impairment verbal and somatic components) are presented for underwater activities. For flying ships a number of systems are introduced, such as a type of expensive magically buoyant wood to make ships out of, magic items to fly ships, a powerful ritual for making a ship fly, and how to hook flying animals to ships to create flying chariots.There are 22 new feats introduced. About two thirds are noncombat and seem a little underpowered and niche. I do not expect PCs to take many of these, but they are great bonus feats for the prestige classes that follow and are great feats for NPC cohorts and crew.Seven prestige classes are included, each covering ten levels except for the five-level surgeon:Harpooneer: Warrior hunters of big sea creatures. A power at every level but the majority of these are only useable against large sea creatures or with a harpoon, which is only described in Sword and Fist and not here.Marine: Basically fighters with good reflexes, sailor skills, fewer bonus feats and some storming-the-beach type abilities. Four empty levels with no abilities. Straight fighters seemed more appropriate to the concept to me.Oceanic Sentinel: Arcane spellcasters with their own spell list (including a 3rd level cure light wounds) and who can cast target creature spells upon ships they bond to. At first they struck me as weak, but they would make very valuable members of any crew for giving ships magical defense, speed, or curing.Privateer: Captains commissioned to make legal pirate raids on ships of an enemy nation. Good concept and archetype, but I do not like the class that much. In particular the empty levels with no abilities and the 10th level power's reputation mechanic which has enemy captains make will saves or flee. The fear mechanic seems inappropriate for affecting PCs or important NPCs. This class was originally presented in the Twin Crowns Campaign Setting book.Surgeon: Completely non-magical healers who rely upon the profession healer skill, can heal increasing amounts at each level with their surgeon's kits, but can cause more damage on critical failures. Sea Captain: Gain bonus captaining feats every even level and specific captain abilities at levels one, five, and nine. Strong fortitude and will saves but weak attack progression (reversed to 1/0 instead of 0/1 BAB advancement). I really like the captain class. They meet the archetype well, would make great NPC hirelings, and would be a good PC choice if playing in a heavily naval campaign.Sea Scout: Underwater scout/warriors. They are used to defend against underwater menaces or to spy on or attack ships (sabotaging) from swimming up to them. They get a bunch of water based bonus feats.There are 37 spells, 12 high powered rituals, 30 magic items, and two minor artifacts. I like the range of spells and rituals, although the rituals do not include the casting rules from the Twin Crowns campaign setting so people without that resource are not sure what Korba is (a rare alchemical substance worth 2,000 gp a shot), what skills to use for the rituals' DC (a new arcane or divine ritual skill) and what flaw (just made DC within flaw amount, results in working but flawed effect) or critical success or failure means (same mechanic as in attack rolls, with charts for various effects if confirmed crit). For this section to be useable on its own there really should have been a quick paragraph for spot rules for using the rituals. There are five repeated spells and six repeated rituals from the campaign book. Some of the magic items seemed too niche specific (specific leather +1 that grants feather fall, cutlass of captain slaying, harpoon that causes large sea creatures to make a fortitude save or die, etc.). My favorite items are repeated from the campaign book, the 50,000 gp each liftstone and dragstone which can levitate a ship so it can fly (but requiring special training and lateral sails, and then provide a pseudo-water level so it can be sailed like a ship in water (without the extra sails).The selection of six monsters was a bit disappointing. The siren is fine, an aberration using mermaid illusions to lure prey, as is the orctopus a giant/big octopus centauroid mix which is aggressive, strong and dumb. The tiger dwarves seem really odd, fur covered, fanged, barbaric dwarves who worship nature spirits and have a small bonus to swim skill and a history of saddling killer whales. The giant shark was OK but the picture makes it look like a snaggletoothed catfish rather than the ultimate sea predator. I was disappointed that there was no sea serpent such as is depicted on the cover.Finally, there are some short scenarios, secret societies, and npcs. The scenarios seemed poorly thought out or too skimpy to use except for the sea battle scenarios which would probably be a good way to get familiar with the naval combat system and the last longer adventure. About half the encounters use elements exclusively found in the Twin Crowns campaign setting (divine initiation, the Kithraas race, the background of the god Jaad). The societies did not appeal to me and they would realistically work or be great elements to bring into a game (insurance brokers with networks of informants, for example. I like the NPCs. All pirates, they have great art and are good examples of the prestige classes or other elements presented in the book and seemed interesting characters to me. I was surprised, however, to see a gnomish pirate crew included, as the Twin Crowns does not have any gnomes in it. At the very end there is a photocopiable ship log character sheet and a good glossary of naval terms.I was sorely disappointed to not find any merchanting rules, rules for hiring crews, or specific discussion of piracy, merchanting or navy styles of campaigning. Also, there are no samples for varying grunt sailors and pirates. An expert sailor example, and some discussion of the average pirate and sailor (expert? rogue? warrior? levels?) would have been nice. There are great rules for getting from place to place, and for ship combat, skills, and classes, but nothing specific about basing a campaign around these concepts or getting people to man your boat.As a campaign support book, there are a few problems. There are a number of spells, rituals, items, and even a class repeated from the campaign setting book. Most significantly, the core naval sailing and combat rules are all repeats from the campaign setting, so you only get more ships and the (useful) example diagrams to expand upon those from the campaign book. You do get more classes, spells, six new rituals, and underwater and atmospheric rules for new mechanics, as well as some NPCs.As a stand alone, the whole ritual spells section is pretty much unuseable without a quick explanation of the ritual system or the DM making up his own system or adapting the effects of the rituals to normal spells or another ritual system (such as from relics and rituals). The rituals only take up six pages, however. There are also a number of places in the sample adventures and NPCs that Twin Crowns specific rules and backgrounds crop up, but these are minor and can be modified easily.Overall, the heart of the book is the naval rules which are excellent. The actual sailing rules, naval combat, the supporting underwater and flying rules, the new feats, spells, items, and classes all add up to a great naval supplement.</blockquote>

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