D&D 5E Experiences Running or Playing Ship Combat?

[Paul Farquhar]

I've used the ship to ship rules a little, and like others here found they didn't really work. It's one of the reasons I declined to DM Spelljammer, despite one of my players requesting it.

I miss FASA Star Trek

 

[Hexmage-EN]

A lot of these responses are echoing what I've seen elsewhere and my own concerns.

One idea I saw on Reddit that I might test out privately before my next session is the concept of protective fields surrounding ships. If I recall correctly, the poster said that in their game they had it so that ships had a protective that extended out 200 feet or so from ships that nullified nonmagical attacks that didn't do enough damage and spells of a certain level. This made it so that the siege weapons on a ship were the main things that could damage other ships (something that the existing Damage Threshold rules already did to a lesser extent), any attacks or spells that did make it through the field telegraphed to the players that the attacker was a significant threat, and encouraged getting within the 200 foot radius and boarding as soon as possible. The person who described this did this for a nautical campaign in which elemental crystals were the source of these fields, but I could easily make such fields a product of a Spelljammer Helm for my own campaign.

I'm also going to take a look at a PDF on DM's Guild called Spelljammer Combat Expanded. I may end up not using it, but I'll only be out a dollar and surely there will be at least something worth cribbing from it.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Bit of a necropolis, but I thought I'd share how my own implementation of Spelljammer ship to ship combat went in a playtest I performed yesterday with two players:

I had two players who took the role of elite vampirates leading an advance force as their fleet's home base was approached by hostile Star Moths from the Xaryxian Empire of Astral elves.

Vampirate warriors Dorgio Dali and Vaitalia Daggermore led a group of four fellow vampirates into battle upon giant skeletal bats while the spelljammers Last Breath and Fangtasia followed behind to lend cannon fire. The vampirates and their mounts flew into a necrotic tempest nebula (whose energies they were immune to) to perform hit and run attacks against the enemy advance fighters while the spelljammers awaited the Xaryxian Star Moths.

The vampirate spelljammers and the Xaryxian craft began trading artillery fire as soon as the elves' Star Moths emerged from either end of a necrotic nebula. Eventually, one of the Star Moths closed in enough on the Last Breath for Xaryxian warriors to board and begin attacking the crew members.

However, Dorgio, Vaitalia, and their fellow skeleton bat riders all emerged from the necrotic tempest to themselves attack the crew of the star moth whose warriors had just boarded the Last Breath. They used their bats' paralyzing shrieks and energy drain attacks to wipe out the artillery crew on deck (turning several into shadow allies) while vampirate warriors from the Fangtasia boarded the Last Breath to engage the enemy combatants as the Fangtasia and Last Breath focused fire on the other Xaryxian ship, blowing much of its crew of into space and shattering one of its wings.

In the end, the skeletal bats finished off the pilots of the smaller Xaryxian fighters (which both then crashed into the Star Moth and exploded) while the vampirate warriors scared half of the surviving Xaryxians into teleporting to safety via Word of Recall. The other Astral Elf boarders on the Last Breath all perished as the ship flew into a necrotic tempest nebula, killing the attackers with deadly energies the ship's crew were immune to.

I definitely need to streamline some things and organize better (especially since I'm planning to use this with a regular-sized party and not just two players), but I'm pretty happy with how things went!