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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 5026526" data-attributes="member: 99">Over the course of several campaigns and numerous one-shot games, I've run a crapload of ship to ship battles (sometimes naval vessels and sometimes airships).  I developed an entire subsystem for it when I ran my WFRP2 "Pirates of the Warhammer Caribbean" game.The most important question you want to ask yourself before you start planning this kind of thing is "how thin do I want to slice the baloney?"  Combat in any game is an abstraction.  And a good thing too because real life naval battles (I'm talking about between 2-4 ships, not line battles) often had LONG periods of boredom involved.  Decide how abstract you want it to be.  You could just skip to the part where the bad guys are on the deck of the ship or you could do a series of skill challenges and ranged engagements leading up to the boarding action.  Pick your level of abstraction and go with that.When you get right down to it, the first important thing is Speed.  If one ship is significantly faster than another then they always get to control whether a battle happens or not.  If you want to make sure that your battle happens then you need to make sure the bad guys are faster than the PC's.  If your bad guys are pirates then this is easy to explain because they do this all the time and would be in need of a fast ship.If there is no question that the bad guys are going to catch them then I wouldn't waste time and skill rolls having the PC's attempt to outrun them.  On the other hand a "sailing skill challenge" might be useful in determining how the ships are oriented when a boarding action takes place.  This is a big deal because the PC's would be better served (in general) to have the bad guys bow to their broadside.  This minimizes the number of pirates that can board at once while maximizing the number of defenders who can attack them.  Another possible reason for making sailing rolls in advance of the battle would be to determine where the fight happens.  For example the PC's might be able to squeeze enough speed out of their ship to get it into treacherous reefs or close to a whirlpool or some other such feature to have on the battlemat.Once the battle is joined then I'd guess you'll want to include a lot of skill checks for things like leaping or swinging from one deck to another, maintaining balance if the ship is rocking violently and that type of thing.  One great thing about 4e in these situations is all the forced movement effects provide plenty of opportunities for people to go overboard.  However I do generally allow the whole "make a save to fall prone at the edge rather than get pushed overboard" rule into effect.  And I usually give a +2 to the Save if there is a railing along that edge of the ship.  It's there for precisely that reason.You'll also want to decide how to handle the NPC's aboard the PC's ship.  My suggestion would be to either have them stay out of the fight by hiding belowdecks in order not to clutter the battlemat and slow things down OR make them minions.  I've also done the abstraction of telling the players "their rank and file sailors are fighting your rank and file sailors, but YOU guys are the ones that will be decisive in this battle".  I'd go with whatever you think your group will enjoy the most.Oh and one last thing:  I would recommend making some cutouts of your ships (with a battle grid on them).  They are fun to have on the battlemat and they let you change the orientation of the ships during the battle for extra tactical fun.  And if you need ship minis to represent their proximity and orientation to each other if there is a "chase scene" then those little Pirates of the Spanish Main ships are EXCELLENT for that.</blockquote>

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