Naval combat rules

[roguerouge]

Please pardon the repeat, as I realized that the general forum was not the proper place for this thread....

In the narrative naval combat system, it's essentially impossible to sink a sailing ship without a high powered mage as a living cannon. While easy to hit, ships have a hardness that subtracts 5 points right off the top of every physical blow. Ships take full damage from only the following forms: slashing and bludgeoning melee weapons (including rams), siege engines that are not a ballista, force and sonic damage. Everything else does half damage or less. Fire, electricity, acid, ballista bolts, and piercing melee weapons do half damage. Cold does one quarter damage. Medium and small sized missile weapons do no damage.

One section of a caravel has 80 hit points and a hardness of 5. You need to hole six sections to sink a ship. And a ballista bolt, at 3d8 damage, after halving the damage and subtracting out the hardness, does 1.5 points of damage on average to the ship section and it can fire one shot every four rounds.

The oft-mentioned fire ball wand? (5d6)/2 produces average damage of 10.5 points per round to two sections of a ship (a 20' fireball and each section is 10' cube). At that rate, you'd need 8 charges to get two sections holed. And four charges to hole each section on either side of that due to rippling damage weakening each adjacent section by half its hit points. Thus for a wizard to hole a caravel, it roughly would take 20 charges off his wand.

Does this seem right to you?

Edit: This gets the area effect of fireballs wrong. They're not 20' squares but a 20's radius. Placed for maximum effect, you could target 12 hull sections at once with that spell. That would mean you could sink the ship with 8 charges of a fireball wand.

 

[Machiavelli]

You already mentioned the best ways to sink a ship: force damage (explosives) and bludgeoning damage (cannons and keel-mounted rams). Your best bet, if you don't have cannons, would be to ram the enemy, which is exactly what happened most times in the pre-gunpowder era. Of course, instead of sinking, a few ships would just be captured by marines mounting boarding actions.

Now, for ways to make magic effective, I would just rely on the Orb of Force spell to act as cannon balls. Low-level warmages with wands are your cannons. Too expensive? Tough, cannons are expensive.

 

[Elephant]

I have to disagree the OP's assessment of the Fireball wand. You don't rely on the Fireball to damage the hull, you use it to light up the sails and rigging. A fireball or two may not fell the mainmast, but it sure as heck will start a big enough fire - and kill enough crew - that the ship will surely burn to the waterline.

By the way, where do you get the stats for the hardness and HP of a caravel?

 

[roguerouge]

ships = floating flamable dungeons?

It's from Stormwrack.

The most accessible force spell, magic missile, can't target objects, unfortunately. So the use of force orb spells are the cheapest copy of cannon balls, right down to the to hit roll. What I'm trying to see is whether DnD has come up with a system that makes it worthwhile to sink the ship rather than target the crew.

As far as a fireball starting fires, the way that stormwrack deals with that issue is to note, correctly, that ships were not floating tinderboxes until the advent of powder magazines, although fires can and do destroy ships without gunpowder. Ships faced with one of a complicated list of fire spells make a fire check vs. DC 10+spell level. Ships prepared for battle with buckets of sand and water on deck and decks wet down get a +4 bonus on this roll. So, a battle-ready ship hit by a fireball has got to get a 9 or better.

If it did catch fire, half the squares exposed to fire ignite. A twenty foot radius spread, placed for maximum effect, would damage 12 sections, so six sections would be on fire. A burning square deals 2d6 damage per round to that hull section. A fire will typically spread to a new square every four rounds. That would decrease the time spent to sink a ship, certainly, as the sailors would have to be insane to go put out any fires started in that area, as that area's where you'd target with a fireball next round.

As for your tactics, there are three rigging sections to a caravel with 80 hp each and no hardness score. Destroying one rigging section does not spread damage to other rigging sections, however. Destroying a rigging section impedes the ship, imposing a 10 foot speed penalty for each mast destroyed in this manner, slowing to zero with the last section destroyed. That's an enormous tactical advantage, but it's not holed.

I suppose, if you were evil, you could then sail a decent distance away, watch them starve to death, and come back for their goods.

 

[Squeaky Bill]

SPI's wargame Frigate (mid 70's) made the same distinction for targeting ships. You could aim your cannons to punch holes in the hull or to knock down the masts. The game only gave you those two choices.

Frigate's scale was at the ship level and covered fleet actions up to the size of the battle of Trafalgar. The level of detail was very general, as compared to role playing. For example, there were no rules for using snipers to knock out enemy officers.

A fantasy world requires more sophisticated strategy, too. You will probably encounter submerged weaponry, magical sighting, magical obscurement, and air support. Controling the wind might be more important than any of your weaponry.

 

[jaker2003]

How about a swimming spellcaster using passwall on a submerged section of the hull?

There's warp wood as a close range spell to spring leaks.

You could have an unseen servant dump buckets of water onboard (granted, lifting 20 pounds at a time means it's a long process).

How about spiritual weapon? That's a medium range spell that deals 1d8 + CL/3 (max +5 @ 15th) force damage every round for CL rounds.

A searing light spell does (CL/2)d6 untyped damage at medium range to constructs and inanimate objects.

There's repel wood to drive away opposing ships.

You could use a glyph of warding spell on an arrow and shoot it over to your target, the first sailor to pass it would trigger the effect. You could even one-up this with a greater glyph of warding triggering a circle of death to negate the crew.

And how about control water (particularly in shallow water) to immobilize a target?

You could use call lightning to assassinate crew members.

cloudkill lasts for 1 min/level and instantly kills (no save) creatures with 3 or less HD. Creatures with more HD have to deal with 1d4 Con dmg every round.

How about spectral hand to bring your touch spells (up to 4th level) to bear at medium range. You could use a darkness category spell to effectively blind the crew of a ship.

Hallucinatory terrain or other illusions could force them to react to false (or ignore actual) navigational hazards.

 

[Elephant]

It's from Stormwrack.

What I'm trying to see is whether DnD has come up with a system that makes it worthwhile to sink the ship rather than target the crew.

As far as a fireball starting fires, the way that stormwrack deals with that issue is to note, correctly, that ships were not floating tinderboxes until the advent of powder magazines, although fires can and do destroy ships without gunpowder. Ships faced with one of a complicated list of fire spells make a fire check vs. DC 10+spell level. Ships prepared for battle with buckets of sand and water on deck and decks wet down get a +4 bonus on this roll. So, a battle-ready ship hit by a fireball has got to get a 9 or better.

If it did catch fire, half the squares exposed to fire ignite. A twenty foot radius spread, placed for maximum effect, would damage 12 sections, so six sections would be on fire. A burning square deals 2d6 damage per round to that hull section. A fire will typically spread to a new square every four rounds. That would decrease the time spent to sink a ship, certainly, as the sailors would have to be insane to go put out any fires started in that area, as that area's where you'd target with a fireball next round.

As for your tactics, there are three rigging sections to a caravel with 80 hp each and no hardness score. Destroying one rigging section does not spread damage to other rigging sections, however. Destroying a rigging section impedes the ship, imposing a 10 foot speed penalty for each mast destroyed in this manner, slowing to zero with the last section destroyed. That's an enormous tactical advantage, but it's not holed.

I suppose, if you were evil, you could then sail a decent distance away, watch them starve to death, and come back for their goods.

I call BS on Stormwrack's rules. Fire is much deadlier to a ship of timber, canvas, and rope than it implies - with or without powder magazines. Set a sail on fire, watch it spread to the entire ship, then enjoy the light show as it burns to the waterline. Using Fireball to destroy a "section" of rigging as though you're hitting it with a disintegrator is entirely the wrong way to model the situation.

The reason you shoot the rigging with a fireball is to start fires, not to damage it directly. Sure, sailors can try to put out the fires started on the deck, sails, and rigging, but there won't be enough sailors to put out all the fires you'll start...especially if they have to worry about another fireball the next round. Besides, you'll probably kill a few sailors with the first fireball.

To answer your question, I'd say, no, D&D doesn't have a system to make sinking a ship more worthwhile than slaughtering the crew. It really doesn't model environmental threats (like objects catching on fire) well.

 

[jaker2003]

I call BS on Stormwrack's rules. Fire is much deadlier to a ship of timber, canvas, and rope than it implies - with or without powder magazines. Set a sail on fire, watch it spread to the entire ship, then enjoy the light show as it burns to the waterline. Using Fireball to destroy a "section" of rigging as though you're hitting it with a disintegrator is entirely the wrong way to model the situation.

Wood is ablative. That means that the outer parts of the timber may burn, but the burnt part insulates the interior from flame and heat. Wood is great fuel, but you've got to really stoke the flames to consume thick chunks, like boat timbers, especially after the treatments done to make it sea-worthy. But, that doesn't matter much if you use a really big fireball.

To answer your question, I'd say, no, D&D doesn't have a system to make sinking a ship more worthwhile than slaughtering the crew. It really doesn't model environmental threats (like objects catching on fire) well.

Are you proposing that someone fix this?

 

[Elephant]

Wood is ablative. That means that the outer parts of the timber may burn, but the burnt part insulates the interior from flame and heat. Wood is great fuel, but you've got to really stoke the flames to consume thick chunks, like boat timbers, especially after the treatments done to make it sea-worthy. But, that doesn't matter much if you use a really big fireball.


Are you proposing that someone fix this?

Well, I wasn't suggesting that you try to set the outer hull on fire - I suggested targeting the sails and rigging and stuff on deck. Those would start up a big enough fire to burn the ship to the waterline.

As to getting someone to 'fix' D&D's poor modeling of this type of thing...yes, it would be nice to have better rules, but no, I don't have the time or inclination to build such a (still easily-playable) rules system - and if I don't do it, probably no one will.

Also, I don't have the kind of detailed knowledge of fire, sailing ships, or (especially) how they interact that I would need to try to accurately model exactly how a shipboard fire should behave.

 

[notjer]

A level 9 wizard could do some nasty damage on a ship very quickly.

Use of spells:
2*teleport scrolls
1-3*fabricate scrolls

SHIPS = sinking

If you dont like the idea of teleportate to the enemy ship then enchant some arrows with single use fabricate and shot at the ship. I think it would works?

You could also get sudden widden and use it on fabricate which result in a range of 50ft+5ft/level.
If you are very cool (and crazy dude) your mage has studied how to make flying machines and then turns the enemies cannonballs and balista arrows into... flying object ;P

You can 'fabricate' 10 cub ft per secondl on wood and 1 cub ft on minerals with that spell.

Frost area spells could possible disable the enemies cannons and balistas.