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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5181498" data-attributes="member: 22779">There's a few issues with running naval combat in D&D.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Numbers.  This is particularly true in 3e but, it also happens in all editions.  Ship combat often features dozens, if not upwards of a hundred combatants.  Trying to do that with D&D combat rules is an exercise in dice masterbation.  D&D combat is about individuals, or at least pretty small groups.  When you start having company sized combats, it takes a really long time to resolve. .</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Magic is king.  I haven't run 4e, so, I wonder if the 10 square ranges would actually help somewhat here, but, in 3e and earlier, ship combat is entirely dominated by combat.  Why would you bother, in 3e for example, to put siege weapons on your ship when a wand of Enlarged Fireball has a range of 1300 feet?  It never misses, fires every round and is far, far more devastaing than any ship mounted siege weapon.  Never mind what you can do with a Lyre of Building <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" />.  .</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Scale.  Ship combat, unlike land based combat, almost always starts at line of sight.  We're talking combats starting at a range of miles.  It's not difficult to spend a very large amount of time just maneuvering into position and trying to get into range.  5 foot squares are just not going to cut it, nor is 30 foot inches.  Not unless you have a REALLY big table. .</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What does everyone do?  One player is the captain.  One is the Pilot.  And the other three guys?  They sit around and watch the game.  Dividing up the responsibilities on a ship is difficult (thought not impossible).  It's very easy to fall into the trap of forcing half the players to watch the game for extended periods of time. .</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Anachronism.  This is one of my own personal bugaboos.  So many of the ships depicted in D&D are totally anachronistic.  At D&D's presumed level of technology, you're talking caravels, maybe a small carrack like a Nar (what Columbus sailed to the Americas).  Crew of maybe twenty, thirty, with enough space for another twenty or thirty people.  Fifty is you want to get really, really cozy.  Yet, time after time, people are using these Galleons with hundreds of pirates or passengers.  Or, as one Scarred Lands supplement had - an English Ship of the Line capable of carrying nearly a thousand (and not out of place during the American Revolution and possibly the Civil War as well).  Totally beyond the technology levels D&D is presumed to achieve.  Sorry, this one's all me.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> .</li> </ul>I've tried.  I really have.  I've tried to use 3e and 2e for naval campaigns.  It takes a better DM than me to do it.</blockquote>

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