D&D General PCs vs Ships

[TheSword]

Incidentally I’m not sure if anyone here has played Sea of Thieves? It’s a great game, and does a pretty good job of capturing and gamifying the tension and frantic mess of ship to ship combat.

 

[TheSword]

Sure. But one of the trademarks of any high seas adventures is peril of the sea itself. Peril that becomes trivial once you start getting spells of levels 4+ cause your lower level spell become cheap and you start getting some nasties for ship to ship combat. Control Water, Sleet storm, Fly, Teleport, Disintegrate. Water breathing/ walking become cheap spells to cast.

It boils down to what kind of game you wanna run. You mentioned Master and Commander. That is low level game, tier 1. When your characters are in late tier 2, they are leaving Pirates of the Caribbean fantasy territory (say up to levels 6-7) and slowly entering One Piece. Tier 3-4 are full on One Piece territory. Ships are trivial to deal with, specially if you have caster heavy party.

Well honestly, when I think of great sea faring media - Black sails, Hornblower, Pirates of the Carribbean, Master and Commander etc. peril of the sea doesn’t really come into it. The peril is always other sailors/pirates or possibly monsters in the fantastical elements. I think you’ll find that the danger of drowning/sinking almost never comes up and when it does it’s usually in conjunction with some other danger.

One piece is a cartoon-comedy version of pirates. Entertaining but hardly a progression upwards. It starts gonzo and doesn’t really have any bearing on a campaign based on the age of sail. Rather what you are describing is not tiers of play but rather low magic, medium magic, high magic genre.

Ships are not trivial to deal with if the world balances the resources the players have with similar resources for their foes.

 

[GrimCo]

Well honestly, when I think of great sea faring media - Black sails, Hornblower, Pirates of the Carribbean, Master and Commander etc. peril of the sea doesn’t really come into it. The peril is always other sailors/pirates or possibly monsters in the fantastical elements. I think you’ll find that the danger of drowning/sinking almost never comes up and when it does it’s usually in conjunction with some other danger.

Sea itself is a big part of the danger. It's been a while since i last watched Master and Commander, but storms and surviving natural sea dangers is big part of the plot. In Black Sails, it's also part of the plot. But all those shows you mentioned have something in common. Every single main charater is at best level 4-5.

One piece is a cartoon-comedy version of pirates. Entertaining but hardly a progression upwards. It starts gonzo and doesn’t really have any bearing on a campaign based on the age of sail. Rather what you are describing is not tiers of play but rather low magic, medium magic, high magic genre.

Ships are not trivial to deal with if the world balances the resources the players have with similar resources for their foes.

One Piece is equivalent of high level d&d characters with magic playing pirates. At that point, pirate is aesthetic choice.

I'm describing power levels. Tier 1 is only tier where you can have characters that are still more or less regular humans. Tier 2 is peak human to supers, tier 3 is supers, tier 4 is demigods.

Pirates of Carribean movies are blueprint for d&d campaigns and map nicley on power scale tiers of play. First movie starts with regular piracy being central theme. By the fourth one, we have literal gods, artifacts and ancient sea monsters. Ship battles are backdrop. It's more about factions, cosmic sea balance, theology etc, which are all trademarks of higher level d&d campaigns.

 

[TheSword]

Sea itself is a big part of the danger. It's been a while since i last watched Master and Commander, but storms and surviving natural sea dangers is big part of the plot. In Black Sails, it's also part of the plot. But all those shows you mentioned have something in common. Every single main charater is at best level 4-5.


One Piece is equivalent of high level d&d characters with magic playing pirates. At that point, pirate is aesthetic choice.

I'm describing power levels. Tier 1 is only tier where you can have characters that are still more or less regular humans. Tier 2 is peak human to supers, tier 3 is supers, tier 4 is demigods.

Pirates of Carribean movies are blueprint for d&d campaigns and map nicley on power scale tiers of play. First movie starts with regular piracy being central theme. By the fourth one, we have literal gods, artifacts and ancient sea monsters. Ship battles are backdrop. It's more about factions, cosmic sea balance, theology etc, which are all trademarks of higher level d&d campaigns.

We’ll have to agree to disagree. Nothing you have said maps to character levels at all. It’s about genre and can’t be mapped to D&D character levels.

Regarding dangers of the sea it is background noise, set dressing or maybe a narrative plot to drive the story in a certain direction. It exists only to make the interactions with other sea farers more interesting. Are there any characters in Black sails that drown? Ever? Do any major NPC ships sink from combat? Even the doldrums scene is there to bring out interesting interactions with the crew.

 

[MarkB]

All this is convincing me that by our levels (8+), ships need to be a bit more. So, at the docks this last session, the party dropped by to see what was being built. The old shipwright talked about the old days where fighting was honest, but there's now glyph-infused construction (no need for a fire pump and honest labor), the new "livewood" from the deep mainland jungles (being plundered, to the chagrin of the ancient beings that live there, wood that has sentience, like Robin Hobb books), and the Hurricane King style ships like one made out of dragon bones that supposedly can fly or go underwater for periods of time.

The nation of Cheliax (Asmodeus is the lead religion) makes pacts with devils, so their warships will be accompanied by flying scouts and all sorts of nasties. It just doesn't seem fair for the poor pirate starting out and just trying to make their way...

In an Eberron campaign a long time ago, there was a pirate ship run by eco-terrorist druids who were targeting House Lyrandar ships after they'd been overlogging the druids' home forest. That could work as a reaction to the livewood ships.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Not sure if someone else has mentioned this...
But an enemy pirate ship may produce Lair and Legendary Actions.

• Have the sculpted mermaid adorning the front of the boat unleash psychic or effects upon enemies of the crew and vessel.
• Familiars (birds, crustaceans...etc) of the boat scupper the party's attempt to surprise/ambush
• A low level Guards and Wards is activated turning loose ropes into Ropes of Entanglement and/or create Obscuring Mist only effecting enemies of the vessel and its crew

Feel free to give defending pirates with a vessel predominantly intact, a free Battle Master maneuver each round to reflect their familiarity and ease aboard a healthy vessel and well-trained and synergetic crew.

Let one of the enemy pirates have a reaction where he directs a grew of sea-birds to provide bonus AC to one his/her crew members or provide disadvantage to a PC's attack.

Use waves and currents to slow and eventually tire out PCs, while a vessel due to its size does not suffer the same easily.
Introduce 3rd party threats which thrive on silly human conflicts in water to capitalise on the situation.

Senior ranking pirates may be equipped with magical consumables such as a Jars of Imprisonment which when cracked releases a Water Elemental or with a Shell of Summoning which conjures up Giant Crabs.

Just some ideas...
But you need to up the types of thematic challenges - i.e. They cannot be doing at level 8 what they were doing at level 3.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

Unless the PCs can fly, trying to race a ship along the coast will involve mostly difficult terrain, plus some impassable terrain that necessitates a long diversion.

It was mentioned the PC's have swim speeds. Trailing the ships from the coast would not be an issue.