Sea World

[Razjah]

Cannons will have a range of 50 ft, require at least 1 person trained in cannons to use, 2 people to load and fire, 1 full round action to load. The attack bonus for a cannon will be ~ +3(+6 with 2 people trained in gunning). A normal cannon ball will deal 1d8 damage. I plan to have 2 types of cannon balls, an explosive ball which will deal 3d6 fire in a 10 ft radius and 1d6 bludgeoning from the actual ball, and a blades ball, which deals 2d6 and ignores hardness of wooden objects.

I would greatly increase the cannon ranges. At least 200 ft. They may be inaccurate if you want, but at 50 ft the cannon are more than useless. It would be better in this situation to have blunderbusses and bind the ships. Then the crews can fight each other.

The exploding cannon ball is odd. I would simply drop it, there are plenty of spell effects you can use alchemically.... actually, you could have magically charged weapons. A lightning ballista or a fire cannon. Then you can just moidfy fireball/lightning bolt/cone of cold/you spell of choice/etc. to be your attack of choice with a weapon. These would let you not need to worry about the extra rules for cannon. If you really need a method to attack a ship, just use normal hardness for wood and give a decent amount of HP to a ship's hull section.

If the battles are really meant for the ships to sink each other, then have armored hulls or attacks that can ignore the hardness.

This lets the ships be able to fight off dragon turtles, sea serpents, and much of the monsters of the deep. Or people stick to the shallows and run from the monsters, making long voyages slow or extremely dangerous.


If you give a bit more about the world then some more advice can be given. Waterworld didn't have sea monsters, just people fighting. Same with the Pirates of the Caribbean films. If you want more monsters- how common? how easy to fight off? What levels of play are you aiming for? (I recommend E6) but high level play will require different sea hazards when mages can control the weather.


Hope this helps!

 

[Dingo333]

The cannons are more a weaken the enemy ship, most pirates (adventurers at sea) were interested in lootong more then killing, which is why I also added grappling hooks fireable from the cannons to pull enemy ships close for boarding.

As for monsters, I have never (DMing or playing) ambushed a group of monsters, ambush is a tactic that monsters get to use exclusively. So as for range, I don't see it being useful on a ship's cannons. most monsters will be attacking initially from under, and after that, will be well within 50ft

The explosive balls are a little akward, I wanted something that could be used to attack land based enemies and structures, and be fairly effective. These were also gonna be on the more expensive side to buy (danger of construction, danger of stockpiling)

In effect, the cannons will be unreliable at best against medium and smaller targets, Fair against large-huge sized (monsters) and good against huge+ (ships and some monsters I dont plan on them fighting for a while)

At the moment, I am looking at them being Lvl 10, 3 person party. only part of the game is spent on the sea, I plan to have ports to interact in (bar brawl) and ruins to loot, I mean reclaim lost treasures >.> yeah, reclaim lost treasures, lets go with that. I also plan for the encounters to be on par to even hard, (fast track for xp)

 

[Glade Riven]

A 6 lb. ball of iron or stone at high velocity is pretty darn effective against buildings. On the range issue, 50 ft is fine before taking penalties - under Pathfinder rules, the maximum range would be 500 ft with a penalty to accuracy of -20. Broad side of the barn and all that.

1d8 is on the low side for cannonry. The smallest cannon in D20 Modern Past does 1d12 dmg (1 pounder cannon), with an additional +1d12 per size increment (6, 9, and 12 pounders, respectivly). Those are the field cannon.

Actually, basic equipment from d20-compatable products can be used as-is in Pathfinder. Ship stats from Stormwracked (D&D 3.x) would work fine, or another d20 naval-based product should work, too. Other things from those books may need some converting.

 

[Aeolius]

Try checking out Alluria Publishing's Cerulean Seas.

I second the motion. Cerulean Seas is as attractive a supplement as it is informative. One of these days I plan to run a Cerulean Seas/Pathfinder game using MapTool and Skype.

 

[Thanael]

There's Sinister Adventures indulgences: paizo.com - Store / Downloads / Sinister Adventures
(Just don't preorder their Razor Coast on their website thus far it's Vaporware)

There's also Sunken Empires by Brandon Hodge from Open Design. It is about Atlantis style lost empires under the sea.

Check out this thread on paizo for more links and articles...

 

[Thanael]

I second the motion. Cerulean Seas is as attractive a supplement as it is informative. One of these days I plan to run a Cerulean Seas/Pathfinder game using MapTool and Skype.

Interesting. How does it compare to the d20 book the Deep ?

BTW here's a link to the Cerulean Seas book on paizo, where there are numerous detailed reviews.

 

[Dark Mistress]

I also recommend Cerulean Seas, but then I am one of the people that reviewed it in the link posted in the post above mine.