Ship combat quickplay (mild spoilers for ZEITGEIST)

[RangerWickett]

I'm working on rules for ZEITGEIST's naval combat encounters in adventure 2, and I needed something fast and efficient. Please let me know what you think.

 

[Spatula]

I would get rid of the OA-provoking stuff. Actions that are not movement or ranged/area attacks rarely provoke in 4e.

The rules look good. I would add some guidelines for ramming; maybe the damage would be by size or a fraction of the ship's HP.

I guess the concern is having the game screech to a halt while everyone gets up to speed on the vehicle rules.

 

[RangerWickett]

I would get rid of the OA-provoking stuff. Actions that are not movement or ranged/area attacks rarely provoke in 4e.

Good point. It's already enough of a choice of whether to spend your action controlling the ship or fighting. No need to penalize PCs further.

The rules look good. I would add some guidelines for ramming; maybe the damage would be by size or a fraction of the ship's HP.

I have ramming rules, but I don't think they're needed for the adventure, since neither ship will be able to deal enough damage to the other for sinking to really be an option.

I guess the concern is having the game screech to a halt while everyone gets up to speed on the vehicle rules.

The PCs will have plenty of lead time to know that there's going to be a ship encounter. I hoped this would be simple enough that you could hand a single sheet of rules to the players, and it would cover all the stuff they need to worry about. Whoever's captain might want to read a bit more.