D&D 5E Ship to Ship Crew Combat Options

[Perun]

We're in a nautical/pirate-themed campaign right now, and our DM has a number of house-rules for naval combat. He devised a system in which naval combat is run separate from standard combat, and uses naval rounds. You basically get three naval actions per naval round (it's more complicated than that, but for simplicity's sake, I'll go with that). Each round in melee naval combat, the character leading the 'unit' (usually the First Mate) rolls an opposed combat check, and the winner takes out a number of opponent's combatants from the battle (they're not necessarily dead, but might have ended up in the sea, etc.), depending (I think) on the difference between the opposed rolls. It's usually between one to three, but can be more or less, depending on the rolls and other effects. This also affects ship's morale, which will cause the crew to surrender, once it falls below the threshold...

It's an interesting system, and we've had several memorable combats using it. I don't know exactly how it works, because my character is not personally involved with naval combat too much, and the DM has not (yet) put it all down in writing.

 

[Coroc]

Well for mass combat of NPCs? If you got a desired outcome just narrate it, if you want it to be random, assign a % chance for one Group to win and roll % dice. Narrate accordingly. KISS

For ship combat involving PCs? that's different, I can only offer one instance from the campaign I dm.
The PCs had acquired a small ship. The ship had 3 ballista, (Ballista and war machines are buyable equipment items in my campaign, the bigger they are the more they dish out, the longer is the reload time and the higher the costs.) So each ballista would do 4d10 piercing damage, to hit was dexterity and proficiency for the martial classes (Basically if they had prof for heavy X bow they could use their prof, so not the party wiz.)
1 guy had to steer the ship the others could each operate a ballista. Reload time for the ballista was 1 round, each ballista could cover a 120 degree angle.

The opponents were orc riders flying on manticores encircling the ship, the opponents did shoot with heavy crossbows and the manticoras used their tail spikes. After a while the remaining orcs and manticores would try to board the ship also.

It was much action and big fun, and we had manticore going down first, so alive orc and dead manticore plummeting into the water, and orc going first so dead orc plummeting into the water and alive manticore boarding the ship for melee etc.

For ship to ship combat assign hull points just like in former editions. Just meditate a bit how many hits from a ballista or catapult some vessel could take and you get some ideas.

I would go with 300 for small ships up to several thousand for big ones.

 

[Celebrim]

Just asking for general inquiry, what DM's prefer regarding running combats between ship crews (not PC's) during play.

* Ghosts of Saltmarsh offered "Typically the crew is too busy managing the ship to do anything else during combat."

The 'Ghosts of Saltmarsh' rules seem heavily inspired by the 1e Pathfinder rules, particularly those pertaining to 'Skull & Shackles', which as I player I'm finding inadequate and uninspiring.

Back in the day we used to use the old 1e AD&D 'Battlesystem' to resolve mass combat, but it has its limitations and I don't know if I'd go back even if I could.

* My latest experiment with this? Stat up ship crews as swarms. Yes, I'm serious. Then they can duke it out and you get some satisfaction.

To a certain extent, that's what I'm leaning toward right now, albeit the rules document I've produced for the DM doesn't use the swarm rules or mob template directly, but instead takes the basic idea from Pathfinders very bare bones mass combat system and rescales it to army sizes more in tune with what we expect on the ship - 2-5 crew units abstracting out 10-50 individual sailors each. Add a few rules to handle boarding actions and other tactical scale issues that the original strategic level rules weren't interested in, plus some rules to generate casualty figures for both sides and hopefully it will work out. I'll let you know when we get a chance to play test it.

 

[Inchoroi]

The 'Ghosts of Saltmarsh' rules seem heavily inspired by the 1e Pathfinder rules, particularly those pertaining to 'Skull & Shackles', which as I player I'm finding inadequate and uninspiring.

Back in the day we used to use the old 1e AD&D 'Battlesystem' to resolve mass combat, but it has its limitations and I don't know if I'd go back even if I could.



To a certain extent, that's what I'm leaning toward right now, albeit the rules document I've produced for the DM doesn't use the swarm rules or mob template directly, but instead takes the basic idea from Pathfinders very bare bones mass combat system and rescales it to army sizes more in tune with what we expect on the ship - 2-5 crew units abstracting out 10-50 individual sailors each. Add a few rules to handle boarding actions and other tactical scale issues that the original strategic level rules weren't interested in, plus some rules to generate casualty figures for both sides and hopefully it will work out. I'll let you know when we get a chance to play test it.

As I'm going to be running 5e Skull & Shackles, I, too, find the idea that the crew just doesn't do much is boring as heck!