My group is about to start a seafaring pirate campaign, and so we sat down one evening to playtest the ship combat rules in Seas of Blood, so that we wouldn't have to scramble for things when the game actually started.
The ship to ship combat rules for maneuvering and firing seemed decent enough, and resulted in what felt like a fairly realistic fight ending in a boarding action (of course, my perception of realistic comes from the old Pirates! pc game. *
. We found, though, that we really disliked the crew combat rules, because the players ended up being completely ineffectual, especially when smallish crews were being used.
Just as a bit of background, the Seas of Blood crew combat rules work roughly like this: Each crew is, in effect, a monster with regular, understandable stats just like any other monster. The difference is that each crew hp generally represents one physical crew member. Each crew takes their turn in initiative, they make an attack against the other crew's AC, and if they do damage, 1d6 or so (depending on weapons) enemy crewmembers drop that round. Players can attack enemy crew members, and if they kill one, you subtract 1 hp from the enemy crew. There are modifiers for the attack and damage of each crew, based on the size of the crew compared to the enemy crew. A crew 50% larger than its opponent, for example, gets a +1 to hit, I think, and the enemy gets a -1 to their own attack rolls.
Anyway, we quickly found with this system that the players were really not very effective in deciding which crew was going to win. Granted, our playtest characters were straightforward fighters and rogues, so we didn't have a chance to fling around fireballs. In small combats, with a 20-man crew against another 20-man crew, for example, the fight was often over before our characters had really done anything interesting. This is especially so if you're using any of their morale rules, which realistically make crews give up pretty quickly - why should a common sailor give up his life if he can just surrender and live to sail again? This doesn't make for very exciting boarding actions, though.
So we started talking and playtesting trying to come up with a new system that felt right to us. We pretty quickly hit upon the realization that we don't actually want the crew winning or losing by themselves (except in situations where the crew is hopelessly outnumbered, perhaps). We wanted the players to always be the deciding factor in a boarding action. In fact, we decided that we didn't actually want the crews doing anything decisive at all - they should be there as a mosh of fighters, providing a backdrop for the players who are darting about, taking care of the ship's captain and officers and other important figures.
Another thing we quickly realized after comparing a DnD boarding action to one in a movie such as The Sea Hawk (old Erol Flynn movie - mostly crappy, but has a very cool boarding action at the beginning), was that the one person per 5-feet scale didn't feel right at all. In a boarding action, the crew are crammed in tight in what's essentially a brawl. They're not maneuvering or anything, they're just surging about and fighting frantically.
So, here's what we tried. At the beginning of a boarding action, the attacking crew launches themselves across the rails onto the enemy ship. We take a bunch of beads or counters or whatever, to represent the mosh, and just place them randomly across the deck of the ship, laid out in whatever interesting pattern the DM feels like. Just place enough of them that the deck seems to be filled with combat. These mosh counters don't actually do anything - each counter represents a mosh of fighters from both crews. Now, the players don't attack the moshes. Their job is to fight the selection of enemy officers and captain and whoever else the DM feels like having the players fight. Those enemies show up regularly and are separate from the mosh just as the players are.
Moshes act as impediments to movement, and also as cover. A player or enemy can move through a mosh, but must spend more than 5' of movement to do so. Spending 10' of movement lets you move into a mosh space, but you take an AoO from an enemy crewmember within that space. Spending 20' of movement lets you move into a mosh space without taking an AoO. Each 5' square of mosh between you and an opponent counts as 1/2 cover. Standing in a mosh next to an opponent who is in the clear grants you both 1/4 cover against each other. If both of you are in a mosh next to each other, that adds back up to 1/2 cover for each of you. While standing in a mosh, you are assumed to be jostling about and holding your own against the flow of battle. Casting spells in a mosh should probably require a concentration check.
Now here's the crucial thing that we decided: Each crew's success in combat is tied directly to the success of their controlling players or npcs. Crews essentially become an extension of the player's collective hitpoints. When the fight is over for the players one way or another, the crews take that cue and fighting wraps up. If the players have lost 50% of their hitpoints during a battle, then 50% of their crew has gone down. If the players manage to wrap up the battle without a scratch, then their crew is also pretty much unscathed. We didn't play this with healing magic... to take that into account, I figure you'd maybe keep track of how much damage the party took overall, not what they actually ended the fight with. As for the enemy, this guideline means the enemy crew is going to be pretty much routed every time... just have the DM decide how much of the enemy crew is actually dead, and how many surrendered or were knocked unconscious during the course of the battle (Seas of Blood has guidelines for this). If you like, you could even take into account subdual damage dealt against the key enemies, so that if a party wanted to capture the crew of a ship mostly unharmed, they could run about doing subdual damage to the key enemies - thus translating into the more of the enemy crew surviving the encounter.
So what happens if one crew is significantly larger than the other? We haven't tried this yet, but we considered the idea of using the Seas of Blood table for combat modifiers based on crew size, and applying that to the players and enemies themselves, instead of to the crew. So if the player's crew is 50% of the size of the enemy crew, the players get a -1 to hit, and the enemies get a +1. Thinking of the crew as a modifier towards player performance also gives you the interesting option to give other bonuses or penalties based on how the crew is equipped and trained. You've hired a contingent of trained mercenaries to help in your boarding actions? Maybe they give the players a +1 to hit and damage during combat. Maybe having archers in the crew gives the players a bonus on their own ranged attacks.
We playtested relatively simple scenarios using this system over the course of an evening, and were in general very happy with it. One of the ideas that we haven't tried yet, but which we like, is having the DM move the mosh squares around randomly during the battle, to change up the paths the players can easily take and keep things interesting. We also hit upon the idea of letting players take a standard action to move some of the mosh squares themselves to help change the layout of the battle, but haven't tried that yet either.
So.. does anyone have any thoughts or comments on this? I'm eager to hear other ideas that might enhance this. We're going to be using some variation of this sytem for sure, and I'd love to make it even better.
The ship to ship combat rules for maneuvering and firing seemed decent enough, and resulted in what felt like a fairly realistic fight ending in a boarding action (of course, my perception of realistic comes from the old Pirates! pc game. *
. We found, though, that we really disliked the crew combat rules, because the players ended up being completely ineffectual, especially when smallish crews were being used.Just as a bit of background, the Seas of Blood crew combat rules work roughly like this: Each crew is, in effect, a monster with regular, understandable stats just like any other monster. The difference is that each crew hp generally represents one physical crew member. Each crew takes their turn in initiative, they make an attack against the other crew's AC, and if they do damage, 1d6 or so (depending on weapons) enemy crewmembers drop that round. Players can attack enemy crew members, and if they kill one, you subtract 1 hp from the enemy crew. There are modifiers for the attack and damage of each crew, based on the size of the crew compared to the enemy crew. A crew 50% larger than its opponent, for example, gets a +1 to hit, I think, and the enemy gets a -1 to their own attack rolls.
Anyway, we quickly found with this system that the players were really not very effective in deciding which crew was going to win. Granted, our playtest characters were straightforward fighters and rogues, so we didn't have a chance to fling around fireballs. In small combats, with a 20-man crew against another 20-man crew, for example, the fight was often over before our characters had really done anything interesting. This is especially so if you're using any of their morale rules, which realistically make crews give up pretty quickly - why should a common sailor give up his life if he can just surrender and live to sail again? This doesn't make for very exciting boarding actions, though.
So we started talking and playtesting trying to come up with a new system that felt right to us. We pretty quickly hit upon the realization that we don't actually want the crew winning or losing by themselves (except in situations where the crew is hopelessly outnumbered, perhaps). We wanted the players to always be the deciding factor in a boarding action. In fact, we decided that we didn't actually want the crews doing anything decisive at all - they should be there as a mosh of fighters, providing a backdrop for the players who are darting about, taking care of the ship's captain and officers and other important figures.
Another thing we quickly realized after comparing a DnD boarding action to one in a movie such as The Sea Hawk (old Erol Flynn movie - mostly crappy, but has a very cool boarding action at the beginning), was that the one person per 5-feet scale didn't feel right at all. In a boarding action, the crew are crammed in tight in what's essentially a brawl. They're not maneuvering or anything, they're just surging about and fighting frantically.
So, here's what we tried. At the beginning of a boarding action, the attacking crew launches themselves across the rails onto the enemy ship. We take a bunch of beads or counters or whatever, to represent the mosh, and just place them randomly across the deck of the ship, laid out in whatever interesting pattern the DM feels like. Just place enough of them that the deck seems to be filled with combat. These mosh counters don't actually do anything - each counter represents a mosh of fighters from both crews. Now, the players don't attack the moshes. Their job is to fight the selection of enemy officers and captain and whoever else the DM feels like having the players fight. Those enemies show up regularly and are separate from the mosh just as the players are.
Moshes act as impediments to movement, and also as cover. A player or enemy can move through a mosh, but must spend more than 5' of movement to do so. Spending 10' of movement lets you move into a mosh space, but you take an AoO from an enemy crewmember within that space. Spending 20' of movement lets you move into a mosh space without taking an AoO. Each 5' square of mosh between you and an opponent counts as 1/2 cover. Standing in a mosh next to an opponent who is in the clear grants you both 1/4 cover against each other. If both of you are in a mosh next to each other, that adds back up to 1/2 cover for each of you. While standing in a mosh, you are assumed to be jostling about and holding your own against the flow of battle. Casting spells in a mosh should probably require a concentration check.
Now here's the crucial thing that we decided: Each crew's success in combat is tied directly to the success of their controlling players or npcs. Crews essentially become an extension of the player's collective hitpoints. When the fight is over for the players one way or another, the crews take that cue and fighting wraps up. If the players have lost 50% of their hitpoints during a battle, then 50% of their crew has gone down. If the players manage to wrap up the battle without a scratch, then their crew is also pretty much unscathed. We didn't play this with healing magic... to take that into account, I figure you'd maybe keep track of how much damage the party took overall, not what they actually ended the fight with. As for the enemy, this guideline means the enemy crew is going to be pretty much routed every time... just have the DM decide how much of the enemy crew is actually dead, and how many surrendered or were knocked unconscious during the course of the battle (Seas of Blood has guidelines for this). If you like, you could even take into account subdual damage dealt against the key enemies, so that if a party wanted to capture the crew of a ship mostly unharmed, they could run about doing subdual damage to the key enemies - thus translating into the more of the enemy crew surviving the encounter.
So what happens if one crew is significantly larger than the other? We haven't tried this yet, but we considered the idea of using the Seas of Blood table for combat modifiers based on crew size, and applying that to the players and enemies themselves, instead of to the crew. So if the player's crew is 50% of the size of the enemy crew, the players get a -1 to hit, and the enemies get a +1. Thinking of the crew as a modifier towards player performance also gives you the interesting option to give other bonuses or penalties based on how the crew is equipped and trained. You've hired a contingent of trained mercenaries to help in your boarding actions? Maybe they give the players a +1 to hit and damage during combat. Maybe having archers in the crew gives the players a bonus on their own ranged attacks.
We playtested relatively simple scenarios using this system over the course of an evening, and were in general very happy with it. One of the ideas that we haven't tried yet, but which we like, is having the DM move the mosh squares around randomly during the battle, to change up the paths the players can easily take and keep things interesting. We also hit upon the idea of letting players take a standard action to move some of the mosh squares themselves to help change the layout of the battle, but haven't tried that yet either.
So.. does anyone have any thoughts or comments on this? I'm eager to hear other ideas that might enhance this. We're going to be using some variation of this sytem for sure, and I'd love to make it even better.
