D&D General Ships & spellcasters

[toucanbuzz]

Next campaign is sea-faring, pirates, swinging from the yardarm, wenches and swains and all that good stuff. I'm looking at verisimilitude - spellcasters vs. ships. It feels...anticlimactic....if every battle is simply "wizard fireballs the sails" or something like that. I want to explain why ships have to close with grapples (gunpowder and cannons are limited to only the wealthiest and most powerful) and why you'd opt for gunpowder in the first place if you could simply hire a wizard.

Has anyone come across this? Would ships in a fantasy setting have any recourse beyond hiring wizards to counterspell, etc.? Would standard ship building come with a blessing from the pirate goddess that protects the ship somehow from being directly affected? Could you buy a figurehead to counter magic?

 

[MGibster]

In the immortal words of The Monster, "Fire bad!" The whole point of being a pirate is to board another ship and take their booty, sometimes even the whole ship, and it's hard to do that when everything is on fire. A lot of us land lubbers do not truly appreciate just how dangerous a shipboard fire is in the modern age let alone the age of wooden ships. Fire would only be used if your purpose was to destroy the enemy entirely rather than for plunder.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Has anyone come across this? Would ships in a fantasy setting have any recourse beyond hiring wizards to counterspell, etc.? Would standard ship building come with a blessing from the pirate goddess that protects the ship somehow from being directly affected? Could you buy a figurehead to counter magic?

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with a DM who is planning out a campaign to institute "new systems" into the game that they themselves have created. Which means (to go along with your post here)... there's absolutely no reason why in this particular campaign of yours that yes indeed, ships and shipbuilding have become such an important business that most ships have magical resistance built into their design. Even if the "official D&D rules" do not have that as an option for most campaigns, you can just make up and institute new rules for such.

For instance, part of ship design includes wizards who assist in their building to abjure the wood / sails / etc. from harm. So maybe all ships are immune to magic spells 3rd level and lower (a la the 5E14 Counterspell rules), and spells of 4th level or higher have the "ship" making an ability check of 10+spell level (like Counterspell as well). And depending on ship size and how much money is spent to build these ships, each ship's "spellcasting ability score" and the "spell level" that they counter at can be higher.

 

[GreatestHonor]

As powerful as a single mage is or can be, they wont be the only member aboard any ship. Training someone to use a musket would be significantly cheaper both time-wise and monetarily to do in large groups.

Lore wise, wizards are unlikely to join, as they spend their time learning, sorcerers may be too unstable to have around, clerics and paladins are only going to be sailors if its within their god’s plan or their oath respectively. Rangers may join as hunters of the sea, druids may work with them to keep the local waters cared for. Warlocks are likely the best fit, as someone desperate enough to make a deal with a mysterious entity may fit amongst a pirate group.

Also, a group of pirates (or any sailors for that matter) may not be trusting of an individual who has the capacity to destroy their ship at any moment with a word and gesture.

TLDR; most mages wont be sailing. Too expensive and (assumed by others to be) volatile.

 

[AlViking]

There have been many times throughout history when a weapon or tactic was devastating until countermeasures were enacted and I think too often people look at the real world and assume no countermeasures would have been developed against magical attacks. The counters could be as simple as flame resistant sails that have HP so multiple or very powerful fireballs could still take them down to some reason they're completely immune to the tactic. A fireball should not instantaneously destroy sails, both from a fun point of view and a tactical countermeasure point of view.

 

[bedir than]

If every ship has a level five mage fireball does become a problem.

But there are ways to get around that -- Longbows with a range 4 times the wizard, cannons with range 16 times the wizard
Various water control spells to put out the burning.
Mending to repair the sails in seconds.

 

[MGibster]

If every ship has a level five mage fireball does become a problem.

Once again, I feel as though we're trying to make sense of a game that doesn't really make sense when you apply the rules to a living, breathing setting. But in the interest of playing along, in the real world, the owners of merchant vessels in the 17th and 18th centuries tried to cut down costs as much as possible by crewing their ships with the minimum number possible, so how much would it cost to crew the ship with one level 5 Wizard? I'm guessing it would be prohibitively expensive to put them on anything but the ships carrying the most expensive cargo. So it probably wouldn't be much of a problem.

But there are ways to get around that -- Longbows with a range 4 times the wizard, cannons with range 16 times the wizard
Various water control spells to put out the burning.

I think a cannon in D&D has something like a 2,000 foot range. But in the OP, gunpowder/cannons was supposed to be rare and expensive. Fireball has a range of 150 feet (I think), so you'd get to pound the hell out of the Wizard's ship before it got into fireball range.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

- There might be international/cultual laws against using certain magic on vessels that is reinforced by sailing culture or by international pacts. Having it be a sailing culture thing will mean that captains themselves will reinforce it. They will not hire wizards who use fire lest other captains and sailors ostracize them or refuse to trade with them. Wizards who use fire have huge bounties laid on them that make them targets for pirates to collect. Pirates refuse to use them lest the wizard attract the ire of both pirates, merchants and naval ships Maybe using fire on a ship comes with a strong superstition. A ship that is known for using fire will find themselves on the receiving end.

- specialized glyphs of warding can be put on sails and various parts of the boat that automatically extinguish flames. Glyph of warding that casts mending on the hull would be useful. Expensive though.

- you can’t plunder a burning ship

 

[Lanefan]

One way to keep the idea of ship-based artillery while eschewing gunpowder is to have banks of heavy ballistae mounted on and between decks.

 

[Vael]

Introduce materials that are more resistant to fire, being put on fire? So the sails are more resistant to fireballs, but still can be shredded with grapeshot?