D&D 5E Simple rules for sea travel (feedback wanted)

[Clint_L]

Another suggestion: let the players participate regardless of whether they are officially part of the crew or not. One thing I do on voyages is, when an obstacle is encountered, ask each player what they can do to help out. For example, maybe the barbarian decides they can help keep the wheel steady with their great strength, the rogue wants to help with the sheets, the cleric offers to use guidance wherever needed, and so on. Then have them each make an appropriate ability check and, if the successes exceed the failures, maybe the d20 roll is made with advantage, and disadvantage if vice versa.

I dunno, maybe that complicates things too much for what you have in mind. But I find the players really enjoy coming up with inventive ways to help out and feeling like their contribution made a difference one way or the other.

Sailing getting safer as they level up comes down to a philosophical difference in the purpose of RPG narrative, I suppose. I'm of the school that if we're going to bother including something in the story, it should be an interesting. So I 100% would make a lock harder to pick at higher levels; the difference would be that instead of breaking into the local merchant's locked drawer, they are now breaking into a vault or something. On the same note, presumably higher level characters are going to more dangerous and exotic places, so the journey could be commensurately more dangerous, if you are that way inclined.

And of course sea voyages mostly become moot after about 9th level or so.

 

[xoth.publishing]

Another suggestion: let the players participate regardless of whether they are officially part of the crew or not. One thing I do on voyages is, when an obstacle is encountered, ask each player what they can do to help out. For example, maybe the barbarian decides they can help keep the wheel steady with their great strength, the rogue wants to help with the sheets, the cleric offers to use guidance wherever needed, and so on. Then have them each make an appropriate ability check and, if the successes exceed the failures, maybe the d20 roll is made with advantage, and disadvantage if vice versa.

I dunno, maybe that complicates things too much for what you have in mind. But I find the players really enjoy coming up with inventive ways to help out and feeling like their contribution made a difference one way or the other.

I like group checks and how everybody can contribute, but for this mini-game I feel it would perhaps complicate things too much, and/or perhaps it would become repetitive with the same actions proposed every day.

Sailing getting safer as they level up comes down to a philosophical difference in the purpose of RPG narrative, I suppose. I'm of the school that if we're going to bother including something in the story, it should be an interesting. So I 100% would make a lock harder to pick at higher levels; the difference would be that instead of breaking into the local merchant's locked drawer, they are now breaking into a vault or something. On the same note, presumably higher level characters are going to more dangerous and exotic places, so the journey could be commensurately more dangerous, if you are that way inclined.

I think we actually agree. It's not that you make the (same) lock more difficult to pick at higher levels. The lock found on the local merchant's door is always DC 15, and the noble's vault is always DC 25 (or whatever), it's just that low-level PCs are more likely to rob the merchant and high-level PCs go for the vault. If the high-level PCs decide to rob the merchant, it would still be DC 15 and the GM might not even require a roll.

And as you mention, high-level PCs would typically (but not always/necessarily) go to more exotic places via more dangerous environments, something which can be modelled by having different skill check DCs for different areas/environments (for example, DC 12 to sail through the "Middle Azure Sea" and DC 22 to sail through the "Red Kraken Sea of the North" or whatever).

And of course sea voyages mostly become moot after about 9th level or so.

Yes, in a standard D&D campaign with teleportation, flying, etc. Whereas in a swords and sorcery campaign with restricted spell lists, a ship is still a major asset

 

[Stalker0]

I think the core ruleset here is pretty solid, its simple and easy to do. A few niche things to consider

• You specifically mention guidance but what I would do is just put in a rule that says magic that only lasts "x" amount of time for the day doesn't give its bonus, but above X does. For example, the foresight spell should always certainly provide its bonus to skill checks. or how about the enhance ability spell...if I'm willing to spend 4 2nd level spell slots for a 4 hour use of it....could I get the advantage on the checks?
• Help Action: My group especially just LOVES the help action, so you want to concretely say if its allowed or not (I think the assumption is no but best to be explicit).
  • That said, party members hate to do nothing. I would assume in a group of 5 players for example, the two players that aren't in the roles are going to try and find SOMETHING TO do.
• You could consider using exhaustion instead of damage. Its more level agnostic and would certainly add to the attrition a lot more. Its major impact would be that the party may finish their voyage and need to stick around in poor a few days to get their "land legs" back, rather than a single nights rest and back in action. Also means magic can't easily fix them back up, except for expensive 5th level spells.
• the biggest thing that's already noted above is that the events are very swingy as written. Its quite easy to have a week of the worst things to happen to you.
  • What you could consider instead is: instead of always making it per day, give the DM some guidance on how many checks to make. Maybe two checks on a standard week long sea journey across well known ports, perhaps 5 checks on an "off the beaten path" exploratory adventure that could have intense dangers or big rewards.

Example:
Checks per Week of Sea Travel*

Calm well-traveled route	2
Standard travel	3
Unexplored Waters	5

*If travel is less than a week, only make 1 check per day at most.

 

[xoth.publishing]

I think the core ruleset here is pretty solid, its simple and easy to do. A few niche things to consider

• (snip)

All excellent suggestions! I've updated the blog post incorporating some of these suggestions as well as other details discussed earlier in the thread.

I can't make up my mind regarding the use of exhaustion instead of damage... on one hand, it makes it more level agnostic and it makes sense, on the other hand it could quickly become deadly even for mid and high level characters. The idea behind inflicting damage is that you have Hit Dice to restore lost hit points, but you have to manage that resource (spend it now, or wait until we arrive?) so it's more decision-making (= more interesting) for the players.

 

[Simonb1]

By thing, I meant Operate the Ship or Fight.

 

[jgsugden]

You can go crazy on weather and things like that - but after spending a lot of time building a tool to really have detailed weather to make a 'realistic world', I realized that I would have been better off just picking weather and encounters based upon whim and estimation.

I built a series of spreadsheets in the 1990s (in Lotus 1-2-3! initially) that designed (simple?) weather patterns for my entire world for approximately 100 years of time. It was built as an overlay for my world mapping, which I do both on physical maps, but also via spreadsheet by tracking zones. It has over 2000 zones with flowing weather patterns, humidity, temps, rain totals, etc... calculated 3 times per day. The first attempts were regional, then spread out to cover the entire globe.

It was a pet project I worked on for an insane number of hours (likely 400 over the years) - but in the end, after showing it off to a bunch of DMs and using it for over a decade: It wasn't worth the effort. Even though I really enjoyed the challenge of making it, and tweaking it to improve it was an interesting challenge, and sometimes it is really cool to be able to tell a player that their upcast control weather spell actually changed the weather across the globe months later ... it is a beast to use and more of an obligation than a benefit most of the time.

As I have it, I use it. It is also uniquely fun for my campaign setting which has a cyclical nature (time travel allows for me to "repeat" the world with new groups but capitalize upon prior edition continuity) it is fun to see the same storm hit different groups in the same location under different rule sets. If I didn't have it, though, I'd just drop weather and monsters in to fit the storyline, not based upon calculations, random chance or other factors.

 

[Tonguez]

A roll of 1 = Disaster is fine, but that should trigger an encounter for PCs not an arbitary “1-5 the vessel sinks (all PCs take 4d10 damage, half the crew drowns)”

Personally I’d divide the crew into 4 areas - Sails, Helm, Hull and Deck

Sails - (Str) ships speed - Mate
Helm - (Dex) ships manouverability - Navigator
Hull - (Con) ships integrity - Bo’sun
Deck - (Cha) ships morale & watch - Captain

PCs can support any of the four areas and make rolls to avoid or overcome the random event, rp interactions with crew.

treat crew as section hp, if a section is damaged then crew is reduced and it takes disadvantage to act

 

[Stalker0]

One option you could consider if you want the roles to make more of an impact.

Instead of +1/-1, if 2+ checks pass the encounter d20 is rolled at advantage, if 1 or fewer checks pass it’s disadvantage

That is more swinging to the extremes though so it might require fewer checks overall.

If you went with the 4 role option (as noted in the post above, which would give the “standard party” each something to do), then if 2 checks pass it’s neither adv nor disadv

 

[SkidAce]

You can go crazy on weather and things like that - but after spending a lot of time building a tool to really have detailed weather to make a 'realistic world', I realized that I would have been better off just picking weather and encounters based upon whim and estimation.

I built a series of spreadsheets in the 1990s (in Lotus 1-2-3! initially) that designed (simple?) weather patterns for my entire world for approximately 100 years of time. It was built as an overlay for my world mapping, which I do both on physical maps, but also via spreadsheet by tracking zones. It has over 2000 zones with flowing weather patterns, humidity, temps, rain totals, etc... calculated 3 times per day. The first attempts were regional, then spread out to cover the entire globe.

It was a pet project I worked on for an insane number of hours (likely 400 over the years) - but in the end, after showing it off to a bunch of DMs and using it for over a decade: It wasn't worth the effort. Even though I really enjoyed the challenge of making it, and tweaking it to improve it was an interesting challenge, and sometimes it is really cool to be able to tell a player that their upcast control weather spell actually changed the weather across the globe months later ... it is a beast to use and more of an obligation than a benefit most of the time.

As I have it, I use it. It is also uniquely fun for my campaign setting which has a cyclical nature (time travel allows for me to "repeat" the world with new groups but capitalize upon prior edition continuity) it is fun to see the same storm hit different groups in the same location under different rule sets. If I didn't have it, though, I'd just drop weather and monsters in to fit the storyline, not based upon calculations, random chance or other factors.

I did this level of detail with languages, and language families, and fonts, and runes, and dialects, etc etc.

And reached the same conclusion. Was fun, still use it...but the level of work versus impact on play was is very low.

 

[xoth.publishing]

A roll of 1 = Disaster is fine, but that should trigger an encounter for PCs not an arbitary “1-5 the vessel sinks (all PCs take 4d10 damage, half the crew drowns)”

A design goal of this "mini-game for travel between adventures" was to avoid wasting/spending time playing out encounters in full. Of course, if the GM thinks it would be more fun/appropriate to throw in a regular encounter instead of just rolling for damage, go for it!

And yes, in the special case where the ship sinks, the voyage is effectively at an end anyway, and the GM has to intervene (perhaps the PCs are picked up by a passing merchant/pirate/slave vessel, etc) so the "mini-game" stops there, at least temporarily.