FitzTheRuke
Legend
I don't think it quite occurred to me that these are still standard-length rounds.
So, is the keelboat supposed to stand in for pilot boats? Jk obv not, that would be absurd.
I don’t suppose y’all would be willing to stay up a 1-2 crew pilot cutter? My character used to be a harbor pilot in a rough harbor, and I’m curious about the specs translation there. Fast little ships.
Also, how do folks feel about all ships having the same turn speed? Seems to me that it short-sells many of the more maneuverable ships, and tbh maneuverability is one of the pillar factors in choosing a ship in any game.
I point back to sailing video games like Sid Meier’s Pirates! You want a small ship that can run circles around a galleon, is better at cutting into the wind, but has little firepower and a small crew.Oh! I just saw your post here, where you already answer my questions about cutters. Thanks!
Great questions!
1. My intention was that the sloop statistics would handle all small sailboats of this type (even though many such sailboats are technically not "sloops"). It's like how you can use the statistics for a glaive to represent a wide variety of polearms.
If we want to differentiate ships further, we can do it with minor tweaks, rather than entirely new stat blocks. You know how some monsters in the Monster Manual have sidebars with variations? The swarm of insects is a good example: you can turn it into a spider swarm, wasp swarm, etc. just by adding or removing a few traits. So if a cutter is substantially different than a sloop, we could have a sidebar that says something like, "Cutter: Reduce the passenger capacity to 1, decrease the hit points to 50, and increase the speed to 35 feet." (I am just making those stats up: I don't really know how a cutter, or any other pilot ship, differs from other small sailboats. Although I do suspect that it doesn't need to be super "fast" because I'm guessing most ships don't come racing into the harbor at top speed.)
2. For turning radius: My favorite system for this that I've ever seen was Star Wars d20 Revised. Every ship had the exact same turning radius, acceleration, etc. But you could overcome those limitations with a piloting check, and each ship had a maneuverability modifier to this check. I love it because it was very easy to remember (each ship gets a number -- a modifier -- instead of a new set of turning rules) and because it was extremely flexible (any wacky move a pilot wanted to try -- it was way easier to do with a tie fighter than a star destroyer).
For ships, I'm planning to adopt a similar system. Simply applying the ship's Dexterity modifier to such checks would be good, except that ships have very little variation in their Dex mods (they cluster tightly around -3). It make sense to base these checks on the ship's length, since longer ships should be harder to turn, and ship lengths are generally multiples of 20 (DC 5 per 20 feet of length works well). Or, we could give some ships a special trait, probably as part of the helm/tiller: "Maneuverable. When you make an ability check or saving throw for this ship to turn sharply, avoid an obstacle, change its speed suddenly, or perform a similar fancy nautical maneuver, you make the check or save with advantage."
What makes the most sense to everybody else? I'm really trying to avoid "retconning" the statistics from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, but I'm open to doing that as a variant/optional thing, if it works.
I don't think it matters. We are dealing with 6 seconds of combat. So ACCEPT the Wonky.
The numbers seem off.