Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Of Ships and The Sea

Interesting. There's an old AD&D 2e "blue book" with that title: Of Ships and the Sea

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So, where is a cutter/sloop supposed to fit in there?

Why is the longship so slow? A Viking sea vessel can beat a modern race cutter with the wind, and barely lose to it running into the wind. It can turn very quickly, too, and the oar-powered speed is faster than most would expect.

I’d love to see stats for a pilot cutter.

Some differences in turning capability would be cool if it can be done efficiently.

And give me differences in different rigging ya cowards! (I know this isn’t a reasonable ask...but I want my gaff rigged cutter!)

 

[Parmandur]

So, where is a cutter/sloop supposed to fit in there?

Why is the longship so slow? A Viking sea vessel can beat a modern race cutter with the wind, and barely lose to it running into the wind. It can turn very quickly, too, and the oar-powered speed is faster than most would expect.

I’d love to see stats for a pilot cutter.

Some differences in turning capability would be cool if it can be done efficiently.

And give me differences in different rigging ya cowards! (I know this isn’t a reasonable ask...but I want my gaff rigged cutter!)

Per Mearls on the Happy Fun Hour, they actually have way more stuff statted out with these rules, including land vehicles (he half-joked about doing up Kit from Knight Rider), but they wanted a focused set for public feedback of the principles.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Per Mearls on the Happy Fun Hour, they actually have way more stuff statted out with these rules, including land vehicles (he half-joked about doing up Kit from Knight Rider), but they wanted a focused set for public feedback of the principles.

Good to know!

 

[robus]

Per Mearls on the Happy Fun Hour, they actually have way more stuff statted out with these rules, including land vehicles (he half-joked about doing up Kit from Knight Rider), but they wanted a focused set for public feedback of the principles.

Perhaps they could communicate those principles, because the current stats seem quite unprincipled!

 

[ZenBear]

Any idea how one would stat up an ironclad warship? My players just commandeered one in the last game session and desperately want to keep it. This UA is serendipity at its finest.

 

[Satyrn]

Any idea how one would stat up an ironclad warship? My players just commandeered one in the last game session and desperately want to keep it. This UA is serendipity at its finest.

I'd start with whatever statblock matched the size of what I was going for, then:
1) Increase the Constitution score (probably by 4)
2) maybe up the Damage Threshold by 10.
3) reflavor the weapons as cannons (upping the damage by 1 or 2 dice if I upped the damage threshold)

4) Switch the movement to Steam Furnace.


That would probably be enough.

 

[Leatherhead]

Any idea how one would stat up an ironclad warship? My players just commandeered one in the last game session and desperately want to keep it. This UA is serendipity at its finest.

19 Ac, 25 damage threshold. Reduced cargo capacity.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Perhaps they could communicate those principles, because the current stats seem quite unprincipled!

They aren't going to do that, because the point of giving us the playtest material isn't for us to "fix" the mechanics. It's *never* been about us helping them "fix" or "balance" the numbers. They know they can do that when the time comes, but what they are looking for us is for us to tell them how do the particular set-ups and formats for the mechanics make us feel?

To be truthful... I suspect that every single person who goes in to the survey doing nothing but talking about how this ship is "way too slow for what it should be", or that the other ship "is missing", or that "we need these rules for wagons and land vehicles"... is pretty much telling them that the rules they've created are what those people want. If worrying about fixing what has been given is (general) your entire focus, it pretty much implies (general) you think the rules as given to us are worthy enough to move on to the balancing pass. Which I suspect is probably NOT what many players who are getting bothered by what we have, actually think.

Don't worry about "fixing" the unbalanced rules. Tell them how you *feel* about the rules as given instead. Tell them you think for example that they are *too* simplistic and that we can handle a more complex system to make ship combat actually interesting. Or tell them that the rules should definitely be tiered on two different time scales so that you can seamlessly move from ship-to-ship into boarding-action. Or whatever else you think these rules need from a conceptual point of view. But also remember at the same time that at the end of the day... these vehicle combat rules most likely ARE going to be on the simplistic side. Because WotC is going to want rules easy enough for non-vehicle-combat-centric DMs to be able to drop into their games with a minimum of fuss. They'll be like the Stealth rules... a very baseline system anyone who have never used them before can figure out and put into place easily... under the expectation that those DMs who NEED a more complex system for their enjoyment were going to end up re-writing whatever rules WotC gave them anyway. So they won't bother delving too deep or spending too much page-count on it since no matter what they came up with, the DMs who want it would probably not like it and end up re-doing it.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I did some looking into naval artillery and it seems that ballistas and catapults on ships were mainly something for the Roman or Byzantine Empires. One thing that was distinctive about Byzantine vessels though was while they may have had ballistas or catapults, many of them had Greek Fire flamethrowers. While the Byzantine Empire did exist in the medieval era, I certainly can't think of anything from official campaign settings that actually have a Byzantine Empire equivalent.

When non-Byzantine naval vessels started using artillery, it was cannons starting from the early 1300's which is still within what's considered the medieval era (although late).

 

[R_Chance]

If you want a definitive book on medieval naval warfare I'd suggest "Medieval Maritime Warfare" by Charles D. Stanton. He covers the whole period, the ships, weapons, tactics, strategy and battles. He covers both the Viking, North Sea, Atlantic, and Mediterranean areas, including the evolution of the weapons, ships and tactics. It's a complete, well researched, and readable book on a topic that's not overflowing with material.