What would you want in a book of naval rules?

[Primitive Screwhead]

For me, I would like a source book that can be used without major re-write of characters to make it work.

I would like to see four portions:

- ships, design and build, standard types.

- exploration and travel.. aka, window dressing to get from here to there. But information on speed and times, trade impact, etc.

- Chase mechanics that include PC choices that are 'naval' in flavor. Use of current, wind, differing types of ships, oars vs sails versus elemental powered.

- Adventures on the high seas... adventure seeds, encounter areas and hazardous terrain, and 'complications'. This portion can offer different styles of adventures. Maybe even talk air-ships, space-ships, or underwater ships?
Burrowing ships?

I do have 'Broadsides', a supplement that does an okay job... but it could be so much better. I look forward to getting a copy of yours to build on the ideas!

 

[Hussar]

I would add two things here that I think haven't been brought up.

1. Company level (100 ish combatants) combat rules. 3e was not a particularly good system for this when I tried it. It's far too fiddly to deal with two fairly large crews having it out - imagine how long it would actually take to roll out 50 combatants to a side. The problem with mass combat rules though is that they are geared for large scale battles- hundreds of combatants. They don't work that well for something that small. There needs to be something in between.

2. Scale. The 1"=5' scale for D&D doesn't work on a ship. Not if you want your ships to look even remotely realistic. If you watch pirate movies or whatnot, you realize that you have large numbers of guys all crammed together on the deck of a ship - and the whole 5' cubes thing just doesn't work. Possibly using something like 3e's Mob rules might work better.

3. At least a nod to historical accuracy. Celebrim, for example, mentioned a ship of the line. That's fine, but, sort of out of place in most D&D campaigns where a ship of the line quite possibly would be seen during the American Revolution and even the War of 1812. It's pretty anachronistic for a typical D&D setting. Anything more advanced than what Columbus sailed to the New World (unless you start getting into Chinese ships) is going to be problematic.

4. And, for the love of god, don't include gun ports in your dwarven sailing ships (like a certain publisher did for once of its naval supplements).

 

[RangerWickett]

Why can't dwarves have gun ports?

 

[Hussar]

Why can't dwarves have gun ports?

Well, it was a book in Scarred Lands which doesn't have gunpowder or cannons. Seeing an 18th century ship of the line, complete with gun ports as the image used for a dwarven warship does tend to be a bit jarring when you realize that that ship is far closer to the one my great grandfather sailed on than it is to the baseline assumptions of the setting.

Like I said, pay attention to the history of ships. A bit of anachronism is fine. No one, other than really anal people like me, will notice. But, let's not have D&D adventures set in Greyhawk describing a sunken schooner near the pirate base (second adventure in the Savage Tides AP has this).

If the ships being used in the game are contemporaneous with airplanes, it's a bit outside the timescale for most D&D games.

 

[Morrus]

The real key question is this: Are you designing a set of rules for meaningful roleplaying, combat, and decision-making on the high seas? Or are you looking to provide some light window-dressing for the voyage between the two points you're actually interested in?

This is Ryan's baby; I'm not involved in the creative side in any way.

 

[TheYeti1775]

You have to rob a bit from other sources to pull it off but here's my take on it. Keep in mind I write this as a 3.5E person, but I'll try to keep it as neutral as possible.

1. Split the book up for the Combat/Chase stuff.

a. Base Line - these are the basic rules of combat for everyone's use to keep it simple.
b. Option One Combat/Chase Rules - this is where you plug in the options of reefs (difficult terrain), variant speeds, broadsides versus manveurs, ship speeds, turning speed/radius and what not.​

Think it already exists somewhere, something like Landlubber/Wet Feet rules - basically it takes time to get sea legs and you walk different on land when you do.​

2. New Skills / Feats

a. Skills

Navigation - Every 5 Ranks equals xx on course.
Helmsman - Every 5 Ranks increases daily speed by xx, and combat speed by xx.
​

Offer something like the Captain offers automatic synergy bonus to the skill checks if he has 5 Ranks in it as well.
b. Feats - you like named feats that offer bonuses to it as well.
​

That all said the big thing is ship weapons versuses PC's and PC's versus ship.
Do something like Spelljammer did, 1 hull point (all ship items were hull points; sail/mast/deck/hull) was equal to 10 PC Hit Points. Using a 1 to 10 ration for whatever system should work for you and easily scales no matter what.
That's why the Kraken always wraps a ship up and doesn't immediately destroy it rightaway in the movies.

All ship based weapons did damage in hull points, A ship balista damage might be listed as 1d8 but that is in hull points. A PC hit with it would be taking 10-80 hit points of damage.
Most would use a size mod to point aim at an individual, but I argue there is a negative to a called shot with a weapon already in most systems. Instead give a basic chart for hit location on a ship. It would reflect accuracy/inaccuracy of the Gunner manning it. 1-2 Hull / 3-4 Decking / 5-6 Forecastle / 7-8 Stern / 9 Crew member / 10 PC / 11 Rudder / 12 Mast / 13 Sail / etc etc.
Change distance scale in ship to ship too, each hex could be 300ft so make ship weapons hex based vice footage. Than mages won't overshadow at a distance.

Multiple Ship layout outs are a must in someway.
The slots are an important issue for ships. Space is limited, a man-o-war needs no where the cargo room as a transport ship, but needs the bunk space.
SW Saga's system fits what your looking for nicely. I just wouldn't use the system where something takes up more room just cause it's a larger ship.
10 tons of cargo space is the same on any ship. Keep it simple.

If you use cannons use historical references in their build.
HMS Victory was 104 gun ship with three tiers of the guns on both sides 50 per side 16ish per level. She is only 227ft long.
Dwarven/Gnome ship, use the CSS Virginia (aka USS Merrimack).

Magic's:
Fisherman's lader hold - Keeps any food fresh indefinitely (or body). Essentially a Gentle Repose modification to fit a room.
Helm of Navigation - Improves on course and manuvering

It's easy to make it complicated but most of the above can be sloted in without too much hassle. Most of the older players remember the old flying turning rules of 1E, they are easily modifiable to any edition

 

[Janx]

If you use cannons use historical references in their build.
HMS Victory was 104 gun ship with three tiers of the guns on both sides 50 per side 16ish per level. She is only 227ft long.
Dwarven/Gnome ship, use the CSS Virginia (aka USS Merrimack).

And this is where I had done a metric crap-ton of historical reasearch. I hunted down stats on a bunch of sailing ships of all sizes. length, width, draft, # decks, # of sails.

I then deduced some simple patterns, based on the length of the ship to get the other stats. In the end, you could define a ship by its length, and get the other factors for free.

Where this had impact, is once you know how many decks, and the length/width, it becomes obvious how many guns, ballistae or catapults you can put on it. Every D&D ship I'd ever seen puts in maybe 7 weapons on a ship. Taking the idea of the 100 gun warship, that same thing can be done with ballistae instead. They may take more space, but you can still pack in more than 7 of them.

Based on my old research:
ship length 2-6 times the width, averaging around 4
# of masts = length/60+.9 round up

Some of the other bits like height, draft, #decks, speed, cargo, hull thickness, crew, turn rate, hull points and sail points were a bit mathier.

I've attached the sheet. I wouldn't expect your book to adopt such mechanics, but I do recommend taking a look at the math for purposes of "realism" testing ship designs.

Historically, the big difference in ship designs is size got bigger over time, enabling larger weapon load-outs, etc. So pre-Pirates of the caribean/master & commander ships just need to be set to smaller sizes and the rest should work itself out.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

@Janx , for earlier ships, you might want to check out that "Greek and Roman Naval Warfare" book I mentioned earlier. The author was a retired admiral who wrote the book in the 1930s or 40s, with some of the same kind of information that you are talking about, heavily based on the work of an earlier French naval official who had supported some reproduction work to determine what actually worked and why.

Edit: Guess I should summarize for those that don't want to read that book, though I don't have the book handy, so can't give exact numbers. Basically, for oared ships, you have similar ratio issues between length, weight of the ship, width of the ship, etc. And the upshot is that the more people you put on an oar, the more power you can cram into a given space. However, each person on an oar provides diminishing returns, because they are increasingly in a non-optimal position to extert maximum sweep on the oar.

The Romans, being forced into naval matters by the Carthagians, and of an engineering mindset, experimented heavily. The Greek colonies, especially at Syracuse, did likewise. The upshot was that 3 to 5 people per oar was found to be best, moving closer to the upper number the more warlike the vessel becomes (i.e. prioritizing speed and maneuverability over cargo space).

Much later, the Venetians had some success with different arrangements with as many as 10 people per oar, albeit for much larger ships, designed for different reasons (mount large weapons to smash Turkish ships)--but these, much like a phalanx on land, need a host of smaller ships to protect their flanks. The Battle of Lepanto is the culmination of this technology.

 

[Morrus]

I personally still not sold on the historical research angle. No other aspect of a D&D setting is historically accurate (well, depends on your settings, I guess, but most aren't), so I don't see why ships should be. Especially where magic is involved! Nothing wrong with water-elemental powered uberships and fireball based figurehead weaponry on the prow. At least, in my mind.

As for the win - I would assume magic affects that, too. Druids on board, or even just the usual magical design of an expensive ship which enables it to control that sort of thing from the wheel.

I guess it's a bit like 5E - you'd need to produce modular scaling plugins to suit everyone!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Sure, but if your particular fantasy choice is that you put 2 ogres on each oar, instead of 5 men, then you've still got some theoretical optimum ratio and some increase in performance. It is one you are largely making up, outside the game, since we don't know exactlly how efficient ogres would be at rowing. But you can bet the characters building the ship in that world have some idea. So the point here would be to pick a number that sounded reasonable and stick to it.

If you've got a steam elemental powering a couple of water wheels, then those kind of ratios don't matter. There are still tensile limits on the size of the ship, unless you also want to magically make changes there. Get enough magic, and you can have a fantasy oil tanker. But its going to take some magic to get there in a medieval setting.