What would you want in a book of naval rules?

[kigmatzomat]

I'm curious what aspect of wind's influence on naval combat you'd like to see forefronted? Something simple and generic, like "wind advantage" (similar to combat advantage in 4e) granting you a bonus to other rolls and maneuvers, and there being various ways to acquire wind advantage, would be easy. But if you try to add much more detail, you very quickly end up adding a lot of complexity.

I recently ran Earthdawn which has a distressingly vague and useless ship handling system for a game named after a flying ship so I had to write my own. One of my players grew up sailing, as in "actual sail boats", so I had to appease his instincts without bogging down the game.

Wind is a huge factor in sailing and needs to be just as relevant as terrain on a mountain. Actually, if you deal with wind in a fashion similar to terrain that could work. Crossing the wind would be like rough terrain, opposing the wind is like mountain climbing.

Then you need to account for the waves, which causes the ship to rock (at best) or pitch and heave. Even in the gentle millpond that is the Mediterranean, wave heights are 1-3 meters. In the Atlantic or Pacific it can go from 2-8 meters under normal conditions and 10+ meter waves in storms. ~20meter waves are possible, if once-in-a-lifetime, events.

Ship to ship combat in rough weather is hhhaaarrrdd. Your ship's deck is moving up and down and rocking, possibly side-to-side and forward-to-back meanwhile the target ship is also moving. If the seas are high enough, entire crews could have full cover from intervening waves.

I don't think it should necessarily be impossible in game, but maybe it would be worth considering making it very penalty laden during rough weather to incorporate a plausible "escape" route.

Oh and one small note: wooden vessels generally don't sink. They can break up, but unless they are heavily laden with non-floating cargo (i.e. spanish treasure galleons) almost never sink at less than glacial speeds.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Some ships would depend on the wind to avoid an other ship that normally is faster than them. I mean if a pirate ship chases a trading ship, without the wind the trading ship is doomed.

Maybe add wind rules as a variant rule or something.

It is done in racing, a ship places itself behind another to steal the wind, the lead boat has to change tack or stop dead. I would like rules that tell me when it becomes stats to become effective: 500yards out loss of 20% speed, 1000 yards loss 5% speed...just would like to know.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hand of Evil, there's no way the rules I write will have that level of precision or accuracy to reality. It would be much more like, "Let's get behind them and steal the wind." "Okay, that will give you a bonus to close distance and gives them a penalty to their own maneuver this turn. But to pull it off, you'll have to make checks X, Y, and Z."

 

[Celebrim]

It is done in racing, a ship places itself behind another to steal the wind, the lead boat has to change tack or stop dead. I would like rules that tell me when it becomes stats to become effective: 500yards out loss of 20% speed, 1000 yards loss 5% speed...just would like to know.

That's probably a bit too simulationist for anything less than a video game. If your ships movement rate was 6", a 5% chance in speed is ~ 1/3rd of an inch, which is less than the error margin in measurement in the long run.

Plus the other problem with high simulation is that let's say your ship is tracked by a 2" token, then cannon engagement ranges will be as much as 5-10 feet away. You'll find yourself needing a two car garage to track combat.... believe me, I've been there. Plus, if you've got lots of calculation and measurement, then it will take up more than an evening to play out a single ship to ship combat.

My preference here would be to incorporate some rock/paper/scissors into a manuevers, with secret declaration and certain manuevers being more or less likely to work depending on what the opponent chose. This gives a high degree of 'choice matters' which lets you minimize the number of 'rounds' necessary to create a narrative of the encounter.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Hand of Evil, there's no way the rules I write will have that level of precision or accuracy to reality. It would be much more like, "Let's get behind them and steal the wind." "Okay, that will give you a bonus to close distance and gives them a penalty to their own maneuver this turn. But to pull it off, you'll have to make checks X, Y, and Z."

Which is fine.

 

[Hussar]

This might have been mentioned, but, I think it bears repeating -

There needs to be some method for dealing with the D&D magic system. This is an absolute must. Probably the most needed in 3e where it's very possible for casters to have large numbers of scrolls and the like, and have spells with ranges and effects that are basically line of sight.

Take something as simple as a Lyre of Building. I can give my ship invulnerablity to all attacks for 30 minutes. But, as a bigger issue, I can repair my ship pretty much at will. Anything that doesn't actually send me to the bottom is a minor inconvenience.

Never mind an enlarged Wand of Firballs (with a range of slightly over 1000 feet - it's outranging anything but siege weaponry with perfect accuracy and a 1/round rate of fire).

There are many, many spells which have huge effects on naval campaigns simply because of the way naval campaigns work.

How do you make a naval campaign not an "all caster show"?

 

[ThunhusDM]

This might have been mentioned, but, I think it bears repeating -

There needs to be some method for dealing with the D&D magic system. This is an absolute must. Probably the most needed in 3e where it's very possible for casters to have large numbers of scrolls and the like, and have spells with ranges and effects that are basically line of sight.

Take something as simple as a Lyre of Building. I can give my ship invulnerablity to all attacks for 30 minutes. But, as a bigger issue, I can repair my ship pretty much at will. Anything that doesn't actually send me to the bottom is a minor inconvenience.

Never mind an enlarged Wand of Firballs (with a range of slightly over 1000 feet - it's outranging anything but siege weaponry with perfect accuracy and a 1/round rate of fire).

There are many, many spells which have huge effects on naval campaigns simply because of the way naval campaigns work.

How do you make a naval campaign not an "all caster show"?

Try to play 4e.

I had same issues in my 3e mass combat encounters. There are no good solution if you allow PCs to buy magic items as they please. Wand of fireballs is cheap, portable and very effective.
It's a same thing with casters. 6th level sorcerer who knows fireball and fly is a must for every ship.


Thunhus

 

[FreeXenon]

I think as some have said starting with "real world"ish math is good for those who wish to play more historically accurate games. It also gives you a place to start from.

The modularity idea I think is a great one, especially when it comes to ships and the rules. Having lists of historically accurate "low fantasy" ships for different ages and lists for "high fantasy/magic" ships is good, perhaps even taking into account something like Spelljammer ships or adapting ships for Spelljamming. ME loves some Spelljammer.

Abstracting the rules for wind as was RW is good enough for me. For the effect that waves and things like that have on combat you could just impose existing status on combatants like:

light waves: acrobatics check dc 15 or grants combat advantage
medium waves: acrobatics check dc 15 or slowed
Heavy waves: slowed and grants combat advantage

You could honestly a disease track like thing to track various affects on combatants and ships. Adding various stages which takes them up the track.

heavy wind + light waves takes them 4 points up the track as a starting point and then they can make rolls on a round by round basis or something like that to move them selves up and down the track. Skills like acrobatics, seamanship, athletics, endurance, even nature to give people skill options

Ship combat:
stage 1 :grants combat advantage
stage 2: slowed
stage 3: slowed and grants combat advantage
stage 4:
stage 5: weakened
stage 6: stunned

Chase advantage

light wind (-1), heavy waves (+3) advanced movement checks (-3) (seamanship or navigation + others?)

stage 1 :+1 speed
stage 2: +1 turn speed
stage 3: ?
stage 4: ?
stage 5: ?
stage 6: ?

just a few random thoughts.

 

[Celebrim]

This might have been mentioned, but, I think it bears repeating -

There needs to be some method for dealing with the D&D magic system. This is an absolute must.

It's been mentioned, but yeah it bears repeating. The D&D magic system is only balanced with regards to a campaign centered around dungeon exploration and the presumed challenges raised thereby. Spells are 'priced' according to the impact that they will have on such a campaign (1e fireball, for example, was 'balanced' by the fact that it was often unusable in most presumed dungeon situations), and with no consideration of there impact outside of such a situation.

So one of the problems that any one has when they write a setting/campaign book for anything other than dungeon crawling is that you pretty much have to overhaul stock D&D's magic system, economics, and sometimes even skills to accomodate the 'unanticipated' campaign structure.

Probably the most needed in 3e where it's very possible for casters to have large numbers of scrolls and the like, and have spells with ranges and effects that are basically line of sight.

Honestly, all of my naval focused campaigning was in 1e, and things were just as bad then if not worst. For example, 3e fireballs don't ignite objects and you have to make a ranged touch attack to fire one through a porthole or arrow loop, and they don't expand to fill the area they are contained in. Likewise, 1e scrolls didn't require XP to create - all you needed was a recipe - wands begin with 100 charges and spells if anything had greater range.

Take something as simple as a Lyre of Building. I can give my ship invulnerablity to all attacks for 30 minutes. But, as a bigger issue, I can repair my ship pretty much at will. Anything that doesn't actually send me to the bottom is a minor inconvenience.

Zowie! I never noticed just how broken that was. Typical of D&D to cost out an item that produces probably 1200 g.p. worth economic value per day at a mere 13,000 g.p. and treat it like a minor item readily available to mid-level casters. Talk about a return on investment. It's wonder that masonry, carpentry, and the like is even practiced in a typical D&D world. Sheesh.

Good thing I rebalanced the magic item creation system early on and tended to ignore magic items made with the 3e assumptions.

There are many, many spells which have huge effects on naval campaigns simply because of the way naval campaigns work.

How do you make a naval campaign not an "all caster show"?

That's major consideration in ANY D&D campaign, but it especially applies to naval campaigns because like I said, D&D is notorious for not even considering the effects of anything outside of a 20'x30'x12' stone room in a dungeons. Broadsides from a reasonably well gunned ship are pretty darn impressive though, regardless of whether you are using cannons or 'mangonels/ballistas in the narrative place of cannons', and once you nerf the major problems (like magical fire) by assuming the existance of useful defensive magic and specify the interactions of things like gust of wind with a ship in a balanced way it's not that bad.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

You might be able to turn the D&D magic part into a positive, not merely neutralize it with defensive magic. You make it part of resource management. For example, when masts and sails are made, they are routinely magically treated to resist a certain amount of fire, lightning, etc. It is not indefinite, but it is enough to make popping off a lot of fireball charges not the most economically feasible way to take out a ship at range. (Defense should always be far cheaper than offense, if you want to preserve sailing and boarding.) If you are willing to pay for it, you can get enough fireball wands to eventually overwhelm a ship, but you'll only do this because you hate the guy on the other ship or other such reasons. It is too expensive for normal warfare.

The positive side of this is that now you can't simply use magic for quick replacements. That Lyre of Building will help you restore damage to the wood, cloth, etc. It won't restore the defensive magic. Same way with any kind of ad hoc masts cut from a local forest. So now storing these properly enchanted spares becomes part of your resource management of the ship--i.e. at the expense of cargo space.