D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[tetrasodium]

I think the storm is an example of where it's potentially easier to think of things you can do if you have magic.

I don't think so. All of the nonmagic alternatives I came up with earlier were before coffee still in bed from my phone off the cuff.

• . At one point it mentioned fly to adjust rigging rather than just climbing it as designed with athletics or acrobatics.
• At another point it mentioned using a one round absorb elements on the helmsman rather than trying to shield him from the spray or somehow stabilize them (perhaps with the 50 feet of rope nearly everyone has).
• Here are a few more not already mentioned
  • strongguy: I want to use athletics to push the flat side of a barrel/crate lid against the splintered wood at the hull crack flat so it plugs the hole & slows the leak for the ship's bilge systems to catch up
  • aarakokra/triton PC: I want to fly/swim ahead with a light/rope as seems appropriate & help guide the helmsmen through the reefs
  • strong guy + dex guy I want to restack & hold the cargo with my strength so dexyguy can tie it down to keep it from shifting again, we both have 50 feet of rope & I bet there is even more in the cargo hold
  • Anyone: I want to use my hammer & pitons to hammer the leak slowing crate bob is holding against the hull
  • Minmaxed dumpstat guy: Thog drank with sailors yesterday! Thog want do athletics thing he was told to do with sail if there was a storm that needed barbarian RAGE! Thog help!

 

[Mordhau]

I agree with what Chaosmancer said earlier. Why would the PCs being do those things rather than the professional sailors?

 

[Hussar]

I agree with what Chaosmancer said earlier. Why would the PCs being do those things rather than the professional sailors?

Heh, since sea campaigns are a bit of my thing, I'd point out that it's entirely plausible that the PC's ARE the crew. I mean, if you are doing historically accurate ships - as in around 15th maybe early 16th century ships, most of them would have crews of five or six. Ten at the most. The whole "hundreds of sailors", ship of the line, Pirates of the Caribbean is really, really anachronistic.

So, it's quite plausible that the PC's plus maybe one or two NPC's are the entire crew of a cog. If the PC's are just passengers, well, sure, leave it to the professionals. But, again, your crew is likely, maybe, a half dozen to a dozen NPC's. Losing one or two is a major deal. Those ships were SMALL.

Funny story. The Sea Ghost - the ship the PC's are supposed to get at the outset of Ghosts of Saltmarsh, is a very accurate Hansa Cog in all ways other than the fact that it is about twice the size of what it should be. A Hansa Cog is usually around 50 feet long and the Dutch used it to sail practically everywhere. The Sea Ghost is nearly a hundred feet long. It's freaking HUGE.

D&D sailing ships really are puny by modern standards. Heck, you don't even need a crew with a 50 foot boat in Canada. Two people can operate it. Not easily, but, it certainly can be done. Put an engine on it, and one person can operate it without too much difficulty. You don't even legally need a crew until 100 feet, IIRC.

 

[Weiley31]

The problem with 5E's Exploration aspect is that the best rules for it are locked in a 3PP version that sadly, is not as easily, or cheap to get now, because the people behind it no longer have the license to produce the books for the 5E version of the IP it's based on.

 

[tetrasodium]

I agree with what Chaosmancer said earlier. Why would the PCs being do those things rather than the professional sailors?

The original example had the PCs expected to resolve the problem, I listed a bun of nonmagical ways to work towards that without changing the situation. I too have had PCs who are the crew in games ranging from a sailing ship to an airship & at one point even a world ship*.

* Basically an airship that could teleport to different spheres & save me from having to create wildspace(?) or justify spelljammer stuff if anyone ever looked it up

 

[Mordhau]

Well yeah it's different if the pcs are the crew.

Personally, if that were the case, I would also make sure that sailing and navigation were both skills.

 

[Hussar]

Well yeah it's different if the pcs are the crew.

Personally, if that were the case, I would also make sure that sailing and navigation were both skills.

See, that creates other issues. It's not like classes are swimming in skill proficiencies. You get what, 5, 6 over the course of the character's lifetime, barring feats of course. Which means that if you are adding new skills, particularly really, really narrow ones like this, then it means that it's a HUGE character expense just to be able to do something. Unless the entire campaign is on ship (which is a perfectly fine thing, but, again, a fairly narrow range of campaigns) expecting the characters to use the skill system like this is a bit difficult.

Granted, this is where Tool proficiency does come in handy since you can Train them with Downtime activities. Ships count as vehicles, so, you can train in Ship and be able to do any ship board stuff. Or train in carpentry tools and be the Quartermaster. That sort of thing. Then it's just a case of a fairly minor expenditure of gold and about 8-10 weeks of downtime. Works fairly well.

 

[Mordhau]

See, that creates other issues. It's not like classes are swimming in skill proficiencies. You get what, 5, 6 over the course of the character's lifetime, barring feats of course. Which means that if you are adding new skills, particularly really, really narrow ones like this, then it means that it's a HUGE character expense just to be able to do something. Unless the entire campaign is on ship (which is a perfectly fine thing, but, again, a fairly narrow range of campaigns) expecting the characters to use the skill system like this is a bit difficult.

Granted, this is where Tool proficiency does come in handy since you can Train them with Downtime activities. Ships count as vehicles, so, you can train in Ship and be able to do any ship board stuff. Or train in carpentry tools and be the Quartermaster. That sort of thing. Then it's just a case of a fairly minor expenditure of gold and about 8-10 weeks of downtime. Works fairly well.

If the premise of the game is everyone is a sailor on a boat I would probably give out sailing proficiency for free.

5e has very little in the way of skill rules so it's pretty easy to rearrange them or take them out all together or replace them with background proficiencies.

The point is here, that if the game involves sailing around all over the place on a ship then they are not narrow skills. In this game survival and nature would probably be much more narrow skills. Fishing would be be covered by a tool proficiency and reading the weather could be covered by Navigation.

 

[Aldarc]

The problem with 5E's Exploration aspect is that the best rules for it are locked in a 3PP version that sadly, is not as easily, or cheap to get now, because the people behind it no longer have the license to produce the books for the 5E version of the IP it's based on.

Are you talking about AiME? There will be a new 5e version by Fria Ligan once they wrap things up for their One Ring Kickstarter.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Heh, since sea campaigns are a bit of my thing, I'd point out that it's entirely plausible that the PC's ARE the crew. I mean, if you are doing historically accurate ships - as in around 15th maybe early 16th century ships, most of them would have crews of five or six. Ten at the most. The whole "hundreds of sailors", ship of the line, Pirates of the Caribbean is really, really anachronistic.

So, it's quite plausible that the PC's plus maybe one or two NPC's are the entire crew of a cog. If the PC's are just passengers, well, sure, leave it to the professionals. But, again, your crew is likely, maybe, a half dozen to a dozen NPC's. Losing one or two is a major deal. Those ships were SMALL.

Now that is entirely fair. I wasn't aware of how small the ships were (I think I'm mostly picturing the age of sail where you had ships of the line but also most crews were around 30, which is what the DMG gives us) but if the PCs make up a large portion of the crew, then of course all my issues fly out the window.