I don't know yet, Heathansson...I ordered the book today though, so I can get back to you in a week or two. My current campaign is entering a naval phase and I was looking for something like this already. I specifically didn't buy Stormwrack because it didn't include ship combat rules.
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I kinda know what you mean about Stormwrack. It said something like, "as a dm, you want to get the ships to close as quickly as possible..." Like, I coulda' winged that one. Okay, after hours of pursuit and avoidance, feinting and tacking in the wind, your ships close. Ravenous cannibal pirates stream onto your ship like hungry hyenas on a dead zebra. Roll inish.
Look forward to hearing bout Corsairs.
I don't have a naval presence as yet in my campaign (that damn Zhentarim fleet knocked it out), but I'm looking forward to a review!
Darr, those flippin' Zhents! Blast thar scarvy hoydes!
Oh, the party did, yes indeed. The sorcerer/dragon disciple had just acquired chain lightning, the druid wildshaped into a giant eagle and the rogue ran around hamstrung and sneak attacked a lot of the crew while they were distracted by the fireworks from above. The druid (as an eagle) strafed the ships while the sorcerer let loose with lightning bolts.
They did have an issue when one of the Zhent ships they boarded had a beholder below decks. An excerpt:
Me: "As the grate over the ship's hold breaks open from the effect of Sharra's lightning, you see a bloated, chitinous sphere slowly float up from the space. One by one, baleful yellow and green eyes open up and glare at you, and a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth slowly grins at you."
The Party: "...What?!?!"
Sharra (sorcerer/dragon disciple): *rolls d20* "Knowledge Arcana...25. It's a freakin' beholder, right?"
Me: "Oh, yes. Roll initiative."
The rogue, who's best known for coming up with crazy ideas that have a sound tactical base, and could quite likely work, came up with the following.
Rogue: "Okay, guys, here's my plan. I'm going to climb up the mast, jump out and aim for the beholder's central eye AND STAB IT. Sharra, follow up and use the dagger as a lightning rod."
Sharra: "Um, boss, you DO know that I deal *A LOT* of damage when I do this, right?"
Rogue: "Yes."
Sharra (after a brief pause): "I hope you make your Reflex save."
Rogue: "Yeah...Thayghen (druid), got any healing spells handy? You know, just in case."
Thayghen: "Never leave home with out 'em."
Rogue: "Good. Let's do this."
Needless to say, the rogue managed to pull it off with the longest string of natural 20s I have ever seen in my life. Good times, good times...
Lilith, your story reminds me of something I've been planning for a while.
Once my son is old enough to appreciate it, I'm going to have a beholder pinata made for him for one of his birthday parties. There's several places in town where you can get custom made pinatas (just bring a picture). I'll fill the eyestalks with tootsie rolls. I'm considering letting each kid fire a few arrows at it before they get blind-folded to beat the shit out of it.
That's one regret I have about growing up in Germany--no pinatas on my birthdays....what great stress relief that would have been. (envisions Deputy Garcia on Reno 911 pumping a full magazine of rounds into a pinata at 3 feet--take that pendejo!)
"Corsair"? Is this a new waterborne adventures book? Who publishes it?
"Corsair"? Is this a new waterborne adventures book? Who publishes it?
It's written by the same folks that made "Skull & Bones". (Adamant Entertainment) It's an excellent sourcebook for when it comes to the ship crunchy stuff (wind, ship types, etc).
My personal opinion is that it's the best of that, but when it comes to a Sea-based campaign, as a whole though, "Skull & Bones" is better simply because it's seems to have a lot more flavor.
However (comma), In my Forgotten Realms based Pirate campaign, we've come to learn that ship-to-ship battles (in our humble opinions) just don't work in D&D. It's MUCH better to simply have the DM describe it as the ships crash together to do battle.
EVERY single "Sea" encounter ended up sucking the life out of our sessions as they players maneuvered the little ships around the hexes, checking wind, counting, etc. Ugh. Painful to remember, frankly.
Along those lines, I got one of the cardboard, build-it-yourself ships from Gameworks? I think it was; and it works BEAUTIFULLY for the on-ship fights! We've fought Zhent Pirates, undead rising from shipwrecks, Giant SeaHawks, Chulls.... Man, that's a blast!
PS - Lillith, you post rocked! SOunds like an awesome game!
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Heathansson, how is Skull and Bones?
I really like it. It is magic-(somewhat)lite, and some of the rules are a little bizarre, but it has tons of p.c. 'fortunes'--traits to add to your characters to make them 'piratey.' If I had a time machine, I'd go back and tell myself to buy it again.
I like the Djab or dark spirits of the islands a lot.There's a 1 1/2 page writeup of the Code Duello.
There's a type of armor made by covering a linen jacket with pitch until it hardens.
Each Caribbean island has a 1-2 paragraph blurb.
And, I learned what "dead man's chest" means.
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Also, each of the big names in the Golden age of Piracy gets a 1-2 paragraph writeup and suggested character level.
What I like about not necessarily S&B but the whole pirate motif is you've got Blackbeard, a real life hard guy to kill, and the tale of his demise put to rest any insecurities I had about the whole D&D hit point thing. The guy took multiple gun shot wounds and sword slashes to go down, and according to some sources his headles corpse jumped in the ocean and swam around the boat several times.
So 100 hit points for a character, though somewhat on the unbelievable side, has some possible historic precedence...depending on the veracity of the tale tellers, of course.
PS - Lilith, your post rocked! Sounds like an awesome game!
Man, I'm just the stage director - the players are the ones who make it rock!
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Lilith, your post rocked hardcore. Tell the rogue we all bow to them and chant, "we're not worthy."
Edward, that's good stuff to know about the ship combat. I was lamenting the lack of it in Stormwrack; now it sounds like a wise thing.
F2K, I was in Deutschland as an Army brat, and I know I'm gonna misspell it, but they had something called "kinderlampiennacht;"
and my mom still has this sweet paper sun lamp; I was 3 years old, but I have some memories of that being fun; kids with paper lamps with candles out at night. No candy, no blind fighting feat training, but it was cool.
Yeah, those were fun memories. Putting little white candles inside a paper colored lamp held by a wooden stick and then going from door to door singing. Kids-paper-open flames....never had any problems.
If I lived anywhere in the state of Oregon, I'd drive to play in one of Lilith's games (even if they tracked my mileage from space so they could tax my hybrid just as much as my SUV).
Heathansson, you live in the Dallas area right? My son will most likely be at Medical City for 7-10 days for surgery later this summer, maybe I can meet you for lunch or something. No time to game though, as my wife and I will tag team taking care of our son in the hospital. I don't know the exact dates yet, you can e-mail me at farewell2kings (at) gmail (dot) com if you want.
Don't sweat it. I don't even know what the dates are yet and whether or not I'll even get a chance to get away.
If I lived anywhere in the state of Oregon, I'd drive to play in one of Lilith's games (even if they tracked my mileage from space so they could tax my hybrid just as much as my SUV).
Considering gas is at least $3 a gallon for the crap gas on this side of the mountains, that's a heck of a commitment. :-D
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If I lived anywhere in the state of Oregon, I'd drive to play in one of Lilith's games (even if they tracked my mileage from space so they could tax my hybrid just as much as my SUV).Considering gas is at least $3 a gallon for the crap gas on this side of the mountains, that's a heck of a commitment. :-D
Down here in Eugene, it is only..., um.. $2.75? As an expatriate Norwegian used to gas prices well in excess of $7.50, I'm just smiling.
I got the book and I've read about half of it. It's plagued by some serious typos and some apparent editing problems, plus surprisingly incomplete rules on boarding actions combined with surprisingly detailed rules on ship grappling and ship maximum speed, which I thought could have been handled much easier to stay with the overall simple rules flavor of the whole book. It's not too bad overall. However, the emphasis on cannons and 17th to 18th century ships makes me wonder how much use it'll be to the Savage Tide campaign it was advertised for.
The rules are fairly simple and tie in well to d20 OGL rules, but the ship to ship combat and boarding action sections left me scratching my head, plus the book departs from simplicity when discussing wind direction, grappling, ramming and ship speed, with dozens of modifiers and some confusion about when to apply the maximum speed limit and referring to a compass rose without providing for a way to determine wind direction.
All of this can be ad-libbed by a competent DM, but one of the things I had hoped for in this book was something complete regarding sea combat and sea travel.
It's not a bad buy for $13, but I'm still a little disappointed by some of the mistakes and omissions I've found so far.
If it was $30 I would be mad, but for $13 it's okay. "Prepare for Savage Tide" as an advertisement may be a little misleading, but since I haven't seen the adventures yet, the jury is still out on that one.
I've finished reading the book and I give it 3 stars out of 5, which would be 2 stars if it was more expensive. There's a lot of stuff that's useful, such as the deckplan and the ship illustrations and ship stat blocks, but there are many game mechanics that just don't flow well and are incomplete or appear to have not gone through any playtesting.
I have some hold over rules on ships and the sea that I culled from old 80's and 90's Dragon magazines that I'm going to review and clean up the rules in this book to my liking.
I specifically really like "High Seas" from Dragon #116 which had a cool wind speed direction vs. ship speed (tacking, running with the wind, etc.) mechanic, which I'm going to use instead of the Corsair mechanic.
farewell2kings,
You may also want to check out Fantasy Flight Games Seafarer’s Handbook. Overall, it’s a decent game supplement for seaborne adventuring. It details a couple of races, presents new feats, new uses for old skills, the obligatory new spells, some ideas for underwater spell casting, a brief offering of some undersea adventuring, ship construction rules, example ships, and ship to ship combat. The last may be of some use to you. It’s been out for quite some time, so you may be able to come across it at your local FLGS for a look see. If not, here’s the description at Fantasy Flight Game’s website:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/llsh.html
Good gaming,
Mark
Thanks, Mark.
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I've finished reading the book and I give it 3 stars out of 5, which would be 2 stars if it was more expensive. There's a lot of stuff that's useful, such as the deckplan and the ship illustrations and ship stat blocks, but there are many game mechanics that just don't flow well and are incomplete or appear to have not gone through any playtesting.
I have some hold over rules on ships and the sea that I culled from old 80's and 90's Dragon magazines that I'm going to review and clean up the rules in this book to my liking.
I specifically really like "High Seas" from Dragon #116 which had a cool wind speed direction vs. ship speed (tacking, running with the wind, etc.) mechanic, which I'm going to use instead of the Corsair mechanic.
I have Skull & Bones and Stormwrack. Someone mentions on the ENworld reviews that Corsair isnt worth buying if you have Skull & Bones. Does anyone else agree?
Stormwrack would be ok IMHO, but I was planning on running a Northern Crown d20 game which is set around 1660 and that time peroid has multi levels of cannons on the ships and Stormwrack isnt set to handle that kinda of combat I feel.
Mike
I picked up Corsair's on PDF (assuming it's the same one), not really had much of a chance to look at it yet, but I'll try and make the effort now. I also already have Skull & Bones so I'll try and give a fair comparison.
Although from memory Corsair is a more focused version of the rules in Skull & Bones, you lose all the new classes magic and the like and gain a bit on the ships information. If you have Skull & Bones it probably isn't worth getting, I'll try and figure out exactly what you get later.
I have Stormwrack and I think it's gonna work really well. Cool prestige classes, great rules for ships, good spells, and some neat monsters.
And it DOES have rules for ship combat, they're just not incredibly detailed. They are what you want for a ship combat in the context of a D&D session. Good enough to run it, but not complicated enough to take a session down.
You may want to check out Salt and Sea Dogs from Kenzer and Co.
Also, Necromancer Games has Dead Man's Chest.
Both are very good for Fantasy Pirate themed campaigns.
If I had to pick one I would go with DMC.