The only seaworthy ship the Rat's End pirates have but what kind of ship is it? Did I miss the description and/or stats? Help please.
The original manuscript had a small dhow (Stormwrack pg. 99) that was pretty derilict. Here's the actual stats. I can only assume that the editors removed it to make room for the other really cool additions that were made to the original draft. It's really beat up, but would work for the PCs to shuttle back and forth to the main island.
The adventure map of Farshore depicts two large vessels moored to the docks. One of those was supposed to be Hellfish. If you want to add some extra crunch to the initial encounter, you could add some more Rat's End Pirates there looting Blue Nixie and tossing stuff onto the deck of Hellfish.
Hellfish
This dhow (Stormwrack pg. 99) is a bit on the small side. She is not built for extended open sea voyages, but serviceable for island-to-island voyages around the Isle of Dread and other nearby islands. Hellfish, as its name indicates, has a figurehead of a large fiendish fish similar in appearance to an angler wreathed in flames and a toothy maw opened wide. The ship is equipped with spare sails, ropes, a spyglass, sextant, and numerous kegs of ale and wine.
Hellfish: Colossal vehicle; Seaworthiness +0; Shiphandling +2; Speed wind X 20 ft., or oars 15 ft. (average); Overall AC -3; Hull sections 15 (sink 3 sections); Section hp 50 (hardness 5); Section AC 3; Rigging sections 1; Rigging hp 60 (hardness 0); AC 1; Ram 3d6; Mounts 1 light and 1 heavy; Space 60 ft. by 15 ft.; Height 5 ft. (draft 10 ft.); Complement 20; Watch 5 plus 6 rowers; Cargo 30 tons (speed wind X 15 ft. if 15 tons or more)
Edit: If anyone actually uses this material, I would suggest cleaning the Hellfish out of any good equipment as described above and play up on the crummy condition the pirates kept their boat in. Make any excursion in it one full of creaking, groaing, and other ominous sounds as if the ship were about to fall apart at any moment.
The only seaworthy ship the Rat's End pirates have but what kind of ship is it? Did I miss the description and/or stats? Help please.What? I thought you wanted stats for Abe Simpson's army unit, the Fighting Hellfish.
Hey them too.........hehe
Maybe it's just a nitpick but can someone please explain why the draft is so deep on this thing?
Maybe it's just a nitpick but can someone please explain why the draft is so deep on this thing?
Gotta put all that cargo somewhere...
Maybe it's just a nitpick but can someone please explain why the draft is so deep on this thing?
There are several versions of the dhow. Check this link for more info --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhow
This version would be considered a Baghlah. It is a deep-sea ship, which has a deeper draft. I don't know an awful lot about ships, but I believe that deep sea vessels needed a deeper draft since the bottoms needed to be filled with stones for ballast - this helps them stay upright and balanced. Because this would decrease the space left for cargo, they would of necessity need to be deeper to compensate. Again, I'm not a ship expert, but I hope that helps.
The adventure map of Farshore depicts two large vessels moored to the docks. One of those was supposed to be Hellfish. If you want to add some extra crunch to the initial encounter, you could add some more Rat's End Pirates there looting Blue Nixie and tossing stuff onto the deck of Hellfish.
Edit: If anyone actually uses this material, I would suggest cleaning the Hellfish out of any good equipment as described above and play up on the crummy condition the pirates kept their boat in. Make any excursion in it one full of creaking, groaing, and other ominous sounds as if the ship were about to fall apart at any moment.
If the Hellfish is of dubious seaworthiness, wouldn't the pirates just scuttle it and take off with the Nixie instead? It'd save the trouble of transshipping any goods they're trying to make off with, and would improve the pirates' situation (maybe they'd be able to make an ocean voyage back to the main shipping lanes where pickings aren't so slim).
On the draft question, ten feet isn't an extremely deep draft for an ocean-going vessel, although I'd expect such a deep-draft vessel to be a bit beamier. *Tries to recall details of dhows observed pierside in Dubhai many years ago* (Ten feet would be the draft when fully loaded anyhow, and the prow and stern of the vessel would need more than five feet of freeboard if the captain expects to weather any kind of a storm--if memory serves, dhow sit fairly low in the water, but the main deck curves upward at bow and stern). I'm not that familiar with Arabian/Persian naval architecture, but there is quite a lot of variation between different regions of the globe in how ocean-going vessels were constructed. Chinese ships, for example, were flat bottomed and broad beamed--they maintained stability in a way similar to modern catamarans, rather than with a deep, ballasted keel like the classic 16th-18th century European sailing ship.
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As an aside, I saw a show about a year ago on Discovery about archaeologists studying Kublai Khan's fleets for invading Japan. They were asserting the fleet was built as a rush job, due to the fact that Kublai was being extremely demanding about the builders getting everything done really quick. As such, most of the fleet was barely seaworthy.
If the Hellfish is of dubious seaworthiness, wouldn't the pirates just scuttle it and take off with the Nixie instead? It'd save the trouble of transshipping any goods they're trying to make off with, and would improve the pirates' situation (maybe they'd be able to make an ocean voyage back to the main shipping lanes where pickings aren't so slim).
That's absolutely a good point and you just reminded me of how I ran things in the playtest. The pirates were a little bit different. James initially wanted some fiendish and half-fiendish really nasty types. I had both as well as some corrupted pirates (BoVD). The crew of Hellfish were a pretty chaotic lot. There were groups of them all kind of doing their own thing, much the way it still is in Tides of Dread. One of those groups was on the docks stealing anything that wasn't battened down on Blue Nixie and tossing the goods over onto Hellfish. These sorry salts were ready to cut and run in crappy, yet smaller and easier to sail vessel if things went bad for them. In the event that the Rat's End pirates actually defeated the colonists they would have stuck around and had themselves a much better ship and gladly scuttled Hellfish and said "good riddance".