I'm heading into a section of my campaign where I'll need naval set-ups for my campaign's PC to figure out. So, I was looking for help brainstorming common naval strategies and setups. To give you some idea of what I'm talking about there's:
Ramming SPEED!: win the battle you're losing by ramming the other side's ship.
Lose them in the shallow waters: your ship has a shallower draft than there's does, so you can escape them.
Fighting blind: any naval battle occuring in areas of fog or on nights without a moon.
Have you any others?
Raking Broadside -- You broadside at their fore so your cannonballs travel down the sides of their ship causing greater damage than if you fired broadside to broadside... also lessens the chances of return fire as most ships are set up for broadside attacks instead of firing fore.
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To a point, traditional naval maneuvers only work in low-magic areas.
If you can summon a kraken, or confound the enemy's sails with fire elementals, or turn their hull to stone, your schooner will probably win a naval encounter against a mundane ship-of-the-line.
Very true. Something though that should be considered is that if a navy is going to spend thousands of gold to build a ship-of-the-line, they surely will not leave it unprotected.
There should be protection spells against fire, and wards against unauthorized boarders, protection from evil may be used as well. Now these spells don't have to cover the entirety of the ship.
Place wards along the railings against unauthorized boarders (they don't have the password or whatever), protection against fire on sails, protection vs evil on the deck in an area easy to fight in.
Also, every major military ship should include either a cleric or more likely an adept. An adept can do some major damage and damage control. Summon spells can be used against the attackers as well. Get an adept who learns to polymorph a person into a whale and have him cast in battle on someone on the enemy ship.
Have an adept with a dispel magic wand, and a cure light wand.
Combat on the high seas then becomes a major issue of taking out enemy spellcasters first. In fact major military ships should probably have officers of a prestige class with some spellcasting abilities. Think of Iron Kingdoms and their Warcasters (battle mages who command small units of steam mechs and troops).
Now, personally I just cannot run a D&D sea battle without cannons (and gun powder- but an alchemical version, subtle change but important). I just cannot picture frigates going to battle launching ballistas. Yeah ok, they are great against sailors and clearing the decks, but come on they are not going to shatter hulls and sink capitol ships. By the same token I cannot picture the fighting (especially with pirates) without guns.
So to me you have combat essentially starting with maneuvers. You want to gain the advantage of position for your guns while minimizing their possible attack options. Or you may want to outrun them, or trick them onto reefs (divination spells can end that trick).
A couple or rogues attempt to use scrolls to teleport onto enemy ships and assassinate spellcasters and officers. Long range cannon shots are exchanged along with summoning spells. As ships close in cannons are fired, snipers try and take out spellcasters and officers, marines shoot at anything that moves, spellcasters are healing and tossing lightning bolts, and summoning critters to help heal or assault the enemy (water elemental could be darn handy).
So you have divinations, gun smoke, spells, explosions, sword fights, monsters, everything you can imagine going off in close range and sheer total mayhem and chaos.
Yeah, baby, sounds like fun!
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To a point, traditional naval maneuvers only work in low-magic areas.
If you can summon a kraken, or confound the enemy's sails with fire elementals, or turn their hull to stone, your schooner will probably win a naval encounter against a mundane ship-of-the-line.
Hulls will be too big for turning to stone unless you allow a custom made spell that affects something that large of an area. Same thing with creating holes in the ship by using Warp Wood.
Great stuff!
Actually, my campaign uses sonic ballista for "cannon." It's low damage, but the sonic part goes directly against the ship, ignoring hardness. That 1d6 means that you can replicate the spectacle of two ships pounding on each other for a while. It also allows powerful mages to refuse on ship duty, where everyone would be targeting them....
So to me you have combat essentially starting with maneuvers. You want to gain the advantage of position for your guns while minimizing their possible attack options. Or you may want to outrun them, or trick them onto reefs (divination spells can end that trick).
Yeah, those scenarios are what I'm also interested in setting up. I have no idea what the common naval ship battle scenarios are. I don't even know what the common Hollywood naval battle tactics are!
There is a nice tactical encounter in Stormwrack. It is called The Sable Drake. It makes use of a dark ship sailing at night.
Prior to the development of cannon, ships generally packed themselves with troops and fought grim boarding actions. Hordes of archers were also employed.
While D&D attack magic makes ranged combat more effective, I don't see wizardry becoming so common that it would eliminate these tactics. Magical defenses would be devised to counter many attack spells.
There is a nice tactical encounter in Stormwrack. It is called The Sable Drake. It makes use of a dark ship sailing at night.
If you're thinking of the kobold ship, I ran that. Man, that was sweet. The tin-can cleric got launched far into their air, but rolled lucky and he was launched from the aft to the bow rather than overboard.
There's also crossing the T, in which you attempt to float by the prow of the opponent's ship, so your fire goes lengthwise down his ship and he can't fire back.
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Prior to the development of cannon, ships generally packed themselves with troops and fought grim boarding actions. Hordes of archers were also employed.
While D&D attack magic makes ranged combat more effective, I don't see wizardry becoming so common that it would eliminate these tactics. Magical defenses would be devised to counter many attack spells.
True, I suppose for my description I really picture that kind of battle with the biggest capitol ships.
Smaller naval ships will have less magical offense/defense, and may have a token Adept for medical care. Most probably do not even have an Adept.
Only the richest merchant ships will have extensive magical protections, though I think they are more likely to have an Adept for medical care (just level 1). Smaller merchants will have no magical protection.
Pirates would be a case by case scenario. Really famous, successful pirates may have just about anything a GM wants them to have. Smaller pirate ships will barely have a crew worth calling a crew!
If you're thinking of the kobold ship, I ran that. Man, that was sweet. The tin-can cleric got launched far into their air, but rolled lucky and he was launched from the aft to the bow rather than overboard.
Yes, that is the one. Unfortunately (for me) my players cleverly managed to avoid the encounter alltogether.
I would think that the best defense for a ship would be sailing speed, maneuverability and knowledge of where other ships/dangers are.
A fast ship aware of it's surroundings should be able to stay out of most/all spell ranges.
The main boosts I can see for making a better ship:
More buoyancy (more cargo with less speed loss, able to survive more hull damage/water flooding and stay afloat)
More maneuverability (avoiding incoming fire, rocks and such)
More speed, overall (faster ship, shorter travel time, out pacing pursuers)
More speed, burst (short term but can provide a important tactical advantage)
Fire resistance (wood + most people not being good swimmers + fire = bad situation)
Improved sails (regenerating? self deploying?)
Common naval battle tactics:
-Side swiping (destroying oars and leaving ship adrift)
-Ram (desperation unless ship is designed for it)
-Grappling (thrown or fired grappling hooks and harpoons to bind the two ships together allowing boarding)
-Environmental hazards (sailing into a shallow section of water (reef, rocks, sand bars, etc) if your enemy doesn't know the path through can often disable the ship if it follows)
-Turning broadside to fire (maximizing your fireing surface)
-Turning face on when being fired on (minimizing your exposed target area)
Factors:
Wind (speed and direction)
Turning speeds
Currents
Shorelines
Underwater hazards
Wave size
Visibility (fog rain, etc)
Sailing experience/skill (sailing with the wind or can they sail against the wind?)
Well thats what I can think of off the top of my head.
Edit: Extra Links:
Common tactical strategies
Common tactical strategies (image)
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If there's any more than 2 ships in the battle, the common and overwhelmingly successful tactic is the Line of Battle.
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I would think that the best defense for a ship would be sailing speed, maneuverability and knowledge of where other ships/dangers are.
A fast ship aware of it's surroundings should be able to stay out of most/all spell ranges.
The main boosts I can see for making a better ship:
More buoyancy (more cargo with less speed loss, able to survive more hull damage/water flooding and stay afloat)
More maneuverability (avoiding incoming fire, rocks and such)
More speed, overall (faster ship, shorter travel time, out pacing pursuers)
More speed, burst (short term but can provide a important tactical advantage)
Fire resistance (wood + most people not being good swimmers + fire = bad situation)
Improved sails (regenerating? self deploying?)Common naval battle tactics:
-Side swiping (destroying oars and leaving ship adrift)
-Ram (desperation unless ship is designed for it)
-Grappling (thrown or fired grappling hooks and harpoons to bind the two ships together allowing boarding)
-Environmental hazards (sailing into a shallow section of water (reef, rocks, sand bars, etc) if your enemy doesn't know the path through can often disable the ship if it follows)
-Turning broadside to fire (maximizing your fireing surface)
-Turning face on when being fired on (minimizing your exposed target area)Factors:
Wind (speed and direction)
Turning speeds
Currents
Shorelines
Underwater hazards
Wave size
Visibility (fog rain, etc)
Sailing experience/skill (sailing with the wind or can they sail against the wind?)Well thats what I can think of off the top of my head.
Edit: Extra Links:
Common tactical strategies
Common tactical strategies (image)
Actually when you get right down to it, yeah you are absolutely right. A faster, more maneuverable ship and knowledge of your surroundings and of the enemy make for a tremendous advantage. Self healing sails and carrying more cargo (whether mercantile or weapons of war) also make a tremendous amount of sense.
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Also, use halflings for sailors. For only a small decrease in strength, they take up half the space needed for bunking, leaving that much more room for cargo/weapons/etc.
True, however, many items will need to be altered for halflings. Te ropes would need to be thinner and ladders have smaller steps, unless the halflings wanna just accept a generic -2 to their skill checks... you would also likely need more halflings to help with some tasks, such as raising and lowering sails (if they have a lower strength that sail still weighs the same amount so an extra halfling or two would be needed per sail).
The rails will need to be closer together, increasing the number of rails and weight per ship so they don't easily wash through them on a storm (not too big a deal really).
And, if your halflings are traditional (ie pre 3.5) you will need 4-5 times the food just to keep them from mutinying. THAT is where halfling sailors are weakest! lol
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Also, use halflings for sailors. For only a small decrease in strength, they take up half the space needed for bunking, leaving that much more room for cargo/weapons/etc.
Wasn't there an old Spelljammer adventure that had balled up skeletons that served as skilled ship's crew. I'm sure a variant of that could be gen'ed up fairly easily. Dress em in sailor's attire and from a distance no one's the wiser.
Also, if you want to avoid the undead aspect, you could go the construct/elemental route, using more improved forms of the bogun druidic spell, utilizing air, water, and wood spirits.
Or, how about an Animated ship, sails, ropes, etc that do for themselves at the helmsman's command.
Awesome!
The hull is too large for warp wood, the Rudder however......
Hulls will be too big for turning to stone unless you allow a custom made spell that affects something that large of an area. Same thing with creating holes in the ship by using Warp Wood.
Oooh, nice. *steals evil idea to torment PCs with later* :)
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Also, use halflings for sailors. For only a small decrease in strength, they take up half the space needed for bunking, leaving that much more room for cargo/weapons/etc.True, however, many items will need to be altered for halflings. Te ropes would need to be thinner and ladders have smaller steps, unless the halflings wanna just accept a generic -2 to their skill checks... you would also likely need more halflings to help with some tasks, such as raising and lowering sails (if they have a lower strength that sail still weighs the same amount so an extra halfling or two would be needed per sail).
The rails will need to be closer together, increasing the number of rails and weight per ship so they don't easily wash through them on a storm (not too big a deal really).
And, if your halflings are traditional (ie pre 3.5) you will need 4-5 times the food just to keep them from mutinying. THAT is where halfling sailors are weakest! lol
Halflings are noted as being used as crews for merchant vessels in the Legacy of Fire Player's Guide, and in the Curse of the Crimson Throne Players Guide it's specifically noted that "In order to maximize its profits gained from ship-borne cargo, House Leroung began the practice of hiring halfling sailors (the house also experimented with gnome sailors, but that ended poorly). Halflings require less than half as much space and food, so House Leroung reasoned it could use that extra space for additional cargo. The other houses (with the pointed exception of House Arkona) bought these halfling-sized ships from Leroung and filled their crews with half ling sailors. Today, nearly half the ships that belong to the city’s elite are sized for and crewed by halflings."
So yes, it might require specifically built or modified ships to really work, but there's a precedent for it in Golarian as being a valid and profitable tactic.
Also the easy ability to effectively power and direct ships via wind spells and magic items would make them far less reliant on the standard Sailing tactics. You could effectively ignore wind direction with the right set of spells
Ships with their own energy source such as a feather token or some dude with wind spells would make a sailing ship almost as manoeuvrable as a galley.
The types of tactics used then could possibly match those of the Athenian Navy of the 5th Century BCE. (LINK)
Roman naval tactics are also very interesting (using some very broad and sweeping generalisations here) They Romans were very bad at sailing and the Carthaginian's regularly "whupped their arses".
The Romans on the other hand were very good at hand to hand combat and land warfare. So they hit upon the idea of turning a sea battle into a land battle through the use of the Corvus (Crow/Raven) it was in essence a spiked boarding plank the mast was rigged so that it could be swung like a crane. So the Roman tactic was to get close enough to drop the massive gang plank on to the opposition ship and then overwhelm it with marines.
Another interesting thing to think about is unless a wooden ship is "broken" it takes a while for it to sink especialy when all the holes you put in it are above the water line.
So ramming and breaking a ships spine is an important tactic to consider.