One of the first things I ever learned as a DM is to NEVER leave your party without a chance. Because of that, I do not want to just say, you are now ship wrecked, nothing you can do about it. So I was wondering if anyone has ever played out a ship wreck before.
The things I have developed only so much at this point are thus:
>STR checks to keep the ropes where they should be and to get them to re-lash.
>Acrobatics checks to keep their balance.
>Ship has 200 HP
>Waves do 3d6+3 dmage per round
>Wreck lastes for 20 rounds
>Use standard rules for Hardness and HP for rope and wood
>How well the party does determines how well off they are on the island.
What are the opinions and/or suggestions for the shipwreck.....
The closest thing I've ever run to a shipwreck prevention scenario was in my Pathfinder Beta when the group had to keep the important crew alive while they were raided by Sahuaguin (favorite monster ever), else they'd be stranded at sea with nobody with the proper knowledge to sail them to safely and possibly destroyed if they couldn't deal with the Sahuaguin spellcasters who cared little if their AoE did some damage to the ship. Interesting story; 4 armed sahauguin monk was the last one left alive of the raid and bleeding to death due to the rogues bleeding attack (this is fairly high levels mind you, using the critical hit deck), and with his final round he flurries, and kills two people, and knocks 4 others into negatives. He hadn't hit at all earlier in the fight, and somehow it has become a recurring theme that with a cornered monster's (or occassionally a PC's) parting blows it drops several targets along with it. We call it sahauguin monk syndrome in our group.
Anyways, it sounds fun, and as much as I think people wil pester me for saying so on here, it would make an excellent skill challenge in 4E.
Seems in the example above there is a lot more physically fit and agile characters can do. I'd consider adding Knowledges, Professions, and Crafts to see what can be done to mitigate some of the damage, or even diplomacy or intimidate to direct crew to certain stations for repairs. This would allow an interesting oppurtunity for characters with diverse skill sets to work together (the knowledable one telling the charismatic one what needs to be done, who then uses his clout to direct others) and possibly even setting up a first meeting for some characters in a group, if they were aboard the same ship but haven't met.
Of course a shipwreck works much better at lower levels where a well placed spell or two can't save the day entirely. What are the circumstances you are thinking for a wreck... Storm? Monsters? Pirates? Unfortunate curses? Divine ire?
If you're going to wreck the ship, there's a rather nice shipwreck map for sale here:
http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/c/cubicle7/gamescapes/v5748btpy8d0d
It's the print version of one of the PDF maps available from Savage Mojo, also sold on Paizo.
Check the Savage Tide AP part of the forums here (under Older Products/Dungeon Magazine).
As written, "The Sea Wyvern's Wake" (Part 3 of the STAP) ends with a shipwreck, but many DMs want either to give the party a chance to avoid it, or at least to give them a chance to reduce the impact/improve their chances of a safe beaching. So there are several threads there which discuss the game mechanics needed to avoid a shipwreck in a storm.
I had thought of a few other things for people to do.
>Craft checks to repair damage.
>Some simple spells like mending to fix ropes or mage hand to guide them back
>Diplomacy/Bluff could be useful to keep the other passengers below-decks (out of the way)
Other than that, I was going to go the storm route with this one. I actually have another thread around here discussing the adventure as a whole, but was having some semantics issues with the ship wreck and thought I might as well ask.
One of the first things I ever learned as a DM is to NEVER leave your party without a chance. Because of that, I do not want to just say, you are now ship wrecked, nothing you can do about it. So I was wondering if anyone has ever played out a ship wreck before.
The things I have developed only so much at this point are thus:
>STR checks to keep the ropes where they should be and to get them to re-lash.>Acrobatics checks to keep their balance.
>Ship has 200 HP
>Waves do 3d6+3 dmage per round
>Wreck lastes for 20 rounds
>Use standard rules for Hardness and HP for rope and wood
>How well the party does determines how well off they are on the island.
What are the opinions and/or suggestions for the shipwreck.....
3.5 had a few campaign "setting" books, one of which was Stormwrecked(? I'm not 100% and the book is at the DM's place) which was basically expanded rules for games on the water. Might want to ask around to see if anyone has one you could look at, or if a book shop still has one in stock to browse if you are interested. I imagine there would be something you could use in there.
Stormwrack. :)
Honestly, I thought you might have been asking for advice on the best way TO wreck a ship. That one's easy: disintegrate.
As for avoiding the wreck through seamanship and all, I have to second the Savage Tide AP (especially chapter 3 as mentioned above), and Stormwrack from 3.5 (also as mentioned above). Between those two, there's more than enough naval stuff to sink (or not) your ship.