I know from long experience that ship vs. ship combat didn't work so well in 3.5e. It took forever to sink a ship with siege weapons, with hardness and complicated rules for ship sections. (That fairly accurately simulated the reality of ship battles prior to gunpowder, both in tedious length and in difficulty sinking a ship before gunpowder turned ships into powder kegs.) Spells were more effective, albeit still a complexity nightmare, and were always more effective against the crew than the ship, given the penalties of energy's effects on objects and the squishiness of the average sailor.
In short, naval combats dragged games to a halt. Did Skull and Shackles create a good mini-game for ship vs. ship combat or is it still something better to hand wave?
Although I am not running S&S and also not planning to do so for the foreseeable future, I am quite interested in this, too. A row of sub-systems for prior AP's have been not that good, so I would love to know if this one turned out better.
We gave the rules a little playtest, and found them not to your taste. Things were quite complicated, and the results rather boring.
Owing to high hardness and large numbers of hitpoints, taking out sails was the only consistent use of siege engines we found. Taking out crewmen might have been an interesting option, but with the only way to handle it individual attack rolls it would have taken forever and had little effect (other than for one person, who broadsided the enemy captain and rolled well. Encounter over.), since most of the sample ships have more than enough crew to survive some losses. Taking out oars or sinking the ship was out of the question, as oars were much easier to take out with shearing and ships just had too many hitpoints to make grinding through them viable without thousands of gold in ammo.
We found trying to close on a ship without slowing it down was quite rolly, with the final results being pretty minimal. If you didn't slow down the other ship, it took forever to catch up. If you did, it was trivial.
And, of course, magic obviated all of it. I can understand why the Master of Gales is so feared, as a Druid would simply devastate. Fly over as a bird and use Summon Nature's Ally to swarm the captain or take over the wheel. Cast Control Water and remove the need for ship combat entirely. I don't really know how to handle other options (like setting off pyrotechnics to blind everyone), but handling it through averages left entire ships fairly well devastated.
The rules do "feel" rather realistic (to a group of people who don't really know anything about naval combat, anyway), but they weren't necessarily that much fun for us. The effects of magic were also realistic in the amount of damage they could do, but that meant all the Siege feats and fancy ammo rules and whatnot started becoming fairly pointless with casters above level 5 or 7. It is not a bad system by any means, but one I will likely skip over for the most part.
My group just finished our first session with the Ship to Ship combat rules last week. As the GM, here are my thoughts:
The rules themselves were not bad. My group had fun. The biggest issue we had with it, is that it is basically one person rolling for a while. Sure other people can fire siege weapons and such, but it really puts the spotlight on someone.
The Upper Hand is critical to making the combat exciting. Without it, it plays off as just rolls to match the other's maneuvers. With Upper Hand, you really need to get some strategy, especially as the GM.
Don't forget to add the pilot's Profession Sailor check to things like AC, CMB/CMD, etc.
The fastest way to win the battle is to destroy the sails/oars. "If a ship
or its means of propulsion becomes broken, the ship’s maximum speed is halved and the ship can no longer gain the upper hand until repaired." If you can get the sails to the broken condition, it is much easier to catch up to prey.
That being said, the rules are rather complicated. Now that my group has a better handle on them (having run 3 ship-ship encounters) we should have fewer problems.
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I've posted my variant rules HERE. Suffice to say it's just a quick and dirty conversion of the old Damage/Toughness Save mechanics from Mutants and Masterminds and Unearthed Arcana.
I hope these help simplify the siege weapon issues. As for movement. I'd like to give it a go as written. I'll just need to make a quick reminder card for my players.
Well, real ship to ship combat took hours & even there, the best way to win was to take out propulsion. It took a lot to actually sink a ship, or an extremely lucky shot to the powder magazine. Seeing that the idea is to slow down the ship, catch her, then board her, it sounds to me like the rules are reasonable, if long. I would say you just need to reinforce the main objective of the battles, and then have all of the players assigned to positions that allow them to have some actions. Then make sure to turn it to a boarding action as soon as possible.
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real ship to ship combat... did not take hours, if the crews knew what they were doing. Take a good look at USS Constitution vs HMS Java, or USS Chesapeake vs HMS Shannon. Long battles "occur" because they get calculated by logs, denoting when the ship sets course for battle, with its crew being sent to battle stations, not actually when the first shots are fired and usually mostly as the result of long chases.
What "killed" ships were shots under the waterline (being hard to plug and causing flooding) or into the rudder mechanism, wheel or the rudder itself , plus those taking out masts (shredding sails with cannonfire was something the french tried without success for most of a century - although grapeshot worked well, it only did so over very short distances).
And what mattered most was the size of the gun delivering the cannon ball, having it punch through the oppositions hull - dependant on what the ship using it could conceivably carry, and to a lesser degree on the thickness of a ship's size.
Catapult work, done only in classic times and possibly by the Byzantine, would have been even more effective as the ships of those ages were considerably more vulnerable.
That being said, the "ship to ship" rules are mostly a sad joke. I mean "burning sails".. what is a crew to do ? Drop them on the deck ? Nevermind fire spreading ? IMHO the damage for the warmachines is deliberatly low. Otherwise, warmachines, especially ballistas etc would be too useful in eliminating out "heroic characters".
Actually, I don't see even Conan shrugging off a hit from a Trebuchet, but... Yeah well, the rules as in RAW..*shrug*
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Well, lets look at the USS Constitution: A fearsome ship to be sure, but hardly the most weight of cannon carried in the age of sail. Wikipedia says that its armament was 30x 24 lb cannon and 20x 32 lb carronade. Modeling that as a broadside of 15 cannons and 10 fiend's mouths cannons (from ultimate combat), the average damage of a broadside is 595, reduced to 470 from hardness 5 - easily capable of wiping out several thousand hp worth of ship in a minute (10 rounds) of side-to-side combat.
The S&S frigate, a man-of-war sailing ship, can mount 10 Large direct fire engines on a broadside, with two Huge engines on the deck. Selecting 10 light ballistae and 2 heavy ballistae for the broadside, we have an average damage of 85 after hardness.
I would house rule that siege weapons cannot be targeted precisely enough to target specific individuals, up their damage, and allow ships to carry more siege engines. Otherwise, you may as well run an unarmed ship and have flying mages blast opponents ala aircraft carrier combat.
trying to make sense of game rules to real life is always a worthless path
for me , as a game, do the rules, mean
-a Ship to ship combat takes no longer than any other combat
-can everybody do something
-is it fun
-we will use it again
I imagine at some point travelling by ship is no longer a neccessary option as
-magic travel becomes more efficient
-magic and monsters just make mincemeat of the ship within a few rounds
good topic
The examples you selected are far later and more technologically advanced than a Pathfinder setting. The Constitution had a 950 pound broadside. The heaviest ship at the Battle of Lepanto, if it fired every gun it had (not a broadside, *every* gun) would shoot 504 pounds of ammunition. Most vessels of the time were far more lightly armed (carracks and caravels generally...
That being said, the "ship to ship" rules are mostly a sad joke. I mean "burning sails".. what is a crew to do ? Drop them on the deck ? Nevermind fire spreading ? IMHO the damage for the warmachines is deliberatly low. Otherwise, warmachines, especially ballistas etc would be too useful in eliminating out "heroic characters".Actually, I don't see even Conan shrugging off a hit from a Trebuchet, but... Yeah well, the rules as in RAW..*shrug*
Ships of "the period" are also build far more fragile, both in size and strength of planking, since their rigging provided far less propulsion, nevermind merchant seaman being far less inclined to be torn to shreds then those fighting for "King and Country"
If you want a "short and bloody fight" with smaller ships, look up Thomas Cochrane and his fight with "HMS Speedy vs El Gamo" (decided within 10 minutes, broadsides included), Francis Drake's "Golden Hind " battle with the "Cacafuego" ("Nuestra Senora de la Conception") (broadside + melee action, all over within half an hour) or almost any number of battles between man-o-wars and civil vessels.
The galleases at Lepanto : for one : no true broadsides, but two canon-armed castels , armed with cannons of up to 36 pounds, plus some light swivel guns. Any ball of the 36 pounders was more than enough to cripple any galley, even sink it instantly by ripping away large parts of the hull (less frames on a galley) or even massively damage a ship like the USS Constitution if it struck close to the waterline.
Second, these are Galleases, stengthened and extended galleys, not man-o-wars for deep-water raiding. Any of the ships at Lepanto were struggling for sheer survival in winds of Beaufort 6 or more. that is "strong winds". Since they are light in build, their capacity to carry guns is limited for reasons of stability. But the centerline guns of galleys were absolutely crippling in the mediterranean conditions.
Third, the galleases at Lepanto (all 12 of them) are gainsaid to have sunk or crippled up to 60 Turkish galleys in that half-day battle, by cannonfire, without a loss of their own. At miserable rates of reload.
As for realistic and useful : Once characters have access to flight, plus some fireballs or equivalent AoE effective magic, any trebuchet/ballista etc. becomes rather worthless. And it saves the hassle of contemplating through which sail precisely your catapult shot is travelling^^
We have decided to just have sailing rolls being made to gain position and use the weight saved onboard for more plunder and perhaps a light ballista (if we ever get an alchemist into the group again).
Once Dimension Door enters the game, it will probably be all "boarding actions"
My PCs have basically duplicated the tactics historically used by pirates (as opposed to true naval fleet engagements) - they've maxxed out their ship for speed/maneuverability, packed in as large a crew as possible (to man prizes), and attempt to run down and board enemies as soon as possible, without screwing around with artillery.
They also have a very optimized pilot (+17 profession (sailor) at level 5 - Ranger with skill focus, heart of the fields, and water favored terrain) so they've been very successful with this and it definitely keeps engagements short - 3 to 4 rounds usually and then its into the boarding combat.
As for realistic and useful : Once characters have access to flight, plus some fireballs or equivalent AoE effective magic, any trebuchet/ballista etc. becomes rather worthless.
Though, if we're in a magic-infused world such as Golarion, wouldn't it make sense for ship captains to shell out a little more money wizards of their own to counter those on opposing ships? Either to launch those truly devastating fireballs right back, or, even more frustratingly, to counterspell everything they recognize an opposing wizard is casting.
Additionally, looking to the magic element, it might become possible to begin creating magical protections for the ship and crew to help nullify enemy wizards. I've not looked into the rules too deeply, as we've not decided to run this AP right away (though it's on the list!), but these seem like perfectly logical possibilities in a magical world. Merchants make lots of money. If anyone could afford to maintain protections against wizards it's them, and other pirate/naval vessels would come to realize right quick that not having wizards of their own to thwart an enemy with them would be a death sentence (or, at the very least, a written invitation to be tossed into slavery).
As for realistic and useful : Once characters have access to flight, plus some fireballs or equivalent AoE effective magic, any trebuchet/ballista etc. becomes rather worthless.Though, if we're in a magic-infused world such as Golarion, wouldn't it make sense for ship captains to shell out a little more money wizards of their own to counter those on opposing ships? Either to launch those truly devastating fireballs right back, or, even more frustratingly, to counterspell everything they recognize an opposing wizard is casting.
Absolutely true. Problem is finding and paying for enough wizards/whatevers. Which means rewriting the ship-combat scenes to "counter" the group. Can be done, but makes the campaign a "naval duel of wizards/druids/witches/sorcerers and alchemists"
And a single fireball to the rigging (burning sails), aft gallery (burning stern, plus possible burning sails) or smack into the sailors on deck (making everyone scamper belowdecks - which sailor wants to be roast for a cargo of sargavan produce ?) is too easy. Launch once or twice from invisibility. Float close(invisible )and summon some monsters (meet the fire elementals) or even a single level 2 swarm on deck. Or drop alchemists bombs on vulnerable parts, bowsprit, mastfittings, the gratings, rudder blasting them and splattering everything around. Too many ways to do it
Yes basically the "aircraft carrier" analogy is terribly correct. In another AP ("Savage Tide"), some years back, an 8th level sorcerer sank a squadron of nine ships full of pirates. In barely five minutes. Burning shattered wrecks everywhere. Yeah, Midway...
Defensive measure need to protect the entire ship, and they need to be active all the time. All sails, the hull (let's warp wood), relevant mechanisms... everything.
All of it : very expensive - how much to make an entire ship fire resistant ? And it still leaves the crew exposed...who might not agree to be the sacrifical lamb.
Much easier to lose the cargo, or pay for a shackles flag to gain some indemnity. Or even buy the cargo back from other ships who got their's stolen^^
If you want a "short and bloody fight" with smaller ships, look up Thomas Cochrane and his fight with "HMS Speedy vs El Gamo" (decided within 10 minutes, broadsides included),That's not correct. After the first broadside, El Gamo tried to board Speedy for over an hour, but Cochrane would establish enough distance to make boarding impossible while still staying under the depression ability of El Gamo's guns, at which point he'd resume firing into El Gamo. It was only "decided" quickly because of Cochrane's superior seamanship. It's also a couple hundred years after...
Niccolo Caponi ( Macmillan 2006) disagrees on the galleases , there being six of them in the middle squadron alone (nevermind the ones shoreward and seawards). If you have more accurate numbers, please let me know.
And the utter desaster of mediocre broadside still destroying galleys en masse becomes worse by every galleasse less than 12.
Unfortunately, the Turks flanked the Holy Alliance, not the other way around, mostly on the seaward wing by Uluc Ali. Ask the Knights of Malta.
Overall, if the galleasses were not an immediate success (and the Venetians had successfull tested the concept a while back north of Lepanto), why did the Spaniards immediately build some for their Armada ?
To compare a sloop of war with the galleasses of Lepanto or the Armada is a futile exercise in shipbuilding, since a brig, fielding yarded masts is far more sturdily build than a (mediterranean) galley, requiring greater lateral strength, resistance to hogging, a strong keel and correspondent frames. Just saying
"Speedy vs El Gamo" (1801) was basically 4 broadsides at close range, with the Speedy then boarding "El Gamo" (Robert Harvey and Donald Thomas), not the other way round. Nevermind El Gamo's guns being easily able to shred Speedy's rigging and thereby forcing a boarding, whatever their alleged depression. Indecisiveness of command at its best.
Both ships were of a type entirely typical for the whole of the 18th century... The Xebec-frigate even of the 17th and are entirely "periodical", although w. guns. And given the description of the "Golden Hind vs. Nostra Senora", it is almost the same tactics and outcome.
And hey, we have brigs in the AP. There are even naval cutters,18th century vessels. So what period is "period" exactly ?
I hope later books do have defenses like wall of force around the wheel.Those ivory belaying pins at 10-foot intervals around the deck of the ship full of archers? Yeah, they're all enchanted with Antimagic Field.
I want one, no two of those for my barbarian. Where do I buy them ?
With all of the arguments over 10 minute battles, you are still missing the point. A 10 minute battle, while quick in the real world, is still 100 rounds of combat. That still doesn't sound like a "quick" battle you are looking for in Pathfinder.
Niccolo Caponi (MacMillan 2006) disagrees with your claim. Page 328 - 2 galleasses in the left division, 2 in the centre, 2 in the right, 6 total. Per pages 325-327, they were Bragadina (32) and Bragadina (27) on the left, Guora (23) and Duoda (28) in the centre, and Pesara (26) and Pisana (23) on the right. The map on page XXI clearly shows 6 galleasses across the entire fleet. For another source, R. G. Grant's Battle at Sea (Dorling Kindersley 2006) states on page 93 that the fleets at Lepanto were 206 galleys and 6 galleasses for the Holy League and 230 galleys for the Ottomans.
now...... THAT is fun, because quoting from pages 266-267 of Capponi
"Slowly Doudo's six ships made a half-turn, oars moving in half-turn.." He (Capponi) is talking about the center squadron of galleasses here.
Checked the rest of his script (the remainder of the battle), Capponi does not deviate from that number. Four galleases on the left, two more on the right according to the lecturer's notes
And given the size of the battle field, coordination of ships on both wings from a central command seems hard to accomplish without repeaters
Whole things was footnoted by the lecturer (Francesco Doudo being in command only of the central squadron etc etc, the ships on the wings being under independent local command etc etc etc; paraphrasing from the German here). The lecture/kolloquium was given at the local university two years ago, and the PDF handed out for it. Seems/seemed like the real deal to me. It was more on structure and building of galleys, true but... bad mistake. *facepalm*
My seminary copy (PDF) has no order of battle, but also has no page count beyond p.324. But obviously there is an order of battle attached in the original book, listing only six galleasses overall ?
Would be a major foible (and on my part, but that's the problem with e-booked scripts. You can't verify whether that really is all of the original text ). The rest of the book never explicitly mentions the Holy Alliance's order of battle, and there are no pictures except for some rudimentary maps in the script. Guess if there were any, those were left out as well....
In that case Kudos to you
On the other hand, my argument of the devastation caused by warmachines onto galleys holds even truer, if one halves the number of vessels in the battle, compared to the losses incurred, with 36pounds (app) cannonshot sinking galleys in one swift attack, if, and not with dozens of shots.
I somehow doubt a 50lbs+ rock dropped from a heavy catapult would not cause massive structural damage on most smaller ships or galleys.
And I do have E.S.Grant lying about somewhere but was dissuaded from reading it back then, since some of his theories about Cyprus and other stuff seemed "slightly" doubtful to a friend of mine who is heavily into turkish/Levant history. He extrapolated this "doubtful reesearch" to the rest being probably shady too, and since I cared more for the shipbuilding aspect of the galleys... seemed not worth the while.
With all of the arguments over 10 minute battles, you are still missing the point. A 10 minute battle, while quick in the real world, is still 100 rounds of combat. That still doesn't sound like a "quick" battle you are looking for in Pathfinder.
Given that shipboard reloading of weapons took anywhere between 100 seconds (18 rounds) and more than 3 minutes back in the RL 18th century, that makes for barely more than 4 shots. Late 18th century. I'd say definitely longer on 17th century pieces, especially with the time for cooling off for earlier cannons.
Reload time in Pathfinder S&S AP is rarely more than 3 rounds (ignoring the Firedrake), one shot every fourth round.... that's 25 shots in 10 minutes 20 for a firedrake. That is - if we assume 3 fullround actions loading by each member of its crew, not total.
Yeah, sportive. Very much so...
25 shots at 6D6 each = 25 x app 21 HP, if every shot hits... also 25 stones of 75lbs each... 1875 lbs, that's almost a metric ton. of ammunition. per fight... And not even enough to cripple a normal 100' warship. Nevermind a Sailing Ship as per AP-PG... say, like the "Man's Promise"
You would even need to hit a normal ship's boat with an average of 6 heavy catapult stones to sink it.... or 10, from a medium catapult....
Mages (or their equivalent) are more effective^^
25 shots at 6D6 each = 25 x app 21 HP, if every shot hits... also 25 stones of 75lbs each... 1875 lbs, that's almost a metric ton. of ammunition. per fight... And not even enough to cripple a normal 100' warship. Nevermind a Sailing Ship as per AP-PG... say, like the "Man's Promise"
You would even need to hit a normal ship's boat with an average of 6 heavy catapult stones to sink it.... or 10, from a medium catapult....
Mages (or their equivalent) are more effective^^
Which should drive home the fact that magic-users in D&D where originally fantasy replacements for artillery pieces in wargames. Does it comes as any surprise that the mages, with a faster "reload" rate would be more effective. Kinda the reason many of the spells are labeled as ineffective against structures.
--- huge snip ---Ironically, 266-268 is also why I brought up the disruption of the Ottoman line and the flanking maneuvers. The galleass fire disrupted the Ottoman line, allowing tactical flanking by galleys. Doria's right flank was an odd combination of maneuvers, where both he and Uluc Ali Reis proceeded south in attempts to outflank each other. Ali Reis utilized his superior maneuverability to cut back inside Doria and "shoot the gap" between the League's centre and...
Sounds feasible (and like a debate for a different board^^). I just went and spend a couple of pounds to simply order me a copy of Niccolo Capponi ( good books always beat eating at McDonalds^^) and have a look at the whole work, offscreen.
I would think that the biggest counter to highly destructive magic would be the probability of destroying plunder.
Warships could afford device and magic-using counter measures. They are spoiling for a fight. Trade ships, their greatest defense is that people don't want to sink them. Just be a rational GM- if the PC's chuck fireballs into the other ship and catch it mostly on fire, let them loot what once was 2 points of silk and timber plunder.
Idea for Warships
Make a new ship upgrade that is SR hull. The ship is encased in a field of Spell Resistance. It blocks any spell that allows SR being cast into or from this ship at a set SR (say 13, 14 17 etc). The field generator is somewhere in the ship, and can be powered down as a Full Round action with a UMD of 20.
Thread-necro instead of creating a new one.
I'm considering dividing ship hit points into quadrants to add a bit more strategy into manuevering with ship-to-ship combat.
fore/port, fore/starboard, aft/port, aft/starboard. Reducing any one quadrant to 0 gives it the broken condition, Reducing two quadrants to 0 makes it sink.
This essentially halves the HP damage needed to sink a ship (for example, the Sailing Ship has 1620 HP, each quadrant is only 406, so you only need to do 816), but at the same time makes combat more dynamic and potentially the same length as ships position themselves tactically to spread out the damage, shield damage quadrants, etc.
Actually that's what we did, just with seven areas (bow, stern, forward and aft sides, rigging), kept hardness and spell effects vs. different sorts of materials.
And we added a "taking "water" condition, if a section of the hull took more than 60% damage, slowing the ship down and making her less manoueverable...
We cut by one third for 1D10 turns, then 50% if not at least 30% or more of the crew went to stabilize and pump out the ship. Which inturn reduced RoF etc for weaponry.
This is usually the point where even the most stubborn merchantman strikes colours.
We used 1/3, because we basically set the "HP" for each section arbitrarily (and we do so in 30 HP increments.. lazy us ) , and commenting to the players that "that vessel looks like it sturdily build" or "the seams crack open at the first strike", so they get an idea where to attack or aim their fire.
And sections like the stern = always weaker, so maneuvering into position does actually make sense.