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My players and I finally broke into true ship to ship battle rules yesterday with their Man's Promise and Dominator going up against the Deathknell.
I've never seen more dreadful, mind-numbingly lousy mechanic design is my life.
The Man's Promise possesses 800 HP, while the Dominator (a ship so powerful the PCs weren't even meant to have it) and the Deathknell each have 1620 HP.
Ballistas and catapults just don't hold up against those kinds of hit points. The Dominator got a crit with its catapult on the Deathknell for, wait for it, a whipping 38 damage. Then they broadsided it for 138 damage using the quick barrage rules.
However, said barrage only has a 25% chance of hitting, meaning it would take ~40 such barrages from the Dominator to sink the Deathknell.
We all said "screw this, we don't won't to be here all night," and started boarding actions.
What did we miss? How is ship combat supposed to be anything other than a mind-numbing slug fest? Why include them at all if the rules are going to be THAT boring, rather than just encouraging the much more fast paced and exciting boarding actions?
How do YOU have successful ship to ship battles in YOUR games? I fear a primary aspect of our Skull and Shackles game is going to be lost.
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Right now I can't recall the S&S naval combat rules, so I'm shooting in the dark.
A ship with an HP total is not a creature: is a structure (and a rather complex one).
After a percentage of its HPs are lost, structural damage sets in - movement loss, maneuvrability loss, weaponry loss, leaks/gaps in the hull, roll and pitch, etc - and with every multiple of that percentage new and more terrible structural failings start to pile up.
A ship starts sinking way before all its HPs are lost, and performs worse than its optimal quite quickly.
The skull and Shackle naval combat section says that the rules aren't designate to simulate trying to sink ships, but to soften them up for capture.
It makes a certain amount of sense, since you'd really need cannon to do the kind of damage to sink the kind of giant well-buitl ships your using. Or magic.
Naval battle is about captureing the other ship. Not sinking them.
Ships are very hard to sink with the exception of fire or a lucky cannon shot.
The ship captured is the prize its cargo is just a bonus as ransom for the ship is how you make your money.
If you want to sink enemies ships. -Which seems like a huge waste to me they are quite valuable.- Then you are better off trying to set them on fire.
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Again, why make us do all the rolls and such if it's all pretty much pointless?
To give you the chance to loose enough crew to perform a sucessful boarding, or sink the ship with a unlucky crit. It also gives the chance to run from or trick the attacking ship.
Again, why make us do all the rolls and such if it's all pretty much pointless?
Because the idea is that you're going to be shooting at the sails, helm, rudder, and occupants. You're trying to make the enemy slower and less maneuverable for boarding (or to escape) and to soften up the crew on board.
Just because one option is to attack the ship's structure doesn't mean that option should be the sole focus.
To quote the rules, "In most circumstances, the ship-to-ship battle just serves as a prelude to the main combat."
eta: and if you really want to sink it, fire is more effective than it initially appears.
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Before the advent of cannons, historical ship-to-ship combat consisted of pelting the opposing crew with arrows or setting their decks on fire. Neither of those actions is likely to sink a ship - its decks can burn for hours, maybe days, without sinking, and even as the fire spreads to the wooden hull, that wood is wet enough to be very resistant to fire.
A few ancient ships had small catapults on their decks. I suppose a very lucky shot might hit with the right angle and force crash through an upper deck and punch a hole in the hull below the waterline but I'm willing to bet that was rare, even very rare - those catapults were too small and hulls too thick for that to work. These deck-mounted siege weapons were for delivering fire to wipe out the crew.
Any attempt at actually destroying the ship and making it sink involved ramming. Ancient warships were invariably built with a pointy ram, below the waterline, designed to put a hole in enemy ships below their waterline. It was really the only method of sinking enemy ships.
Cannons barely changed that. Cannons could destroy the superstructure of a chip much more effectively than arrows, and were also far more effective at eliminating crews, especially when firing shot rather than cannon balls. Cannon balls were more likely to be deployed against ground fortifications than other ships, but even when they were used against ships, they rarely sank the ship .
The real problem is that you can punch hundreds of holes in the side of a ship's hull and it won't sink because all those holes are ABOVE the water line. Sinking a ship requires punching holes in it BELOW the waterline.
Water has two funny effects on projectiles:
1. Projectiles often "skip" off the surface of water, just like when you "skip" rocks on the surface of a lake. Firing from a cannon mounted 15 feet above the waterline is a perfect way to "skip" your cannon ball, bouncing UP from the water's surface instead of going below it.
2. Even if your projectile goes below the surface of the water, it immediately starts losing velocity at an alarming rate - water is surprisingly dense compared to air and it slows down projectiles. A lot. If your cannon ball has to pass horizontally through 100 feet of water, it can lose enough momentum to have little or no effect on the hull of a ship.
So puncturing a ship's hull below the waterline, without using a ram, requires a decent cannon, loaded with ball (not shot), fired through water, without the shot skipping or passing through too much water. That's hard to do given two moving ships, pitching and rolling at sea.
Not saying it didn't happen. But I can easily see why it would take a long time and a lot of cannonfire (or a much, much longer time and a ridiculously incalculable amount of ballista fire).
Just annihilate the crew, board the ship, finish of the stragglers, and claim your prize.
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Unfortunately we are fed lies by movies and other media to think that sinking ships were common in war.
In reality, it was only with Ship-Of-The-Line (with around 120 cannons) and very large frigates (with upwards of 74 cannons,) that ships were sunk. Even then, if you look at ship histories of how many of them were sunk it took multiple ships over a long period of time to accomplish the task.
Sinking from broadsides was indeed rare. Most ship ended their careers by being scrapped. Some were lost at sea in storms. Others accidentally rammed hidden reefs and rocks. Don't get me wrong, there were still plenty of ships sank in military action, but like I said above they were sank by multiple ships armed heavily with purpose of sinking ships.
Outside of the Age of Sail, which is the age we most often think of when we think pirates, siege engines on ships for the purpose of sinking other ships is pretty rare. The Greeks relied on rams and oar sheering to disable ships. The Vikings would actually rely just on boarding ships for their navel warfare, and a few of their battles were upon a large number of ships tied together to create a battlefield. Before cannons were a viable weapon for ships Europeans used longbows, crossbows, fire, and rams. They would attempt to kill as many of the crew as possible and then either set the ship on fire or board it.
Ballistas were rarely placed in large amounts on a ship.
I suggest using the ship to ship rules to only disable ships, either by taking out sails or steering device and then go in for a boarding. Outside of that, you have a slugfest that really only needs one or two PCs to run, leaving everyone else to sit and wait until they are needed.
Before the advent of cannons, historical ship-to-ship combat consisted of pelting the opposing crew with arrows or setting their decks on fire. Neither
They'd also ram each other. Triremes in particular had a bronze ramming head, and on a clean hit could smash a warship of their own size in half. However, we're talking about the impact of an object many orders of magnitude heavier than a cannon-ball in that respect.
Up until the advent of economically feasible cannon, the most dreaded thing on water was still a galleon with a ramming prow. They weren't used as much in the atlantic (not sure why), but in the pacific they were used well into the 15th century.
Turns out 100 men with levers (oars) can exert a truly awesome amount of force over a short distance. Daserak isn't kidding when he said ships could be punched in half.
The ramming prow was the only ship-to-ship weapon designed to sink an enemy vessel (at least until the invention of the torpedo)
Everything else was designed to cripple them, not sink them. If you sink a ship you can't take it's cargo.
Unfortunately, the ram is poorly done with the rules and is just as bad as trying to shoot a ship to death.
Not sure. We aren't dealing with ancient ramming triremes for the most part. Ships of the size and construction we're dealing with might be better suited to withstand it.
Or maybe they nerfed ramming. IDK
Fire as she Bears by Frog God Games is a great 3PP rule set (and one of the few ones out there) for naval battles. It includes everything you need including comprehensive ship creation, upgrades for your favorite Man-O'-War, and all sorts of magical goodies to load your hull's full of.
Recommended: 10/10
Waves. They were used into the 18th century in the Baltic & Mediterranean, but in order to be effective the oars had to enter the water from close to parallel to the surface and the waves of the Atlantic were high enough to swamp the oar decks.Up until the advent of economically feasible cannon, the most dreaded thing on water was still a galleon with a ramming prow. They weren't used as much in the atlantic (not sure why)
That makes a lot of sense. I'd never read that anywhere, but it seems so obvious. Thanks. :)
Even in modern cannon battles naval combat lasted for hours. See the Bismarck for example. Things like the Hood going boom were rare.
Greek fire and ramming was the default to destroy a ship and the Byzantines stopped using Greek fire presumably because they lost access to oil in sufficient quantities.
D&D rules and by extension PF have always been crappy in this regard. Spelljammer may have gotten it right in 2nd ed and even then I remember my PCs with a souped up ramming ship that could one shot other ships and the PCs could loot the rubble.
There is an old 3.0 book I have used for naval fights called the Seafarers Handbook.
That makes a lot of sense. I'd never read that anywhere, but it seems so obvious. Thanks. :)Waves. They were used into the 18th century in the Baltic & Mediterranean, but in order to be effective the oars had to enter the water from close to parallel to the surface and the waves of the Atlantic were high enough to swamp the oar decks.Up until the advent of economically feasible cannon, the most dreaded thing on water was still a galleon with a ramming prow. They weren't used as much in the atlantic (not sure why)
I did a paper in college on the attack of the Spanish Armada. The spanish brought a few Galleass with them from the Med. These were something like a hybrid of galley (they had oars) and galleon. They just don't have the durability to endure an Atlantic sea voyage. There was one whos name I can't recall at the moment who lost her rudder more than once on the voyage from Spain to England.
You know, in historical battles, they didn't have 40 strength Barbarians that could swim over and punch the bottom of the enemy's ship. Just sayin'.
Well as the rules in s&s stand that are not perfect but I have had 5 ship to ship battles and all of them have been successful. As others have mentioned the combat is not meant to sink the ship but to comendeer it and start boarding actions. Don't forget the players are looking for plunder, sink the ship loose the plunder! Ships can also be towed back to port to sell so they can make more money (and gain fame for trashing a well known ship and crew). The players also need to get new crew so capturing ships gives them the crew as well. Also if you damage the ship then capture it you have the added hassle of fixing it before you can tow or make use of it.
Hit the sails, as others have said this will slow the ship, ram it, ok you dont do much damage but ramming brings the ship close enough to start grappling then you can board.
You also need to think out of the box (my players always do and they have made the combat easy because of this). Use spells, stonecall if rolled high enough on damage can wipe out pretty much most of the crew or damage the siege engines (remember if less than 20 crew the ship will slow, the more crew you kill the ship will eventually stop). Fireball, flaming sphere are also good ones (flaming sphere on the pilot, kill him damage or destroy the wheel and ship is useless). I have a druid who changes into a gull the flies over and casts spells whilst flying over the ship as well.
Again as others have pointed out you need banks of weapons to make any kind of leeway really, 1 or 2 ballsitas and a catapult is going to do next to nothing really.
I plan on trying out fire as she bears too as the rules look much better so im not rally that bothered to be honest.
My players and I finally broke into true ship to ship battle rules yesterday with their Man's Promise and Dominator going up against the Deathknell.
I've never seen more dreadful, mind-numbingly lousy mechanic design is my life.
The Man's Promise possesses 800 HP, while the Dominator (a ship so powerful the PCs weren't even meant to have it) and the Deathknell each have 1620 HP.
Ballistas and catapults just don't hold up against those kinds of hit points. The Dominator got a crit with its catapult on the Deathknell for, wait for it, a whipping 38 damage. Then they broadsided it for 138 damage using the quick barrage rules.
However, said barrage only has a 25% chance of hitting, meaning it would take ~40 such barrages from the Dominator to sink the Deathknell.
We all said "screw this, we don't won't to be here all night," and started boarding actions.
What did we miss? How is ship combat supposed to be anything other than a mind-numbing slug fest? Why include them at all if the rules are going to be THAT boring, rather than just encouraging the much more fast paced and exciting boarding actions?
How do YOU have successful ship to ship battles in YOUR games? I fear a primary aspect of our Skull and Shackles game is going to be lost.
I've run several ship-to-ship battles so far (two on water, one on sand, and two up in the air), and while the system is not perfect, it works.
The way I see it, trying to reduce a ship to 0 HP would be akin to breaking it down entirely. What you really want to accomplish in a ship battle is to either capture it by boarding, force its surrender or sink it, neither of which require absolute disintegration of the vessel. Evem though the rules state that a ship gains the Sinking condition when it reaches 0 HPs, I believe it means that the ship at that point simply cannot stay afloat any longer, but doesn't necessarily say that a ship couldn't start sinking earlier if the vessel is damaged where it counts (akin to chopping a man's arm off even if he still has 30 HPs).
How do YOU have successful ship to ship battles in YOUR games? I fear a primary aspect of our Skull and Shackles game is going to be lost.
I use Dragon Mech crit rules. Crits have special effects on mechs; you have to tweak the fluff for what the crits do.
But Stormwreck's rules also help.
I center Cloud Kill on the mast.
See, this is the real reason GMs are reluctant to run ship-vs.-ship combat; the foes tend to be relatively low-CR sailors, and the amount of swag the PCs get is hilarious - NPC gear, the ship, and its cargo! Piracy may be the only career even more profitable than being paid 100 gp to kill somebody's rats!
Yes but have you seen how much you have to spend on upkeep? Don't forget that the plunder is not just for the PC's. It needs to be used to pay the crew, but ship supplies, re-fit a damaged ship, but more siege engines and ammo. Not to mention you may want to add modifications along the way or use it to boost infamy.
Trust me, the plunder is spent very quickly and very little is left for the players to spend on themselves.