Yeah, this is a corker - in a lot of the literature on the Shackles they like to say that pirate captains have "frigates!" and other super late 1800's ship types. But then whenever you see a ship writeup it's basically "early caravel" tech if you're lucky, and often just "wrong."
I've been running a pirate campaign set in Golarion for 4 years now and you have a couple choices.
1. Go big! Buy "Fire As She Bears" Razor Coast supplement from Frog God, it has proper big ships covered up through first rate ships of the line with crew of 850-875 and 100-120 cannon, and the rules to handle that.
2. Keep with the smaller ships but try to make them a little more realistic. The latter half of my campaign Player's Guide has some writeup on trade and piracy and whatnot in the seas of Golarion. My PCs' ship is the Teeth of Araska from Second Darkness, but with added cannon.
Teeth of Araska
Length 60’, Beam 25’, Height 5’, Draft 7’, Rig
height 60’, 75 tons cargo
Hull: 12 sections (hardness 5, hp 60)
Masts: 3 (hardness 5, hp 50), mainmast lateen,
foremast lateen
Decks: hold, lower deck, main deck, quarterdeck
Crew: 24/12/6 Current Crew: 44
Speed: 8 knots
Maneuverability: +3
Seaworthiness: +4
Armaments: 8 12 pounders (7d10) (four on each side of the main deck), 1 9 pound chase gun (6d10), 8 swivel guns (2d10/4d6), 1 4 pound tail
gun (4d10)They have enough crew to sail the ship without problems (24) and man one side of guns (16), plus the PCs as command staff. That's as many cannon as you can cram onto something of that size; in fact they often don't try for a full broadside as the Sailing penalty is intense, they tend to stagger fire.
Thanks Ernest, it is so nice to see someone who does their nautical research.
CJ
Thanks Ernest, it is so nice to see someone who does their nautical research.
CJ
Sure man! I find there's a lot of good gameplay in those realistic complexities. Heck, we've had whole game sessions where the dramatic conflict was "a long severe storm at sea," worked out hour by hour with sailors suffering from exposure and falling out of rigging, trying to keep the ship afloat and not be driven onto the land, and the players were left with the same fulfilling experience as having had a big ol' combat. Turning ships into the "cars of the sea" is a horribly missed opportunity for an allegedly naval campaign.
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Sure man! I find there's a lot of good gameplay in those realistic complexities. Heck, we've had whole game sessions where the dramatic conflict was "a long severe storm at sea," worked out hour by hour with sailors suffering from exposure and falling out of rigging, trying to keep the ship afloat and not be driven onto the land, and the players were left with the same fulfilling experience as having had a big ol' combat. Turning ships into the "cars of the sea" is a horribly missed opportunity for an allegedly naval campaign.Thanks Ernest, it is so nice to see someone who does their nautical research.
CJ
Totally agree.
Also, if you have any more of those tasty home-brewed campaign documents -- I'm very interested. Your campaign players guide was very well done.
CJ
Oh sure - my blog is geek-related.com, I have a variety of stuff there. The Reavers section has most of the piracy related goodies - I have alternate gun/cannon rules, naval combat rules, chase rules, mass combat rules... (The gun rules got published by LPJ and the naval rules got incorporated into Fire As She Bears where I have an "additional design" credit - mine were pretty simplistic compared to the full setup there though.) I also put up full session summaries, NPC/monster writeups (usually exported from Hero Lab to pdf), use whatever seems helpful.