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I have noticed a few people speaking about cannons. Having them not having them. How having them makes the fight with the Filthy Lucre less special. I have yet to roll this out yet but I had a different way to play this than I have seen talked about.
Some are having no cannons except Bonefists as the AP is written.
Others are having lots of cannons and just having a great old time.
My plan:
My crew has yet to deal with any cannons. Just starting book 2. However one of the characters did lay eyes on one of the items Harrigan wanted off the Man's Promise. I showed him a pic of an early European cannon. If you have never seen one they are quite small and rather than shooting cannon balls shoot a short heavy arrow.
Through the course of their career they will encounter and search after a number of competing cannon tech. My thought process was that being where they are located in a very diverse area with influences from Vudra, the far east analogs (which I can't spell off the top of my head) as well as competing Inner Sea interests. This means that the will encounter a variety of weapons. Like the early cannon described above. Perhaps they will also meet the early chinese style cannons that the carved in the shapes of dragons that were essentially rockets similar to bottle rockets. My thought that these cannons will do varying degrees of damage at varying rates of speed a varying degrees of reliability and of course varying degrees of danger for the crew firing it.
Once I finish my write up I will post it. Though I wanted to bring up the idea to see if anyone else had similar ideas or ideas that would gel well. My hope is this will create 1- a real arms race and technology aspect to things 2- create very diverse strangeness to ships that reflect the great diversity of the Shackles 3- It gives the fun and flavor of cannons without giving the PCs or other ships encountered long before Bonefist weapons that rival the Hurricane King.
Nice idea! Are these places producing gunpowder on their own or importing it from Alkenstar? I like the idea that Alkenstar is the only place quite that technologically advanced, but having other people build devices taking advantage of their tech seems only logical.
Looking forward to your write-up!
I had not figured on that. With the presence of guns I figured its not going to be a secret forever and I can't imagine that if it only comes from one place that one global powerhouse or another would either conquer them or make them a deal they could not refuse to be the sole customer.
More to the point I did not want to play a pirate games without guns and cannons. I even allowed guns but no gunslingers (felt to western).
Also there are some pretty ingenious devices throughout history as China lost/traded the secret to gunpowder. I just am in the process of compressing these from a few centuries in the real world to a contemporary arms race in the time of the AP in Golarion.
Right-ho. Looking forward to seeing what you've got!
Well here is what I have I did not want to leave you hanging.
Well I have been looking into the variety of cannons and so on as I said. I asked around about things already published and found these already included in the PF rules.
Additionally I found more siege weapons on the SRD. Most of these are not ship appropriate unless you are looking at ships like ancient Greek multi hulled ships.
Brasselwark Cannon: Though occasionally made with cast bronze, the pot-de-fer was essentially an iron [2] bottle with a narrow neck. It was loaded with powder and an iron arrow-like bolt, feathered with iron. It is believed that the middle of the bolt was likely wrapped in leather for a snug fit, necessary to enhance the thrust from the gaseous pressure within the cannon.[3]However, this feature is not shown in manuscript illuminations. The cannon was set off through a small-diameter touchhole, where a red-hot wire could be thrust to set off an explosion and fire the cannon.
Fluff: The Brasselwark Cannon is a recent addition to the Chelaxian war machine. Many nations of the Inner Sea have been in an arms race since the rise of guns in the world. While an Alkenstar cannon is the gold standard recently the weapon smiths of Brasselwark have invented a new option. After the expense of research efforts to point out that its benefits over the much cheaper ballista are met with disapproval. The weapons real power as many Chellish generals will tell you is force of presence. Allowing them to claim a victory in the arms race even if it is less powerful than traditional cannons and less accurate than the Ballista.
Pot-De-Fer Cost 4k GP, Damage 4d6, Crit x3, Range 80 feet, Piercing, Crew 1, Rounds to Aim 1, Rounds to Load, Speed 10 ft.
Nice! Thanks for this!
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After some research I have discovered the weight of cannons during the golden age of piracy. Now with so many sizes of cannons the ratio works out as, the weight of the cannon is 200 times the weight of the iron cannonball to be fired.
For example a common cannon size was a 1600 pound cannon that fired 8 pound cannon balls. 24 pound shots were known as ship wreckers, anything larger were normally used in coastal defense.
Pathfinder rounded and used 25 pounds as their base cannon shot for a 5000 pound cannon. While a fiends mouth cannon is 30 pounds as base shot with a 6000 pound cannon.
Following this ratio increasing the poundage of the shot fired by five increases the damage by 2d6.
Now before any one starts saying that's op, every five pounds for a cannonball also increases the cost by 3000 gold. And for a bit of realism each shot needs half the weight of the cannonball in gunpowder to fire properly.
All because of the fabricate spell I had to do this. Blasted wizards.
Will do, KarlBob. I think he'll appreciate it as much as I appreciate the compliment. Thank you kindly.
As an addendum to my earlier post, and once again because of my gun nut wizard, I have been forced to continue my scaling operations because I left out range and bombards.
So cannons for every additional 5 lbs per load to be shot gain 30ft of range.
And now for the issue with bombards, they do a d6 less damage, for each like weighted load, until it gets to the heavy bombard that has a 50 pound iron ball load and does 9d6 damage.
Granted there is errata that corrects the heavy bombard from 8000 gold to 16000 gold. But it doesn't touch on ammo size.
Ballistic arc dictates that gravity doesn't really have much effect on damage done. But cannons would have a ballistic arc for longer range shots but they have no minimum distance. So the degree of angle for a bombard must be greater because they do have that minimum range.
So I'm left with some options:
Change the weight of the heavy bombard shot.
Say indirect fire weapons don't follow the ratio.
Find a better scaling ratio. For which I am currently at a loss for.
Scrap the ratio and say a gargantuan cannon shot does 10d6 with a 50 lb cannonball with other changes for range and all the rest.
Need your input on this one.
Doesn't the damage for cannons seem incredibly low? A typical greatsword wielder with STR 14 does average 10 damage per hit, more with power attack, high strength etc. A 25 lb cannon ball only does 21 damage? Compare to muskets (1d12) and other handheld firearms. Musket balls weigh around 1/14 of a lb - http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/abstract/military/army/britain/arti llery/c_ammo.html
Even a 1 lb cannon ball should be doing a lot more damage than a greatsword hit; 14d12 would be too high, but several d6 at least. I'm inclined to increase the listed cannon damage by x10, so 6d6 x10 = 210 dmg from a hit by a 25lb cannon, which is still on the low end but at least allows for demigod PCs and monsters surviving a hit. 6d6 looks ok for grapeshot with a spread.
I've also seen a PC barely survive a critical hit from a standard cannon. Keep in mind that the truly debilitating hits for firearms comes from their crit multiplier. And hit points are a very abstract form of health, it might be better understood that PCs should start to show damage when their hit points drops into their con range.
It was explained to the PC that he just survived a cannon shot to the chest, a more truthful explanation would have been he was barely grazed and it pulverized his rib cage from the pressure wave. But PCs are heroes, they take a cannon to the chest and say I'm gonna murder me a golem over this. Because while they should be on the ground having trouble breathing, or even living for that matter, that's not very fun. And not all PCs would have survived that.
But PCs are heroes, they take a cannon to the chest and say I'm gonna murder me a golem over this.
By the 6d6 standard, most level 4+ NPCs are epic heroes, too! :)
Finding thunderman's extrapolation slightly "off", especially given the difference in shot-weight in comparison to penetration power I might want to offer some of our way of sailing around with cannons.
Using 6 pounders (3D6), 9 pounders (4D6+4), 12 pounders (6D6+6) and 24 (8D6+12) pounders in our campaign, all of them long guns (the carronade seems not to have been invented yet in our Golarion).
basic ranges are between 300' (light guns) and 500'-600' for the larger calibres. Basically, for increased range one needs both a longer barrel and enough propellant to hurl the shot the distance, which in history commonly lead to barrel bursts, if the barrels were extended too much. Like a "long" 24 pounder or even stronger gun.
We left out elevation for range extension - or rather, it has not come up yet since noone has dared attack a coastal fort.
The ( traditionally )farthest reaching guns are long-sixes, long-nines, and very rarely long-twelves (who were awfully troublesome both for their weight (usually being mounted on the forecastle, massively affecting the trim) and having to be secured extremely well, since the forecastle is usually at the end of a ship's pitching ===> hence a gun should be secured really well before it crashes down the maindeck lengthwise and possibly out the sterncastle's windows). Much easier to do with a lighter calibre.
Long Nine (from Wikipedia)
One unique naval gun was the long nine. It was a proportionately longer-barrelled 9-pounder. Its typical mounting as a bow or stern chaser, where it was not perpendicular to the keel, allowed room to operate this longer weapon. In a chase situation, the gun's greater range came into play. However, the desire to reduce weight in the ends of the ship and the relative fragility of the bow and stern portions of the hull limited this role to a 9-pounder, rather than one which used a 12 or 24 pound shot.
compare Age of Sail Artillery, Wiki
As for penetrative power - the fact is is that the heavier shot is propelled with more force from the expanding gas (hence has higher momentum projected on basically the same point of impact), yielding high pressures and making penetration or ripping right through a target far more likely (actually roundshot cannonballs could crash right through dozens of people - and did in pitched battles ). Again, momentum should should be considered here.
But my players flinched on a proposed houserule that allowed anyone in line with the initial target to be struck as well, if the first target was killed outright - basically raking the stern with a large gun (12+pounds) would probably allow the roundshot to crash through most of the ship. Yes, that would actually be realistic, aka "raking the stern"
All guns use point blank rules against characters with their first range increment with solid shot (cannonballs) aka, negating armour (yeah big surprise) and have Crit x4 as by Pathfinder.
As a houserule we assume that a cannonball that has penetrated an objects hardness (x4) or destroyed it through outright damage has pierced the object. 6 pounders usually stand no chance, 9 pounders are usually outclassed, 12 pounders have a roughly even chance to pierce and 24 pounders are real ship wreckers.
Which makes battering a ship into cinders possible, but one needs big guns for that. It also makes armouring the hull etc. worthwhile.
On the other hand they are siege engines with corresponding requirements. There is also grapeshot - with a much reduced range, resulting in a line-of-effect of damage (AoE effect with a Reflex DC for half damage), consisting of hurled musket balls (or pebbles at times), in common use for clearing decks or countering troops of boarders.
As for gunpowder : Alchemically it is pretty easy to assemble - and was developed in at least two scientifc speheres mostly independent of eachthe other and can be prepared with some care (requiring a lab - especially one without open flame), but the chinch is the supply of potassium-nitrate and safe grinding for a fine powder, which makes full-scale production difficult (I would assume that Alkenstar has either some decent supplies of Potassium-Nitrate or has the alchemical know-how to synthesize it from other elements.
Most certainly, most pirates do not have the know how. A cruel GM might also want to take a careful look on magazines and storage of gunpowder of renaissance naval vessels.
One might also consider the problems of trimming the vessel with large cannons aboard, and how the enormous recoil and masses are being dealt with (one might take a good look at the sinking of the Vasa on what happens if that 3 ton piece is torn loose (it weighs more than most SUVs).
And besides - a large cannon of 6000pounds is basically 3 tons less cargo that can be hauled around. Two (one on each side) is 6 tons less cargo etc etc.
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My current S&S character is a gunslinger (Siege Gunner) from Inner Sea Combat... you add your gunslinger level to siege weapon and the radius is bigger. Cool ability, and I hope it will pay off (we're just starting the campaign so I'm not sure if I just made a character that's just cool on paper but will never see the siege weapon benefits used... hopefully there's more than one or two fights in the entire campaign)
One idea to limit gunpowder firearms in a sensible way, while allowing it's use is as follows -
Firearms are expensive, and in most kingdoms are considered only legal for nobility to own. This means that places like the River Kingdoms or Galt might have very few firearms (long distance from Alkenstar and prohibitive cost when compared to scorching ray wands)even if they tend not to have the "nobles only" restriction. Cheliax would make certain only nobles would have firearms. Pirates, being outlaws, love firearms and gladly purchase them from Alkenstar or from loot. This may be problematic for ammunition.
Cannons have the same legal issues as siege engines, and kingdoms farther from Alkenstar might have the knowledge of making cannons, they try to severely regulate any weaponsmiths capable of doing so (fear of such people falling to the hands of competing nations, etc.) This makes Cannons available, yet very rare compared such siege engines like catapults and ballista.
Just a few roaming ideas.
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My current S&S character is a gunslinger (Siege Gunner) from Inner Sea Combat... you add your gunslinger level to siege weapon and the radius is bigger. Cool ability, and I hope it will pay off (we're just starting the campaign so I'm not sure if I just made a character that's just cool on paper but will never see the siege weapon benefits used... hopefully there's more than one or two fights in the entire campaign)
I suggest talking with your GM about how ship-to-ship combat will be handled in your game. As written, Skull & Shackles assumes that boarding actions will be the deciding factor in most naval combats. The modules sometimes offer options for skipping immediately from sighting range to boarding range, without firing the guns at all. If you want to use your artillery abilities, find out whether your GM plans to play out the ranged portion of naval battles.
There are a couple of different rule systems out there for naval combat. In my game, we're using one called Fire as She Bears. It offers a variety of different cannon sizes, as opposed to just Small and Large. (It can be hand-waved to represent ballistae and catapults, instead of cannon.) It also provides something for multiple characters to do during the ranged portion of a sea battle (a nice change from the 'GM vs. Captain' focus of the S&S system).