It's a homebrew magitech campaign setting. The tech level for weapons is standard Pathfinder, with firearms rare. Transportation technology is much more advanced, and we have mass production. We also have ironclad warships with screw propulsion biting alchemists fire engines. We do not have cannons in common usage, however. So, how do these ships fight each other, assuming a ship has between four and a dozen full casters of level 3-6, depending on the size of the ship. Crews can range from an 80 hand destroyer escort to a 300 hand battleship. I am convinced the navies of this world can find ways to sinkify each others toys without guns, I just can't figure out what they are. Looking for both magical and nonmagical methods.
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Icebergs work.
It's a homebrew magitech campaign setting. The tech level for weapons is standard Pathfinder, with firearms rare. Transportation technology is much more advanced, and we have mass production. We also have ironclad warships with screw propulsion biting alchemists fire engines. We do not have cannons in common usage, however. So, how do these ships fight each other, assuming a ship has between four and a dozen full casters of level 3-6, depending on the size of the ship. Crews can range from an 80 hand destroyer escort to a 300 hand battleship. Looking for both magical and nonmagical methods.
The same way you'd fight any other armored opponent. Ironclad ships are exactly that; wooden ships with iron armor riveted on to a wood base (and the wood was an integral part of the armor as well, since it provided flexibility and prevented the iron from breaking). Open a gap at the joint between two plates and focus-fire on that area.
This could be as simple as rocks out of a catapult or something more sophisticated like teleporting a rust monster.
Well, a few rust monster would likely due the trick.
Though expensive, admantine tipped ballistae bolts should also do the trick of penetrating the hull.
Find a way to add significantly to their weight. Ships can only carry so much before they sink.
Causing a stinking cloud inside of the ship is sure to get the crew to run outside.
Starting a fire inside the ship.
Swimming underneath the ship and placing some sort of explosive on the bottom of it.
I was going to say catapult + rust monster but I got semi-ninja'd. So disintegrate, adamantine ammo,passwall? there are probably a lot of ways.
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Icebergs work.
I nominate the RMS Titanic for the Ice Water Challenge.
I don't think I like the idea of rust monsters being a common part of naval warfare. I'm not convinced my (hypothetical) players would let me live.
Torpedoes? We can probably pull off short ranged ones with screw propellers, and we have alchemical explosives. Perhaps they could be manufactured with an empty space for the payload, and an alchemist or three could be assigned to the ship. They make bombs, bomb goes in payload compartment, gets launched at enemy. Can load them into ballistae, too.
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I don't think I like the idea of rust monsters being a common part of naval warfare. I'm not convinced my (hypothetical) players would let me live.
Shrug. Oil of rusting grasp, then. Or force-feed potions of that spell to hamsters and launch them at opposing ships.
Starting a fire inside the ship.
That's a good idea. We do rely on alchemist's fire as a method of propulsion...
Ships ramming each other.
Ram, then board?
I wonder if the proliferation of engines makes boarding actions more or less likely here.
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Raaammmmming Speeeeeed!
Here's a question. Without common cannon, why clad ships at all? (I guess fire and lightning would be a problem for them.)
Do you need to sink them? What about ploys to foul the propellers leaving them dead in the water? Does the cladding extend well below waterline? Is there a vulnerable wood underbelly? Especially fast ships might sacrifice bottom protection.
What about boarding? Why sink them if you can capture them instead?
Heat metal might be good. Chill metal coupled with a sharp impact could have catastrophic consequences if you're willing to consider brittle steel.
Just some ideas.
Invisible wizard flies over to ship, lands on it, triggers a Feather Token - Anchor. Ship comes to a sudden halt.
Invisible wizard flies up a couple of hundred feet and unfurls his Treasure Stitched cloth, containing a 9x9x9 piece of granite.
Massive bomb weighing many, many tons crashes down onto the now stationary ship, blasting it's way through the decks, etc, breaks the back of the ship and down she goes.
Cheap, effective and only needs a 5th level wizard type (who has been equipped appropriately) to deliver the bomb.
Even the decks of WW2 battleships were vulnerable to plunging fire...
Invisible wizard flies over to ship, lands on it, triggers a Feather Token - Anchor. Ship comes to a sudden halt.
Invisible wizard flies up a couple of hundred feet and unfurls his Treasure Stitched cloth, containing a 9x9x9 piece of granite.
Massive bomb weighing many, many tons crashes down onto the now stationary ship, blasting it's way through the decks, etc, breaks the back of the ship and down she goes.
Cheap, effective and only needs a 5th level wizard type (who has been equipped appropriately) to deliver the bomb.
Even the decks of WW2 battleships were vulnerable to plunging fire...
Oh, dear. The spellcasters have a way to overpower anything, don't they?
Ships ramming each other.Ram, then board?
I wonder if the proliferation of engines makes boarding actions more or less likely here.
depends on the engine, but could make it MORE likely, if you can equip smaller boats with equal sized engines, you can have bots made specifically to catch up to and board larger ships.
Also keep in mind that ships are still going to be targeting the enemy ship's mode of acceleration. If it has sails, you blast the sails, if it has an engine, blast at the engine, if the engine is too deep in the ship, you target the rotor, since that must be exposed for the ship to use it.
Ramming ships is a time honored tradition in naval warfare.
Ramming, yes. Targeting the screws? Those are beneath the waterline.
adamantine drill below decks and cloudkill.
Ramming, yes. Targeting the screws? Those are beneath the waterline.
Ramming ships is a time honored tradition in naval warfare.
Not a problem for magical effects.
Attacks from Land: Characters swimming, floating, or treading water on the surface, or wading in water at least chest deep, have improved cover (+8 bonus to AC, +4 bonus on Reflex saves) from opponents on land. Land-bound opponents who have freedom of movement effects ignore this cover when making melee attacks against targets in the water. A completely submerged creature has total cover against opponents on land unless those opponents have freedom of movement effects. Magical effects are unaffected except for those that require attack rolls (which are treated like any other effects) and fire effects.
So a simple wand of magic missile can disable the screws in relatively short order.
Here's a question. Without common cannon, why clad ships at all? (I guess fire and lightning would be a problem for them.)
Because we have the industry to do it easily, and it's a significant boost in armor strength. If ballistae have trouble with wooden hulls, they really have trouble with metal hulls.
Do you need to sink them? What about ploys to foul the propellers leaving them dead in the water? Does the cladding extend well below waterline? Is there a vulnerable wood underbelly? Especially fast ships might sacrifice bottom protection.
What about boarding? Why sink them if you can capture them instead?
All of this is situational. I'm considering that boarding might be extremely common as opposed to sinking a ship with direct fire.
So a simple wand of magic missile can disable the screws in relatively short order.
F*&*ing wizards.
So a simple wand of magic missile can disable the screws in relatively short order.F!#!ing Wizards.
Magic Missle can't deal damage to objects unless it's been changed recently.
Ramming, yes. Targeting the screws? Those are beneath the waterline.even so, unless they are under the center of the ship, they can still get hit. Just like a rudder can.
Of course. You just can't easily target them directly.
So a simple wand of magic missile can disable the screws in relatively short order.
Magic missile can't target objects, only creatures. The screws are fine.
But ramming can still target the screws even if they are below the waterline. The point of ramming was to put a hole in your enemy below the waterline.
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There was a well building spell in 3.5 that was called Sweet Water. It drilled a hole that was ten feet in diameter and up to one hundred feet down, or until the spell hit fresh water. We were sailing in Forgotten Realms on a fresh water sea.
Our tall ship (wooden, with sails) was being chased by an Iron Clad War Ship from Thay. My character had a grudge against Thay because of the whole slavery thing.
So I cast Sweet Water on the Iron Clad. Whoosh! I sunk their battle ship and shocked the heck out of my GM. :)
Hmm
Druids apparently have a spell, Transmute Metal to Wood. It's high level. But it's also quite literally "Eff your metal ship".
Iron ship in water?Well it might not sink it but hitting it with a plain old lighting bolt or
any other electric might make the crew unhappy
And the spell control water and control weather could also make the life on an Ironclad ship interesting. For those who dont know early Ironclad ships rode low in the water and where very easy to swamp.
And here I was just going to suggest underwater friends and an adamantine drill. Few holes in the bottom and it'll go down.
Rust monster sharks.
Or deeper darkness green slime vials, preferrably below water level.
Any sort of water plants plus entangle wouldn't be good for the propellers. A strong steel net would also be bad. Fowl the propellers.
Alchemical tanglefoot bags could make a mess of the deck.
If the alchemical fire is anyplace it could be seen then spark, flaming sphere or small fire elementals could be a real problem.
Strafing runs by trained flying animals with the bombard trick would make things exciting.
Anything that could capsize the ship.
Invisibility+Fly.
Slingshot a Boat feather token through one of the portholes or cannon doors into the lower hold.
Yo dawg, I heard you like boats...
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Pick up a history book on the naval aspects of the American Civil War (and the broader naval world as well). It was a time of change, from Wooden Ships & Iron Men to Ironclads. You had wooden hull ships, some steam powered and some sail powered, you had converted wooden hull ships with armor plating bolted on, you had true ironclads, and the whole lot of them were running about fighting one another.
A classic battle was the one between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia, basically a draw after 4 hours of pummeling one another with some of the most advanced cannon of the time. Although both survived the battle, if I recall correctly, the CSS Virginia was scuttled to prevent capture when the port she was in was overrun by Union troops, and the USS Monitor suffered the sad fate of slipping beneath the waves while transiting the open ocean.
Ramming was very much a part of combat in that era. Look up the "Spar Torpedo". Ramming and boarding was NOT really a big tactic of the time. You rammed to sink, not board. Typical ironclads had relatively small crews. Ram and board is more a tactic of the ancient galleys.
If you can get a copy, there's an old game from around 1980 which I used to play called "The Ironclads". Great game - I think I still have my copy in storage.
With the tech guide out you could probably build a shark with a laser on it's head. However that's too mad scientisty for most pc's. The easiest way would be with another ironclad ship with an adamantine ram. Now then if you just want to stop the ship control water will basically stop it from moving for a bit while you can use disable magic on the alchemical engines.
With creatures I'm sure you could figure a way to get a treant out to sea as they have the unique ability of double damage against objects if they get a full round action to just swing with their slam attacks.
A freezing orb spell might freeze the alchemical engines if they aren't meant to deal with the water instantly freezing, or with elemental admixture turn it into acid and melt the engine and a good chunk of ship. Now that I think about it why not just use a lot of acidic weaponry to try and melt the iron off the ship?
Trying to avoid magic necessarily since one would think in a world of magic, defences there against are commonplace;
Ballista? Catapults? Rams of even tougher metals? To take off an idea mentioned above; boarding. Iron doesn't exactly make a boat faster, even in light of engines.
That, and if this is asked in lieu of a campaign; boarding is potentially the most fun.
I hope my Skulls and Shackles players never find this thread....So that i may use them all against them, although they have already done the feather token and ram.
I do love infiltration missions.
Question. Do you need to sink or disable?
If that engine runs on heat / fire, I wonder how nasty throwing a vial of humble Brown Mold would be? I'd imagine 'Rapid and exponential growth' may feature prominently.
The GM has 2 choice on how to rule it at that point.... Either
a) The mold rapidly makes enough cold to maybe take over the engine room, kill the engine, but not much else.. Engine goes out and then proceeds to chill it completely. You now need to clear the mold (with cold AoE) hopefully without losing your engineering crew that was looking after the engine at the time. Then you need to re-start the engine, and re-heat a boiler before your moving again. That's going to be an interesting prospect if you weren't 100% thorough in your cleaning of the mold.
b) The engine maintains enough heat for there to now be a serious mold problem on the whole ship.
Depending on how your GM runs 'Fire bought within 5 feet' and if it needs to be actual fire or just heat / warmth.... dropping a Fire Trap on the door before leaving. I shudder to think about what Heat Metal might do in those conditions.
Or (alternately), if they are iron clad, not completely iron, there's always Warp Wood.
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Uncontrolled fire is still one of the most dangerous events for even modern mostly steel ships.
In WWII most gunfire destroyed ships were actually lost when the gunfire started fires that the crew could no longer control. It took something special or a really big explosion to sink a ship before it could burn.
An immovable rod place in the correct location would be amusing.
Ironclad's would be much more vulnerable to fire than modern ships.
Summoned monsters messing with the propulsion, drilling holes, or attaching sea anchors to the underside of the ship would be a good idea.
Bags of alchemical weapons.
Ramming would always do significant damage. Just takes a harder impact than plain wood. Adamantine tip on the ramming prow.
Spells that come quickly to mind are:
Fireball, flame arrow, or Scortching Ray (duh)
Shatter damages objects, so pick a weak point (keel or tiller) to keep hitting
Grease the controls
Pyrotechnics (especiailly if someone can infiltrate to the engine)
Returning Weapon on your adamantine ballista bolts
Flaming Sphere rolling around on the deck should start fires.
Confusion on crew
Magic Siege Engine (duh)
True Strike, Gravity Bow, Ricochet Shot, Reloading Hands, and Abundant Ammunition (decide if you rule that it can work on siege engines)
Dispel Magic on the engine
Water Walk on marines to board enemy ship
Tar Ball
Wood Warp
Quench on engine
Stinking Cloud (or even Obscuring Mist) through port holes to make conditions inside unworkable
Shrink Item on a hugantic adamantine returning ballista bolt
Edit: Can't believe I forgot Heat/Chill Metal
What do they have? High DR?
Because if that's the case, any magic damage, spells or spell-likes, or energy attacks bypass that entirely.
Objects generally don't have DR. They have hardness. Energy spells do half damage against objects* and then you subtract the hardness from that halved damage.
*Unless your GM decides it's particularly effective.
Iron has hardness 10. So, you need to do more than 20 damage with an energy spell to do even a single point of damage.
Boarding and capturing was only typical back when the ranged attacks were so inaccurate or did so little damage that sinking a ship took too long. Magic can augment the hit rate or damage of traditional weapons or attack directly. So I doubt you will encounter being unable to sink ships very often.
Unless of course, you introduce a bunch of economical protective magics for the ships. Then it may become easier to board than sink.
When sinking a ship became easier, it was definitely the more economical option. A ship with an extra 400 mouths to feed and house has additional problems. A smaller ship (smaller crew) with dangerous weapons is much cheaper to build and operate.
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want to be creatively non magical? carry a bunch of empty barrels and have a water pump, fill them with see water as you launch them with your catapult to swamp the enemy ship.
Water on the deck is really not much of a problem. It will just run out the scuppers (an opening cut through the bulwarks of a ship so that water falling on deck may flow overboard). So it wouldn't really swamp anything unless you first plug the scuppers or can get the barrels below decks.