Fleet battles: Are they fun? Has any one used them?

[Mathius]

I am running SnS and fast approaching the fleet combat sections. I am posting here because this topic has not got much play in the AP threads.

Has any one used these rules before? If so do they work? Are they fun?

How do you explain fleets clashing in engagements that might last as long as any hour when there are mid to high level PCs on board?

My PCs would be far better served simply destroying the ships personally instead of with a fleet.

My monk can easily hole the bottom of boat, climb aboard and kill the crew. No 3rd level warrior is going to stand in his way.

The witch has several spells will simply kill the whole crew.

The cleric can bring in outsiders who go through crew like a hot knife through butter.

Control weather is a thing and i would guess that hurricane would make short work of the fleet as well.

Is there way to make the fleet battle itself mean something more then a backdrop for high level PCs to fight over?

[Dave Justus]

We basically skipped the fleet battle when our group played it, just had it be narrative style and moved on to fighting the focus enemies. However, there are some reasons that the fleets would still matter.

The first is the speed of ships and the dispersal between them. Ships move at a base of 90, and are probably each at least a few hundred feet between them. Even a high level PC could well get separated from combat if they go after one ship, letting all the others get through. 10 ships could easily have a mile distance between the farthest ones, while still being in a fleet formation. I don't recall the exact numbers in the AP, but I seem to recall it was a lot of ships. Being spread out over 10s of miles is not unlikely.

Secondly, the other side has powerful characters too. If your party splits up to go offensive against individual ships you risk the enemy high powered units defeating you in detail. If the whole group goes after one ship at a time, they are unlikely to be able to deal with many, and in either case, if you go offensive against their fleet you can't be there to defend yours against the same tactics.

I would imagine that in a case like this, effective high level characters would focus on being a reserve force, hoping that the enemy powerhouses show themselves in a vulnerable position, so they can take them out, which means if both sides are smart, you have pretty much a stalemate while the main battle is decided until one side or the other gets desperate.

[Drakir2010]

Dave Justus does a good job of justifying the necessity of fleet battles. I won't go into detail because I would likely just repeat him.

My group did run the fleet battles as written, and the summary we had of the need for them was "meh".

The morale element made battles tremendously swingy. My group was pretty harshly trounced in the opening round of the Battle of Abendego, and rightly so (50 ships meant for combat against a ragtag pack of about 35 things we could scrounge together? Even giving tremendous advantages for "home water", they still didn't stand much chance). Besmara's Herald was summoned when a tremendously loved NPC sacrificed himself to earn her aid and try to give them a fighting chance. I gave the Herald the same fleet capabilities as one of their lost squadrons, and if I hadn't claimed it had unbeatable morale, it would have immediately turned around and gone home on the next round. Then the dice spontaneously turned around, and the Chelish fleet pretty much disintegrated. I didn't keep an accurate count, but I'm pretty sure that my group actually took out three squadrons. The other six routed.

On top of that, there's a not-inconsiderable amount of bookkeeping involved, as each squadron has independent morale, loss count, and hits. Hits taken alter squadron stats, so you have to keep that in mind too. Also, some of the Lords of Hell have unfortunately similar names. I spent far too long trying to figure out if it was Mammon or Moloch that had routed.

Now what I have said is all about the Battle of Abendego, which we did two weeks ago so it is fresh in my mind. The Battle of Empty Eyes didn't have quite the swing when it ran, nor did the bookkeeping make me go cross-eyed. But do my players remember it as particularly exciting? I don't think so.

If I were to do it again, I would take a lesson from the way the Free Captain's Regatta was run as a game element. Hmm... Thinking as I type here... The Chelish invasion of the Shackles is going to fail, and the PCs will get their chance to face Druvalia toe-to-toe on the bridge of Abrogail's Fury. They don't need to know that... But exactly how dramatic/pyrrhic the victory is should depend on how well prepared the PCs and their allies are, as determined by a point-based system.

Points for:
- Number of squadrons/ships recruited
- Particular NPC allies (My PCs had worked really hard to get in good with the Master of Gales. He thrived at the edge of the Eye of Abendego)
- Access to particular spells/magic items
- Admiral/Commodores' charisma, leadership, profession (sailor)
- Research into Druvalia, Cheliax, the western navy
- Having defeated the more frivilous motions during the Pirates Council in the previous module
- Give those PCs listed in the OP as being capable of taking out Chelish ships "single-handedly" the chance to actually do so, running two or three assaults on the lead ship of individual squadrons, awarding points based on how decisive the victory is. I really like this idea, because the above examples (witch spells, cleric summons, etc) all use relatively precious higher-level abilities. Is it worth casting Cloudkill to kill the crew of Mammon's Spear? Or should I hold on to that 5th level spell for when we board Abrogail's Fury?

Then a sliding scale for victory:
0 points - The PCs' ship is the only one left. Maybe a single ally commodore routed and can be rejoined later, but the majority of the PCs' support in the Shackles are dead. The defenders on Abrogail's Fury get a morale bonus on all the good stuff in the final combat.
Half points - A major NPC sacrifice turns the tide of battle at the critical moment (I admit, I love this trope when conducting epic confrontations). That NPC is dead, but victory is ours! Proceed to capturing Abrogail's Fury.
Maximum points - A decisive victory! The armada breaks like surf on the rock that is the people of the Shackles. Now, the admiral herself must die! The PCs get the morale bonus in this case.

I think that would allow the plot to continue, the PCs to remain relevant, and avoid the unfortunate headaches that the fleet battle system seems to cause.

[Mathius]

Thanks for both of your responses. I really like the idea of running it like the regatta or the party. That makes all the recruiting still important but it can be made up for if the PCs play ship smash in the final battle.

Going to have to read through and find out what would be max points and do a break down but that is far better then just hand waving the whole thing.

[Russell Akred]

I have yet to run the Fleet Battles but still see issues. If each of four squadrons of six ships has a fifty fifty chance to successfully attack each round and concentrates on one squadron at a time then it would do 2d6 + 2d4 + 12 - 2 damage. A like squadron targeted with this kind of attack would take 22 point of damage on average. This would wipe out a squadron of sailing ships and nearly destroy a squadron of warships or galleys. If it was the Flagship's squadron (why wouldn't it) then the Flagship is gone or left alone and significantly damaged and ready to bolt. Seems there is a strong chance of routing in the first round or both fleets losing their Flagships.

[NobodysHome]

Resurrecting this because we just played out our first fleet battle last Sunday. Overall, they got a "thumbs down without major rework" from our players.

As usual, taking away player agency, especially when dealing with PCs who can cast battle-altering spells such as Blade Barrier, Control Water, and Control Weather makes the PCs feel... less-than-special. As Dave Justus pointed out, both sides are likely to have high-level casters, but as players, we'd have had a lot more fun actually casting spells and countermeasures at each other than a general, "Yeah, you're entirely ineffective" approach. As a 12th-level Life Oracle, my choices were "1 point of DR for 1 fleet" (irrelevant), "Heal 1d6 on one fleet" (nearly irrelevant, since both sides focused fire to sink entire fleets), or "blast away" (give 1 extra point of damage to a roll that was already 1d6+8 or so). I chose "Loyalty Officer", and read below to see how well THAT worked...

The morale rules don't work as-written. We had 5 of 9 fleets run away from the battle, 3 of which hadn't even been shot at yet. You need to at least modify the rules to, "You don't have to make morale checks until someone actually shoots at you."
And losing more than half the fleets to morale problems made it seem more like a disorganized mess than a "fleet battle". (Two of the fleets that didn't run only stayed because the admiral rolled low enough on the 1d4 not to lose them.)

As I've seen stated elsewhere, the damage-to-hit-points ratio is so high that the battles are unbelievably short. We had roughly 40 total ships. In three rounds 39 of those 40 ships had either run away or sunk. As one player put it, "We did more to rid the Shackles of piracy in 3 rounds than most Cheliaxian Admirals do in their lifetime!"

So we did it once, and not a single player nor the GM wants to do it again. And we've encountered pretty much the same sort of thing in all of the APs that implement such things: The army rules in Wrath of the Righteous were one-and-done. The caravan rules in Jade Regent didn't even get attempted.

So our expanded group of 3 GMs and 12 players have universally discarded all the "group battle" rulesets as "not fun for us".

YMMV.