Background:
I'm a GM running a pirate campaign for players, and said players have gotten to the point where they have their own small fleet of ships that they're actively using for purposes of piracy.
The first few times that the players were able to run down merchant ships were great fun for everyone, but past that it's devolved into a rather monotonous and repetitive series of events, since most merchant ships can't put up a fight against them, and I can't have all merchant ships be traps, tricks, or idiots. As a result, I'd like to only resort to ship combat when the players are in a fight with actual value, i.e., something that furthers the story, or a fight that is actually a credible threat, rather than just running down another merchant, but I'm at a loss as to how to properly account for this in the abstract.
Question:
Does anyone know of any rules for piracy and plunder that allow players to simply make weekly rolls to determine how much plunder they obtain?
Caveats:
Ideally, I'd love to somehow use the player's profession sailing checks, but also their levels and the levels of the crew to properly represent their ability to locate, chase down, and either kill or intimidate crew into giving them their valuables. Any thoughts?
Try the Downtime rules from Ultimate Campaign.
Specifically Organizations.
You can also use Militia rules from Pathfinder Chronicles: Lands of Conflict. They were written for landlubbers, but it seems they can be easily adjusted.
You can also declare that routine pirating provides just enough income for the crew to survive, and play out only special encounters for the extra loot that PCs can keep for themselves or distribute among the crew to keep them happy and loyal. Meaning, the more they keep for themselves, the higher the risk of an uprising.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One could use Profession: Pirate and simply roll using downtime rules like everything else. The results won't garner the riches you're expecting though.
Unfortunately, the downtime rules are very similar to the profession rules, and, as Brother Fen stated, don't garner the riches necessary to keep a crew of a hundred pirates happy.
On the other vein of thought, me simply ruling that things work out either gives the players no way to improve their fleet (if I rule they make the bare minimum) or gives them no incentive to optimize their pirating franchise (if I give them a lot).
@Adjoint I scanned through the militia rules but didn't see anything about generating funds. If you're familiar enough with the text, can you give me a page number of heading?
I don't have the book, but apparently there are rules for Plunder in Skull & Shackles AP #55.
We're actually using those rules, but in that book plunder points are stated as being given out by the GM essentially when they're needed, rather than a roll-based system that helps determine if the PCs are successful in their pirating attempts.
I'd look at modifying the buildings and organizations rules from ult campaign to apply to ships and crew. So upgrading either one will increase the income potential for "off camera" pillaging, and you use the existing rules for the interesting events.
Or you could look at the kingdom rules and modify them to represent a fleet, with a flagship instead of capital city and each other vessel as a settlement?
I'm curious to find an answer for this now. I'm going to dig into the Pirate Campaign Compendium when I get home to see if there's anything in it.
One possible homebrew idea would be to use building rules as suggested above for the ship. You could supplement this by rolling a group Profession: Pirate result. Perhaps figure out the number of crew and use that to multiply the Profession result.
I'm not a huge personal fan of a lot of how ultimate campaign does Mass stuff, and after looking through a number of companion books, that does seem to be the method of the moment. Brother Fen, if you reveal anything interesting in that compendium you mentioned, I'd be interested in hearing it, otherwise, I've started just making it myself. More time consuming, but I suppose in the end it'll have all the things I want. I'm honestly just really surprised there isn't already an effective system around.
Thanks, everyone. :)
Dotting for interest. If you end up coming up with your own system, Brogue, I'd be interested in having a look. :V
I think you should start by asking some basic questions that will have to be personalized for your group.
1) What do your players (and you) want the system to do? (just simplify things, have tangible mechanical benefits, supply narrative points of interest to the story are just some possibilities.)
2) How much toleration do you as a group have for bookkeeping? Tracking the profits and expenses of multiple ships could be quite intensive. Some groups find these numbers a fun part of the game, others just a drag.
3) How concerned are you about keeping this system from unbalancing other aspects of the game? If, for example, it generates a lot of wealth that ends up as the PCs personal accounts it could change the traditional balance of PCs vs. Monsters pretty significantly.
These things are going to vary a lot from group to group, and any system that works for one might be horrible for another.
For me personally, I would recommend simplicity. Make an agreement with your players that other than the notable, cinematic encounters that will be rolled out piracy plunder won't be translatable to the characters wealth but you will give them feedback on how their fleet is doing (maybe using a die roll to add a luck component) and they can in turn tell you how they are investing things in ways that are flavorful but not mechanically changing the PCs abilities (new/better ships, pirate bases, fame, greater profit for the crew are possible examples.)
Generally agreed, Dave. As mentioned, I don't have a problem creating my own system; I was just hoping there was a good one already in existence so I could save the time. I was really expecting there to be a decent system already made.
Looking through the Pirate Compendium, I see that it expands on Plunder rules a bit. Plunder is still gained through in-game actions rather than a downtime activity, so encounters such as raiding ships and the like are supposed to be part of the greater adventure rather than something happening off-screen.
It looks like your best options are to go with the Profession: Pirate option to keep it simple if you truly want downtime pirating. Just multiply the results by the number of pirates involved. The numbers will be small, but perhaps that means their takes have been small as well for the past week. Keep your major pillaging on-screen and in-game and use the plunder rules to acquire larger booty.
If you want a variety of activities represented during downtime, the suggestion to use Militia rules is a good one. I've been running Militia rules for my Ironfang Invasion campaign. There are teams within the militia that can use their weekly activity to generate funds, but the result is pretty much the same as the individual Profession: Pirate suggestion as I stated earlier, which brings us back to the top.
|
Assuming 100 pirates have a +9 in Profession (Pirate) and they all take ten, they'd earn a collective 950 gp per week. Add another hunderd if you've equiped them with a masterwork ship and masterwork cutlasses. I'm not sure if that's a normal amount for Pathfinder, but Pathfinder isn't known for representing an economic system that well.
Now this may or may not include the cost of ship maintenance, food and rum depending on wether or not you like to play Accounting and Bookkeeping. You might want to say the 950 gp is what's left after expenses.
Profession is very much an abstract skill when it comes to making money. If it doesn't work for you, you should find something else that does.
As for your problem with keeping the game from becoming boring, that depends on how you run your game. If your players are just looting every ship they come across and that's it, I'd be inclined to believe that that would be a very dull game. If you alternate raiding with gathering information on which ships carry the most loot, storms, a siren's call, privateers that are actively taking on those dreaded pirates that are raiding all those ships, mutiny and stuff like that, than it doesn't sound like the occasional raiding should be that boring.
950gp is roughly equal to 1 Plunder point worth 1000gp. Sounds pretty good to me.