I'm on a boat! And we're all stuck!


Rules Discussion


I made the mistake of having the PCs sailing down a river on a boat, and attacked by some aquatic monsters as they went.

Why was this a mistake? Because it turns out there's nothing about boats in the book. In fact, only the magical swan boat even has a listed speed. Capsizing a boat is a special monster ability and can only be done by a Dragon Turtle or a Sea Serpent; even a substantial Water Elemental or an actual Kraken can't do it! Control Water can have no effect on boats; even if an effect isn't actually stated, an effect that could only impose the Slow condition on fish is presumably going to be too weak to affect any substantial ship.

So, are there any real guidelines for how to do combat where a boat is involved or are things just stuck? What should have been a thematic Siren-style encounter got reduced to daftness.


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That is going to have to be a GM run situation. Basically the answer points to doing whatever it is you feel is thematic, and fits.

Perhaps assign a "capsize" DC on the boat that is just a bit higher relative to the 35 DC that a Sea Serpent has to do, since it has a specialized ability for that.

You will also have to assign a speed to the boat yourself. For control water, it can have any effect you want on the boat. Boats are relatively easy to move about on water compared to a similarly sized object on land after all.

Don't despair, so long as you find a solution that "fits" the situation and is fun to play, you'll do alright. And if you mess up a bit, note that and do better next time.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

There will be an answer to this eventually, I'm sure. Maybe the GMG?


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

There was some mention of vehicle rules being present in the GMG, but we don't know for sure. Sometime next month perhaps?

In the meantime I'm sure you can improvise something for a riverboat or even a sailing ship. There was a (poorly implemented) system in PF1, and there are some slightly better 3pp solutions. Maybe someone will chime in and remind us of their exact names.


These situations are why my players get concerned when I bring in an old rule book for some archaic rules set.

There are many, many printed and home brew rules for aquatic vehicle combat of various types, they're almost all flawed in one way or another. Most have little to nothing to do with the base systems they were printed in.

Your best bet is to just use some google-fu and see which ones can be converted to fit your scenario, or just come up with logical solutions for yourself.

One thing I'd add is that a Dragon Turtle's capsize ability isn't really about capsizing a 16' launch in a river, it's talking about flipping a large ship with a move action that counts as a strike. There's nothing that says a Kraken which is much larger, and stronger can't roll over a ship just because it doesn't have a specialized ability for it, it would just require multiple actions.

Verdant Wheel

Lol woops!

Dark Archive

Hypz, the first episode of Oblivion Oath and the second episode (second season) of Knights of Everflame both feature great river barge encounters. Both also include exceptional circumstances in addition to enemies. :)


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For starters, I'd try figuring out how tough the boat is.

According to the materials rules, wooden structures have a Hardness of 10, and HP/Break Threshold of 40/20.

Since the structure of the boat and the pressure of the water reinforces the hull, we can bump this up to Hardness 12 and 60/30 per 5 foot square of hull. For a larger ship, we can increase this further if necessary.

So an aquatic foe can seek to bring the boat down by breaching the hull. You can then just assign an amount the boat floods each turn. If we assume that a small boat takes five minutes to sink with one reasonable breach, then that's 50 rounds of combat.

We consider a section of hull to have 1 breach when broken, and two breaches when destroyed. Notably, it's reasonably straightforward to repair a broken section of hull, but a destroyed section is going to doom a boat, and threaten a ship.

We need a way to measure the amount of water it takes before the hull goes under. We can call these "sinking Hit Points". For each breach in the hull, a boat loses 1 SHiP each round. So a boat with one breach takes 50 rounds to sink. A boat with two breaches takes 25, and so on. For a full sized ship, we might increase that to 100 or even 150 SHiPs.

Now, a Kraken hits for 4d10+17, or an average of 39. With a hardness of 12, that's 27 damage carrying over from a hit... to a break threshold of 30. I think that seems about fair that a Kraken can threaten to breach a hull with a single impact, guarantee a breach with the second, and guarantee a destroyed section with a third. With a few more rounds of assault, a ship should have its lifespan measured in moments.

A Sea Serpents threatens 3d10+14, or 30 damage. After hardness, that's still punching holes reliably in the ship (and it has the capsize option as well).

If we assume ships should fear Krakens, I'm pretty happy with this.

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