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Hi all, first time poster!
I'm currently running a personally-converted game of Skull and Shackles in 2nd edition, and I was unsatisfied with the ship combat rules I've found so far out in the internet. As a result, I've written an 80+ page document that details a rules system that takes some stuff from starfinder (hex map and officers) but tweaks them to exist within the general action economy of pf2e. A not insignificant portion of the doc is also dedicated to a ship level progression system, which allows for player's ships to gain ship class levels and acquire feats for better customization.
I guess this is kind of an ad to let folks know that this is something I'm working on, and plan to publish once I have some questions answered by the licensing team and format it into a nice looking pdf.
I'd appreciate any advice folks have for publishing homebrew content, or tips on working out how to make sure things are balanced. Thanks~
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It is good that you are going with the starfinder style hex map - ship combat just doesn't work at the regular scale of pathfinder.
Having played out the starfinder ship combat a fair bit, here are some things to consider when converting it;
1. The starfinder ship combat system makes a lot more sense to players (and is a lot more fun) once you realize that it is essentially star trek. Any way you can encourage players/gms to run it that way in the text is a really good idea (starfinder doesn't do that great a job at explaining that, it took me being familiar with star trek style bridge operations to get that).
2. Starfinder doesn't (at least last I played) support having characters do encounter mode style/scale stuff during ship combat, which is one of the most common complaints about starfinder ship combat I have heard from players - in age of sail ship combat, I think it is doubly important that there is some mechanism to handle that stuff, as you are not separated from the other ships by a void and bulkheads.
3. On the above point, really keep it simple. Don't let nitty gritty encounter mode effects get too granular on the hex ship combat mode. I think the best way to run people wanting to use their spells or other effects on the other ship is to assume that any spell or attack with a certain range can reach a ship in an adjacent hex (ships not in adjacent hexes are too far away/moving too fast relative to your ship to hit with such things) and have the ships crews (the grunts who the officers order around) each be represented like a troop - just a shared HP pool with thresholds that reduce their size, and some kind of effect on the ships ability to function at each threshold. It can be pretty abstracted, with the crew HP pool also representing any small stuff the players might damage with spells or bombs or whatever that reduces the efficiency of the ship. To keep it balanced, I would say that any officer/PC who wants to interact with an adjacent ship in this way does this instead of doing their officer thing, and just gets to do one activity, because they have to move out of the position where they do their officer role and focus on casting their spell or throwing their bomb or whatever for that turn. Look at the troop defenses rules for how stuff like sleep or mind control spells would affect crews.
4. Boarding actions should require the ships to "dock" and switch to encounter mode, with the battlemap being the two ships alongside each other. Running both modes at once would create too many weird interactions and be generally confusing. If there are other ships out there that want to fire at the boarding action or whatever, just abstract it as an area hazard.
Oh, if you haven't already - get the pathfinder compatibility license - it automatically gets approved, and you get the pathfinder icons font which has all of the PF2 action icons.
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It is good that you are going with the starfinder style hex map - ship combat just doesn't work at the regular scale of pathfinder.
Having played out the starfinder ship combat a fair bit, here are some things to consider when converting it;
1. The starfinder ship combat system makes a lot more sense to players (and is a lot more fun) once you realize that it is essentially star trek. Any way you can encourage players/gms to run it that way in the text is a really good idea (starfinder doesn't do that great a job at explaining that, it took me being familiar with star trek style bridge operations to get that).
2. Starfinder doesn't (at least last I played) support having characters do encounter mode style/scale stuff during ship combat, which is one of the most common complaints about starfinder ship combat I have heard from players - in age of sail ship combat, I think it is doubly important that there is some mechanism to handle that stuff, as you are not separated from the other ships by a void and bulkheads.
3. On the above point, really keep it simple. Don't let nitty gritty encounter mode effects get too granular on the hex ship combat mode. I think the best way to run people wanting to use their spells or other effects on the other ship is to assume that any spell or attack with a certain range can reach a ship in an adjacent hex (ships not in adjacent hexes are too far away/moving too fast relative to your ship to hit with such things) and have the ships crews (the grunts who the officers order around) each be represented like a troop - just a shared HP pool with thresholds that reduce their size, and some kind of effect on the ships ability to function at each threshold. It can be pretty abstracted, with the crew HP pool also representing any small stuff the players might damage with spells or bombs or whatever that reduces the efficiency of the ship. To keep it balanced, I would say that any officer/PC who wants to interact with an adjacent ship in this way does this instead of doing...
Thank you for the reply! I don't know why I didn't see this before, but this is mostly how I have things. It just takes a lot of text to have it explained properly, I think, and to cover for strange ability interactions. Plus all of the ship level up customization. At this point I am waiting for the compatibility license to update, which should hopefully happen soon!
Pathfinder Infinite would be a good option to post there but I personally wouldn't be opposed if you'd wish to post a link on these forums. ;)
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I've looked at Pathfinder Infinite and I don't like only receiving 50% of the value for each pdf sold. There is a lot of work I put into this, and nothing I have made so far is Golarion-exclusive. The compatibility license will let me sell it on DriveThru or Itch.io and get a larger portion of each sale. I'll definitely advertise this wherever I can once its done, and you can follow me on Twitter @TravlrAutmTales to see snippets of my progress whenever I remember to post.
I also have additional content planned, like more ship class options and customizations, and it would fulfill a dream of mine to make this my full-time gig. Losing half of my earnings to paizo doesn't feel like it fits that.
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Ah, so a 3rd party PF sorta thing then; you might want to see if you can get coverage at the Paizo store [mebbe even D20PFSRD store too] as a prospective 3pp company then- you just gotta keep it all generic without any formal place/person/deity naming then with the OGL. :)
PS. Best wishes to you on all that; always good to have more 3pp stuff out there for the various PF/SF iterations. ;)
Wish I had some good advice for self publishing.
However, I am interested in your product. I ran S&Shackles some time ago, was active in the forums, homebrewing the ship stats, battles and the sort. Most of my campaigns are maritime (currently running one that ties in to 10 years down the line from the S&Ss we did).
Similarly, I'm happy to help where I can if you'd like some reviewing/testing of something.
Best of luck.
ps. sent you a pm
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wish I had some good advice for self publishing.
However, I am interested in your product. I ran S&Shackles some time ago, was active in the forums, homebrewing the ship stats, battles and the sort. Most of my campaigns are maritime (currently running one that ties in to 10 years down the line from the S&Ss we did).
Similarly, I'm happy to help where I can if you'd like some reviewing/testing of something.
Best of luck.ps. sent you a pm
Thank you for the reply! I've fallen off on checking these forums, so I'm relieved to see that I haven't been too late in my response.
At this point, I think the text is complete for the basics, and I am assembling the doc using Affinity Publisher. It won't have any art (until I can commission some), but I hope to put it out for sale in January. I'll definitely reply here and make a new post as well to announce.
Definitely interested. Shoot me a DM when you are ready for your first sale!
It is live now at https://travelerautumntales.itch.io/thundering-seas