Hey all,
Long time PF1e GM, first time PF2e GM. I've only GM'ed 1 one-shot PF2e campaign, but I've played as a PC in a couple of PF2e campaigns now. Anywho, I'm about to do a Pirate-themed, very airship-y homebrew long-term campaign (hoping for 6-12 months or greater), and I'm wondering about all the rules that I need to know about doing ship-to-ship combat. So I've looked up the rules on weather and adverse conditions, as well as uneven surfaces, as well as difficult terrain vs. greater difficult terrain.
I'm hoping that you all can give me some advice about how to use these rules effectively, like when a cannon hits their ship, do they make Balance checks? And if it's raining are there additional modifiers/penalties? Please crash course me on this, any and all advice is welcome :)
You are going into rules-light free-form territory.
The rules we have that I would recommend are: Vehicles, and Victory Point skill challenges generally as well as a specific type of Victory Point system, Chases.
So if I was running this, I might list some basic vehicle stats for the airships such as AC and save bonus/DC.
Airship combat would be a VP skill challenge. PCs could use their action on their turn to make attack rolls against an enemy ship - use an attack bonus of their choice and one of the ship's weapons. Depending on the weapon, it may even be a weapon that uses spell attack roll. Success gains 1 point, crit gains 2 points. Failure and crit failure neither gain or lose points. One player character can also actively pilot the ship with a piloting check to avoid enemy fire. Success means that one enemy's shot that round doesn't land and the enemy team doesn't gain a point for it. Similarly, the ship might have active defenses that could be manned by the PCs to negate hits to their ship. As with VP systems, the enemy team auto-progresses rather than rolling. And it is based on how many PCs there are. For 4 PCs I would have the enemy team gain 2 points (two hits with their ship's weapons) each round unless the PCs negate them. Then set a number of rounds that combat happens and/or a threshold or two of points that need to be met and the consequences for meeting them. For example, I could have combat last for 4 rounds an if no airship has gained 8 attack points on the other ship, then the two ships withdraw in a draw. Once one ship takes 8 points of hits, then it is disabled and can be boarded/captured/looted. If a ship takes 6 points, that airship can decide to flee and the scene can transition into a chase scene.
Tweak as you see fit.
A lot of the Skull & Shackles AP pirate rules could be translated to PF2 with minor effort. It might not address such complicated concepts as you're researching though. Most pirate fights are one-ship vs. one-ship which plays out kinda like standard melee of key characters w/ unimportant crew blurred into the background (though the AP has lots of party exploration too for standard play). There's also a secondary mini-game when dealing with fleets, reputation, and collecting booty, ya' know pirate-genre tropes. The rules favor those avenues much more than how many veteran players might handle it w/ PC guerilla tactics taking out fleets single-handedly w/ crew-killing magic & underwater sabotage at practically zero risk. So at least you might find a way there to address meta-tactics which might spoil the spirit of the campaign, though getting players on board for genre-appropriate play would likely work best.
As Finoan said, it's a bit rules-light in PF2, which also means there aren't rules to break so you can tune the effects to suit the danger & drama you want for any particular fight scenes. The airship angle might prove a little rough as pushing might become an insta-kill tactic. PCs might lean into flying so much they trivialize the obstacles NPCs might still be dealing with.
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Skull and Shackles AP has a conversion to 2e out there.
I'm also running a Pirate / Nautical themed campaign staring in a couple months, so I've been looking for resources as well.
I recommend:
1. Pathfinder campaign setting: Isle of the Shackles
2. Pathfinder Player Companion: Pirates of the inner sea
3. Skull and Shackles AP - (contains ship to ship combat rules)
Grab the conversion, they do a pretty good job of this as well.
4. Smoke and Sail: a Pathfinder 2e Naval Warfare Sourcebook
I also recommend checking out the AP, Souls for Smugglers Shiv for a fun shipwreck isle adventure. There is also a PF2e conversion out there.
If you're looking for third party content.
Frog God games has some cool stuff:
1. Free Booters Guide
2. Any Razor Coast adventures.