D&D 4E Nautical Help - OG Myth-Weavers

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D&D 4E Nautical Help

   
D&D 4E Nautical Help

I'm working on setting up a piracy campaign for 4th Edition D&D. Unfortunately, I'm finding it somewhat difficult to find or produce any good ship maps. I'm mostly just looking for them for ship-to-ship combat and encounters on the boats. I suppose ship-to-ship could be done mostly through description or skill challenges, but I would still need something for if their boat is invaded or if they invade other boats. Any suggestions for this problem and any other aspects of sea faring campaigns?

One way to do ship-to-ship combat is to make the combat an encounter in of itself. Stat out the ship the characters are on as a regular monster (though probably with more HP, or a solo or something similar if the PCs only have a single ship), and the enemy ships as standard/elite monsters. Then give the PC ship special abilities depending on what kind of PCs you have, and allow the players to support the ship through their own abilities. For example, the ranger could make a precision shot against another ship's captain, dazing it for a while, or the wizard could conjure up a storm to either boost the PC ship or hinder enemy ships. There's no need to make the PC abilities literally what they have, as long as they work on a thematic basis. One or two at-will abilities and a couple of Recharge 4 abilities per PC should keep it interesting enough. If they want to board enemy ships you can bring the PCs out in their full stats (as well as perhaps supporting abilities from their ship).

If there are multiple ships, have each PC handle their own ship with unique abilities corresponding to their role. Defenders would have a Soldier-type ship, Strikers either Artillery or Skirmisher, Controllers have a Controller ship and Leaders have supporting abilities on top of the ship they'd be on (Warlords on a Soldier ship, Bards on a Controller, etc).

In addition, always have a secondary objective the characters need to accomplish instead of just "destroy all enemy ships".

Not sure it'd work perfectly, but at least it'd make an interesting diversion from the regular encounter paradigm.

I actually already have stats for ship weapons like a ballista or catapult, and I was thinking of designing a cannon-like weapon that amplified magic of any power source. Do you think that sounds alright?

Should a player be able to get onto the enemy ship, I would allow them to fight their way through to overtake it. Or the players could attempt to flee in their ship or bargain with the other ship. The only restrictions I can think of are plausibility and imagination.

Aside from the ship weapons, why not stat the entire ship as a monster of its own? So instead of the PCs fighting the ships, you'd have the players taking control of the ship itself. Essentially, zoom out of the character-centric viewpoint to a broader fleet based system, where each ship is a custom created "monster" and with stats to go with it. If necessary you can them zoom back in when there are boarding actions or when the PCs are needed in person, where they then fight small skirmishes as they'd normally do.

In a boarding encounter, you'd probably want to create the other ships and the effects they have as hazards or traps for that encounter, making them more effective against regular characters instead of against ships, since as it is the HP and damage of the ships' abilities is normally against other ships.

As an example, lets create a close-quarters raiding ship with a tough crew, made for ramming:

Took me around 10 minutes to create, so it's not the most imaginative (or probably balanced), but the idea still remains: creating an encounter that works a bit differently from regular encounters, giving a small departure from typical encounters and keeping the game fresh.

What era do you want your ships from? (Before cannons came on the scene, ships had their fore and aft castles built up so their archers could shoot down onto other ships.)

What type of rigging? (There are two basic types: square sails and fore-and-aft sails.)

A basic, square-sail ship would have three masts, one fore deck, and one or two aft (poop) decks. The names of the masts would be fore, main, and mizzen. On top of each would be a platform with other mast, the top mast. Each would be named top fore mast, top main mast, top mizzen mast. On top of them, would be another platform with a mast, the topgallant mast. They would be called the topgallant fore mast, the topgallant main mast, and the topgallant mizzen mast. There would be 6 to 8 cannons on the main deck and smaller cannons on the fore and poop decks, usually only two for each.

For more information, see Square Rig.

The main reason that I don't want to set the ships up like they're monster is because then all the players basically have to share one turn unless they manage to acquire more ships. That would be fine if I was playing a game at home and whatnot, but it sounds really bad for PbP games. It sounds neat, but I think they wouldn't like not having their own turns for a large part of the game.

And honestly, I don't care what era the ships are from. As long as it looks cool, is mostly wood, and doesn't use anything to move besides sails and rows, I could throw it in. I very rarely pay attention what era tech comes from in fantasy worlds because, well, that's what they are. Fantasy worlds. However, I'm not having any cannons, so they'd be changed to have ballistas and catapults. Sorry if I came up rude, I just woke up. But anyways, I'm am more than happy to do something like have the pirate PCs encountering a viking or Greek ship because that sounds awesome.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SovelsAtaask View Post
The main reason that I don't want to set the ships up like they're monster is because then all the players basically have to share one turn unless they manage to acquire more ships. That would be fine if I was playing a game at home and whatnot, but it sounds really bad for PbP games. It sounds neat, but I think they wouldn't like not having their own turns for a large part of the game.
I will admit, this is the main problem I can foresee with the setup, since in most cases there'd be only a single ship. Finding a way for all players to be able to contribute to the ship's performance would be highly important. Could work with a large list of things to do on board the ship that contribute towards the ship's performance, but this delves a bit deep into the territory of larger rules.

I have a 3rd party pdf called the Nautical Compendium that I was planning on using. It gives stats for ships and some weaponry, so I was planning on having the players working together to man the weapons on their turns. Or they could use their own powers and weapons if they can reach the enemy ship.

Handling shipboard duties or needs during combat is the perfect use for a skill challenge. Ignore it or fail it, and the combat gets trickier, or merely surviving combat proves not to be enough for victory. Work on it and succeed at it, and you gain some benefits and a richer success, but at the cost of using up valuable combat actions. Movies are full of good examples. Take The Avengers. They might beat Loki's forces aboard the helicarrier, but that doesn't matter if the helicarrier crashes.

While this isn't 4e, Star Wars Saga Edition had a good system for managing ship to ship combat while still keeping all players engaged. Players would take actions individually (i.e, repairing damage, using ship weapons, piloting the ship), while the ships themselves had their own statblocks, as per Actana's suggestions. Given that SWSE and 4e are fairly similar systems, you might look into that for inspiration on how to handle nautical combat. A lot of the individual ship combat actions could probably be refluffed to work in a 4e setting.





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