High Sea's

[Draig]

So I've decided to go with a pirate setting in my next campaign, my questions for the playground are

A) what are some good classes for a pirate setting? (Mainly base classes that fit it or give the pirate feeling) B) what are some prestige classes that fit with the pirate idea and C) what are some good feats and such to take for high sea's adventure.


Also as a DM what are some good encounters, puzzles, monsters, etc to throw at the party?

[Curmudgeon]

Get Stormwrack. They have class options (ACFs, different mounts, different summoned creatures, & c.) to make a lot of classes work better for a sea-based campaign.

[Draig]

As much as I want to, at this current time I'm unable to obtain it. Besides, sometimes I'd rather hear the playgrounds thoughts and experiences.

[Flickerdart]

Scouts are pretty good pirates - they can climb around with an ACF from PHB2, swing on rigging to get Skirmish off, and generally not care about the short range of precision damage because the ship's deck limits the movement options of opponents. Bards are another good choice - who doesn't love a good sea shanty?

However, there is a difference between good pirates and pirates that make sense. With accurate and deadly long-range spells, naval combat in D&D is not likely to resemble anything remotely historical. By the time two ships close, the crew of one is likely already dead.

[Darkomn]

I happen to be working on a nautical campaign of my own so I'll share my thoughts (and a few links).

Ships:
These are most of the ships presented in Stormwrack. They range in time (top oldest, bottom newest) from about 400BC (Roman Republic) to 15 Century AD (Columbus) which is the period of time where boarding was the main form of attack (and what most people suggest for dnd).
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bireme
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trireme
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriremes#cite_note-Galley69-33
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dromon
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravel
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrack

Note on Names: Those ancient galleys (Bireme,Trireme,etc) all seem to follow a pretty simple naming convention where its a number sufex (bi,tri,etc)(2,3,) followed by reme which is means something like oar or oarsmen where the number is the amount of oars/oarsmen at each point along the length of the ship a Trireme for example has tree decks of oarsmen with one man to each oar, past 3 though it just means they are adding more oarsmen to a Trireme (and making it wider) so a Quadriremes (4) would be the same as a Trireme except that the top rowing deck would have two people rowing each oar.

Actually important game-y stuff:

HP: Stormwrack separates all their ships into multiple sections, about one per 10 square feet per deck with 50 to 80 hit points each and the ship sinks after a quarter of the sections are destroyed. I really like this idea but I would rather go with fewer sections with more hit points each as bigger ships like a carrack (not even that big of a ship by today's standards) has over 200 sections. I would recommend maybe 16 (4 on each side on two levels) or less sections for the hull and a few for other important parts of the ship like the forecastle, or the main mast.

Speed: Most of those ships have both rowers and sails, and I would suggest just using one at a time. Make rowing a little faster then sailing with little wind but slower over all. But really if you are going to actually do ship scale combat I would use the rules from some other game, I'm looking at maybe battlefleet gothica which is a 40K space ship combat wargame. Stormwarck pretty much says don't play it out and just run the ships together after a few skill checks

Why magic doesn't own all ships: Basically the arguments for why magic doesn't ruin ship combat are these
* Ships are valuable, most of the worlds navies until the 20th century wanted to capture ships for loot (doubly true for pirates)
*ships before gunpowder weren't tinderboxes, most of the wood on a ship is both very thick and thoroughly soaked in water and are not going to burn easily. Stormwrack suggest a d20 roll 10+spell level (-5 or so if the ship has been prepared for fire) where a roll under that number means the spell has started a fire.
*magic works both ways and can be dispelled, adding magical resistances to stuff isn't really that hard in dnd and if a lot of people use magic attacks a dispell-bot would become standard on pretty much every ship.

Well that's what I got so far:smallwink:

[Ellrin]

Refluffed Rogue, Ranger, and Druid would all work well (flavor-wise, anyway) for an open sea campaign, I think, and anybody with control winds would be a godsend to any sailing crew. Depending on prevailing religions, a Cleric or Favored Soul might be an interesting pirate, as could a Blackguard. Fighter and Swashbuckler are givens, and having a Beguiler on hand is good in any situation where you want to lie, manipulate, cheat, and/or induce panic. Wizards might be a bit over-cloistered to find typically, though Warlocks and Sorcerers, as fringe members of most societies, would both make sense.

Monks are too lawful, Paladins are too uptight, and Barbarians are too chaotic (which may not make sense for a pirate; but on the sea, following orders (even in a mutiny!) is absolutely necessary).

[Flickerdart]

Burning? Oh my, no. Drop some Cloud or Fog spells into open hatches, pick off stragglers with Unicorn Arrows, ravage the enemy crew with Confusion, slap some Black Tentacles around, divide the crew using Walls, Feeblemind the captain, catapult some tigers across and then Animal Growth them, snipe crew members off the ship with Telekinesis...

Yes, you might have dedicated counter-mages on board. But that only further escalates the point, rather than mitigating it. Naval warfare consists entirely of spell duels, with everyone else either being archers who can't use precision, or dying.