Cannons and Ship-to-Ship Combat

[LimeSkeleton]

I've been running a 4e campaign set in a world that's mostly ocean, with small islands dotting the land. This of course results in a lot of time spent on the high seas, making piracy and sea combat a fairly common occurrence. However, I believe my players will soon be going about purchasing cannons from a Dwarven settlement that specializes in such things (Including enchanted cannons and cannonballs, of course :smallwink:!)

Has anybody ever ran actual ship combat using cannons to sink an opponent, or perhaps as a weapon against larger sea creatures. Fighting a Kraken would be pretty amazing!

Any tips or tricks? Thanks!

[Mutazoia]

I've been running a 4e campaign set in a world that's mostly ocean, with small islands dotting the land. This of course results in a lot of time spent on the high seas, making piracy and sea combat a fairly common occurrence. However, I believe my players will soon be going about purchasing cannons from a Dwarven settlement that specializes in such things (Including enchanted cannons and cannonballs, of course :smallwink:!)

Has anybody ever ran actual ship combat using cannons to sink an opponent, or perhaps as a weapon against larger sea creatures. Fighting a Kraken would be pretty amazing!

Any tips or tricks? Thanks!

I don't know that anybody's done a 4e system for ship combat yet, but 3.5 does have Stormwrack. I'm sure you could convert the necessary stats over.

[Arkhosia]

Someone posted 4e rules they used here (http://community.wizards.com/wiki/Dnd:Iomandra/Variant_Ship_Rules?no_redir=1).

[Yakk]

Neat. Some critiques:

1) PCs are competing over the same action pool.

2) Attack bonuses / defences fail to scale.

3) Player powers are either very strong (if they can target objects), middling (if they allow skill checks), or pretty much useless.

4) DCs auto-scale with player level, while challenges do not. (DC high? That is good, if your challenges are supposed to scale with your level. But nothing in those rules even encourages that...)

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I'd first start with making sure characters are important. As characters are built around small unit tactics, I'd make ship-to-ship combat typically end in a boarding action, somehow, so we can get it down to character scale.

Next, I'd make crew an important resource, as well as PC. Ie, attack rolls are (# of crew) + (enhancement bonus of weapon) + (weapon accuracy) + (half ranged basic attack bonus of weapon commander): but this bonus is never more than the level of the ship.

We can do similar things with other checks -- each such check is a combination of (# of crew) plus (half the commanding character's appropriate modifier) plus (misc bonuses), with the bonus capped by the overall level of the ship.

Now we have higher and lower level ships, and heros on such ships can basically replace huge amounts of crew with their talents.

Elite crew might count as +2 each, and each ship would have a limit on how many people can effectively crew her (low enough that you'd want high level commanders on her).

I'd be tempted to make the combat more intimate than 100' per square. A galleon is 150' long and 25' wide. At 25' per square, it would be 6 squares long and 1 wide.

If we assume effective ranges of ~200 yards (inaccuracy and the balls moving slower basically), that is merely 24 naval squares at 25' per square. At the same time, greatbows have a range of 10 naval squares, and even relatively short ranged spells have a range of 2 naval squares (and thus are the equivalent of reach melee weapons).

We could also have circles of ritualists boosting the range and effect of a spell somehow, similar to how crew are used to man ship-to-ship weapons. You could even use similar mechanics...

To mimic the 4e engine, crew count and hull HP should be roughly linear in level, while AC and weapon accuracy should be affine. "Elite" and "Solo" ships can exist (extra large ships) as well as "minion" ships at the same level.

Level can be basically "naval tech level", and higher naval tech level ships will tend to have better crews (so each member of the crew is worth multiple crew points -- CPs?)

[Hal]

As far as Kraken-based encounters go, there's a few monsters that should help you out. I've actually run an encounter with some of these guys.

MM3 has the Sea Kraken, a level 10 solo; I'd probably use the builder to make him an elite, unless your plan is for the players to blast his HP apart using cannons rather than their normal attacks. If they're higher level than that, there's a Ghost Kraken (16), an Abyssal Kraken (22), and an Astral Kraken (25).

The Silt Horror from Dark Sun is also a good use, just convert anything about being underground to being underwater. If you need an even higher level monster, Dagon (MM2, lvl 30) is your option.

All of these come with requisite tentacle monsters as minions. Most of these are minions, and the Silt Horror comes with three flavors of tentacles. Still, if you want to have tentacles as an encounter unto themselves, consider using the Tendrils of Dagon (Standard Controllers, lvl 10, Dungeon 156).

Now, I didn't use any of these as a ship vs. creatures combat, but I think you can make it work in a pinch. Normal combat against a bunch of tentacles, then have the kraken appear when appropriate.

If I were running that encounter, I'd make the cannons a terrain power. Just watch how you balance them. If they're too strong, the players will ignore their powers and just man the cannons the entire fight. You could balance that by giving them a long reload time (say, 1 full round), but since most players will be reluctant to lose an entire turn to reloading, the cannons would likely be fired once and then forgotten. Figure out what role you want them to play in the encounter and determine their power from there.

[Yakk]

If they have crew, the crew could be in charge of reloading.

If each the cannons require 15 crew-rounds to reload, with a max of 5 crew on a cannon, protecting the reloading crew gets you another cannon shot quicker. Which means every 3 rounds a player can fire a cannon (use the firer's level, so the firing is best done by a PC, mayhap), and on the other 2 rounds they can attack themselves, distract the kracken, protect the crew, etc. New crew can be recruited if some fall, but it takes time, and maybe a diplomacy or intimidate check to convince crew to run into the dangerous cannon duty.

[Alejandro]

How about basing it on skills?

Perception to spot the target and time cannon fire correctly.
Athletics to load and winch forward cannons quickly.

Maybe have gunners make d20 rolls and add their INT modifier, since their muscles or personal dexterity won't matter much with a cannon, but their ability to judge trajectory and drop will.