Vehicular Combat

[rweird]

I've been looking at the D&D rules for combat between vehicles (ships mainly), and found them discouraging, mainly, the ability to do damage to the vehicles (the best damage being 6d10 of the heavy bombard, which typically is only shot once per 10 rounds, and the average damage is only 33, 28 with hardness, this is all assuming you want cannons in your campaign). Magic can do somewhat better, though a maximized fireball would only do 25 damage to a wooden ship, a 5th level fireball, perhaps 3. With auto-reseting traps and so-on, damage could be higher, though if you go that far, why bother with boats and not use portals?

I realize it is mentioned that typically battles would be resolved through boarding, though I am trying to see if there is a way to have it be ships firing at one another instead for a change of pace. So, my question is, is there a feasible way to have boats fight each other with weapons, trying to sink each other, that would be common without an abundance of magic?

[NoACWarrior]

When you first mentioned inter ship warfare I immediately thought of disintegrate and sphere of destruction. But with no magic its a bit more complicated - especially with airships.

For sea battles its not too hard to sink a ship, but in air battles you have to take out the levitation devices instead. Conventional balistae won't normally work with sea battles either (they work in air battles by hitting the levitation devices assuming the devices have to be housed on the outside of the ship). Bombards also won't get your far in air battles (unless you hit the levitation devices).

To handle non-magical DnD no boarding sinking in all aspects I suggest ramming speed. Yes when commander worf is all out of options he uses ramming speed. But at the start of the fight ramming speed is one of the best options to sink another persons ship out of the sky or air.

Use size damage for ramming - I think it caps off at 10d6 or 10d8. Since you are using your ship as a weapon, so long as the ramming part of the ship is "masterwork" adamantine or star metal and you won't have to likely repair damage after ramming - even though physics tell us that there is some noticeable damage on the rammer and the rammee.

Other than that good luck. You might want to buy some catapults and chuck wagons at the enemy - this will do 10d6 damage as well.

All this information on large items and damage is from Complete Warrior - but I'm taking the damage dice ratings off the top of my head without looking at the book atm.

[VoxRationis]

My advice to you:

Have patience.

Historical naval battles took hours, even days. Two ships could pound away at each other, even in the age of cannon (cannon have a lot more energy behind their shots than torsion-powered ballistae), for ages before one surrendered. And pre-industrial ships didn't move that quickly, either. I think Olympias (a reconstructed trireme, and thus one of the fastest) moved at about 9 knots at a cruise, with a little beyond that for short periods.
My recommendation is to have "rounds" for naval/vehicular combat that are much longer than standard combat rounds.

[Ravens_cry]

Non magical ballista I can see being quite effective against the gas bags against a non magical airship. Big target, little possible armouring. Maybe with a change in tip design so it makes a big rent instead of a relatively small hole, but effective nonetheless.

[rweird]

NoACWarrior: I realize with sufficient magic, such combat can be achieved, though 11th+ level casters typically are hard to come by. I think ramming does equal damage to your ship unless you have a ram, in which case it does half. Then again, ramming is typically followed by boarding.

VoxRationis: An interesting idea. Minute long combat rounds could speed things up, making the combat feel quicker.

Ravens_cry: True, mechanically speaking, it probably would remove the half damage part.

For more information, I am thinking about running a few naval encounters in some game I DM and wanted advice on if you could make it more of a firefight than the melee suggested by stormwrack for a change of pace in a few encounters.