Ships VS Spellcasting

[Ninjadeadbeard]

I've been planning a more nautical-themed campaign for a little while now, and I've run into a little problem while talking things over with one of my players. The campaign itself will feature a lot of ship-to-ship combat, and most of it will be of the pre-gunpowder variety.

The trouble I've found is that Magic sort of wrecks any attempt at this. Control Water, as my player pointed out, simply allows the party with the spell to capsize ships almost at will. Gust of Wind and Control Winds just makes life hell for ships that depend on sails, and Wind Wall pretty much guarantees anything short of a ship-mounted ballista is useless. And then once you get within boarding range, an Enlarge/Reduce spell can make that proud frigate into a sad sloop or smaller with little effort. The fact is, the PHB alone is packed with spells that utterly wreck any attempt at a naval game.

It just seems like the spirit of a naval campaign is lost when the Party can effortlessly no-sell any and all threats against them past level 6. And throwing more and more wizard-armed ships at them seems like it violates the spirit of the game, since at that point it's now a war between the DM and Players.

I refuse, normally, to ban spells and other options for my players, but I see very little way around this. Just talking to them doesn't help, since we all know the issues but outside of clear cheese we don't self-ban options, and the player I ran all this by is terrible at offering constructive advice on the subject.

What would the Playground do in this situation?

[LeonBH]

I once read through a naval text-based adventure game where they always include one cambiente in the crew. The duties of the cambiente is to predict the seas and skies, and cause the air and water to aid the ship's sailing. The most powerful cambiente could manipulate an entire school of fish -- but nobody could summon storms or turn over ships, for example. At best, they could shield the ship, if many of them worked together, from heavy rains and harsh waves.

So I suggest that you introduce a slow leveling progression to your players and tell them they cannot ever reach level 7 in this campaign. A low magic game doesn't have to ban spells, it can simply be low-level. These types of games are also fun, just as long as everyone knows in advance that 3rd level spells will be the best they're going to get (and most cambientes are going to be 1st level anyway).

Also beware of the Keen Mind feat, which allows navigation in water be a non-issue.

[Saiga]

You're going to need a bigger boat.

Control Water only effects Huge or smaller boats. Admittedly, this only leaves Gargantuan, but remember these sizes are meant to describe creatures. The 'gargantuan' boats really aren't far-fetched for the kind of threats the party will be facing once they hit higher levels. And I don't think I'd rule than an entire frigate counts as a singular object for Enlarge/Reduce.

[Ninja_Prawn]

In most D&D settings, every warship carrying a mid-level caster or two is not unreasonable. A heavy ship could easily carry several hundred crew and/or marines (so even with conservative estimates of how many people in the world have PC levels, you could have a couple of spellcasters in there just by random chance), and the extreme value of spellcasting in naval contexts would make most ship-owners keen to ensure they have a proper warmage on board.

It'd be like in the Wheel of Time books, where every Sea Folk crew includes a 'windfinder' - who are almost all powerful magic-users in what is (theoretically) a low-magic setting - as one of the most important officers aboard.

[Foxymew]

You're going to need a bigger boat.

Control Water only effects Huge or smaller boats. Admittedly, this only leaves Gargantuan, but remember these sizes are meant to describe creatures. The 'gargantuan' boats really aren't far-fetched for the kind of threats the party will be facing once they hit higher levels. And I don't think I'd rule than an entire frigate counts as a singular object for Enlarge/Reduce.

Huge being a 3x3 - 15x15ft basically means it only works on a dingy, no?
So for an actual ship, that wouldn't be any kind of issue then.
Though whirlpool (A possible action from the control water spell) doesn't have any obvious size restrictions or following damage models, so any object would be taking 2d8 damage each turn when in the vortex. And with the range being 300, it's not like you need to be too close for comfort to do that.
So I guess you could nerf or ban whirlpool, but keep the rest of the spell. Could be useful for keeping small boats from getting to you, with only a 25% chance of capsizing.

[Camman1984]

seeing as a gargantuan creature is a 20ft x 20ft square (iirc) I would say most seaworthy vessels would fall well beyond that size.

I too wouldn't treat a whole warship as as single object for enlarge/reduce, in the same way as I wouldn't allow a party to reduce a large building

[Arcangel4774]

Have most recently sized ship carry one more anti-spell people that have some homebrewed spell to protect them from that issue. If you can board the ship or somehow sneakily kill that guy the ship is easy to destroy but otherwise spells that affect weather and the ship itself fizzle out.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I too wouldn't treat a whole warship as as single object for enlarge/reduce, in the same way as I wouldn't allow a party to reduce a large building

On this point, I wouldn't either. Though Enlarging a creature during a boarding action still seems like a fine strategy.

A while back, I did write a spell (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?491003-Spell-Balance-Check-Shrink-Object) that was intended for use with ships - specifically to shrink warships down to man-portable sizes - which indicates (indirectly) my feelings on what slot level should be necessary for shrinking big ships.

None of this changes the massive influence of wind or fire spells on naval combat, of course.

[lianightdemon]

Have some casters on board with Counterspell. However not all the time. Have more encounters per day as well with more than one ship. If the chars do have these spells let them have their victories once in a while. The worst would be if their magic was constantly being thwarted.

[Armored Walrus]

Given what could be lurking in the seas of a D&D world, I would think all merchants travel with some type of protection. Maybe not all of them have spellcasters on board, but have their ships enchanted to resist things like fire and whirlpools. Maybe some rich merchant houses are known for having their ships covered by an anti-magic shell. Maybe the less prosperous only cover the rigging, or the hull. Or the crew carries some items that allow them to shut down certain dangerous magic for a short period of time. Like magic fire extinguishers.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Well, a ship is way too big to be affected by control water or something tiny, and wouldn't have enlarge/reduce work on it.

As far as control weather goes, remember that if they summon a storm, they also have to weather it's effects.

[Mellack]

As others have said, the size of seagoing ships really means most of the spells you worry about will not have much of an impact. Most any ship will be too big. A traditional viking ship (Knarr) was over 50 feet, and a trireme was over 100 feet. Since Enlarge/Reduce has a range of just 30 feet, it would take a very permissive DM to allow it to change objects that are bigger than the range of the spell.
As for Wind Wall, note that it is not moveable. The ships will be moving, so a ship will quickly move out of any cover the spell is providing.

[Koningkrush]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzZ2o6uO0jwJMTU1RF9GcUlXYVk
You could try doing something like this:

[Demonslayer666]

Ships are designed to handle bad storms. Control Water, Vortex should not damage a ship at all since it is not going down into the 5' vortex and being whipped around like a person would, it would just sail out of it.

Control Water, part water, would be troublesome for ships at 100'x100'x100' cube. You could simply rule it can't be cast on water occupied by ships, or it moves the ship to one side because it pushes the water (and the ship).

Wind should not be a problem for sailing ships, they just turn and use it to move. Many ships accompanied their sails with oars. Strong winds should only effect smaller ranged weapons, not siege weapons. Ships will simply move out of the area the next round, so this isn't a big deal.

I would not allow enlarge/reduce to affect a ship since it is not one object.