Pirate Campaign

[HermanTheWize]

Curious to see if anyone has experience Running or Playing a pirate campaign?

What are some memorable adventures? fights? etc...

What were the difficulties running that type of game?

[Khrysaes]

I was also interested in setting up a seafaring campaign. The biggest issue I would forsee is that it would be boring. It is not likely that a ship would be attacked several times in a day, and from experience, being in the middle of the ocean for many weeks is incredibly tiresome, especially if you aren't a sailor.

So the sailing aspect would have to be skipped, maybe have random/plot encounters every once and a while.

The rest would really just be thematic? Islands, Seafolk(triton/Sea Elves/sahuagin/etc.) Port cities. I could see an interesting campaign set off the sword coast. It has the moonshae islands, and many many ports between waterdeep and calimshan.

[Spiritchaser]

Edit: for clarity, the below applies to a campaign with typical d&d technology, so no cannon etc.

One issue is a difference in knowledge, and therefore expectations about the ocean and the mechanics of sailing.

The players don't know about different sail shapes, performance to windward, hull shapes, crew sizes, visibility, rations (see scurvey) and so on. I'm most cases I've just glossed over the details.

They won't know their maneuvering options. I've tried to learn enough for them as well, and that's fine, but they sometimes don't have the comfort to go head to head with another ship on the high seas.

They do have a (now ex)pirate NPC to help, but that can result in the usual dmpc autopilot.

The interaction between fire spells and ships rigging and planks is ghastly. Any ship with a mage on it is going to run away with a win awefully fast. Think of a mundane universally available fire resistant material that everyone uses for sails and rope.

An octodruid is fun. I suggest waiving no swim speed requirements to put this in play early, to compensate for the relative irrelevance of bear cavalry in a ranged ship battle.

Straight melee types will only have a role/(roll?) once the ships collide. Make sure you build encounters where combat could occur such that the warrior or Paladin has something to do... Poison to cure, a main brace to splice

I didn't use any of the parrot peg leg arrrrr yarrrr tropes, but it might have been funny

Sea cave bases are fun

Using tides to control movement Sounds like a good idea, but if the players don't get enough information ahead of time, it can come across as DM fiat

There were a few CR levels where I had to roll my own monsters. The monster manual does have aquatic foes, but not so many.

Weather is a great metaphor, use it lots. Storm, spray, visibility are all at the whim of the sea.

Anything that controls weather is disproportionately powerful

Think about how large a ship your PCs can realistically manage on their own (probably not too big) If they will need a larger crew, how will you manage them?

The ship is both home and freedom. Its the millennium falcon... Play up how cool this is!

[Delicious Taffy]

I've been tinkering with a pirate-friendly campaign setting for a bit, but it's been for 4e. Any thoughts on whether it would be more suited for 5e? I've seen some things suggesting 5e is designed to be a bit more fast-paced, and what I've played of 4e...isn't that.

[Dudewithknives]

Curious to see if anyone has experience Running or Playing a pirate campaign?

What are some memorable adventures? fights? etc...

What were the difficulties running that type of game?

I have not played one in 5th edition but I did in Pathfinder and in 3.5.

Some Issues we encountered.

1. People underestimate how much down time there is in the open sea. People need to have something to do for themselves RP wise.

2. Range wins.
- We had an arcane archer with Far Shot and a distance bow. His long range was about 1/3 mile. As soon as an enemy ship was in range he just started shooting. If they stayed on deck, they would all be dead by the time they got into range of their own weapons and spells. Once he had phase arrow, it was phase arrow + Stinking cloud, or other cloud spells. The GM eventually just stopped running ship to ship combat because it was pointless.

3. Druids are monsters.
- A well rounded druid who casts plenty of outdoor friendly spells and wild shapes into nasty sea creatures is a train wreck on the way.

4. Melee mundane classes are pointless.
- Sure you can make a dwarf fighter with a great sword and full plate. Expect to be doing nothing but grunt work while casters and archers do everything else.

5. Small groups are better.

6. Who is the captain?
- We debated over that for a while in the campaign I was in, until I pointed out that I was playing an master necromancer and I controlled the crew of undead that could work around the clock on no supplies and never went against orders. I literally gave the ship a "skeleton crew"

[Sjappo]

I've DMed the Freeport trilogy. Not exactly an high seas adventure but the back drop is very piraty. The modules are well written, especially the first two. Needs conversion to 5E though.

[Khrysaes]

Look at the 3.5 splat book stormwrack. It can give you a ton of ideas about seafaring.

I think there is one about the moonsea too, which has some sea(lake) sailing on it.

[Beastrolami]

The most recent nautical campaign I played in hit one major snag.... the players wanted to play dnd. We started with a few naval battles, and the dm was using custom naval combat rules. 7 sessions, in and sailing has become "fast travel to island x". All the other comments on magic/weather/range hold true, but if the players come into this game hoping to play generic dnd, you will have to either A. waive naval rules so they have a fun ship battle dungeon crawl, or turn the boat into a mobile base/fast travel method, so they can do fun quests on dry land like they are used to. Also, give them a parrot and peg leg, arr yarr shiver me timbers, etc.

[Zorku]

I've never seen a full campaign, but a particular ship vs ship encounter was made much more interesting by allowing the characters to be the leads of cannon/ballista crews, or otherwise perform a role where their roll of the d20 influenced how well the ship was doing. This kind of system did not do a great job of making hp a concern, and if it did I don't know how the party would recover.

For designing my own thing I've screwed around with just enough vidja games with these elements to have all these dangerous ideas along the lines of "it would be fun to navigate the ship to try and get your broadside firing while the other guy had a bad angle for that." If you're going to do that or keep track of crew counts and so forth, it needs to be abstracted almost entirely out of the standard combat system. Turn lengths with ships simply aren't 6 second affairs, and you need whole crews of people scrambling to do the various tasks that keep the ship going. Moreover, ship combat is swingier that the kind of skirmish combat we're used to, so it can be really exciting getting the drop on some admiral and sinking a bunch of their ships, but it's also a really bad time if the party has a bad go of it.

What I'm tempted to actually do, is more like how I run a large scale defensive siege/assault. The party gets to jump into a skirmish here or there, but between those they have to decide what they're going to focus on and how, ideally making difficult choices between a couple of options. There's a simply tug of war with this, where either side wants to get 10-20 points ahead of the other guys. Depending on how long the skirmishes take or how well the party does on their skill checks, any one unit of time can give maybe 4 points to either side, and then I roll a dice and award 2 points to either side and narrate what the mundane masses were all doing during this (The bigger impact from the party keeps this heroic and prevents the fatigue of not making a meaningful impact.)

Notably, that system scales up really easily, so they can be running just one ship or they can build up to a whole fleet of ships, and maybe they've trained a bunch of apprentice types to do the magical tricks and such that they came up when they were doing this at lower levels. I haven't actually tried to make this a big and constant style of battle in a campaign, so exactly how much you need to change things up to stave off fatigue is kind of hard to say...

-

As for your mile long snipers, that's pretty good against pure human crews, but what about the monstrous pirates? Stinking cloud doesn't matter to undead, and any time aquatic creatures are involved you can have nasty traps when you sail up to a ship where all the crew got off the deck. It's not a huge problem if they're all idle until the ships are roughly in cannon range (unless they wanted to run away,) and with a large crew you'd expect to have a couple of casters around, especially the type that can summon up a wall, real or illusory. You don't want magic to be totally everywhere, but this guy is probably not the only person that's ever played at sniper, so at least some portion of ships should have some measure of protection from it, even if that's some weird arrow dispeller-catcher thing.

[90sMusic]

I played a campaign once that wasn't "pirates" but the whole thing took place around a chain of islands in the ocean so we spent most of our in-game time on a ship.

We got into a sea battle and were firing cannons at each other at a distance. There were enough cannons on our ship that each player had access to one. Some players wanted to move the ship closer for a boarding action, but the group decided we were better off staying at range.

After that battle, we headed for an area rumored to have a sort of pirate base of operations and it was a relatively small island made mostly of rocks with a cave system, the exterior was made up of parts of ships that had been cannibalized to create some rather rudimentary defensive structures like walls and a couple of towers. They had a bunch of cannons as well. We ended up sneaking onto the backside of the island to avoid their pretty fortified main entrance and fought our way inside. I don't recall exactly how this happened (this ways many years ago), but most of our party were captured except for me and one other player. I was a rogue and they were a druid, so we ended up sneaking around together inside this densely populated pirate base.

We were looking for our party's equipment before we were going to break them out since they would be useless in a fight without their gear. We finally found a guarded treasure room that we were told had the equipment in there, so I went up and started distracting the guards and even began making out with one of them (they thought I was just another pirate) while the druid snuck inside, picked up everyone's equipment, then turned into a parrot so all that equipment merged into her body and she could carry it easily then she flew out. When I got the signal, I left those guys, grabbed the parrot, and we busted our buddies out of jail. Boss fight ensued shortly thereafter. We ended up having to kill all the pirates on that entire island, so we just claimed it as our own and decided to use it as our own home base.

We spent our adventure split between being on ship and visiting these small islands. The trips by ship took days and sometimes weeks to travel from place to place, so we did the sort of narrative fast-forward. We'd kind of describe the things we were doing during the elapsed time and how we spent our days and we'd do any major conversations during the trip but otherwise just let it slide. We did end up having a few sea battles, a couple of them resulted in ship boarding action. We were also attacked by sea creatures of various kinds that boarded the boat. Also had an obligatory kraken attack our ship. We ended up abandoning ship and boarding another ship that was in the water with us and using it to escape while the kraken destroyed our ship and took it down to the bottom of the ocean with it.

We had a couple of scenarios where we had to go underwater looking for sunken treasure. One of the party was a mermaid so they were really useful in those underwater situations, but the druid had wild shape to turn into fish of varying kinds and we had other spellcasters who could cast underwater breathing and things of that nature so everyone got to go down and get in on the action.

Our enemies were all pretty diverse because while we did have all the sea creatures and aquatic enemies, the islands we visited each had different biomes like a foresty island and a jungley island and one that was a big volcano full of fire-based creatures and more rocky types like basalisks.

There were all kinds of port cities we visited with different sorts of people and they each had different political affiliations and so on.

All in all, it was a pretty fun and interesting campaign. Most of what took place on the ship happened in a similar way to when you have to travel for days on end walking in normal adventures, it was glossed off for traveling aspects but we still had a lot of ship specific interactions like talking to the crew that we became pretty close with and making sure we had enough supplies and repair materials, and taking time to repair the ship after each combat, and so on. We ended up swapping ships and upgrading what we were sailing a couple of times too. I enjoyed it.

[CaptainSarathai]

I play/LARP a "pirate" each year at various historical events. We teach kids, and such. Mostly, we just get drunk at Renn faires, but nobody goes to those to learn anyway.

What's important is to separate fact from fiction. Romantic, sea-roving, swashbuckling, "Arr Yarr" pirates are a fantasy that would be very hard to replicate in D&D without coming up with rules covering ship-to-ship combat. I have done this, but it also requires the players' agreement that this is what they want. Some players don't want a naval sim, they just want to bash monsters.

The reality of piracy can actually lend itself pretty well to a D&D campaign. The boucaneer era from about 1640-1700 was the golden age of Caribbean piracy. The boucaneers lived on the edges of civilized society, and were often mercenaries, privateers, or just common bandits. Cpt. Morgan's attack on Panama City is one of the most famous pirate actions of all time, and it was an attack over land.

Boucaneers would usually attack smaller boats, coastal merchants and things of that nature. Big ships, anything that could properly broadside you, would have been far too hard a target. The prime boucaneering strategy relied on their skill with the french long-gun. They were like modern Seal Teams. They'd row out from shore in small boats under cover of darkness, and use snipers to pick off the helmsman and any crew on watch. Then they would board the ship, throwing bombs and grenades ahead of them. Remembering that these were usually just small merchant vessels and never proper naval ships, the ambushed crew would usually surrender without any further resistance. At this point the ship would be sailed back and relieved of her cargo, and the original crew either ransomed, killed, offered to join the gang, or left to sail away empty handed.

The problem faced by pirates is that their actions don't scale so well. On board a naval warship, space was at a premium. You needed a fighting crew, an armament, enough ammo and powder for protracted combat, and enough food and supplies to feed everyone. That doesn't leave much room for plunder.
This is compounded when you realize that getting a big ship was awfully hard for a pirate, and big ships are easily caught by authorities. Instead, they would usually over-gun and over-crew a smaller ship. Now there's even less room for plunder.
This is what made the Caribbean prime pirate territory - small archipelagos meant that you never had to sail far from land/food. All you needed aboard were men and guns.

This would be very doable as a D&D campaign.
Spend the first few levels entirely without a proper sail-ship, and make the game about exploring the island and setting up base, maybe trying to unify scattered groups of boucaneers, and a few canoe raids on coastal shipping for supplies.
At about level 7 I'd give them a proper ship. Still small, nothing to go toe-to-toe with a naval ship, but something that can get around the whole archipelagos and facilitate attacks on bigger targets to bring in more supplies to support a larger band of ruffians.
Note, that although they have a ship, it is not simply "fast travel anywhere." Docking at a port is a good way to get yourself killed, because after all, you are wanted pirates and if anyone found out, the coastal battery would tear you to pieces on your way out of the harbor.
It's at this point that you introduce the concept of a BBEG. Some threat to the whole archipelago or the pirate way of life.

I strongly suggest breaking the party of any notion of naval combat early on. Let them try, and make their a major plot point of the campaign. A single broadside from a navy ship could end most smaller vessels. This is what happened to the famous Bart Robert, when he was caught facing a proper naval vessel off the coast of Africa. Their opening broadside killed him, most of the crew, blew apart a mast, and had the ship taking on water. The crew surrendered immediately.
This inability to fight such foes is what will make your pirate campaign a bit more interesting. In land-based D&D, the party can possibly stand up to a dragon, and if not, they can come back at a higher level, loaded with magic gear and new skills, and give that dragon what-for. On a pirate ship, you can be the best gunner who ever lived, but your success relies on the quality of your crew and on your ship. If you add warships to the archipelago, now you have an enemy "creature" that the party has no choice but to avoid, flee, or die.

If you want, I can get my rules for ship-handling and combat together, and post them for you. They're based on the notion of using the PCs as officers and chiefs/masters over various parts of the ship, and then using crew-quality as a modifier to their rolls. It's all theater of the mind until you actually board, but it doesn't add any new skills to the game, and it gives every stat a role in sailing.

[Delicious Taffy]

Pirate lore is always fascinating to read about. I, for one, would love to see the rules you came up with.

[Vogie]

Some ideas:

a "West Marches" style campaign - the PCs are actual pirates that can do actual pirating. Downside is there is a lot of work beforehand, and no single linear storyline.
a caravan or "Stargate: Destiny" style campaign - the ship is alive, or part of a trade caravan - and therefore doing it's own thing, effectively on rails. The PCs are tasked to defend the ship as it travels and finishes its task. Downside is there is very little player agency on where the ship goes - however, you can introduce mechanics to "catch up" to the ship, or jump ahead, using the ship as both a mobile base as well as a time clock.
a "Heart of Gold" ship - Not only does the Artifact ship travel through the ocean, it can navigate through various dimensions and planes as well. The PCs will gain more and more control over the drive of the ship as the campaign continues, but they'll run into the capability at improbable times. For example - They'll be out to sea, then find themselves in a spirit realm dungeon, or an abstract/surrealist dimension, or pulling up to a castle in a cloud. In this manner, it acting less like a ship and more like a permanent McGuffin.
a "guildhall" ship - they're part of a floating city that functions independently of the stuff around it. As a part of the campaign, returning to the ship allows them to upgrade the capabilities of the city-ship, similar to the guildhalls from MMOs. Completing those quests and arcs expands the capabilities of their home-city-craft, unlocking more and more crafting potential and pseudo-kingdom-building potential as part of the city-ship
Racially-diverse types of ships - Instead of each race and kingdom using effectively the same sea-tech, have Dwarves sail in forged submarines, elves rock living rootships with a ironwood tree as the mast, Orcs rocking massive catamaran-like vessels with raiding parties mounted on Sharks. Mix it up.

[Mortis_Elrod]

snip

yes, please post these rules. I've been wanting to do a pirate campaign for a while, just to justify a monk/duid character that regularly becomes a shark with freakin' laser beams.

[Khrysaes]

yes, please post these rules. I've been wanting to do a pirate campaign for a while, just to justify a monk/duid character that regularly becomes a shark with freakin' laser beams.

Cause that character deserves a hot meal.

[CaptainSarathai]

LOOOONG post incoming. I didn't really clean this up at all, and also added the historical precedents for why things were done this way.

Sail Rules
The purpose here is to abstract the duties of a sailing ship, so that player rolls have an impact, while also not necessarily making it into a "5 PCs sail an entire Frigate"
Also, all social aspects of sailing, such as crew moral, as well as minutia of things like tracking ammo and food, are up to the DM to provide.

Major Roles Aboard Ship
Pirates didn't have a uniform "Code", but they did sail under a set of 'Articles', which were often quite democratic. Most positions were filled by a 1-man, 1-vote policy amongst the crew. The Captain of any vessel would lay out his articles when enlisting a crew, including how pay would work. Important roles aboard were usually called 'Lords' among the articles, representing skilled men who got an extra 25-50% of the usual share.
Many of these roles aboard a pirate vessel differed massively from the authoritarianism of the Navy and Merchant fleets, so if you're running a proper naval campaign, the roles should change a bit.
The following are roles aboard a pirate ship. The first 4 are not necessarily roles upon all ships or the most important but they lend themselves most to "Player duties" aboard

Captain and Quarter Master
-- The "law" aboard ship. The Quarter Master is elected by popular vote. The Captain is voted for only if the ship is already underway (after a mutiny, prior Captain died, etc), otherwise, signing on for a voyage is your vote of confidence in the captain.
The captain is concerned with the voyage, the major decisions on where to go and what to do. The quartermaster is concerned with the day-to-day logistics of the ship. Quartermasters are the go-between for captain and crew. They speak on behalf of the whole crew. They also dole out rations and pay.
When you watch movies and the captain kind of mumbles an order, it's the Quartermaster who yells the order over the whole deck.

Bosun
-- the Bosun is the ships supply manager. He also runs the ship's store, and makes sure that the ship is maintained.
In battle, his primary concerns are two-fold. He overseas handling of the sails (earning him the awesome name of "Sea-Artist"), and also keeping the ship afloat should it take damage. The ship's carpenter assists in the latter task.

Chief Gunner
-- does what it says on the tin. They handle the cannons. Most pirate ships only have a single deck of cannon, with perhaps 2-4 9-pounders on the fore and aft castles, either as "chase" guns firing front and back, or angled alongside to add to the broadside. Most pirate ships were not "castled" though, being smaller sloops.

Sergeant of Arms
-- in charge of all non-cannon implements of ghastly demise aboard the ship. Pirates didn't really have these, usually.
The Royal Marines were not established until 1750, (US Marines in 1775, semper fi). Before then, their jobs were just filled by regular sailors tasked for it.
They would comprise sharp-shooters firing from the rigging and decks, as well as boarding and anti-boarding crews. In the Navy, they would drill and train about 1 day each week, when the deck could be (relatively) clear of working men. Pirates don't practice, though.

Navigator
-- does what it says on the tin. Very much a scientific job. Charts at the time were of vastly differing quality, and it's never as easy as "okay, sail west". The navigator was not much use in combat, but was very busy out of it. They would verify the ship's heading, as well as current latitude and longitude, and speed, hourly. Even pirates could not afford to be lax on this. They also took soundings to determine the depths of the bottom, if there was any risk of running aground in shallows. Navigation is a labor of love, and they would always be notating and updating their charts, or drawing new ones to fill in any gaps. Finding a skilled navigator's charts was incredibly good fortune, and the one thing that pirates probably would not sell on. The (in)famous "Dutch Rutter" was an incredibly accurate book of sailing directions to East Asia, compiled by a Dutch navigator employed by the Portuguese. "Rutters," routiers or seebüchen were not maps and charts, but simply instructions on how to reach certain points. They were falling out of use by the 1300s as navigator's charts filled in the gaps. The Dutch was released in 1595 though, and was important because nobody had yet charted passages to Asia.

Surgeon
-- if there was any one role which pirates were short of, it was skilled surgeons. 90% of the time, it didn't matter, because they were also absurdly short on medicine. Any surgeons found or captured would be pressed into service immediately.
As with most colonial locales, the barber also handled the surgeon's duties. The cook was also usually pressed to work.

Ships, Guns, and Crews
For gaming purposes, what's important is the size of crews and number of guns. Fortunately, these are related!
It takes about 10 men to run a gun. Gunners make up about 80% of a warship's crew, so you can bet that Pirates would have that ratio as well. A good rule of thumb is that you have 6 crew per cannon.
And I hear you all out there:
"Didn't you say it was 10 men to run a gun?"
Yes, I did. But even Royal Navy ships couldn't crew both broadsides at once. All ships are rated based on the total number of guns, so a 20-gun brigantine is going to have 10 guns on each side, meaning 10 gun crews. That's 100 men, representing 80% of the crew, so you get 125 men aboard.
Pirates favored ships of 0-12 cannon
These ships were faster, more maneuverable, had a shallower draft, and were more easily disguised as merchant vessels.
The draft is important, and pirates cared a great deal about it. Shallow draft is what made the Vikings successful, and made Blackbeard and Jean Lefitte's careers. Being able to sail in and out of coastal rivers, over sandbars and shoals, and at lower tide, gave the pirates more opportunities to evade capture. When Lt. Maynard went after Blackbeard, he specifically requested small, fast ships rather than the larger ships that Blackbeard was used to evading. With the authorities after him, Blackbeard himself eschewed the Queen Anne's Revenge (40 guns, frigate) in favor of the 20 gun sloop, The Adventurer and was hiding in shallow waters off the Carolina coast.
--

Tying it all together in the rules!

-Ship DC-
The base DC to perform any orders aboard is equivalent to the ship's size, and crew quality.
0-6 Guns = dc5
7-12 Guns = dc10
13-24 Guns = dc15
25-40 Guns = dc20

No Crew Assistance = DCs are tripled
Under-crewed = Disadvantage to rolls
Unsteady Crew = -5 to rolls
Competent Crew = no mods
Veteran Crew = +5 to rolls

I would consider a ship notably under-crewed at about 50% of her crew capacity. A 20 gun ship with a crew of 120 men therefore, is under-crewed at 60 men, and skeleton crewed at about 20.

Remember that you can always add further modifiers, if the ship is rocking in rough seas, sailing through a storm, the crew is being shot at heavily, etc. You're the DM, these are just guidelines for "smooth sailing" DCs.


Roles Aboard:
Captain or Quartermaster
--must issue all orders to crew in order to gain crew assistance to rolls.
--may use an Action to "inspire" the crew. At ship DC, roll Persuasion or Intimidation (Intimidate can use Strength, if desired)
On a success, that portion of the crew gains Advantage on their next roll.
Remember, the Quartermaster especially should be wary of over-using Intimidation, as they can be voted out of position. A captain risks mutiny.

Helmsman
--handles all steering input. Normally, this is a 1-man job, however, there are still several ways the crew can impact this roll, so use the standard DC. Remember that ships tend to be slow, and steering them is ponderous. There is no need to require any sort of "reflex check" for a helmsman, although you could for smaller ships if they're traveling fast and you want to liven things up.
Steering is 'Dexterity: Ocean Vessel' (sailors are proficient)

Bosun
--handles the rigging, and all speed and direction changes. If the ship changes speed, and any time it changes direction in relation to the wind, roll against the Ship DC for Dex Acrobatics (climbing in the rigging) or Str Athletics (hauling lines).
On a failure, and either the speed change is not carried out, or the ship flounders after a direction change and it's speed is reduced by half.

Sergeant
--no ship-dc role, as they are basically just making ranged shots at the enemy, or commanding boarding or counter-boarding parties.

Navigator
--think of this as the ship's over all Perception and Insight check for anything which might harm it. Sure, any crewman might spot an enemy ship, the navigator can't help with that. But nobody is going to see the reef hiding below the surface. A crewman might spot an island in the distance, but the navigator knows it's there before it even crests the horizon.
As the DM, you set the difficulty for these obstacles just as you would traps in a dungeon. They do not use the Ship DC, but they should require actions by the other players beside the Nav. These rolls are Wisdom: Perception, as usual. Good charts could decrease the DC, however.
When using the ship for travel, make navigation checks. For a short voyage I use "best of 5" for determining if the ship arrives at all. One failure means the ship arrives on time, 2 means they arrive late, and none means that they arrive early.
These rolls are made with Intelligence: Navigator's Tools

Chief Gunner
--handles the ship's shooting attacks.
These are pure Ranged Attack rolls, with the Crew modifiers, and using the Ship DC as the target AC. Apply the usual modifiers for Long Range and Cover. Note that a ship which is moving perpendicular to the Gunner's ship is a harder target and counts as having partial cover.
This is abstracted as a crew roll because it's not hard to hit a ship with a cannonball. They're pretty big. What IS hard, is making a meaningful shot: ie hitting the water line or the masts. Hitting the masts is so difficult, in fact, that it's -5 to the roll (although using Chain Shot gives advantage)

---

Ship Combat
Each ship essentially uses "side initiative" for everyone aboard. The side who holds initiative in any "straight" fight, is the side with the Weather Guage; meaning the side with the best sailing orientation for the wind. If two sides have the same orientation, then the ship closest to the source of the wind has the Weather Guage.

--Ship orientations for weather, best to worst:

Square Rigged Ships (sails perpendicular to ship, like traditional ship tattoo)
Wind --> / 'Reaching' is the fastest speed over the water
Wind --> -> 'Running'
Wind --> | 'Tack'
Wind --> \ 'Closehauled'
Wind --> <- you cannot sail into the wind, you need to zig-zag through the Close Hauled positions.

Fore-Aft rigged ships (sails parallel to ships, like modern sailboat. Lots of small ships are rigged this way)
Wind --> | 'Tack'
Wind --> / 'Reaching'
Wind --> -> 'Running'
Wind --> \ 'Closehauled'
Wind --> <- no sailing, start close-hauling.

In a tie, Fore-Aft rigged ships win.

Ship Speeds -
Remember, smaller is faster. I tend to give ships 1 speed, divided in 4 to cover the orientations of the wind (into the wind is zero).
Then, for ships running Full Canvas (all sails, plus spankers, etc) I add a 1.5x multiplier to their current speed. Ships only went to full sail when they were not fighting. Having canvas so close to the decks and flashing guns increased the risk of fire.

Damage and Casualties -
Ships are much like Roman gladiators; the notion that they fought to the death is fiction. It was considered the "gentlemanly" thing to accept your defeat and strike your colors, rather than have your whole crew die in a pointless fight. Remember that quite a few sailors still couldn't swim.
Also remember that the strategy for pirates was to capture a ship. You can't really plunder it if it's on the bottom of the ocean or burnt to the waterline. For many pirate-hunters and navies, it was the same way; you want the ship, and you want proof that you either killed the guy, or brought him to sit
trial. Going back to Blackbeard and the Queen Anne's Revenge for a moment, the ship was actually built and launched as the HMS Concorde, then captured by the French and renamed La Concorde de Nantes, then captured by Blackbeard's teacher, Ben Hornigold. Ships were pricey and time consuming to build. During the wars against Napoleon, the poverty of the French navy led to them focusing their attentions on firing at long range and knocking down English masts and rigging in order to take the shape intact. Meanwhile, the British with their superior gunnery skill, sailed up close and just blasted the guts out of the French, firing 50-100% faster, and often double or even triple loading their guns for the first volley.

This means that when a ship "strikes her colors" to surrender is largely up to the DM. Typically, naval theory holds that if you get off 2 effective broadsides before the enemy clears one, you have won the fight. To do this meant "raking" the enemy, crossing St their bow or especially their stern, where they cannot return fire. Two rapid broadsides does so much damage to the crew, guns, and decking, that the enemy cannot recover. A third volley often sealed the engagement, but not always. Ships took hours to sink (barring catastrophes) and after-action reports from Trafalgar mention two ships, both sinking, still exchanging broadsides at pistol-range, and their hulls so shot away that
"Her lower decks were lain bare, such that the gun crews were exchanging musket shot below deck"

Casualties were often wounded, rather than killed outright. When a cannonball hits wood, even if it doesn't penetrate, the force breaks off splinters from the other side which can be as long as a man's arm and as thick as his wrist. The carnage was such that they would scatter sand on the decks to prevent slipping on the blood, and sometimes even painted the interior of the ship red, to hide the gore in battle. A ship was often de-crewed or set ablaze long before the hull failed.

Rules-wise, I generally require a sort of "best of 5" scenario for ships to strike. Again, theater of the mind, you have to describe the quality of enemy broadsides to the players in a way that they understand when they are being outclassed. I record not only hits and misses, but the To Hit roll of each shot. Alternately, you can record damage, but I try to keep things fast and only use one roll. In either case, the shooting "stops" as soon as one side reaches 3 broadsides given, and then I tally the total rolls to determine who has "won."

Broadside Calculator:
2 shots per 5 minutes (British 3)
Range: 450'/200'
Use majority poundage of guns in volley

Damage Values, given simply as "hit, misses" and as rolled damage
9lb = To Hit +0, or d8
12lb = To Hit +2, or d12
24lb = To Hit +4, or 2d10
32lb* = To Hit +7, or 4d8
'To Hit' is taken as the difference between the necessary ShipDC and the actual roll, not just the entire roll (a 16 To Hit on a DC15 would be 1 damage)
*32s were massive, horrific cannons. A 32lb cast-iron ball hitting a wooden ship wrought devastation. Only the largest ships carried these.

Crits don't add damage, but instead count as a "free" broadside in the race. Instead, Crits have different effects. Roll a d8:
1-3 Crew Damage: carnage below deck reduces the ship to Under Crewed. Ships that were already under-crewed are now ghosts and cannot fire at all.
4-6 Structure Damaged: roll a d6 to determine what area is struck and which players are affected:
--1: hull, no effect
--2-3: hull, Gunner and anyone below deck
--4-5: masts, Bosun and anyone aloft
--6: helm, Helmsman, Captain and Quartermaster
Being hit is 2d10 damage, Dex Save for Half.
Masts reduce speed to half of current, and double all Ship DCs to change rigging
Helm doubles Ship DC for all direction changes
----
5-7 Fire! a fire is struck. Reduce the crew skill by one step (Veteran > Skilled > Unsteady) until the fire can be put out (any player near the fire rolls a ShipDC at the crew's unmodified quality)
8 Powder Mag! the crit deals double damage and counts as 2 "free" broadsides, as the powder magazine explodes. Also begins fires on all decks.

Chain/Bar Shot Crits: treat rolls of an 8 as Structure Damage, and reroll all "hull" results

Grape/Cannisters/Scrap shots: treat rolls of 8 as Crew Damage. Reroll Hull and Mast results on Structure Damage.

Double-shotted: half range, crit on 18-20.
Must sacrifice a volley to reload double-shot after the first volley.
---

If, after 3 shots, one side is winning decisively (ahead by at least the average value of the loser's single broadside) then they will strike. Otherwise, fire 2 more volleys and check again. Every shot after the first 3 broadsides is assumed to be at "under crewed" as casualties have mounted and guns have been destroyed.

If the players do not strike their colors, remind them that a lost fight will put them on the bottom, in an ocean full of blood and sharks, and burning wreckage. If they still refuse (as some pirates did, considering the almost certain death penalty) then have the crew begin to give up. Force the players to make Persuade, Intimidate, or Bluff checks to keep the crew from abandoning the ship or laying down their arms. Just remember that one a ship can't keep up the fight, it's only a matter of time before they're boarded and put to sword.

[Zorku]

I rather like all of that, but I'm not sure that it quite works in a world of magic.

[Laserlight]

Excellent post, Captain, although I'm going to quibble with one tiny bit:


During the wars against Napoleon, the poverty of the French navy led to them focusing their attentions on firing at long range and knocking down English masts and rigging in order to take the ship intact. Meanwhile, the British with their superior gunnery skill, sailed up close and just blasted the guts out of the French, firing 50-100% faster, and often double or even triple loading their guns for the first volley.

I have a friend who obsesses about that era of naval history--he travels to Paris and Madrid to read the original ship logs, and wrote the wargame Close Action because the classic Wooden Ships & Iron Men wasn't accurate enough for him--and he said that he has never found evidence of a French policy for firing high.

In that time period, the English generally considered French vessels superior to their own (better lines, faster) and were happy to capture them whenever possible. However, you could capture them by sailing to point blank range and hammering them with broadsides; it was rare for ships to sink directly from battle damage (as opposed to, say, foundering in a storm after the battle). And when the French generally didn't have problems replacing hulls (as opposed to experienced officers and crews); as I recall, after the disastrous Battle of the Nile, they replaced the whole fleet within a year.

[ThurlRavenscrof]

Those rules sound really cool! Thanks for posting.

I would also agree with a previous posters that it's hard to justify the ship getting attacked more than a few times in a week under a normal pirate campaign. Maybe you could have some quest that requires the party goes underwater OR have a number of flying creatures who may also attack the ship OR a plot point which causes underwater inhabitants to be attacking the ship frequently.

[Zorku]

I'm not really familiar with what kind of repairs can be done while you are out at sea, nor how long any of that takes, but it seems like it doesn't really matter how many attacks there are in a week. This is much more in the wilderness survival vein of things, where you need to leave port and arrive at another port before your supplies run out.

You can probably kill two birds with one stone by treating repair materials as both healing potions and rations for the ship. In the early levels you probably have to supplement that with hunting some wildlife on any islands you happen upon (and house rule that spells like create food and water create the kind of stuff you'd find locally, so sure you can get a bunch of fish, but that's not really going to help with your major vitamin deficiencies.)

The trips are fairly long, so if the party ever gets a chance to set up a permanent teleportation circle (or otherwise have perfect teleportation to and from the ship,) then the wizard just goes shopping somewhere on the mainland and removes all limits to how far you can sail, except maybe into unnaturally stormy areas or some such.


If you do still want to tie party combat effectiveness to the state of the ship then you're going to have to adjust the rules for rests. Simply applying levels of exhaustion doesn't seem granular enough for this case, but if you wanted to use something like Ryuutama's daily mood/health rolls you could probably create a slower moving ratchet that doesn't refresh until shore leave. Just abstract it down into some Oregon Trail type events where the character rolls saving throws against getting bitten by some fantasy sea snake while they're fishing, or people try to forget that they accidentally just did some crochet or the visage of some elder god or whatevrthfook mundane sea voyage things slowly wear you down (realistically lots of petty squabbles I bet.) For a typical long voyage you'd let this ratchet gradually take away around half of their hp and spell slots and other daily resources, maybe more if they have had a particularly bad voyage. That should pretty much mirror the typical attrition of an adventuring day, so you can treat any combat on deck pretty much the same as you usually would, but you either need a group that knows how to properly retreat from tough fights or you need to be really careful, as this is effectively denying them the ability to rest when they feel like they need to.

[EvilAnagram]

I'm actually DMing a pirate campaign right now, using the 5e longer rests variant. The key to keeping the plot moving so far has been giving them a clear goal (buried treasure), clear enemies (Nelanther pirates), and clear reasons to get off the boat.

I have hit some bumps in the road, though.
There are two paladins and a barbarian, so ranged combat would slaughter them.
The ranger and rogue are the only ones with range.
The mystics are the only ones with nautical skills, and it's only navigation. No good pilots on the crew.
The only arcane caster is a bard. No ranged blasting or weather control at all.
This all means that the player's have very little in ways to influence ship battles outside of killing the people on the other ship.


So far, combat has involved boarding actions and fighting on land, but I'm going to have to figure out more ways to challenge them at sea.

[Vogie]

That actually would be pretty cool to do as a pirate campaign, specifically BECAUSE you don't have to worry about environmental cheese. Boarding ships and fighting on land is kinda par for the course.

Ideas for that situation:
Maybe give the Paladins' water-based Find Steed, either having them ride on celestial sharks, or fey giant fishing spiders or Fey Basilisk Lizards (aka Jesus lizards).

Perhaps give the Barbarian one of those poles from Mad Max Fury Road, so (s)he can quickly jump onto the top of an enemy ship and start disabling it... maybe build it as a sort of Trebuchet to launch him to opposing ships at range. Or, of course, you can start having him/her use their strength to maneuver a single cannon around the deck.

Give the Bard a unique Animate Objects variant that allows them to take control of the entire ship by themselves.

[CaptainSarathai]

I'm actually DMing a pirate campaign right now, using the 5e longer rests variant. The key to keeping the plot moving so far has been giving them a clear goal (buried treasure), clear enemies (Nelanther pirates), and clear reasons to get off the boat.

I have hit some bumps in the road, though.
There are two paladins and a barbarian, so ranged combat would slaughter them.
The ranger and rogue are the only ones with range.
The mystics are the only ones with nautical skills, and it's only navigation. No good pilots on the crew.
The only arcane caster is a bard. No ranged blasting or weather control at all.
This all means that the player's have very little in ways to influence ship battles outside of killing the people on the other ship.


So far, combat has involved boarding actions and fighting on land, but I'm going to have to figure out more ways to challenge them at sea.

So, if I were crewing the ship with my rules:
1. Paladins are gonna be Captain and Quartermaster. High Charisma makes for good orders. Bard could also fill this role.

2. Ranger/Rogue probably have the Dex to be either the Master Gunner firing below deck, or the Bosun handling the rigging topside.

3. Barbarian has the Strength to assist the Bosun, Intimidate to assist the Captain/Quartermaster, and should probably take lead in any boarding action.

Honestly, I have to wonder how much of a Session Zero you had, or how much the players were aware of the direction the campaign/party would be taking. You ended up with 3 primary melee combatants, 3 Charisma-primary characters (a pair of which play the same class), nobody seems to have taken the Sailor or Pirate background, and you're playing a nautical campaign. I would be very accommodating of any player who wanted to adjust or change their character to better fit the campaign. Failing that, give them ways to learn some nautical skills.

[Khrysaes]

So, if I were crewing the ship with my rules:
1. Paladins are gonna be Captain and Quartermaster. High Charisma makes for good orders. Bard could also fill this role.

2. Ranger/Rogue probably have the Dex to be either the Master Gunner firing below deck, or the Bosun handling the rigging topside.

3. Barbarian has the Strength to assist the Bosun, Intimidate to assist the Captain/Quartermaster, and should probably take lead in any boarding action.

Honestly, I have to wonder how much of a Session Zero you had, or how much the players were aware of the direction the campaign/party would be taking. You ended up with 3 primary melee combatants, 3 Charisma-primary characters (a pair of which play the same class), nobody seems to have taken the Sailor or Pirate background, and you're playing a nautical campaign. I would be very accommodating of any player who wanted to adjust or change their character to better fit the campaign. Failing that, give them ways to learn some nautical skills.

Proficiency in Navigator's kit. Since that is how you determine direction on a ship. Give it to the ranger, since they are usually good at survival, which is a similar check.

[EvilAnagram]

So, if I were crewing the ship with my rules:
1. Paladins are gonna be Captain and Quartermaster. High Charisma makes for good orders. Bard could also fill this role.

2. Ranger/Rogue probably have the Dex to be either the Master Gunner firing below deck, or the Bosun handling the rigging topside.

3. Barbarian has the Strength to assist the Bosun, Intimidate to assist the Captain/Quartermaster, and should probably take lead in any boarding action.
I'm less worried about the general maintenance of the ship. I have three strong PCs, and it's very easy to find ways for them to help out during skill challenges.


Honestly, I have to wonder how much of a Session Zero you had, or how much the players were aware of the direction the campaign/party would be taking. You ended up with 3 primary melee combatants, 3 Charisma-primary characters (a pair of which play the same class), nobody seems to have taken the Sailor or Pirate background, and you're playing a nautical campaign. I would be very accommodating of any player who wanted to adjust or change their character to better fit the campaign. Failing that, give them ways to learn some nautical skills.
We had one of the more comprehensive session 0s I've ever conducted. Everyone was aware that it would be a seafaring campaign, that they would be spending a lot, but not all of their time on ships, and that there would be several niches on the ship. The two mystics came prepared with navigation proficiency and decent intelligence, and one of the paladins is a triton, but everyone else figured that the others would cover the piloting of the vessel. Except the ranger - he just wanted to be a crow's nest sniper, which is fine, but we still need a ship pilot.

I think giving someone the opportunity to learn how to pilot the ship is a great idea, though. Once we get someone capable there, the other roles should get filled in time.


Proficiency in Navigator's kit. Since that is how you determine direction on a ship. Give it to the ranger, since they are usually good at survival, which is a similar check.

The two mystics are both proficient in navigator's tools. I ruled that nautical navigation would be intelligence-based (it relies on specialized knowledge and tools), while piloting the ship would be wisdom-based (it relies on situational awareness). Between the two of them, they are destroying navigation checks, but the highest piloting check is a +1 because the ranger doesn't want to pilot.

[Khrysaes]

The two mystics are both proficient in navigator's tools. I ruled that nautical navigation would be intelligence-based (it relies on specialized knowledge and tools), while piloting the ship would be wisdom-based (it relies on situational awareness). Between the two of them, they are destroying navigation checks, but the highest piloting check is a +1 because the ranger doesn't want to pilot.

If the mystics take Nomadic Mind, they are proficient in everything.

And if no one wants to pilot, you could always try and get them to get a NPC helmsmen, or several to work in shifts. Then they could all do everything EXCEPT pilot the ship, and then just give him orders.

You may also be interested in the Halruuan Sky ships and the House Lyrandar Air ships, or some combination of the two. If you introduce these to the players, it would/could serve as a goal for them to achieve.

Also, Sky Pirates.

[EvilAnagram]

If the mystics take Nomadic Mind, they are proficient in everything.

And if no one wants to pilot, you could always try and get them to get a NPC helmsmen, or several to work in shifts. Then they could all do everything EXCEPT pilot the ship, and then just give him orders.

You may also be interested in the Halruuan Sky ships and the House Lyrandar Air ships, or some combination of the two. If you introduce these to the players, it would/could serve as a goal for them to achieve.

Also, Sky Pirates.

I think airships are a great reward later on, but I want to spend a good deal of time on the seas first. I've already established some major threats, including wyvern riders and a piratical gang of orcas, and I'd like to see those threads play out before they achieve liftoff.

Still, an airship would make a great mid-game reward.

[Occasional Sage]

1. It won't likely have much in the way of rules to port across, but for inspiration track down a copy of the Ars Magica expansion Mythic Seas. I treasure my copy and have pulled it out for a number of different RPGs, including D&D, L5R, and Star Wars.

2. Intrigue is an underused plot element at sea; imagine you find that despite things going well, there's a mutiny brewing. You have to be very careful to not alienate the crew, there's no place to go for help, and any combat operation runs the risk of betrayal and death. Any two crew working in relative isolation may be a problem, and sleeping will become dangerous very quickly.