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View Full Version : Best ship content for 5e?



TyGuy
2022-03-01, 11:43 PM
Best simply meaning material you've found to be the most useful or favored by you or your table. Third party, UA, homebrew, or Ghosts of Saltmarsh; or any combinations of multiple sources.

I would like something with decent material for building/ selecting ship options, to present the players with meaningfully different decisions. GoSM didn't really seem to have a heck of a lot on that front.
Bonus would be decent ship combat rules/ variations. But so long as their functional, it's fine. Ship combat won't be the focus of the campaign, as the ships will mostly be a means for travel. But the goal is to have ship combat reinforce the decisions made on which ship and its upgrades the party choose.

Thanks in advance.

Kane0
2022-03-02, 02:06 AM
I hacked together some quick and dirty rules some time back

Order of Combat
1: Roll initiative
2: Your Turn: Perform movement (vessels can turn based on their mobility, typically 1 hex face per 2 or 3 hexes of forward movement)
3: Your turn: Decide Action
Attack action: Fire available weapons using crew bonus
Board action: Attempt one opposed check using crew bonus against another ship within reach.
Each turn spend an action to attempt another opposed check.
Three successes before three failures are required to claim ship
Evade action: Ship gains +2 speed and enemy attacks are at disadvantage to hit until the start of next turn
4: Your Turn: Character actions
Each PC aboard the ship can take one action or bonus action, including firing a ship weapon.

Taking Damage
At 0 Hull HP the ship begins to sink (death saving throws at DC 18)
At 0 Rigging HP the ship is immobilized and cannot take attack or evade actions
At 0 Crew HP the ship has insufficient manpower and suffers disadvantage on all attacks, checks and saves

And the statblocks look a little like this (different weapons can target different HP pools, like damage types but actually relevant)

Brig
Size Medium
Movement 5 (1 per 2)
AC 16
Hull HP 10d8 (Thresh 15)
Rigging HP 10d8 (Thresh 12)
Crew HP 6d8 (Thresh 9)
Crew Bonus Att +6 / Save +4
2x Ballista 6/18 (1d6 R/C)
2x Catapult 8/24 (1d8 H/R)

Demonslayer666
2022-03-03, 04:49 PM
Check out 'Nautical Adventures.pdf'.

It has many different ship types, building them, stats, and ship to ship combat.