I'm a DM looking to introduce naval mechanics into my campaign soon. I really want to have ship combat, but while the stat blocks in GoS make sense to me, the mechanics seem really overwhelming. I'm autistic and have ADHD, so often need to tweak combat mechanics I find tricky to run things more smoothly (for example, I basically rework mob combat into working like the mobs are swarm monsters). This means I'm not new to reworking mechanics, but this one is challenging me.
My main issues are that the action economy and role system in GoS ship combat is confusing, and makes it seem like players have limited options for taking part.
In essence, I'm wondering if anyone has advice on reworking naval combat so that players still feel like they can take part (with using cannons if they want to, for example), but requires juggling fewer things on my end. From what I've read, the vehicle system in Descent Into Avernus is a lot simpler, but I understand that applying those rules to huge ships and weapons that require more actions to use might not make perfect sense.
I've also seen a few sets of homebrew ship combat rules, but a lot of them also seem quite complex, and they seem to rely on using different stat blocks for the ships, whereas I'd like to still use them if possible. I will admit that I obviously haven't seen everything, though.
Does anyone have advice for where I could start with this?
I would dispense with ship combat altogether. It's like a weird sub-game and not really fun. Instead have NPCs pilot the ships and run combat encounters for boarding or being boarded by enemy creatures - much more fun and the players get to do their thing.
I second Sanvael, but in a different way. Large naval or land battles are in my view best treated as narrative story elements. I have often run boarding actions for a current D&D campaign, and small ones work fine as conventional encounters. Five pirates on a sloop isn't much different than five orcs in a 10'x10' room, except they have rigging to swing from. For large ones, there's a small section or sections that the PCs are involved with - a few key scenes where a small band of heroes in the right place at the right time can swing the fate of the battle - but the battle itself is largely backdrop. Think of a play or movie with a major battle sequence - the focus remains with the heroes despite all the flying shot and mayhem in the background. You can have the outcome of the overall battle hinge in whole or in part on how well the PCs do in their particular scenes, or even have different scenes available depending on success or failure in earlier ones. If PCs are actually in command, it's a bit more complicated but I still focus heavily on narrative; perhaps I'd have them each pick a skill (e.g. Performance (oratory) to rally troops, Proficiency (water vehicles) to have the weather gage) to roll going into the battle for preparation, opposed by the enemy commander(s), and give each one an inspiration point to be used during the battle scenes if they win. On the other hand, if your players really are going to enjoy switching to a naval wargame for a session, great, knock yourselves out. The point is to have fun, after all. Just be aware you're basically trying to create a wargame from scratch, because D&D isn't really set up for it. There are a number of decent age of sail or even classical naval combat wargames out there that might let you run your scenarios you could give a try to. So what if today's D&D session guest-stars "Of Wooden Ships and Iron Men" (or even Harpoon)!
I'm a DM looking to introduce naval mechanics into my campaign soon. I really want to have ship combat, but while the stat blocks in GoS make sense to me, the mechanics seem really overwhelming. I'm autistic and have ADHD, so often need to tweak combat mechanics I find tricky to run things more smoothly (for example, I basically rework mob combat into working like the mobs are swarm monsters). This means I'm not new to reworking mechanics, but this one is challenging me.
My main issues are that the action economy and role system in GoS ship combat is confusing, and makes it seem like players have limited options for taking part.
In essence, I'm wondering if anyone has advice on reworking naval combat so that players still feel like they can take part (with using cannons if they want to, for example), but requires juggling fewer things on my end. From what I've read, the vehicle system in Descent Into Avernus is a lot simpler, but I understand that applying those rules to huge ships and weapons that require more actions to use might not make perfect sense.
I've also seen a few sets of homebrew ship combat rules, but a lot of them also seem quite complex, and they seem to rely on using different stat blocks for the ships, whereas I'd like to still use them if possible. I will admit that I obviously haven't seen everything, though.
Does anyone have advice for where I could start with this?
My suggestion is to take Ghosts of Salt Marsh and combine it with the vehicle rules from Descent into Avernus. What you want to make sure of is that each player has a role in the combat and are rolling. Possible roles would be captain (influence everyone else's roles possibly a bardic type inspiration on roles once per round) (groups caller) + steering, Navigator (utility) influence speed of ship and have a roll to see if the ship performs the maneuver, gunner (dps) (load/aim catapult/guns) you could have multiple crewmen for this one, Boatsmen Mate (healer) - help repairing the ship from damage to keep it afloat.
Just make sure you have the roles defined, everyone gets something to do. Having multiple gunners would probably be not too bad for the more offensive types, whether it be balistae, catapults or guns.
Could you expand on this a bit? Are you looking to evoke some cinematic scenes of ship combat? Do you specifically want to break up "regular D&D" with a different combat system? Is it something the players have asked for or something you are particularly passionate about?
I ask because a pretty common answer is going to be that if it feels overwhelming, just don't use it in your campaign. I've done the ship combat from GoS a couple of times and it really wasn't for me - it felt jarring to suddenly be playing another game when I was there to play D&D. I just kind of felt like I was waiting for it to end.
But you and your group could feel differently. If you have reason to believe that your table would like it, I think doing some simplification based on the Avernus rules is a good idea. If you don't really feel that strongly about the mechanics but want to have the cinematic/narrative aspects of ship combat, I'd suggest something like Torvald's advice - have it as a backdrop to a regular battle with "lair actions" of cannonballs hitting the ship they're fighting on or sails catching on fire. Or you could run it more like a skill challenge where you're describing events and obstacles and the party figures out how they want to tackle them with their skills and abilities.
I do like the approach of incorporating the DiA system, but then there are the questions of how to deal with a ship's general NPC crew and such. An NPC crew would (logically, on a full-scale ship) be super numerous and would have to be treated like a mob or a swarm, maybe divided into different groups for their own stations?.
Plus there's how stationary weapons demand multiple actions, and how PCs could be involved with those. I guess it's a safe move to say that a PC could take command of, say, the team that's working a ballista, and have the NPCs' actions leading up to that PC "pulling the trigger," so to speak.
I'm digressing, but it kind of speaks to how 5e isn't designed to handle large-scale events like naval combat and big battles in general. The DiA mechanics work very intuitively because it makes sense for those vehicles to have individual people controlling individual things, because they're much smaller than ships and don't use crew-based weapons.
These are good points too. It's just a shame, because I'd like to have this element of novelty/variety (especially since seafaring is a big element of my setting in terms of narrative).
For simplicity (IE, if I were to make this a brief part of the game but not an ongoing theme, so I don't want to put a lot of effort into it), I would do it like this:
1: The ship is a plot device, so damage dealt to it is thematic and not in HP. If a player wants to fireball the hull of a ship, then I'd make them do a roll to see how that goes, an narrate the results- which will be factoring in the "plan" I'd have had for the encounter.
2: for a basic one, I'd give the ships a simple mechanic:
Ships move forwards every turn. If it's going to be a chase then the wind direction matters - if not, then they just move forward every turn.
Ships can be turned an amount each turn. Turning further requires a strength check to hold the wheel, based on how muich you turn (turning 90° in 1 turn is going to be a high check). Strength check DC to turn is angle/10, so 30° is DC10, 45° is 15, 60° is 20, 75° is 25, 90° is 30. Failure means you only turn as far as you tested to pass for.
Cannons are an action to load and a bonus action to fire, or an action to aim and fire. I'd use the spell "Catapult" to simulate the cannons.
For more in-depth, I would have the ship need a crew. DC of checks to control the ship depends on the size of the crew, and those crew members need to be using their turns to be crew. Fighting a boarding action makes the ship less controlled. Killing the crew makes it less controlled.
If I were building the campaign around it, I'd be doing a lot more research into how ships work!
I'm a DM looking to introduce naval mechanics into my campaign soon. I really want to have ship combat, but while the stat blocks in GoS make sense to me, the mechanics seem really overwhelming. I'm autistic and have ADHD, so often need to tweak combat mechanics I find tricky to run things more smoothly (for example, I basically rework mob combat into working like the mobs are swarm monsters). This means I'm not new to reworking mechanics, but this one is challenging me.
My main issues are that the action economy and role system in GoS ship combat is confusing, and makes it seem like players have limited options for taking part.
In essence, I'm wondering if anyone has advice on reworking naval combat so that players still feel like they can take part (with using cannons if they want to, for example), but requires juggling fewer things on my end. From what I've read, the vehicle system in Descent Into Avernus is a lot simpler, but I understand that applying those rules to huge ships and weapons that require more actions to use might not make perfect sense.
I've also seen a few sets of homebrew ship combat rules, but a lot of them also seem quite complex, and they seem to rely on using different stat blocks for the ships, whereas I'd like to still use them if possible. I will admit that I obviously haven't seen everything, though.
Does anyone have advice for where I could start with this?
I would dispense with ship combat altogether. It's like a weird sub-game and not really fun. Instead have NPCs pilot the ships and run combat encounters for boarding or being boarded by enemy creatures - much more fun and the players get to do their thing.
I second Sanvael, but in a different way. Large naval or land battles are in my view best treated as narrative story elements. I have often run boarding actions for a current D&D campaign, and small ones work fine as conventional encounters. Five pirates on a sloop isn't much different than five orcs in a 10'x10' room, except they have rigging to swing from. For large ones, there's a small section or sections that the PCs are involved with - a few key scenes where a small band of heroes in the right place at the right time can swing the fate of the battle - but the battle itself is largely backdrop. Think of a play or movie with a major battle sequence - the focus remains with the heroes despite all the flying shot and mayhem in the background. You can have the outcome of the overall battle hinge in whole or in part on how well the PCs do in their particular scenes, or even have different scenes available depending on success or failure in earlier ones. If PCs are actually in command, it's a bit more complicated but I still focus heavily on narrative; perhaps I'd have them each pick a skill (e.g. Performance (oratory) to rally troops, Proficiency (water vehicles) to have the weather gage) to roll going into the battle for preparation, opposed by the enemy commander(s), and give each one an inspiration point to be used during the battle scenes if they win. On the other hand, if your players really are going to enjoy switching to a naval wargame for a session, great, knock yourselves out. The point is to have fun, after all. Just be aware you're basically trying to create a wargame from scratch, because D&D isn't really set up for it. There are a number of decent age of sail or even classical naval combat wargames out there that might let you run your scenarios you could give a try to. So what if today's D&D session guest-stars "Of Wooden Ships and Iron Men" (or even Harpoon)!
My suggestion is to take Ghosts of Salt Marsh and combine it with the vehicle rules from Descent into Avernus. What you want to make sure of is that each player has a role in the combat and are rolling. Possible roles would be captain (influence everyone else's roles possibly a bardic type inspiration on roles once per round) (groups caller) + steering, Navigator (utility) influence speed of ship and have a roll to see if the ship performs the maneuver, gunner (dps) (load/aim catapult/guns) you could have multiple crewmen for this one, Boatsmen Mate (healer) - help repairing the ship from damage to keep it afloat.
Just make sure you have the roles defined, everyone gets something to do. Having multiple gunners would probably be not too bad for the more offensive types, whether it be balistae, catapults or guns.
Could you expand on this a bit? Are you looking to evoke some cinematic scenes of ship combat? Do you specifically want to break up "regular D&D" with a different combat system? Is it something the players have asked for or something you are particularly passionate about?
I ask because a pretty common answer is going to be that if it feels overwhelming, just don't use it in your campaign. I've done the ship combat from GoS a couple of times and it really wasn't for me - it felt jarring to suddenly be playing another game when I was there to play D&D. I just kind of felt like I was waiting for it to end.
But you and your group could feel differently. If you have reason to believe that your table would like it, I think doing some simplification based on the Avernus rules is a good idea. If you don't really feel that strongly about the mechanics but want to have the cinematic/narrative aspects of ship combat, I'd suggest something like Torvald's advice - have it as a backdrop to a regular battle with "lair actions" of cannonballs hitting the ship they're fighting on or sails catching on fire. Or you could run it more like a skill challenge where you're describing events and obstacles and the party figures out how they want to tackle them with their skills and abilities.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Those are good ideas, thank you!
I do like the approach of incorporating the DiA system, but then there are the questions of how to deal with a ship's general NPC crew and such. An NPC crew would (logically, on a full-scale ship) be super numerous and would have to be treated like a mob or a swarm, maybe divided into different groups for their own stations?.
Plus there's how stationary weapons demand multiple actions, and how PCs could be involved with those. I guess it's a safe move to say that a PC could take command of, say, the team that's working a ballista, and have the NPCs' actions leading up to that PC "pulling the trigger," so to speak.
I'm digressing, but it kind of speaks to how 5e isn't designed to handle large-scale events like naval combat and big battles in general. The DiA mechanics work very intuitively because it makes sense for those vehicles to have individual people controlling individual things, because they're much smaller than ships and don't use crew-based weapons.
These are good points too. It's just a shame, because I'd like to have this element of novelty/variety (especially since seafaring is a big element of my setting in terms of narrative).
The lair action idea is really smart, thanks!
Have you looked at wargames?
A quick web search found some discussions on exactly this topic. For example, https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/486914/there-really-good-small-simple-realistic-solo-frie/page/2, https://www.reddit.com/r/wargaming/comments/fyld08/simple_naval_wargames/.
I've never played any of these so I can't comment on the actual wargames.
For simplicity (IE, if I were to make this a brief part of the game but not an ongoing theme, so I don't want to put a lot of effort into it), I would do it like this:
1: The ship is a plot device, so damage dealt to it is thematic and not in HP. If a player wants to fireball the hull of a ship, then I'd make them do a roll to see how that goes, an narrate the results- which will be factoring in the "plan" I'd have had for the encounter.
2: for a basic one, I'd give the ships a simple mechanic:
For more in-depth, I would have the ship need a crew. DC of checks to control the ship depends on the size of the crew, and those crew members need to be using their turns to be crew. Fighting a boarding action makes the ship less controlled. Killing the crew makes it less controlled.
If I were building the campaign around it, I'd be doing a lot more research into how ships work!
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