I'm working on a one-shot for my friends focused on a race where the characters are on, essentially, magic speedboats in a race where they're actively battling with enemies in their own speed boats. I'm planning for 3 NPC teams with different ships, all with teams of 5 characters (there are 4 PCs, and I'm adding an NPC for their team who takes on the task of driver). Also, the reason it's on boats instead of just wagons or something is because the characters come from another one-shot that was completely underwater (since underwater combat is so rare, and I wanted to actually play with that setting for once).
The players are level 4, and the combat doesn't concern me too much, but I'm curious if there's any advice for how to run a race... whether anyone knows of some pre-written rules that can be applied to this, or if you have ideas that you haven't had the chance to use in your own games.
My plan, at the moment, is for the speedboats (which I'm calling "Battleskimmers"), have a movement speed of 60 and 200HP, with 18AC. For now, they're functionally just mounts, but I'm trying to think of how best to handle their movement... should they be able to Dash and double their movement speed, or would that make it too easy to just rush forward and skip all the combat? I'm considering something where the players can choose to use their action to boost speed or repair the ship.
Also... this is a tangent, but what are some magic items that would work well with this concept?
sounds like fun! what jumps to my mind are the chase rules in chapter 8 of the DMG and/or the dinosaur race in tomb of annihilation.
as for a magic item: mariner’s studded leather. it’s literally a life vest 😂
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Since 1995: AD&D 2nd Ed.; D&D 5e; Vampire: The Masquerade (and other Old-WoD titles); Rifts (and other Palladium RPGs); Star Wars (WEG); Magic: The Gathering; Old School Essentials; AOL Red Dragon Inn; Ultima Online; Dark Age of Camelot
Well, if some has proficiency in vehicles:water, they’ll finally get a chance to use it. And carpenter tools to do any repairs on the fly, or other relevant tool proficiencies.
You could look using/modifying the DMG chase rules to run the race part. I’d make the characters spend their action for the boat to dash. Maybe even say at least 4 (or even all) of them on board including the NPC have to at the same time for the boat to dash. Since it requires everyone doing something on the boat in concert to make that happen. Or they can spend their time fighting/repairing. It forces them to make a group tactical decision. And the con checks in the chase rules still seem appropriate, since it can be tiring work manning a boat. If someone does have that water vehicle proficiency, I’d be liberal with giving them advantage on checks. I’d maybe lower the boat’s hp, it will force them to make more choices about if they need to do repairs or try and keep moving. Especially if you are using the hardness rules, 200 hp will likely be tanky to the point they never have to worry about it at level 4. And I’d clarify beforehand what you’re doing about spells and if they can target objects, or if the boat is considered “unattended.” I guess the PCs won’t have fireballs, though shatter would be on the table, so is the boat considered “worn or carried”? Just to decide in advance and be up front about those kinds of things.
A trident of fish command could be interesting, if it’s in the open ocean, someone could use it to make a shark or giant squid or something attack the boat.
This advice is definitely helping. I still want the boats to have fairly high HP, because the race is meant to take up the bulk of the one-shot, so I want them to be a bit tanky so the players can't just focus fire on a single boat and completely eliminate it in a single round. I think 100hp will make them durable enough to avoid being blasted out of the race too easily.
I'm thinking I'll treat the ships as Constructs with full stats for the purpose of handling saves and such, and it would be treated like a Mount. I definitely like using the Dinosaur Races from Tomb of Annihilation as a way to vary the speed of the ships, so they're all not just rocketing forward at the exact same speed, but without just giving them different base speeds where a single ship is very clearly just going to pull ahead and get out of range after a few rounds.
My plan, then, is that the driver for each ship makes a Water Vehicles check on each turn... on a success they move at top speed, on a failure they move at lower speed. If the driver fails, anyone proficient with Water Vehicles can use their action to attempt the check instead. As well, anyone proficient with appropriate tools can use an action to make a check to patch up repairs, and the ship recovers HP equal to whatever they rolled... maybe that's too much. Maybe half of what they rolled? How would you handle mid-journey healing without just letting the players target the ship with healing magic? Or would it make more sense just to let them cast heals on the ship?
You could just treat the healing like a cure wounds, maybe? If they have an appropriate tool proficiency and spend their action, they repair the boat a d8+(ability, I don’t know which though. Good cases for dex or wisdom even str). They’re still spending actions on it. If you’re worried they’ll spam it, just give them limited supplies. Only enough spare wood for 5 repairs or something. Oooh. Then they could spend more. Like use 2 portions of the wood for 2d8 healing. So it would be almost like a single purpose spell point situation. I guess then they might just wait and do all 5 at once. So cap it at 1-2 units per repair action.
Or you want to let them cast repairs on the ship, you could really go for it and say the ships actually are mounts. Make them living creatures bred and domesticated for these races. Beasts, or water elementals. Watch the Druid flip their lid at the idea of enslaved animals.
Okay, my plan is to let the players do an appropriate check (whether it's water vehicles, or smith's tools, or whatever), and on a 12-15 they can heal 1d4 of damage, on a 6-19 it's 1d6, and for 20+ it's 1d8... a low enough number that it probably doesn't need to have limited uses.
Anyway, I think I've got the basic racing rules figured out now, but I wonder if anyone has any advice for hazards. The location is a flooded city (something like Venice), and the race is a rowdy event with a large audience. It also takes place in a land-locked lake.
Pillars or walls from old buildings sticking up out of the water.
Ramps, because jumps are just cool.
Pillars and walls just under the surface that take a perception check to notice. Hitting them doesn’t stop you but slows you down, like difficult terrain, basically.
Some big creature like a giant toad, on a giant lily pad, and it has a reach attack with its tongue that slows a boat down on a hit. But it’s used the toad’s reaction, so it really only targets the first boat. So there’s a risk to being ahead when the boats pass it.
Spears that poke out from the walls if you get too close to them. But not every time, maybe do it on a 5-6 recharge kind of thing.
Maybe include things the boats can do to each other. Structures you can attack and knock down to create new obstacle pillars, oil patches they can choose to light on fire (which is what the ramps let them jump over, cause jumping over fire is even cooler than jumping). Generally ways to let the racers interact directly with the course.
Not to harp on the repairs too much, but also figure out what mending does of any of the PCs have it.
I like those ideas; I especially like the idea of a large creature or hazard of some kind that the party has to contend with if they get too far ahead.
I'm not worried about Mending... it takes a minute to cast, so it's not like they'll be able to do it in the middle of this race, and the whole thing is a one-shot so I'm not worried about the logistics of it long-term.
I'm working on a one-shot for my friends focused on a race where the characters are on, essentially, magic speedboats in a race where they're actively battling with enemies in their own speed boats. I'm planning for 3 NPC teams with different ships, all with teams of 5 characters (there are 4 PCs, and I'm adding an NPC for their team who takes on the task of driver). Also, the reason it's on boats instead of just wagons or something is because the characters come from another one-shot that was completely underwater (since underwater combat is so rare, and I wanted to actually play with that setting for once).
The players are level 4, and the combat doesn't concern me too much, but I'm curious if there's any advice for how to run a race... whether anyone knows of some pre-written rules that can be applied to this, or if you have ideas that you haven't had the chance to use in your own games.
My plan, at the moment, is for the speedboats (which I'm calling "Battleskimmers"), have a movement speed of 60 and 200HP, with 18AC. For now, they're functionally just mounts, but I'm trying to think of how best to handle their movement... should they be able to Dash and double their movement speed, or would that make it too easy to just rush forward and skip all the combat? I'm considering something where the players can choose to use their action to boost speed or repair the ship.
Also... this is a tangent, but what are some magic items that would work well with this concept?
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
sounds like fun! what jumps to my mind are the chase rules in chapter 8 of the DMG and/or the dinosaur race in tomb of annihilation.
as for a magic item: mariner’s studded leather. it’s literally a life vest 😂
Since 1995: AD&D 2nd Ed.; D&D 5e; Vampire: The Masquerade (and other Old-WoD titles); Rifts (and other Palladium RPGs); Star Wars (WEG); Magic: The Gathering; Old School Essentials; AOL Red Dragon Inn; Ultima Online; Dark Age of Camelot
Well, if some has proficiency in vehicles:water, they’ll finally get a chance to use it.
And carpenter tools to do any repairs on the fly, or other relevant tool proficiencies.
You could look using/modifying the DMG chase rules to run the race part.
I’d make the characters spend their action for the boat to dash. Maybe even say at least 4 (or even all) of them on board including the NPC have to at the same time for the boat to dash. Since it requires everyone doing something on the boat in concert to make that happen. Or they can spend their time fighting/repairing. It forces them to make a group tactical decision. And the con checks in the chase rules still seem appropriate, since it can be tiring work manning a boat. If someone does have that water vehicle proficiency, I’d be liberal with giving them advantage on checks.
I’d maybe lower the boat’s hp, it will force them to make more choices about if they need to do repairs or try and keep moving. Especially if you are using the hardness rules, 200 hp will likely be tanky to the point they never have to worry about it at level 4.
And I’d clarify beforehand what you’re doing about spells and if they can target objects, or if the boat is considered “unattended.” I guess the PCs won’t have fireballs, though shatter would be on the table, so is the boat considered “worn or carried”? Just to decide in advance and be up front about those kinds of things.
A trident of fish command could be interesting, if it’s in the open ocean, someone could use it to make a shark or giant squid or something attack the boat.
This advice is definitely helping. I still want the boats to have fairly high HP, because the race is meant to take up the bulk of the one-shot, so I want them to be a bit tanky so the players can't just focus fire on a single boat and completely eliminate it in a single round. I think 100hp will make them durable enough to avoid being blasted out of the race too easily.
I'm thinking I'll treat the ships as Constructs with full stats for the purpose of handling saves and such, and it would be treated like a Mount. I definitely like using the Dinosaur Races from Tomb of Annihilation as a way to vary the speed of the ships, so they're all not just rocketing forward at the exact same speed, but without just giving them different base speeds where a single ship is very clearly just going to pull ahead and get out of range after a few rounds.
My plan, then, is that the driver for each ship makes a Water Vehicles check on each turn... on a success they move at top speed, on a failure they move at lower speed. If the driver fails, anyone proficient with Water Vehicles can use their action to attempt the check instead. As well, anyone proficient with appropriate tools can use an action to make a check to patch up repairs, and the ship recovers HP equal to whatever they rolled... maybe that's too much. Maybe half of what they rolled? How would you handle mid-journey healing without just letting the players target the ship with healing magic? Or would it make more sense just to let them cast heals on the ship?
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
You could just treat the healing like a cure wounds, maybe? If they have an appropriate tool proficiency and spend their action, they repair the boat a d8+(ability, I don’t know which though. Good cases for dex or wisdom even str). They’re still spending actions on it. If you’re worried they’ll spam it, just give them limited supplies.
Only enough spare wood for 5 repairs or something. Oooh. Then they could spend more. Like use 2 portions of the wood for 2d8 healing. So it would be almost like a single purpose spell point situation. I guess then they might just wait and do all 5 at once. So cap it at 1-2 units per repair action.
Or you want to let them cast repairs on the ship, you could really go for it and say the ships actually are mounts. Make them living creatures bred and domesticated for these races. Beasts, or water elementals. Watch the Druid flip their lid at the idea of enslaved animals.
Okay, my plan is to let the players do an appropriate check (whether it's water vehicles, or smith's tools, or whatever), and on a 12-15 they can heal 1d4 of damage, on a 6-19 it's 1d6, and for 20+ it's 1d8... a low enough number that it probably doesn't need to have limited uses.
Anyway, I think I've got the basic racing rules figured out now, but I wonder if anyone has any advice for hazards. The location is a flooded city (something like Venice), and the race is a rowdy event with a large audience. It also takes place in a land-locked lake.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Pillars or walls from old buildings sticking up out of the water.
Ramps, because jumps are just cool.
Pillars and walls just under the surface that take a perception check to notice. Hitting them doesn’t stop you but slows you down, like difficult terrain, basically.
Some big creature like a giant toad, on a giant lily pad, and it has a reach attack with its tongue that slows a boat down on a hit. But it’s used the toad’s reaction, so it really only targets the first boat. So there’s a risk to being ahead when the boats pass it.
Spears that poke out from the walls if you get too close to them. But not every time, maybe do it on a 5-6 recharge kind of thing.
Maybe include things the boats can do to each other. Structures you can attack and knock down to create new obstacle pillars, oil patches they can choose to light on fire (which is what the ramps let them jump over, cause jumping over fire is even cooler than jumping). Generally ways to let the racers interact directly with the course.
Not to harp on the repairs too much, but also figure out what mending does of any of the PCs have it.
I like those ideas; I especially like the idea of a large creature or hazard of some kind that the party has to contend with if they get too far ahead.
I'm not worried about Mending... it takes a minute to cast, so it's not like they'll be able to do it in the middle of this race, and the whole thing is a one-shot so I'm not worried about the logistics of it long-term.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium