I am running a nautical campaign and I need a way to streamline ship battles. Rolling for every cannon and NPC crew is tedious and slows the game down. I would make it all background flavor but I want it all to matter. If they don't do well their ship will skin. I just need to make it all less painful for me (the DM) to run the numbers. Any advice?
Even if you're using that, you could simplify combat rolls down to a modified single role as well. If The Northern Star can bring 6 of her portside cannons to bear on The Black Hound - then roll a single attack roll at a +6 attack/damage modifier. Sort of make a "cannon swarm attack" rather than making each roll individually.
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My issue with a lot of ship combat that I've seen is it leaves most of the player bored. I played in a Spell Jammer came and this came up allll time. Even in a 7th Sea game most people couldn't do anything until ships got into boarding actions. If the Captain decides what the ship is doing, and maybe someone gets to roll a ship weapon... and everyone else just kinda sits there.
The Rogue Trader RPG by Fantasy Flight has my favorite rules to date for number of reasons. (It's about spaceships, but shouldn't be hard to convert)
1) Ship Combat turns are measured in like 10-30 minutes at a time. Naval Combat is sloooow, this gives plenty of time for players to complete their action. 2) Every player gets to choose 1 action a turn. Be is Pilot the Ship, Rally the Crew, Put of Fires, get better aim of the guns, fire guns. This means everyone at the table is always rolling and people are deciding who gets to do what as each action can only be picked once.
2a) A lot of these actions are all skill based and social skill or intelligence based, so it gives more then just roll an attack value.
I think I had some other points, but it's late.
3) The books has tons of stuff for "pimp my privateer ship". Players generally love nothing more then personalizing stuff.
The players are not sitting around waiting. They are fighting people while the ships are firing and the crew are scraping. I just don't want to roll for every cannon and crew member, while still having it all matter. If they choose to man a cannon then it may fire better but they are not killing the people who just boarded the ship.
Then this isn't really about ship-to-ship combat per se, but more about how to conduct large scale battles around the main action.
Or is it? In naval combat - unless its a multi-ship engagement, which these could be - ship to ship combat and boarding actions are usually separate phases.
However, the trick here is to not simulate the larger battle to the same level of detail as the close-in fighting. Devise a simple means by which you can determine how the large battle is progressing You could even do in narratively with a few die rolls here and there to determine if/how the tide of the battle has turned - say a contested D20 roll for the two Marine companies, with appropriate modifiers to depict their relative strengths, lose a point of modifier if you lose the roll - first marine company to -5 is dead or surrendered.
The action going on immediately around the Players, however, you describe in glorious detail. From what the Characters are seeing & hearing, it shouldn't be obvious that the rest of the battle just got "simpler". You can even pull in dramatically interesting plausible events and fighters from the surrounding larger battle into the immediate vicinity of the Characters, or have them charge back out, to keep the Characters' arena of combat interesting and dynamic.
Describe events going on around them in the larger battle - especially interesting developments they'd notice "a cluster of enemy boarders has swung across on ropes into the rigging ..."
Player action still can have impact on the larger battle. Depending on their actions in the battle, give the larger Marine companies modifiers to their rolls. If the Party archers are pinning down the enemy Marines with fire, maybe they get a -1 to their roll. Maybe if the Fighter is rallying the troops and leading a charge across the gangplank onto the enemy ship, the friendly Marine company gets a +1 to their roll.
In short, only use as much simulation detail to make things look realistic to the Players - but where they're not looking, reduce the combat to narrative descriptions, and simple die rolls which can be influenced up or down by what the Party is doing in their own little knot of highly detailed combat.
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I like the contested D20 rolls. Having the players be able to affect the modifier of the ship threw actions they can take in battle. They need to balance fighting the thing in front of them and doing things to help the ship. Less rolling for me.
I don't know if this is late or not but what I do is I have the party roll for all of the ships cannons with only one roll, If they take more than 100 damage i roll a d20 to see how many crew died
Break out a couple of Wizkids Pirates of the Spanish Main ships and play a few rounds of that. Smaller footprint, quicker rules and they're fun to build.
I am running a nautical campaign and I need a way to streamline ship battles. Rolling for every cannon and NPC crew is tedious and slows the game down. I would make it all background flavor but I want it all to matter. If they don't do well their ship will skin. I just need to make it all less painful for me (the DM) to run the numbers. Any advice?
There's an Unearthed Arcana which deals with ship maneuvering, splitting up ship functions amongst crew members, and simplified ship combat.
I don't know if you've seen that, or not.
Even if you're using that, you could simplify combat rolls down to a modified single role as well. If The Northern Star can bring 6 of her portside cannons to bear on The Black Hound - then roll a single attack roll at a +6 attack/damage modifier. Sort of make a "cannon swarm attack" rather than making each roll individually.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I have not seen that. Thank you.
My issue with a lot of ship combat that I've seen is it leaves most of the player bored. I played in a Spell Jammer came and this came up allll time. Even in a 7th Sea game most people couldn't do anything until ships got into boarding actions.
If the Captain decides what the ship is doing, and maybe someone gets to roll a ship weapon... and everyone else just kinda sits there.
The Rogue Trader RPG by Fantasy Flight has my favorite rules to date for number of reasons. (It's about spaceships, but shouldn't be hard to convert)
1) Ship Combat turns are measured in like 10-30 minutes at a time. Naval Combat is sloooow, this gives plenty of time for players to complete their action.
2) Every player gets to choose 1 action a turn. Be is Pilot the Ship, Rally the Crew, Put of Fires, get better aim of the guns, fire guns. This means everyone at the table is always rolling and people are deciding who gets to do what as each action can only be picked once.
2a) A lot of these actions are all skill based and social skill or intelligence based, so it gives more then just roll an attack value.
I think I had some other points, but it's late.
3) The books has tons of stuff for "pimp my privateer ship". Players generally love nothing more then personalizing stuff.
The players are not sitting around waiting. They are fighting people while the ships are firing and the crew are scraping. I just don't want to roll for every cannon and crew member, while still having it all matter. If they choose to man a cannon then it may fire better but they are not killing the people who just boarded the ship.
Then this isn't really about ship-to-ship combat per se, but more about how to conduct large scale battles around the main action.
Or is it? In naval combat - unless its a multi-ship engagement, which these could be - ship to ship combat and boarding actions are usually separate phases.
However, the trick here is to not simulate the larger battle to the same level of detail as the close-in fighting. Devise a simple means by which you can determine how the large battle is progressing You could even do in narratively with a few die rolls here and there to determine if/how the tide of the battle has turned - say a contested D20 roll for the two Marine companies, with appropriate modifiers to depict their relative strengths, lose a point of modifier if you lose the roll - first marine company to -5 is dead or surrendered.
The action going on immediately around the Players, however, you describe in glorious detail. From what the Characters are seeing & hearing, it shouldn't be obvious that the rest of the battle just got "simpler". You can even pull in dramatically interesting plausible events and fighters from the surrounding larger battle into the immediate vicinity of the Characters, or have them charge back out, to keep the Characters' arena of combat interesting and dynamic.
Describe events going on around them in the larger battle - especially interesting developments they'd notice "a cluster of enemy boarders has swung across on ropes into the rigging ..."
Player action still can have impact on the larger battle. Depending on their actions in the battle, give the larger Marine companies modifiers to their rolls. If the Party archers are pinning down the enemy Marines with fire, maybe they get a -1 to their roll. Maybe if the Fighter is rallying the troops and leading a charge across the gangplank onto the enemy ship, the friendly Marine company gets a +1 to their roll.
In short, only use as much simulation detail to make things look realistic to the Players - but where they're not looking, reduce the combat to narrative descriptions, and simple die rolls which can be influenced up or down by what the Party is doing in their own little knot of highly detailed combat.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
I like the contested D20 rolls. Having the players be able to affect the modifier of the ship threw actions they can take in battle. They need to balance fighting the thing in front of them and doing things to help the ship. Less rolling for me.
I don't know if this is late or not but what I do is I have the party roll for all of the ships cannons with only one roll, If they take more than 100 damage i roll a d20 to see how many crew died
Break out a couple of Wizkids Pirates of the Spanish Main ships and play a few rounds of that. Smaller footprint, quicker rules and they're fun to build.
There was a thread here not long ago about naval wargames.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/dungeon-masters-only/133311-simple-vanilla-compatible-ship-combat