I know I'm probably a bit late to the party, but I had to finish another campaign first, before heading into spelljammer. I've taken a look at "the rules" for spelljamming and, apart from the discussed to death issues with a lack of proper combat rules, the biggest issue to me seems to be the ship's movement speed. For example, let's assume we're gonna start battle from the max distance: 1000ft. Let's further assume you are on a space galleon, which has a movement speed of 35 ft. With that abysmal of a ship's movement speed, that's 30 rounds, rounded up, of combat for you to reach boarding distance. Half that many if both ships are moving towards each other and even longer if one of them tries to run. Maybe i'm overlooking something, but's that's a lot of turns for the players to simply repeat using the same set up/reload/fire action for the ship's weapons over and over again. Even if I'm using the middle range of 500ft that's still 14 to 7 rounds for a ship to get close enough for melee combat and 11 to 5 or more to reach range for most spells to hit - assuming no sniper feats. I get that their design philosophy was something like "coming up with special rules is pointless, as the players features/spells are more useful/powerful than anything we could give the ships", but that doesn't change the fact that's with that slow of a movement speed, it's gonna be a lot of rounds to burn until you even get to use any of those abilities. I feel like there's something I'm overlooking, but so far I failed to find anything. Hence why I'm asking all of you here. Please, feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong about anything. As always, thank you for taking your time to read and for any potential help.
Here's an idea that just came to mind (feel free to use, alter, or discard as you like)
Instead of 30 rounds (3 minutes in game), have each minute be a phase. Have everyone decide what they're doing for that minute, then resolve it. If one character is alternating between loading a weapon as an action, and firing it, if they land their shot, multiply the damage by 5 to account for those 10 rounds. If a second character is reloading the weapon every round so the other can fire it every round, and the rolled attack hits, multiply that by 10 for the 10 rounds. That way you have three rounds of lots of damage, so you may have ships in flames, or with massive holes for more dynamic battle-maps when they finally get into melee. The ships went through 30 rounds of combat, but with fewer rolls, condensing the real-time at the table to get to where the players have more choices.
I'm still having trouble figuring out these whacky speed variations. The listings for the individual ships has ship speeds that are 4 to 8 miles per hour but at the beginning of the section it says this -
"When cruising through space, a spelljamming ship can travel 100 million miles in 24 hours..... A spelljamming ship automatically slows to its flying speed (discussed later in this chapter) when it comes within 1 mile of something weighing 1 ton or more, such as another ship, a kindori (see Boo’s Astral Menagerie), an asteroid, or a planet." - https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sais/aag/astral-adventuring#Speed
So, that is roughly 4.167 MILLION mph down to 4-8 mph. That makes no sense at all. Yeah, I know we are talking about a game with magic, talking trees and unicorns, but the rules should make sense.
To me, it makes more sense that the flying speeds would be higher allowing for shorter times to come into gun range.
Impulse Speed is for combat and orbiting planets. Warp drive is for moving between the stars.
My problem is how does it sense the other body before it passes it by and then stops?
I understand the difference between impulse and warp speed, but to continue with your Star Trek reference, impulse power is not a slow, terrestrial speed. Impulse speeds are extremely fast. Full impulse is .25C or 167,000,000 mph.
To me a good speed for a combat encounter between Spelljammers would be 50-100 mph.
Check out Spelljammer Combat & Exploration on DMsGuild... worth your time to look at to provide a ton of basic "space physics" and rules like fleet combat using 5e combat mechanics but isn't addressed in the 2022 wotc release.
I know I'm probably a bit late to the party, but I had to finish another campaign first, before heading into spelljammer.
I've taken a look at "the rules" for spelljamming and, apart from the discussed to death issues with a lack of proper combat rules, the biggest issue to me seems to be the ship's movement speed.
For example, let's assume we're gonna start battle from the max distance: 1000ft. Let's further assume you are on a space galleon, which has a movement speed of 35 ft. With that abysmal of a ship's movement speed, that's 30 rounds, rounded up, of combat for you to reach boarding distance. Half that many if both ships are moving towards each other and even longer if one of them tries to run. Maybe i'm overlooking something, but's that's a lot of turns for the players to simply repeat using the same set up/reload/fire action for the ship's weapons over and over again. Even if I'm using the middle range of 500ft that's still 14 to 7 rounds for a ship to get close enough for melee combat and 11 to 5 or more to reach range for most spells to hit - assuming no sniper feats.
I get that their design philosophy was something like "coming up with special rules is pointless, as the players features/spells are more useful/powerful than anything we could give the ships", but that doesn't change the fact that's with that slow of a movement speed, it's gonna be a lot of rounds to burn until you even get to use any of those abilities.
I feel like there's something I'm overlooking, but so far I failed to find anything. Hence why I'm asking all of you here. Please, feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong about anything.
As always, thank you for taking your time to read and for any potential help.
Spelljammer did not do ship-to-ship combat well.
Here's an idea that just came to mind (feel free to use, alter, or discard as you like)
Instead of 30 rounds (3 minutes in game), have each minute be a phase. Have everyone decide what they're doing for that minute, then resolve it. If one character is alternating between loading a weapon as an action, and firing it, if they land their shot, multiply the damage by 5 to account for those 10 rounds. If a second character is reloading the weapon every round so the other can fire it every round, and the rolled attack hits, multiply that by 10 for the 10 rounds. That way you have three rounds of lots of damage, so you may have ships in flames, or with massive holes for more dynamic battle-maps when they finally get into melee. The ships went through 30 rounds of combat, but with fewer rolls, condensing the real-time at the table to get to where the players have more choices.
I'm still having trouble figuring out these whacky speed variations. The listings for the individual ships has ship speeds that are 4 to 8 miles per hour but at the beginning of the section it says this -
"When cruising through space, a spelljamming ship can travel 100 million miles in 24 hours..... A spelljamming ship automatically slows to its flying speed (discussed later in this chapter) when it comes within 1 mile of something weighing 1 ton or more, such as another ship, a kindori (see Boo’s Astral Menagerie), an asteroid, or a planet." - https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sais/aag/astral-adventuring#Speed
So, that is roughly 4.167 MILLION mph down to 4-8 mph. That makes no sense at all. Yeah, I know we are talking about a game with magic, talking trees and unicorns, but the rules should make sense.
To me, it makes more sense that the flying speeds would be higher allowing for shorter times to come into gun range.
Impulse Speed is for combat and orbiting planets. Warp drive is for moving between the stars.
My problem is how does it sense the other body before it passes it by and then stops?
I understand the difference between impulse and warp speed, but to continue with your Star Trek reference, impulse power is not a slow, terrestrial speed. Impulse speeds are extremely fast. Full impulse is .25C or 167,000,000 mph.
To me a good speed for a combat encounter between Spelljammers would be 50-100 mph.
Check out Spelljammer Combat & Exploration on DMsGuild... worth your time to look at to provide a ton of basic "space physics" and rules like fleet combat using 5e combat mechanics but isn't addressed in the 2022 wotc release.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/474639/Spelljammer-Combat-and-Exploration