They could. But most boats have a minimum amount of damage that needs to be dealt to them before they're actually physically damaged.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Sure, a spear is basically going to be useless against a properly-built, fast-moving, ocean-fairing ship, but a more important issue is that the ocean is a really big place. Intelligent aquatic creatures are probably content predating upon aquatic creatures. Fish are soft and plentiful, algae and seaweed are diverse and farmable, and merchant vessels are heavily armed and highly inconvenient. The only reason an intelligent aquatic creature ought to risk attacking a ship is if they want something being carried by the ship, such as treasure, which they may or may not care about. (Gold and Silver are pretty, but aquatic currency/jewelry is more likely to consist of pearls, shells, and other organic pieces. Hard to melt metal in the ocean.)
The convenient answer is that the aquatic and terrestrial worlds are largely separate, like travelling to a different plane. Each has their own riches and adventures. Occasionally they'll interact, but it's more of a fringe/opportunistic event.
The complicated answer is that if aquatic civilizations wanted to wage war on sailing ships, they totally could, with the tiniest amount of innovation. Create a few "Sticky drills/explosives" on the side of a ship and then let them slowly dissolve the ship over the course of the day. When the ship starts to sink, the intelligent aquatic creatures would swoop in to clean up. However, as soon as that started to happen, there would be an escalation... either the development of metal hulls and high speed skimmers, or aquatic weaponry, like depth charges and torpedos.
For the sake of Worldbuilding, it's much easier to assume the world is simple until you want it to be dynamic. Don't make your life difficult by trying to create a perfectly "realistic" world.
So why don't intelligent aquatic creatures just puncture holes in boats full of prey? Is it basically the toughness of an average hull?
Yes, that's correct. When you look up the stats of a ship, the listed HP is how much damage the ship needs to take for its structural integrity to be compromised - the rules for all objects work that way. A lock's HP is out-of-band small for an object of its size because once you deal it enough damage, you've bricked the lock - i.e. it is no longer a lock. You need to deal an incredible amount of damage to a boat to render it a non-boat, i.e. sink it. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a campaign with a bunch of campaign-specific rules in it that by and large violate the general RAW, if you want more specificity for boat combat.
Who would win? A terror from the deep, or one cheeky bosun with fabricate, mending, and control water?
Seriously though, ships could take a beating from rapidly fired cannonballs and stay afloat for a decent amount of time via things like pumps, patching, and shot plugs. Adding magic to the mix makes it an entirely doable job, imo. Pumping ships was actually a constant job as wooden ships would leak.
Here's a post I found on reddit a while back when I was researching stuff for a pirate plot hook in the campaign I'm running. It was insightful and leads to more info.
I will say though that if a Dragon Turtle somehow takes a big chomp out of your ship's aft, you may be SOL.
Who would win? A terror from the deep, or one cheeky bosun with fabricate, mending, and control water?
Seriously though, ships could take a beating from rapidly fired cannonballs and stay afloat for a decent amount of time via things like pumps, patching, and shot plugs. Adding magic to the mix makes it an entirely doable job, imo. Pumping ships was actually a constant job as wooden ships would leak.
Here's a post I found on reddit a while back when I was researching stuff for a pirate plot hook in the campaign I'm running. It was insightful and leads to more info.
I will say though that if a Dragon Turtle somehow takes a big chomp out of your ship's aft, you may be SOL.
The only RAW I've personally encountered for a creature literally taking chomps out of your vessel is in Frostmaiden. Spoilers:
There's a plesiosaurus that will literally take bites out of your boat. Your boat gains no special rules for this - i.e. it's a fully functional boat until it hits 0 HP, at which point it isn't, and the DM interprets the boat having lost structural integrity as they see fit, as normal for "destroying" an object. I will also point out that the plesiosaurus is inexplicably listed as choosing randomly between surfacing or not before doing this, and could easily attack from below - as indeed it does if you roll differently.
yeah, what mimosa said...who says they don't? That's exactly what the Sahaugin do in at least one novel i've read (Evermeet I think). I think sea trolls used that strategy too. To counter, the elves built crystaline-hulled ships to counter that exact threat (and to let them burn the trolls without catching the whole boat on fire)...but then the fire heated up the hull and made it brittle...so same effect, baddies bashed the hull and it sank (i think it sank anyway - or something else came in and saved the day at the last second, can't remember).
It actually takes quite a bit of force to break through the hull of the average wooden ship- making a hole big enough to cause the ship to sink is going to be difficult for something like a sahagin. Be much easier for them to just come up and attack the crew directly, especially since that way they get to fight.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It actually takes quite a bit of force to break through the hull of the average wooden ship- making a hole big enough to cause the ship to sink is going to be difficult for something like a sahagin. Be much easier for them to just come up and attack the crew directly, especially since that way they get to fight.
For someone like a sahaugin? you mean an intelligent race with tools and thumbs? considering they're at least as smart as I am, I can can ask the whole 'what would I do'....a) climb up the side of the boat, into their environment, on their territory, with my 10 buddies and let them shoot at us as we climb over the railing or b) hang out in my environment, under the boat where most can't effectively reach us, chipping away at our leisure until we've destroyed the integrity of the boat.
I suspect I'd go with option b pretty much every time.
It actually takes quite a bit of force to break through the hull of the average wooden ship- making a hole big enough to cause the ship to sink is going to be difficult for something like a sahagin. Be much easier for them to just come up and attack the crew directly, especially since that way they get to fight.
For someone like a sahaugin? you mean an intelligent race with tools and thumbs? considering they're at least as smart as I am, I can can ask the whole 'what would I do'....a) climb up the side of the boat, into their environment, on their territory, with my 10 buddies and let them shoot at us as we climb over the railing or b) hang out in my environment, under the boat where most can't effectively reach us, chipping away at our leisure until we've destroyed the integrity of the boat.
I suspect I'd go with option b pretty much every time.
Keep in mind that boats are mobile. It's one thing to spend time chipping away at a stationary object, and entirely another to do so while running. If you stop for a moment, you'll have to sprint to catch up.
Yeah I can see a creature trying to simply "pierce" a boat going for other tactics. But what about leviathan scaled creatures, the Dragon Turtles, Moby ***** and the like ... are there rules for gargantuas and capsizing such ships if not sundering them Moby Dick style (though IIRC the great white whale needed to expend quite the effort to wreck the Pequod, it was not a simple snack?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah I can see a creature trying to simply "pierce" a boat going for other tactics. But what about leviathan scaled creatures, the Dragon Turtles, Moby ***** and the like ... are there rules for gargantuas and capsizing such ships if not sundering them Moby Dick style (though IIRC the great white whale needed to expend quite the effort to wreck the Pequod, it was not a simple snack?
The Kraken is a siege monster, so one round of tentacle attacks will deal ~120 points of damage to a ship. That's enough to capsize most ships instantly.
The ships from Ghost of Saltmarsh have damage thresholds, so most mundane attacks simply don't harm the ship.
Yeah I can see a creature trying to simply "pierce" a boat going for other tactics. But what about leviathan scaled creatures, the Dragon Turtles, Moby ***** and the like ... are there rules for gargantuas and capsizing such ships if not sundering them Moby Dick style (though IIRC the great white whale needed to expend quite the effort to wreck the Pequod, it was not a simple snack?
The Kraken is a siege monster, so one round of tentacle attacks will deal ~120 points of damage to a ship. That's enough to capsize most ships instantly.
The ships from Ghost of Saltmarsh have damage thresholds, so most mundane attacks simply don't harm the ship.
On what basis do you think 120 points of damage will capsize a ship? Only rowboats and keelboats are weak enough to die to that - everything else has 300 or 500 hp.
A kraken can easily demolish even a capital ship in 18 seconds even with very bad rolls, but 120 by itself generally won't do it.
Yeah I can see a creature trying to simply "pierce" a boat going for other tactics. But what about leviathan scaled creatures, the Dragon Turtles, Moby ***** and the like ... are there rules for gargantuas and capsizing such ships if not sundering them Moby Dick style (though IIRC the great white whale needed to expend quite the effort to wreck the Pequod, it was not a simple snack?
The Kraken is a siege monster, so one round of tentacle attacks will deal ~120 points of damage to a ship. That's enough to capsize most ships instantly.
The ships from Ghost of Saltmarsh have damage thresholds, so most mundane attacks simply don't harm the ship.
On what basis do you think 120 points of damage will capsize a ship? Only rowboats and keelboats are weak enough to die to that - everything else has 300 or 500 hp.
A kraken can easily demolish even a capital ship in 18 seconds even with very bad rolls, but 120 by itself generally won't do it.
Ah, I misread the ship statblocks. Didn't realize that each part of the ship had its own Hit Points.
Ok, so with Legendary Actions, it could deal 240 damage on average in a single round. So, with a little luck (4% increased damage), it could down a ship in either 6 or 12 seconds.
If you wanted a semi-supported Capsizing rule, you could apply the Massive Damage optional rule to ships, which would give a 30% chance of instantly capsizing the ship if a single source dealt 150/250 points of damage.
It actually takes quite a bit of force to break through the hull of the average wooden ship- making a hole big enough to cause the ship to sink is going to be difficult for something like a sahagin. Be much easier for them to just come up and attack the crew directly, especially since that way they get to fight.
For someone like a sahaugin? you mean an intelligent race with tools and thumbs? considering they're at least as smart as I am, I can can ask the whole 'what would I do'....a) climb up the side of the boat, into their environment, on their territory, with my 10 buddies and let them shoot at us as we climb over the railing or b) hang out in my environment, under the boat where most can't effectively reach us, chipping away at our leisure until we've destroyed the integrity of the boat.
I suspect I'd go with option b pretty much every time.
First of all, the hull of a typical wooden sailing ship of the types usually depicted in most D&D worlds is going to be sufficiently durable that trying to put a hole in it is going to be the work of minutes at a minimum. Sahaugin might be tool users, but they're stuck with augers and saws, mostly. They're not going to be slapping some C4 on the thing and letting it rip.
Second of all, sahaugin are noted as being extremely bloodthirsty- no way they'd want to sit around cutting their way through inanimate wood when they could be fighting and killing the squishy surface-dwellers inside.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I’ve done that before as a DM. I had aquatic creatures attack the bottom of a boat with harpoons before. It made for a fun combat because the PCs had to leave the ship and fight under water. They were high enough that one of them was able to cast Water Breathing on the party.
So why don't intelligent aquatic creatures just puncture holes in boats full of prey? Is it basically the toughness of an average hull?
They could. But most boats have a minimum amount of damage that needs to be dealt to them before they're actually physically damaged.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Who's to say they don't?
Sure, a spear is basically going to be useless against a properly-built, fast-moving, ocean-fairing ship, but a more important issue is that the ocean is a really big place. Intelligent aquatic creatures are probably content predating upon aquatic creatures. Fish are soft and plentiful, algae and seaweed are diverse and farmable, and merchant vessels are heavily armed and highly inconvenient. The only reason an intelligent aquatic creature ought to risk attacking a ship is if they want something being carried by the ship, such as treasure, which they may or may not care about. (Gold and Silver are pretty, but aquatic currency/jewelry is more likely to consist of pearls, shells, and other organic pieces. Hard to melt metal in the ocean.)
The convenient answer is that the aquatic and terrestrial worlds are largely separate, like travelling to a different plane. Each has their own riches and adventures. Occasionally they'll interact, but it's more of a fringe/opportunistic event.
The complicated answer is that if aquatic civilizations wanted to wage war on sailing ships, they totally could, with the tiniest amount of innovation. Create a few "Sticky drills/explosives" on the side of a ship and then let them slowly dissolve the ship over the course of the day. When the ship starts to sink, the intelligent aquatic creatures would swoop in to clean up. However, as soon as that started to happen, there would be an escalation... either the development of metal hulls and high speed skimmers, or aquatic weaponry, like depth charges and torpedos.
For the sake of Worldbuilding, it's much easier to assume the world is simple until you want it to be dynamic. Don't make your life difficult by trying to create a perfectly "realistic" world.
Yes, that's correct. When you look up the stats of a ship, the listed HP is how much damage the ship needs to take for its structural integrity to be compromised - the rules for all objects work that way. A lock's HP is out-of-band small for an object of its size because once you deal it enough damage, you've bricked the lock - i.e. it is no longer a lock. You need to deal an incredible amount of damage to a boat to render it a non-boat, i.e. sink it. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a campaign with a bunch of campaign-specific rules in it that by and large violate the general RAW, if you want more specificity for boat combat.
Who would win? A terror from the deep, or one cheeky bosun with fabricate, mending, and control water?
Seriously though, ships could take a beating from rapidly fired cannonballs and stay afloat for a decent amount of time via things like pumps, patching, and shot plugs. Adding magic to the mix makes it an entirely doable job, imo. Pumping ships was actually a constant job as wooden ships would leak.
Here's a post I found on reddit a while back when I was researching stuff for a pirate plot hook in the campaign I'm running. It was insightful and leads to more info.
I will say though that if a Dragon Turtle somehow takes a big chomp out of your ship's aft, you may be SOL.
The only RAW I've personally encountered for a creature literally taking chomps out of your vessel is in Frostmaiden. Spoilers:
There's a plesiosaurus that will literally take bites out of your boat. Your boat gains no special rules for this - i.e. it's a fully functional boat until it hits 0 HP, at which point it isn't, and the DM interprets the boat having lost structural integrity as they see fit, as normal for "destroying" an object. I will also point out that the plesiosaurus is inexplicably listed as choosing randomly between surfacing or not before doing this, and could easily attack from below - as indeed it does if you roll differently.
yeah, what mimosa said...who says they don't? That's exactly what the Sahaugin do in at least one novel i've read (Evermeet I think). I think sea trolls used that strategy too. To counter, the elves built crystaline-hulled ships to counter that exact threat (and to let them burn the trolls without catching the whole boat on fire)...but then the fire heated up the hull and made it brittle...so same effect, baddies bashed the hull and it sank (i think it sank anyway - or something else came in and saved the day at the last second, can't remember).
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
It actually takes quite a bit of force to break through the hull of the average wooden ship- making a hole big enough to cause the ship to sink is going to be difficult for something like a sahagin. Be much easier for them to just come up and attack the crew directly, especially since that way they get to fight.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
For someone like a sahaugin? you mean an intelligent race with tools and thumbs? considering they're at least as smart as I am, I can can ask the whole 'what would I do'....a) climb up the side of the boat, into their environment, on their territory, with my 10 buddies and let them shoot at us as we climb over the railing or b) hang out in my environment, under the boat where most can't effectively reach us, chipping away at our leisure until we've destroyed the integrity of the boat.
I suspect I'd go with option b pretty much every time.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Keep in mind that boats are mobile. It's one thing to spend time chipping away at a stationary object, and entirely another to do so while running. If you stop for a moment, you'll have to sprint to catch up.
Yeah I can see a creature trying to simply "pierce" a boat going for other tactics. But what about leviathan scaled creatures, the Dragon Turtles, Moby ***** and the like ... are there rules for gargantuas and capsizing such ships if not sundering them Moby Dick style (though IIRC the great white whale needed to expend quite the effort to wreck the Pequod, it was not a simple snack?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The Kraken is a siege monster, so one round of tentacle attacks will deal ~120 points of damage to a ship. That's enough to capsize most ships instantly.
The ships from Ghost of Saltmarsh have damage thresholds, so most mundane attacks simply don't harm the ship.
On what basis do you think 120 points of damage will capsize a ship? Only rowboats and keelboats are weak enough to die to that - everything else has 300 or 500 hp.
A kraken can easily demolish even a capital ship in 18 seconds even with very bad rolls, but 120 by itself generally won't do it.
Ah, I misread the ship statblocks. Didn't realize that each part of the ship had its own Hit Points.
Ok, so with Legendary Actions, it could deal 240 damage on average in a single round. So, with a little luck (4% increased damage), it could down a ship in either 6 or 12 seconds.
If you wanted a semi-supported Capsizing rule, you could apply the Massive Damage optional rule to ships, which would give a 30% chance of instantly capsizing the ship if a single source dealt 150/250 points of damage.
First of all, the hull of a typical wooden sailing ship of the types usually depicted in most D&D worlds is going to be sufficiently durable that trying to put a hole in it is going to be the work of minutes at a minimum. Sahaugin might be tool users, but they're stuck with augers and saws, mostly. They're not going to be slapping some C4 on the thing and letting it rip.
Second of all, sahaugin are noted as being extremely bloodthirsty- no way they'd want to sit around cutting their way through inanimate wood when they could be fighting and killing the squishy surface-dwellers inside.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I’ve done that before as a DM. I had aquatic creatures attack the bottom of a boat with harpoons before. It made for a fun combat because the PCs had to leave the ship and fight under water. They were high enough that one of them was able to cast Water Breathing on the party.
Professional computer geek