How do pirates force other ships to stop? I always struggle with ship-to-ship combat in DnD. Obviously, we don't want to give them easy access to cannons as that would lead to the question: Why aren't cannons used elsewhere? But at the same time, the ancient form of naval warfare of ramming, arrows, and boarding has its own challenges. Mostly that it doesn't translate well to the game mechanics.
First, the actual interesting part would be the outmaneuvering and positioning of ships. Something that just doesn't work with DnD rules so it has to be simplified or even handwaved. But also that ship crews are rather big. So every fight has a ton of low-level fighters involved and would just take forever without being interesting.
With merchant ships, you can kinda solve it by having a few higher-level fighters, and the rest surrender once they are dead. So you just have a regular DnD experience but with warships, you would have a crew that easily could go into the hundreds.
So the question is:
Are mages on ships just way more common and do they take over the role of cannons?
Do ships just have lower crew requirements than real-life ships would have?
I have cannons in the setting, just cos I wanted the players to be able to use them, cos fun! I’ve developed a way of doing ship-to-ship combat that has been working quite well.
I balance the encounter with a manageable number of enemies to match the party, and maybe one or two named NPCs. They battle it out while the two crews fight around them. The crews go in with a set strength rating that translates to a modifier. At the start if each round, both crews roll a d20 and the loser takes one away from their modifier. I determines the starting mod for the players by assessing morale if the crew, how well fed and we’ll armed they are, etc. I use the results to add flavour to the battle. So it’s like the party are fighting some of the crew, but I’m simulating a larger battle around them. If their crew is losing, the PC cam use their actions to affect the larger battle and swing it back in their favour.
Each turn, each ship can move its movement speed and fire cannons/ballet’s on either side. The players can use their actions to do these things or, if they have enough crew left, they can give orders to have them do it.
Makes are still very useful aboard ships cos they can do stuff like create a gust of wind for a burst of speed, or create a fog cloud for visual cover. Also fireballs!
If you can, it might be worth looking into the old games workshop game “Battlefleet Gothic”. While it’s spaceships in space, a lot of the rules and ideas could easily be remapped onto sea battles. Some of the rules would actually make MORE sense for a sea navy rather than a space navy. It could help for things like getting caught in a multi fleet battle, without getting bogged down too much.
well, since its in the Forgotten Realms settings, access to cannons are rare and limited - and really expensive - where a small island of a weird gnome sect in the far south west of the continent hold the monopoly to guns and cannons. Mostly, mages and other magical users would be employed to either power the sails and/or defend from attacks.
as for the maneuvering part, one can roleplay a ship chase, running mages dry, and then the more powerful ship has the chance to get away or attack the remaining fighting crew as one would. And since a ship will fight for its very existence, unless the opponent are slavers, every man will fight, which shouldn’t be fought out unless you group all combatants into one “group” and roll for them to see how they are doing.
More ideas:
Slavers are a topic in such games. One could think about the wealth distribution among the crew, among certain factions, regions, and flesh out the region accordingly.
Check the campaign guide for trades countries would ship overseas, what items could they want to smuggle?
What kind of taboos exist on land, which your crew might flee from and become Privateers?
How are Pirates supplied?
Where is their landing port, safe haven? How is it defended when the main part of the fleet is gone? Access to repairs? How do they recruit additional crew?
What enemies are there? What “Kingpins” of the Underworld (can also be intelligent Monsters) exist, what foes? (how a about a beholder “kraken”?)
How are the landlubbers acting towards the crew, what kind of people are there? Do you have primitives, voodoo shamans and a carribbean setting or do you prefer the privateer British setting, with more refinements and fortified towns - or something in between?
Source: FR Campaign Guide & Drizzt Books
notable mentions to check out:
(TSR/2nd ED): Pirates of the Fallen Stars
(D20): Corsair the definitive Guide to Ships / Gareth-Michael Skarka
There are tales of buried treasure, maps with a marked ‘X’, etc. But currently there is a greater prize which some of the crews and functions are frantically searching for. One particularly viscous and evil pirate captains, a sharkman necromancer named Blackfin who, along with the Southern Islands Company itself, is one of the BBEGs of the campaign. He is in the employ of the demon Lord Orcus.
You see, a great hero stole the Wand of Orcus, and then was lost while passing through the Isles. Blackfin has been promised great power if he retrieves it for his master, so he is raising an undead army to find it. He’s also made an alliance with the sahuagin, a local population of aquatic arseholes.
Signature dru k would of course be rum! Particularly spiced run, sometimes mixed with ginger beer and lime (which is a real cocktail called a Dark & Stormy)
Sade havens… there’s the idland of Oresk, on which is the hidden treetop hideout of thw pirate queen Anne Bonny. She’s beautiful and ferocious, and most of her crew are in love with her. There’s also Tortuga, a town built onto the back of a great Zaratan (giant turtle). The zaratan makes them powerful, so the SIC have not been able to bully them into economic submissions like other places. The players managed to convince the council that runs Tortuga to ally with the pirates when it comes time to topple The Company.
Exports are exotic food and spices, and gold from a mine on one if the islands. But the placement of the Southern Isles makes them a hub for trade. It is by far the quickest route for many neighbouring nations, it takes a long time to sail around them. So many still take their chances with the pirates.
People come to the isles to disappear, or in the hopes of adventure and fortune on the high seas.
Sounds like fun. I’ll have a go at some questions.
How do they get the profit? If the local population are starved and downtrodden, the stolen pirate goods have to go somewhere else. Is there some black market organisation they’re linked to which gives them the funding to run the place like their personal kingdom?
Is it oppressed in the sense that collaborators are treated well while the rest just try to survive? Or like a population of slaves and a couple slave drivers to keep them in line? How does the local community run? What are they able to do to make a living and what are they there to do? There has to be something there to be exploited in the first place.
Is the government an actual pirate crew that owns the joint or just a group that lets piratss come in and do business? What sort of security do they use? Personal army? Mercenaries?
The Southern Islands Company (SIC) is basically a stand in for the East India Company. They wear red coats and speak with posh English accents, and are basically a private army, owned by a merchant company, who in turn operate with the blessing of their home government. They are a human colonial force. There are developed towns with a merchant class, who do quite well, and an underclass made up of pirates, other races and the indigenous people of each island. The Company takes a cut of all the food that, is grown, and have recently begun increasing their cut to the point that the underclass are going hungry (and getting angry). The indigenous people are treated the worst, some sold into slavery others just worked like slaves.
The local pirates stand in opposition to them and its mostly SIC affiliated merchants who get raided. The SIC do their best to hunt down the pirates, but they are spread quite thin, particularly in the Western parts of the Isles.
There is a black market run by the pirates to sell their booty, and a lot of the goods end up back in the hands of the company, either trough seizure or through the more corruptible Company men.
Jesus, I remember when they announced he wouldn’t be back for Talks at the start of C3, but I had no idea about any of the reasoning behind it.
Tough decision for sure, but definitely one that speaks to their integrity as creators and as a company. Best wishes to them moving forward, and hope Ashley is doing well of course.
While there is speculation that him leaving was related to this, there's no confirmation, and chances are it was a different reason. Personally I suspect it was related to his substance abuse issues and his frequency of lashing out at trolls online. The breakup and restraining order were both this year, and DV is VERY often hidden in plain sight. Most people who interact with DV victims are completely unaware, because most people who commit DV are very good at being charming when they want to be and the victims are usually too afraid to let the people around them know.
Yeah, I don’t think it was directly because of a restraining order either. That sounds more a symptom (along with his trolling) of his substance abuse problems. CR is very careful about how it engages it’s fanbase and he is a major liability to that.
Totally understand the reasoning and honestly I wouldn't be shocked if most if not all that content still exists somewhere. I would be shocked if some fan somewhere hadn't backed it up at some point like with the Wendy's one shot
Pretty good basic intro to dnd healing, but they are sleeping on Bards as healers. They can apply expertise to perception, which more than makes up for wisdom not being their primary stat. They have access to awesome crowd control and support spells in their list. And then you’ve got the glamour bard’s mantle of inspiration that pours temporary hit points and reaction disengage/movement on several people. A party having a large movement advantage compared to the enemies is one of the best ways to reduce incoming damage.
What a great, quick read. I’m preparing for a Ravncia campaign and intend for it to have a fair bit of mystery/intrigue. A great reminder to make the goals plain and obvious.
The spell slot progression for the Spell Shot is really weird. It does not play nicely with multiclass spellcaster rules. It gains spell slots up to 7th level just as fast as a full caster, but it also caps out at 7th level. And then it doesn’t gain any spell slots at all from 14th - 18th level.
Magic Arrows could benefit from some clarification. I’d change “arrows” to “pieces of ammunition,” since you’ve established that crossbows and blowguns are part of the archer’s kit. I’d also clarify that you cause the ammunition to become magical, and that the benefit lasts until the ammunition is used to make an attack or until the next time you use this feature.
Intense Impact is bonkers, both in terms of battlefield control and damage output. At 6th level you get Extra Attack. Are you okay with a sniper having 70 foot knockback per turn? Or 8d4 (average of 20) bonus damage per turn? Without expending any resource other than ammunition?
Full Metal Jacket is the 20th-level feature right? It doesn’t mention the level.
The spell slot progression for the Spell Shot is really weird. It does not play nicely with multiclass spellcaster rules. It gains spell slots up to 7th level just as fast as a full caster, but it also caps out at 7th level. And then it doesn’t gain any spell slots at all from 14th - 18th level.
Magic Arrows could benefit from some clarification. I’d change “arrows” to “pieces of ammunition,” since you’ve established that crossbows and blowguns are part of the archer’s kit. I’d also clarify that you cause the ammunition to become magical, and that the benefit lasts until the ammunition is used to make an attack or until the next time you use this feature.
That’s such a tough call I don’t envy having to make. Some of the content created while he was ok is one of a kind. I’m picturing the interview he had with Quyen Tran where she shared her and Sam’s 9/11 story. We’re missing that verbal history for people to hear, now. Balancing that with not giving him air time, or worse, having to pay out to him must have been an extremely hard decision.
I know at least one is getting frustrated with combat because he can’t roll to save his life.
Yeah, that's a feature of 5e combat, not a bug. It's what makes me despise combat. I miss three times, wait 20 minutes for my turn to come back around, miss three more times, wait 18 minutes, and then combat is over.
Some of us are just cursed. The only workarounds I've found so far are:
Specialize in making the DM roll saving throws, rather than me rolling attack rolls. A spellcaster who focuses on save-for-half spells feels so much better (because even when the monsters pass the save, the player still get to feel useful).
Specialize in party buffs and reaction spells. They don't have to roll anything to Enlarge or Dragon's Breath their friends, and they get to feel like they helped. Also, never underestimate how good it can feel to make a Counterspell bot. Even if the bad guys start upcasting their spells and your player always fails the check, they still made them waste a higher-level spell slot than they'd have used otherwise.
Halfling Divination Wizard with the Lucky feat. Three re-rolls, two portent dice, and rerolling all 1s once really helps brute force one's way through being cursed. And it's not broken when people like us play it, because we end up finally managing to get around the same number of successes that non-cursed people get normally.
Notice that none of these solutions are possible with pure martial classes. Steer your player away from those, maybe even let him make a new character. Martials are totally at the mercy of the dice.
My ultimate solution was to switch systems and play FATE instead. But that's an extreme reaction to an extreme level of frustration.
This is a great reminder as I prep for an upcoming campaign. I’ve never heard of Sly Flourish but I like the way this was presented; I’ll have to read up some more. Thanks for sharing!
He’s one of the (now ex) members of critical role. He was engaged to Ashley Johnson (from critical role, Ellie in TLOU games, waitress in avengers) and they separated with restraining orders because of abuse and general assholeishness.
So critical role is removing him from their content as best as they can so he doesn’t get visibility and such.
Luckily he isn’t in the main Campaigns, just side stuff. But the stuff he’s in he’s usually the main focus (host in Talks Machina, GM in Undeadwood) so it would be impossible to edit him out of those.
No, those are the exceptions I think. I suspect that removing them would have caused too much trouble for the main campaigns, because they would have had to explain that there is missing content and why for anyone who would be watching them for the first time.
tl;dr would be that one of the main actresses on critical role (Ashley Johnston) was in an abusive relationship with this guy named Foster, and Critical Role has now scrubbed every notion of his existence from their page by deleting all videos with him in it.
A valuable lesson on the importance of local archiving and not trusting any online source to stay online.
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