Damage to Ship Hull and Rigging

Ship strength is an expression of its hull points and rigging points, as described under ship types.  These points are illustrated as a series of squares, which are then crossed off as damage is caused to the ship.

Total hull points are divided into “exterior” (EH) and “unprotected” (UH) hulls, in a ratio of 2:1.  The caravel, for example, has a total of 30 hull points.  Two thirds of these, a total of 20, are assigned to the exterior hull.  The remaining 10 are assigned to the endangered hull.  Where a fraction occurs, always assign the extra hull point to the exterior hull.

Rigging points are divided into blocks of 4 squares, with the remainder making up a block of 1 to 3 squares.  Each block is a mast.  These should be labeled, in order of presence, the main-mast, mizzen-mast, or fore mast; if there is a fourth mast, this is the jigger mast. 

A caravel has 8 rigging points, which are divided into two masts, the main-mast and the mizzen-mast.

The layout of squares for a caravel would appear as shown in the image, with four blocks of squares, two representing the hull and two representing the mast.

Caravel total strength points in hull (30 pts) and rigging (8 pts).

Assigning Damage

All hull damage is assigned to the EH, or exterior hull, until that part of the hull is completely destroyed.  Thereafter, further damage is recorded against the UH, or unprotected hull.  When the EH is gone, the ship’s condition in the water has begun to sag; the ship’s yare is reduced by one degree (from A to B, from B to C, and so on). 

When the UH is gone, the ship is considered in such danger of sinking that it cannot be sailed or the weapons fired.   All crew and persons aboard are considered to be acting to keep the ship afloat.  If these persons are removed, the ship will sink completely in 5 to 100 rounds, a number that is divided by the wind speed and may be calculated in seconds.

When a hit succeeds against the rigging within a ship’s hex, the mast nearest that hex is affected (therefore, all the ship’s hexes in a ship’s design should be designated to a particular mast).  When a mast is completely destroyed, the ship’s yare is reduced by one degree.  This happens each time a mast is destroyed.  The ship’s yare cannot be reduced below a yare of E.  When all rigging is destroyed, the ship can take no actions except to drift.

Shows 1½ damage

When assigning half a point of damage to either the rigging or the hull, draw a single line through a box, as shown.  When assigning a full damage to a hull box, draw a cross inside the box to show that strength point is completely destroyed.

See Naval Combat

Preliminary Work to Ship's Weapons

UPDATE: the mangonel as it appears on this page is inaccurate, as I write about here.  Please disregard content on the page and in the comments about this siege weapon.


Basic Rule for what to do when research fails ~ concentrate on the goal at hand.

If we take some time to look on line to learn what we can about siege weapons, it becomes apparent in short order that: a) no one can agree on what anything is; b) no one can agree on how it works; c) there are no legitimate statistics for weight of machine, range, missile, effect or durability; and d) there are hundreds of little groups making their own siege engines with 2x4s, creating noise that goofs up any real scholarship on the internet.

I've been down this road a couple of times before, only to come up short.  So ... we dispense with research, remember a game world isn't an accurate simulation and come up with a solution that pays no attention to accuracy.

What we need is a sliding scale of ship's weapons, the most important thing being that they differ from one another not only in power but in specific benefit.  To that end, I've created this table:

It doesn't matter what any of these things are; only what they are in relationship to each other.  Generally, I'm treating a mangonel as a light counterbalanced catapult firing a small ball that is good for distance and momentum but relatively poor against crew/rigging; it also requires a big ship.  The catapults are torque weapons, fair against the hull and rigging, with the light catapult being a cheap yet effective weapon against crew.  The heavy ballista is light, has good range, can fire at a shorter range and again, a good anti-crew weapon.  The light ballista is lighter still.

I'll put up to other tables here that will help explain the damage, but first let me discuss hardpoints and the limit to ship size.  A hardpoint is a location on a ship where a siege engine can be emplaced.  On the table above, where it addresses damage to hardpoint, it means to the siege engine that has been put on that hardpoint ~ mangonel, catapult or ballista.

It takes a bigger ship to mount a mangonel, with the tonnage shown being cumulative.  Two mangonels would require a ship of 120 tons; two heavy catapults, a ship of 80 tons.  An Indian carrack, at 1,005 tons, has 20 hardpoints and could mount 16 mangonels ... which could quickly destroy ships at +1 hull damage (see below).  This is unlikely, however, as that would also mean sacrificing 54 tons of cargo space to heavy weapons.  A merchant ship (and most of them would be) would do with less firepower, though a warship would load up.

When firing a siege weapon, the artillery crew decides whether to fire at the hull or the rigging.  Whichever is aimed at, rolls are made for hits on the tables below.  We'll start the with hull, the more interesting one.

Yes, I know.  I dislike hit location as well.  But firing at a moving ship with a ballistic weapon is not like firing a bow at a combatant, so considerations have to be made.  All siege weapons use the above table.  The artillerist pointing the weapon aims according to his or her THAC0, and if aiming at the hull must hit AC 3.  A natural 20 indicates a critical hit.  Ordinary hits roll only on the left table, applying modifiers to hull/rigging damage as shown on the siege engine table.  Damage to crew is resolved as normal D&D.  A destroyed hardpoint can't be repaired; a wrecked hardpoint can be rebuilt and restored in 24 hours, a damaged hardpoint can be rigged to be impaired, which than then be restored in an hour and an offset hardpoint can be reset in half an hour.

When rolling a critical hit, both tables are rolled upon and both always apply.  For example, a 20 on the left and a 12 on the right would mean that the enemy ship lost hull and rigging and its crew was forced to make a morale check.  I haven't made morale rules yet for shipboard combat, but that's coming.

Hits to the crew select a random crew member; if the player designates a specific point of the ship being fired at, then hits to a crew member will be a random determination of crew nearest that point.  Most of the time, it will be difficult to identify and target the captain, who will be concealed by other crew members, housings, masts and whatever else might be in the way.  Still, it's possible.

Which hardpoint is hit is also rolled randomly in the same fashion.

I suppose I shall have to create a table identifying the effect of magic spells against rigging and hull.

Here is the targeting rigging table:

This is still, more or less, following a framework created by Wooden Ships & Iron Men, but of course it is much more gritty and detailed as befitting D&D.

I have more to do to nail down a lot of the details on this subject, particularly how long it takes to load a siege engine, the size of its crew and I think probably that more crew means faster reloads to a point.  I admit, however, that my premise is that ships should be very hard to sink with ship's weapons alone. At best, smashing the rigging or getting lucky with a critical hit will reduce a ship's yare, so that it will move slower and make it dangerous to turn into the wind.

I also expect that some sea battles will simply be two to three rounds of getting turned around before the faster ship simply sails away.  The players at low level are likely to have very fast ships, so that they shouldn't be concerned about a big pirate ship, unless encountering it in the fog or some such.  If the players eventually get a big ship, they'll have to decide for themselves how best to use it if they want to chase down victims.  There might be spells such as haste that can be used to let one brilliant crewman act more quickly, enabling the ship to catch the wind a little better ... and there's always sage abilities that could improve a ship's crew to the point where they could improve on the ship's base yare.  I'll get to those rules too.

Still a lot to do, but I feel like I'm over a hump.  I just hope noisms doesn't mind that I'm writing all this prescriptive content on how to run ship combats.

Relax.  That's just a joke.

A Flotilla of Ships

Not exactly a Dogger, but I couldn't resist the image.

For three days I've been working on my own versions of ships, attempting to create a consistent framework for the size of crews, hull values, rigging values, tonnage carried, available spaces for ship's weapons and so on.  Towards this end I've been creating empty links on my wiki.  I'm glad to say those spaces are no longer empty.  The wiki has been populated.

Here are the links I've devised for ship types

Barge: river vessels of varying sizes designed to haul goods up and down stream.

Bireme: light galley designed for battle, beached at night.

Caravel: ocean-going, manoeuvrable 2-masted sailing ship.

Carrack: heavy ocean-going trade ship designed for long voyages.

Coaster: light coastal vessel based on the cog, used as a local service boat.

Cog: broad, single-masted vessel, primitive in design but still working in parts of the world.

Dekares: immense cataphracted oared galley designed to transport infantry and marines.

Dogger: two-masted, sturdy, seagoing fishing vessel.

Holk: ponderous sea-going vessel that is highly fortified.

Junk: sailing ship favored by merchants, with river-going and sea-going forms, replete with isolated compartments.

Ketch: two-masted, large maneuverable ocean-going fishing vessel.

Knarr: light ship built for sea journeys but dangerous in heavy weather.

Yawl: light two-masted vessel used for lake fishing and communications.

My next step is to build a table that describes each of these.  I will say that one thing I could really use would be a floor plan for all of these ~ but I think I'll have to do that myself if I want them to absolutely match the descriptions I've created.  I won't be able to find floorplans that won't need adjustments to length, beam, the number of quarters and so on.

Eventually there will be other ships.  I could easily add 15 more types in galleys alone, from my Trireme game, but just now having 17 types of galley seems unnecessary.  Those will get added in time, when it becomes necessary (if ever).

I did my best to find images for each ship.  Not easy; and was forced to use a modern image occasionally, or one with a ship featuring cannon (which does not exist in my world).  Did my best to find images that would downplay the latter, but frankly it was unavoidable.  Many of these ships were invented post-cannon and that's all there is to it.

I believe, at least, I've got the approximate correct shape and number of masts.

Adding a compiled list of the types shown:

Turning Rules for Sailing

I just finished this, so there's no reason not to share.  I will post it on the wiki this evening from my notes, making changes if anyone wants to deliberate on the content below.  The link to turning and to ship hexes are blank pages right now, but will be active tonight.  Other links should work; please let me know if they don't.  This was a crazy difficult set of rules to write.

Figure 1 - Before Making a Left Turn

TURNING (sailing ships)
For sail ships, turning describes three possible manoeuvres. A moving ship going forward may turn left or right; a ship may swing its bow away from the wind; and a ship may swing its stern into the wind, which is to say moving the stern so that the ship’s bow points more directly into the wind.

Moving Forward

Figure 2 - Completing the Left Turn

When logging movement, shipmasters give orders to change course in 60-degree increments, in keeping with the hexed battle map. These turns are governed by ship hexes, so that as the ship turns, the bow traces a line across the adjoining hex, pointing at the hex side that fits with its new orientation. This movement is resolved during the movement execution phase of the sequence of play.

In the example shown of a right hand turn, Figure 1 shows the ship before the turn occurs. The front green arrow indicates the swing of the bow in the new direction. The black dotted line indicates the outer compass of the stern as it swings around to follow the bow.

Figure 3 - Turning Left after Right

Figure 2 then shows the ship in its new orientation, the turn having been completed. It’s former position is shown in white. Note that although the ship has made the turn, it has not perfectly lined up with the ship hexes ~ instead, it now occupies part of five adjoining ship hexes instead of three (ignoring the sails). The adjusted orientation of the ship is 45-degrees from its original heading, which would become 60-degrees if it moved forward one more hex.

Contrariwise, if the ship were to make an immediate left hand turn with its next movement factor, the ship would straighten out again to its original heading (see Figure 3), swinging back 45-degrees, moving so that it was displaced one line of hexes from its original path.

Ships turning in this fashion ALWAYS move by the bow. Each individual turn costs one movement factor of a ship’s total movement allowance. A ship may never make more than one turn per ship hex.

Smaller, nimbler ships are able to make more turns per sequence of play than larger, cumbersome ships. This manoeuvrability is part of a ship’s “yare.” See ship types for more information.

As ships turn, they adjust their attitude to the wind, which in turn can limit their total movement (whether or not accounted for in the movement log). As detailed in the wind effects table, adjusting from one attitude to another can sharply reduce the ship’s forward momentum.

For example, a B-type ship that’s reaching to a gentle breeze is moving a factor of 5 hexes. As it moves, it turns to an attitude where it is now close-hauling, which is a factor of 2 hexes. Whatever its movement before the turn, it may now move a maximum of 2 hexes in that direction. If it has a movement factor left after movement, it can then swing back, reaching to the wind, and spend the rest of its factors. It cannot again turn into a close-hauling attitude. It could run against the wind. Take note that after close-hauling for 1 or 2 factors, if it turned its head to the wind, it would stop in place, and its remaining factors would be discarded until the next movement notation phase.

A ship may never make a turn if the attitude would cause the ship to exceed its movement allowance at the time of the logging movement phase. Thus, if the ship above started close-hauling to the wind, so that it began the sequence of play with 2 factors, it could not move further than 2 factors even if it turned to begin reaching. This wind limit rule can restrict movement, but it cannot add movement!

Note also that the wind limit rule does not limit the number of turns the ship may take (that is limited by ship type), only the number of hexes that a ship may move.

Any ship that turns to head into the wind must immediately stop and cease movement until the next movement notation phase.

Swinging the Bow or Stern

Figure 4 - Swinging by the Bow

When a ship’s movement is zero, it is permitted to swing its bow outwards to the left or right in a manoeuvre that changes the ship’s attitude to where it will close-haul (and move with the next movement notation phase). The manoeuvre is simple, as shown in Figure 4. As the bow swings over, the stern does as well.

Figure 5 - Swinging the Stern

When making this manoeuver, the bow swings while the ship turns on its stern, dropping back slightly as it does so.  Following the maneuver, which puts the ship into a close-hauling attitude, the ship must turn either left or right with its next movement factor.  Thereafter, with each forward move, the ship should come in line with the ship hexes.

Likewise, a motionless ship is permitted to swing its stern (Figure 5). The stern may be adjusted each so that it swings away from the wind, moving the bow towards the wind. In the example shown, the ship’s attitude to the wind is unchanged (close-hauling). Following the move, the ship may either turn in the direction of the manoeuvre (which means it could turn left here) or move straight ahead at least one turn. A right turn from this position would be more than 60-degrees and therefore cannot be accomplished without first moving forward.

The manoeuvre is rarely used, but can be helpful after unfouling or ungrappling from other ships.

See Naval Combat

The Flux Capacitor

At last, a real post.

The image above is the flux capacitor, it's what makes this work.  The two-tiered hex map above enables me to put together the rules of D&D with those of the war game Wooden Ships & Iron Men (WSIM).  It is the invention of the "ship hex."

The smaller hexes in the image above are standard combat hexes, 5 feet in diameter, just as I've been using for all my combat posts going back well before the start of this blog.  My online characters and those who have read my campaigns are familiar with these.

The larger white hexes are "ship hexes," 20 feet in diameter and juxtaposed with the combat hex.  Most important is this: a ship that is moving 1 knot per hour will cross a ship hex in the space of one combat round, in my game 12 seconds.  This makes the movement of the ship fully compatible with the movement of individual combatants during the naval battle.

1970s Artwork

Compare the image on the right from the original wargame.  The ships depicted here are from the late 18th to early 19th century, much bigger than the ships of my world would be, 150 years earlier.  And I don't have ships with cannon, so picture vessels smaller still.  The ships as shown are moving through game hexes ~ ship hexes for me ~ and on a time frame that WSIM doesn't explain.  But, with the two-tier hex system I'm proposing, the ships can move through the ship hexes just as shown, while at the same time the individual people can move through the standard combat hexes, firing at other ships with bows and ship's weapons, throwing lines to grapple over actual space and fighting boarding battles, while the ships themselves move independently of the characters aboard them.

When the ship turns, it will follow the ships hex, NOT the combat hex ... this will enable the game to be managed without having to figure out the fiddly hell of figuring out the ship's movement using scores of tiny little hexes.  It will make writing out the orders practical.  Orders?

I'm adopting a five-round game-term for the ships's movement called the "sequence of play," which will be staggered and simulataneous, encouraging collisions.  At the beginning of round 1, just as in WSIM, the captains will write out their orders, which will then take place over the next five rounds.  Then the combat rounds will be played out one at a time; there should be room for the players to pick off crew, load and fire weapons, reducing the success of a ship's maneuvering ... while each round the ships will move part of their pre-written movement orders.  Depending on speed, turning, the effectiveness of the crew to follow the orders (which I'm putting in even though it isn't there in WSIM), a ship may move quickly out of range or it may suddenly turn and collide.

PLUS, as I have rules for galley combat that can be fit into the system, I can mesh the systems WSIM and Trireme, since the Turks were still using galleys ~ and in a world without cannon, perhaps a galley is still a terrifically effective sea weapon.

If the reader is familiar with war games, it should be seen how seamlessly this can be made to fit together ... though of course it will need playtesting.  I'm looking forward to getting there.

There's just one little thing about ship movement that is plaguing me.  All the ships in WSIM and Trireme are only two hexes long.  And I have ships that could be potentially nine hexes long.  Here's the question ~ and I expect Sterling can answer it:

If a ship nine hexes long makes a right hand turn at 4 knots, swinging it's bow 20 feet to the right, does the back end of the ship remain "in its lane" or does the back end swing out opposite the bow?  And if it does swing out, by how much?

Any sailors, please weigh in.  I'll listen.  I promise.

Carracks & Caravels

Two and a half years ago, I was working on a naval combat system, when I was interrupted by life changes and other things.  At the time, the project was ballooning in size and keeping track of the wiki pages, as well as what content went on which page, was getting out of hand.  I could feel I had bitten off more than I could chew, and that I would have to retreat and reorganize.

This week, between other projects, I've been reviewing my original content and figuring out a better way to manage the complexity of rules and details associated with naval waterborne adventures.  It isn't straight forward stuff; there are so many elements at play.  But I feel I have a management scheme in place and I have tentatively begun making new pages on the wiki.  This Naval Combat page would be the new opening index.

Anything that is tagged "naval warfare" is the old work.  The new work is tagged "naval combat."  For those visiting the wiki, you may find numerous blank pages; that is because, to keep track, I am creating files in word that mirror files in the wiki, so that I can more easily manage the rules as a single concept as well as isolated wiki pages.

It would seem to be slower, but I think I've got that problem licked also.

I hope to have a practical, rational naval combat system built that anyone can use within a few months, if I can keep my focus.  I have built the frame; mostly, at this point, I just need to translate it into a D&D setting.

Somehow, I doubt that anyone would ever use it; or that I will use it.  Though I do plan on figuring out how to run a test playing session on the blog at some point.

Working on stuff like this is therapy.  We've been going over our financial situation, the money we saved over the last six months and the help we're receiving from Patreon, plus book sales, plus isolated donations and another project I'm not ready to unveil, and it looks like we're going to be fine.  So long as nothing goes horribly wrong.

I have you, dear readers, to thank.

Ship Movement Over Water

Yesterday, when I said I could move on to other things, I'm sorry if the reader got the impression that I meant I was done with ships.

After much consideration, I have decided that the best method for determining the movement of ships during combat, with respect to battles and naval warfare, is to adopt a simultaneous ship movement chart. It is a convenient fact that a ship moving at 1 knot of speed covers a distance of 20 feet in the space of a combat round (see Naval Hex). This means that a ship moving at 5 knots in a round will travel a distance of 5 naval hexes - which will also mean that combatants taking part in combat between ships will find themselves in situations where they may be very close to an enemy at the beginning of a combat round and 80 feet away at the end of that same round.

Where two ships are moving in relationship to one another, turn-based movement such as is found in ordinary D&D combat simply can't represent the orientation of combatants with respect to one another. Therefore, some sort of simultaneous movement is warranted. This will help manage the ranges between combatants in moving ships.

Moreover, it will also help control problems that arise in "real time" with respect to the manner in which rounds are divided up in my game (see Action Points). The captain gives an order - this is one action point in the game. However, following that order requires the use of every action point the crew has thereafter in order to make the ship turn. At the same time, combatants with action points are as bound during ship combat as any other time by the rules regarding the loading and firing of weapons, with additional time-based rules regarding grappling, ungrappling, reloading siege engines and so on.

Therefore, the "simultaneous" movement of the ship cannot be based upon merely the ship's movement, but upon the one-fifth increments of the combat round in which participants are bound by how much they can do in a set amount of time.

Another aspect of combat that must be managed is initiative. Since the movement of ships precludes the convenience of turn-based combat that usually occurs in D&D, where both the party and the enemy's combat movement (which should be happening simultaneously) can be glossed over for the sake of convenience. Such is not the case with ship combat, since the surface of the combat is itself moving (in multiple directions). Whereas boarding battles can still be worked out according to the turn-based system (since the surface isn't moving for the combatants) - for simplicity - outside influences on those battles and missiles fired between combatants have to be staggered through the round. See below for an explanation for this.

Let's look first at the movement chart for ships each fifth of a round, based on the ship's movement according to it's attitude (the direction of the ship in relation to the direction of the wind). This is the sort of chart well known to table-top wargamers.

The numbers on the right indicate the number of naval hexes that all ships move in the AP segment of the round. Thus a ship with a speed (whatever that might be according to the ship's attitude) of 4 knots would not move during the first segment; it would then move in every segment of the round thereafter. A ship with a speed of 7 knots would move 2 naval hexes in the 3 AP segment and 1 naval hex in the 4 AP segment and so on.

Where determining the initiative between combatants hurling or firing missiles against each other, the starting segment of the two sides is staggered. Whereas the combatants who have won initiate begin counting their movement (and firing of missiles) from the first column (1 AP), the enemy begins counting from the 4th column (4 AP). Here is a comparison between the two groups:

Imagine that we have two ships moving towards one another and that it is the first segment of the initiative-winning party. Caleb, aboard one ship, has just finished loading his light crossbow (which took all the previous round) and now intends to fire. He cannot fire in the first AP, however, because it requires 2 AP for him to pick his target and fire his weapon (see the action point page again). By then, the ships will likely have changed their orientation with one another; therefore, when the 2 AP column for ship movement has been resolved, Caleb may say that he'd rather wait: the other ship may be moving closer or the turn of a ship may be bringing his ship into a better line of sight with an artillerist crew on the other ship vigorously working to load a ballista. He may therefore hold off on firing until the 3rd AP, the 4th AP or even the 5th AP. However, just as the actions of one round are never carried over into the next round (all rounds are separate and distinct actions), adopting this staggered rule does not change any previous rule of combat engagement. Caleb cannot hold his shot over until the 1 AP of the next round! If he does not fire his weapon in the time he has, he is judged to have lost his focus and not fired at all, meaning that he must begin the next round exactly as all rounds have always begun since the beginning of turn-based combat: from scratch.

Players are very likely to argue this rule: but I am adamant that they understand that the staggering of the combat rounds has nothing whatsoever to do with breaking all future combats into segments for a grittier management of time (which I can do without). It is strictly intended to compensate for battle fire during ship movement. Period.

If Caleb does hold off until the 5th segment of his round to fire, it should be noted that this will be the 2nd segment of the enemy - and that it will appear that the enemy will be able to fire simultaneously with Caleb. Again, no. Fundamentally, I don't intend to change the turn based system with regards to the order of combat - only with regards to the movement of the ships. Therefore, no matter what comparisons may be made between the one staggered set of combat rounds vs. their opponents, all attacks for one side should be considered to have happenedbefore the other side's fire is resolved. Yes, this will mean that an enemy that waits until AP 5 will be considered to have happened before a player firing in AP 2. This is not a result of travelling back in time - but in making the best of a difficult system that we don't want to solve by making it grittier still. For the most part, since we are only talking about missile combat, we can simply assume that both missiles are in the air at the same time, with the power to designate which one hits its target first.

At the same time, it must also be acknowledged that, in normal turn-based combat, when players choose not to use their AP in the time they have remaining to them in a given round, those AP are lost. This should not change with regards to combat at sea.

See Naval Warfare for the complete status of my ship rules so far.

Hiring the Ship's Crew

None of this describes hiring a crew, however, or what quality the crew will be.  It can be annoying to go through the process of making up individuals for a ship one by one, trying to figure out how a collection of 20 or 30 people determines what a "green" crew is versus a "poor" one.

So, in the interest of making players happy, I suggest these two tables:

Here I am arguing the principle that the difference between finding a good crew member (or hireling) and a bad crew member is a matter of choice.  Taking a longer period of time to look over prospects, being more diligent in finding people and letting the word spread that there are serious ship-owners looking for good people helps spread the word around, enabling the ship owners a greater variety of possible crew members - and consequently, a higher quality of crew and individuals.  It is recommended that the player roll on the bottom table to find the overall crew's quality . . . and then, as necessary, individual members of the crew can be determined from how long it took to find them.

I am somewhat reticent about there being any chance of finding a hireling with +5 in all personality traits, even with a year of searching.  There's only 1 such person in 46,656.  In my world of 237 million in population, that's only 5,019 persons.  How many of those are ship captains?  Still, we are talking about 36 continuous years of searching in order to ensure odds of finding such an individual and this is a fantasy world - some concessions can be made for party luck and unusual benefit.  As such, even though it defies logic, I'm letting it stand.

I feel the need to point out that individuals of the -5 shell are not the same as the +5 shell.  The shells are arranged (see the previous post) so that a person with traits of +3, +4 and -5 would be in the -5 shell because the minimum trait they possess is -5, and not because all their traits are at -5.

This settles my needs for crew acquisition for the present.  The players have a means of obtaining a particular crew, they have a clear idea of what the individuals might be like, they know what a crew of various levels can accomplish and we have the necessary details for managing the rules I've made for naval warfare so far.  I can now move onto other things.

Wind & Turning

I think I've solved the wind problem.  My copy of Wooden Ships & Iron Men (WSIM) refers to a "Wind Effects Table" that is supposed to explain the effect of various windspeeds on ships.  That table does not exist anywhere in the rules booklet.  I downloaded the pdf booklet from Hasbro and nope, not there.  Publisher error.

So I've built my own.  This enables me to get a different number of knots for ship movement under full sail and battle sail, running, reaching or close-hauling the wind (it's always zero against a headwind).  Here's my table for my basic ship types:

I have it sorted out that I can expand this table if I want to add more ships (ketches, bigger frigates, galleons, whatever).

I'm adding "yare" (a ship's speed and ability) in order to establish what the crew is fighting against with regards to moving the ship from one direction to another.  If I go back to the Broadsides link (I really have no other source at all), I find this description under Commands: Turn to Port:

"Ship turns to port after a delay of 10 seconds to 8 minutes of game time. For the Arcade version the delay is 50 seconds. For the Tactical version the standard delay can be set anywhere between 10 seconds and 8 minutes. See sections 5.3 and 2.4 for more informa tion. Excessive damage to the rigging or hull will slow a ship's turning speed (over 50 hull points lost or 50% rigging damage). Additional damage will continue to slow a ship's turn rate."

We can just say the minimum time, 10 seconds, equals 1 round.  Using my system, 8 minutes is equal to 40 rounds.

We can then couple this information with the five melee strengths from WSIM's system:  Elite, Crack, Average, Green and Poor.  A ship wants to make a port turn: the order is given and the crew jumps into action.  How long does it take?

We can establish a "poor"crew as one that takes 21-40 rounds to succeed in making the turn.  Then, in turn, we can say that a "green" crew takes 11-20 rounds, an "average" crew takes 6-10 rounds, a "crack" crew takes 4-5 rounds and an "elite" crew can do it in 1-3 rounds.

We can overlap these: poor, 21-40; green, 11-22; average, 6-13; crack, 4-7; elite, 1-4.  Or whatever adjustment to those numbers that works for us.

The yare of the ship can then affect these numbers.  We can establish a yare of A as 60% of these numbers we've already given; a yare of B at 80%; a yare of C as 100%; and a yare of D as 120%. That gives us this potential table:

That is simple enough.  It's going to take about the same amount of time for a crack crew to drag the frigate around than an average crew with a yawl.  There's enough play in the comparison, even between a green crew that could get lucky with a sambuk or a yawl to outmanueuver a crack crew with a frigate - remembering that if a yawl, a baghla or a sambuk can get their attitude to the wind right, there's no way a frigate can catch them at any speed.

On the other hand, if that frigate - with even an average crew - is bearing down on a yawl with a poor crew that's already close-hauling into the wind (see image below), that's a full turn the yawl has to make before it can sail faster than the frigate.  If the frigate is coming at it more or less head on, the yawl has to swing around 180 degrees - which is three full ship turns: somewhere between 39 to 72 rounds, during which time the frigate can cover a distance of a mile and half.  How is a frigate going to catch a very fast ship?  Coming from around a headland or in bad weather, picking its target.

But, all this is to propose a question.

Everyone hates having to keep track of this sort of thing in a game.  The ship is going to turn in 9 rounds?  Jeez.  Annoyance, much?

Should I just change the above table to a set of percentages?  A yawl with an average crew has a 1 in 7 chance of turning a ship this round; a caravel with a green crew has a 1 in 22 chance.  And so on.  Then there's no tedious record-keeping.  The characters roll and if the roll comes out, the ship turns.

It isn't "better."  In a lot of ways, it's way worse.  Injecting luck to this degree into the system will mess with it in a number of ways.  But it is far, far easier to manage in game.

Thoughts?

Ship Notes

In a few hours I'm going to be doing my first class in Dungeon Mastering.  To fill up the time until then, I'm going out some of my recent thoughts regarding sea battles and how I'd like to shape the system to fit D&D.

To start with, yesterday I was asked in a comment about fire aboard ships.  I've looked through the rules for wooden ships and iron men and there are no rules for fire.  There are rules about explosions, but that is because the game is meant to account for ship battles between 1770 and 1825, when everything is cannon and gunfire.  I'm building a ship system that makes no sense historically, as some features in it will be based upon the pre-cannon era while others are completely 17th century. Still, it works for my world and for my magic-based D&D.  That's all that matters.

Obviously, there are a number of mages able to set a ship ablaze - so fire is bound to come up.  Thankfully, I wrote rules for fires spreading about a year ago, when I invented the 4th level druid spell, create wildfire.  I talk about that with this post.  From those rules, we can start with a 5-foot wide fire and work out the destruction in short order.

But the reader should stop and think, first: do you really want to start a fire on board an enemy ship?  Yes, undoubtedly it will have the deleterious effect you're looking for, but it will also burn up property that is potentially worth 10s of thousands of gold pieces to you.

In an all out ship battle, involving dozens, even hundreds of ships, this makes sense.  When the Byzantines employed "Greek fire," it was at times when the Empire was fighting for their lives, usually against a much more powerful foe.  Most D&D ship combats would not be mass ship battles, however.  It will be the players acting as pirates and seeking plunder or it will be players defending their ship against a pirate.

If the players are pirates, there's a very good chance that the quarry will try to burn the player's ship: they are not seeking plunder, but only to get away, so if the pirate's vessel burns and goes down, no great loss.  But the reverse?  Try to imagine that your first strategy in stealing a car is to pour gasoline all over it and set it alight.  The more pristine the ship that the players take, the greater the treasure.  That is why pirates preferred to board, rather than to blow the hell out of their quarry.

Now, I wrote on the wiki that boarding is a very bad idea most of the time.  You grapple with the enemy ship and in the process you expend crewmembers in killing crewmembers.  Worst of all, while you're boarding, there's always the chance that a brilliant sailor on your side will be killed by some dumb thug on their side.  Of course, this is never a consideration in a war game: in a war game, every participant in the battle has the same value.  You count your sailors, you count what your ship and the plundered ship need to be sailed and you divide up.

But I'd like a crew quality system for D&D that doesn't work like a war game.  War games like Wooden Ships & Iron Men, which I'm melding with D&D, usually work on a time-based system where one turn would take minutes.  I can't figure out how large a hex is supposed to be in WSIM, but given the actions that are taken in the game and the size of the ships, I would guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 meters.  I want a ship-battle system that takes place in the same time frame as ordinary combat in D&D (I use 12-second rounds).  This creates problems.

I found out that - with serendipity - that a ship moving 1 knot will travel 20 feet in the space of 12 seconds.  That is simply . . .  wow, just convenient.  Therefore, I plan to move my ships on a 20-foot hex map, while employing a 5-foot hex map when ships grapple and straightforward combat ensues. The 5-foot hex is the same map I used for this goblin battle.  This makes it easy to work out the range of game missiles from daggers to bows and apply them to the 20 foot hex; so that when ships are three hexes apart, they're actually near enough that a dagger can be thrown between them (with a -5 to hit and a probability that the dagger will end up in the sea, but what the hey).

However, because a ship doesn't have minutes to turn, it has only 12 seconds to make up its mind to do so, part of the game I'm planning is to create limitations on how effectively and speedily a ship can change its direction.  Right now, I can't even find out how long it takes for a modern ship to swing from port tack to starboard; I have no idea at all how long it takes a Constitution class ship to do it or a 15th century caravel.  I'm able to find comments like, "tacks may be required every few minutes," but nothing whatsoever about how long it takes to tack.  I may be reduced to making guesses based on bad movies like Wind, which includes scenes where tacking is accomplished.  I was able to find this post about a video game called Broadsides, but I don't know how accurate it is.

I know virtually nothing about sailing from a technical standpoint; I would guess that a small boat could probably change tacks in a few seconds.  Somehow I think a many masted vessel would require more time than one combat round.  More importantly, I think there would probably be some doubt as to whether the tack would take this round . . . or the next.

Here's the real horrorshow of the system I imagine, from a player's point of view.  To me, it isn't just a matter of skipping around on a battlefield that happens to be made of water.  On land, the characters can turn and pivot, even using a horse (compare rules about horseriders having to travel so many hexes before turning with this display - remembering that part of the difficulty in this sport is that there is a tendency to turn too tight).  A ship, however, is not nearly as precise an instrument as our feet.  The ship itself is the obstacle that has to be overcome and managed throughout the combat.

Therefore, unlike a standard wargame, I want a system where the player says, "I want the ship to turn right," whereupon we roll dice to determine when it can be done . . . with every member of the crew working crazily to succeed in making the damn ship to go starboard when the pirates are bearing down upon them.  What if a green crewmember is in a hurry, slips and falls to the deck, not getting the job done?  How many rounds does it take to have some other monkey climb the mast and do it?  What if something is snarled?  It can take minutes to reset a jib, the triangular staysail that sets at the foremast of a sailing vessel.  In those minutes (10, 15 rounds), there's nothing you can do but plow straight ahead, a sitting duck for the enemy raking your ship.

At the same time, it's easy to see how a good crew would outmaneuver a bad crew, even if the pursuing ship were technically 'faster.'  If it consistently takes an extra minute to make a turn for the pursuing ship, the slower quarry with a better crew might simply turn again and again, until the pursuer gives up.

This makes the point above about boarding all the more important: for that excellent sailor that's being killed by the thug may be the critical asset that has saved the players' ass again and again.  Does it really make sense to put him in danger?

Of course, he might also die from a ballista missile or a catapult hit, from the system I've already posted; there's no real safe option.  But it might be that players have to recognize that the quality of their seamanship - and not the strength, size and battering power of their vessel - is the critical element of play.

I really like this idea.  I also think it would be a source of immense fury at the gaming table, however - enough that it would keep people from engaging in naval warfare.  But then, I have never had players who were terribly interested, not in 37 years of play.  Oh, I've had naval combats - but they always occurred when the players were compelled to participate, either because they were travelling from point A to point B or because they were pressed to defend their holdings against an enemy.  Once I ran a sea battle between 60 galleys based on the wargame Trireme, the rules of which are fairly compatible with WSIM (so I will be incorporating galleys into my system, as the Ottomans used them into the 17th century).  That battle lasted for four runnings and was quite early in my DMing experience (back around 1988-89) - and it certainly didn't have anything like the complexity my combat system has today.  In any case, the players only took part because the 9th level mage had been made an admiral by the King of Portugal and they had to do their part in a war against Spain (my world was based on the year 1500 then).

Players wanting to a ship-based campaign?  Never heard of it.

Mostly, they're terrified the ship is going to go down and they'll all drown.  Or they recognize what a tremendous hassle a ship-to-ship combat is going to be.  If there's going to be player agency, a ship battle has to be tactical.  Can you imagine running a ship-to-ship combat where the DM says, "Okay, fire your guns; then they fire theirs; now fire yours; okay, the ships grapple and everyone fights."

Jeez.  Why bother?

Many people, I understand, don't like tactical movement in a role-playing game.  I don't understand those people.  I mean, I get it, any battle is a lot easier to manage if we're not worrying about where Albert is standing or where Caleb is moving, or how many exact hexes Bala is from Daniel when she fires her bow.  At the same time, however, it explains why so many people in role-playing are so sick to death of melee, and why they spend so much time screeching about how the game needs to be about role-playing and not roll-playing.  When you reduce the meaning and value of the rolls to where they're just dice hitting a table, of course it can't compare.

However, looking for a metaphor, it is like someone who thinks 'baseball' is standing in a field, throwing a ball in one direction, then walking over to pick it up so they can throw it again.  Oh yes, absolutely in no way is that complicated.  And one person can do it!  But people who argue the virtues for tactic-free combat are obviously deluded in their understanding of what tactic-rich combat can produce in terms of gaming experience.  No doubt, that crowd is composed of personalities who look at little squares on a table like a fresh grade ten student views calculus.  "I can't get this," goes the argument.  Can't.  As in, won't.

Ah, but that's a digression.  I was saying that players won't like a combat system that makes them wait and wait and wait before they can make their ship make a left hand turn.  On the other hand, I see immense possibilities for tension.  Two ships, seven hexes apart, moving in the same direction, one trying to turn into the enemy, the other trying to turn away - the one furiously taking down their sails to obtain the status of cloth called 'battle sails' that will make the ship more maneuverable, the enemy already in a position to do the same on a moment's notice, because they knew before-hand it would be necessary; the party having no one except a young kid to send up into the mizzen-mast to reef the sail.  A desperate decision that must be made to hack the sail free with an axe because it's snarled.  The enemy's sails snapping full and their ship suddenly making a dive towards the player's vessel.  The high level artillerist sitting on the aft-most catapult, deciding whether or not to fire this round or the next, given the attitude of the defending ship against what the attacking ship's raking power will be the next round.  The players with bows and crossbows announcing that they're loading this round.  The 6th level fighter and the 4th level ranger, infused with jump spells and super-heroism potions, getting ready to make the leap between the ships, to cause as much trouble as they can in the enemy's rigging before diving into the sea, where they expect to be rescued by the druid's pet sea turtle . . . and everything about the two ships themselves being frustrating and dangerous and uncertain.

Sounds like a good game to me.  No matter how long it would take to play it out.