Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Ye Olde Salte: Ship Stats For GH

Sun Mar 06, 2011 12:17 pm Ye Olde Salte: Ship Stats For GH

Curious, as to how the sea salts handle ship stats and naval combat?

Fill in the blanks...
Ship:
AC:
HP:
Attack:
Damage:

From the few stats;
I could find most naval vessels seem expensive and vulnerable for their cost.

Any advice or comments Question

Sun Mar 06, 2011 12:32 pm

You pretty much only need stats for a Cog and a Caravel. But since medieval ship combat pretty much amounted to boarding actions and setting the other ship on fire, actual stats are almost useless. I tried to run a ship-based game and it was not very exciting, given the lack of canon and grapshot and broadsides in general.

Still, Of Ships and the Sea, a splatbook from AD&D, is a good source.

Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:24 pm

I highly recommend - Corsair: The Definitive d20 Guide to Ships, from Adamant Entertainment (Author: Gareth-Michael Skarka, Price: $14.95).

It covers stats and combat rules for 20 ship types:

Rowboat
Ships Boat
Fishing Boat (aka Yawl, Dhow, Lugger etc.)
Barge
Sloop
Schooner
Brigantine
Pinnace
West Indiaman
Bilander (aka Cog or Roundship)
Cromster
Fluyt
Saique
Galleon
Corvette
Frigate
4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st Rate Ships of the Line

All suppose gunpowder weapons BUT!!! in the back of the book is a fantasy adaptation guide where gunpowder weapons are replaced with:

Heavy, Medium and Light Catapults
Trebuchet
Ballista
Fire Projectors

and magic.

This is the best "all in one" naval product I have ever seen.

If you want more d20 naval goodness, I suggest - Broadsides Naval Adventuring from Living Imagination, Inc. (Author: Various, Price $19.95).

It uses the same stats and system (90%) as Corsair and includes:

Longships (Viking sort + others)
Oared Gallies (Galley, Fusta, Galleass etc.)
Cogs, Roundships, Grain Ships
Caravels and Carracks
Ketchs, Polacres, Yachts

Plus a ton of others to include fantasy vessels - Dwarven Knorrs, Elven Gallies,Gnomish Trade Fluits, Orcish Dromons etc.

Again, armament can be gunpowder or catapult, ballista etc. equivalents.

I highly recommend both books, together they pretty much cover everything.

If you want still more, Mongoose released the fairly high fantasy:
Seas of Blood
Ships of War
Ships of the Elves
Ships of the Goblinoids

The Mongoose titles are a bit too high fantasy for me (Dwarven Floating Fortress ships and Seatower Floating Keeps, Elven Seahaven Great Vessels etc.) but I have used some of the less fantastic offerings.

The great thing about all of the above books is that they are compatible rules-wise, basically along the lines you've outlined - HP, AC, Attack, Damage - with but minor wiggles in naming etc.
_________________
GVD

Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:54 pm

Incredible! I just wrote out a blog entry on this very topic before running into this thread:

http://greyhawkery.blogspot.com/2011/03/anchors-aweigh.html

Thanks for the info guys, and Crag, I've also been rereading your high seas series of articles here on CF. Great stuff that I'm going to make heavy use of!