Ship to ship battles and magic. (d&d 3.5)

[Shining Wrath]

I ran a pirate campaign for about a year and used info from Stormwrack and Salt and Seaddogs.

Most surprising thing was given you can spot a ship about 15 miles away on a clear day it often took close to 3 days for the PC's relatively fast ship to catch even a slow merchant, and then 10's of minutes spent closing from long to short range for archery and spells.

Lots of time to prep and ready buffs and wet down the sails and decks in anticipation for fire. Also lots of time for an escaping ship to consider its options for fight or flight (or surrender).

The campaign made it to around 10th level and I never had any problems with spells or ship destruction. In fact the groups mage (sorcerer blood magus) stayed away from fire spells as he did not want to do undue damage to a ship they could later sell for 1000's or 10s of 1000's of gold.

The campaign was loads of fun.

Read the accounts of, e.g., Trafalgar. Nelson' fleet formed up in to two lines, approached the French / Spanish fleet at about 2 miles an hour while the lead ships absorbed all the fire the enemy fleet could direct at them for several ours. That's NOT going to work if instead of cannon you're taking fireballs and lightning bolts.

[Lightlawbliss]

guys, this thread is from 2011.

[Wolfepuppy]

I'm currently running a naval campaign. We started out playing without anyone being a mage so everything was fine. Then we had another player join and be a wizard. To balance this, most of the ships that are worth anything, or have anything worthwhile on them carry a mage of around the same level or higher. If mages are prevalent in the world this is no problehttp://www.giantitp.com/forums/images/smilies/smallstick/smallwink.gifm. A company or nation that has a strong maritime presents is going to make every possible effort to ensure that their ships get to where they need to go. Sailors are a very prepared bunch. The have backup plans upon backup plans. When you're out at sea you have to have a plane B and C and will often have a plan D and E if you've been at it long. Therefore, it is not unreasonable for any ship with high value cargo to have a mage or two. Many of my mages specialize in abjuration, allowing them to counter spells more effectively. Likewise, it wouldn't be unreasonable for a ship to carry a blaster of some sort. In the case of merchant vessels, they might prefer to sink or disable a pursuing ship before any boarding has a chance to take place. The sailors aboard the ship will not be very interested in putting their lives at risk by capturing a pirate ship for their company. Most of them wouldn't see a dime of it. So your players should know that they always run the risk of having their ship sunk as well. If their the pirates, this should happen more often to them than to the ships they are attacking. As for the lack of involvement for the other players thats a tricky one. Most of my encounters get to the grappling action really quickly which I'm actually thinking about changing a bit. If the players are crewing the vessel they have to make some checks every round. However, if they're like my players they have a crew. So good luck with that

[Haruki-kun]

The Winged Mod: Thread Necromancy.