Thanks for the review of the rules. Sounds tempting to run a seafaring campaign, right? But, the problem is: The source book contains 8 adventures, but none of it is a naval campaign! One is a dungeon inside a ship, but none of it includes seafaring! These rules don't come into play at all! You gotta do all the work yourself. Again. Well, what do you expect from Wizards of the COAST, landlubbers... I'm looking forward to your follow-up encounter video!
There's three primary sources I use for nautical campaigns. Ghost of Saltmarsh, the two pages in the Theros book on magical islands, and the party headquarters and NPC staff section of the Acquisitions Incorporated book. Between those three sources you have everything you need to run island hopping campaigns, and if you scale things up these sources will probably be good fallback options for Spelljammer when that setting is released soon. One complaint I keep hearing is that the three crew positions with special actions feel like they waste the turns of those characters. The simplest solution is that those actions become reactions taken on the ship's turn, provided that PC has at least 3 redshirt crewmates on hand to do the action.
Treantmonk... how would you handle combat on a moving ship or vehicle and the complications there would be with casting spells? What spells would be allowed to target ships? And what about casting things like Leomunds Tiny Hut or Spiritual Weapon on moving vehicles? As you said, there arent very many definitive rulings so it would be interesting to hear your take on it since it has brought up a lot of debate at our table.
@@TreantmonksTemple I was doing a descent into avernus game where my best buddy was dm'ing and he said my clerics spiritual weapon would be lost on the infernal machine. Dm's ruling is obviously dm's ruling, but I was trying to make the case that spiritual weapon has to be "anchored" to something. If not, it would be lost on regular ground with the earth rotating. But yeah, brings up some interesting questions that I wish there were official rulings for. Especially since I will be running a saltmarsh campaign next lol. Personally, i think factoring in vehicle's movement is too complicated and each individual round should be looked at as its own static picture/snapshot of sorts. That way you dont need to break out a calculator for seeing if you can jump to a different moving vehicle at different acceleration or other things of the sort. Spells and combat get very complicated when on moving objects lol
@@JDRightsUSA I like how Shadowrun does it where static spells are anchored to the planet, which means that static spells dropped while moving on a vehicle can cause humorous things, e.g., when something like a floating wall is used on a train. I don't like the idea of anchoring spells to the vehicles since it takes away the unique nature of vehicular combat where things _should_ be different and make you think differently. If all of the spells act like normal it's just the same-old battles playing out with slightly different maps and creatures. You do probably need to nerf Wall of Force, though, and other such invulnerable, non-movable abilities since they can basically TPK with a single cast. I never thought that was good design, but it's what we've got. I'd have preferred a max weight that can be held (to avoid destroying vehicles or blocking kaiju or other such huge things that shouldn't be able to be blocked), an HP total, and a strength check to destroy with DC relative to the HP.
In my take the spells are not anchored to the ship, neither to the terrain. They are anchored to the meta object called the battlemap. So it changes on the situation. When you are running an at sea encounter you are using a battlemap as if the ship was a fixed building on the map, when you are in a situation where ship movement counts like docking at a harbor or something similar you are using the terrain as static and the ship as a moving object. Effects work differently in those situations and it's up to the DM when to choose which. But if you agree with that it's pretty straightforward and not up to debate every single time afterwards. I know this is a really gamist viewpoint, but 5e is a wargame with a roleplay extension and not the reverse, so I feel pretty confident handling it in a boardgame or wargame way ignoring roleplay aspects. Since the game system does that all the time too.
I feel like this setting offers a lot for setup. My thought is along the lines of the adventure party is hired as mercenaries on a ship seeking treasure/pirates/whatever. Give them one journey as hirelings so they get an idea of how a ship is run without being the primary decision makers and at the end maybe give them a small ship that they can handle with a minimal crew. I also love naval settings for the variety of quests you can give, transport cargo, seek out what happened to a ship, rumors of buried treasure, piracy or privateering against a given nation.
Seafaring is something most DMs want to try at least once, and WoTC did an excellent job in GoS. Another supplement I really like is Pirate Borg, through not 5e, it is D&D-neutral enough to be easily adapted.
This book (especially the appendix) seems really inspired by some indie OSR books with awesome tables to roll and build the campaign and the world. Great source, probably the most useful book of 5e, useful in any RPG.
My son was just saying he wanted to develop a pirating campaign to take us through. Your timing is impeccable. I forwarded this to him to get him started.
With my interest in boats I've long thought about a nautical campaign of some sort. Neat to see that there are rules already written for this. I also kickstarted a new third-party book that's out soon "Tempest: A Seafarer's Sourcebook" that looks promising. One of the things I'm hoping for is nautical variants of some of the classes. I can see marine/estuarine/riverine versions of druids and rangers easily.
I also use a modified version of the mishap rules from Descent into Avernus for both sailing ships and flying ships which adds even more interesting detail to ship based adventures.
your timing in the last year or so has been eerily on spot, from making videos about builds days after i send mine to the DM to now this in the middle of preparing a ship based campaign.
I've herd a lot of people complain about these rules, but I haven't had a proper chance to run it myself, so watching you run the rules through their paces is going to be interesting.
Anyone else here because of Chris's video about starting a RUclips channel? I'm glad I came to check out this video. Now I know what book to buy my DM for Christmas 🎄
Thank you for this overview. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is, in my opinion, easily the best adventure supplement so far created by WotC. The adventures themselves are pretty good, but they are disconnected enough to just simply be run as a series of standalones that have a running theme. The real gem though is that it fleshed out very well a huge otherwise neglected aspect of fantasy gaming in the ship rules. It really is a must-have for any DM that wants a great naval campaign regardless of whether they intend to use the included adventures. I can't wait for an even deeper dice into these rules in action!
Thanks for the info here! I have a campaign that is not focused solely on the ocean, but it does predominately span across two specific coastlines in the world I made, as well as some islands. I did not know this stuff existed, so I borrowed mechanics from Blades in the Dark, using sectioned "clocks" to track various events during seafaring and I made hidden checks. On failed checks from officers the clocks would tick up to crucial events. I was quite proud of my dumb captain concept, and I'm going to share it because acting it out was such a treat: A kenku captain.
Treantmonk, Thank you so much for covering this content brother! This has so many awesome implications and I can’t wait to try it out. I bet a lot of this could even be reflavored to fit a spelljammer campaign. Thanks again for putting the time in and covering this topic in the way that only you do.
I have the book on my shelf and thumbed through a couple of times. But having your input on it gives it much more value. I did read some of the stuff but had no perspective of how it works and compares to other stuff. (Same is true to spells and the like ... I read the words, but they only find their way to my brain when someone explains their meaning.)
Thanks for reviewing! This appendix is awesome, and I have used it for so many fun adventures. Even better, with some creativity, you can adapt for different settings other than the maritime theme.
I can't believe it. I swear to god I was going to email Treantmonk with a question about an encounter I'm building which is a naval battle and about rules for naval encounters in general.
I wonder how things will hold up once Spelljammers is out in a month. Is WootC going to run similar mechanics of go with something completely different?
If you're a DM who's running GoS, I highly recommend you to go through these rules and include encounters. Some of the adventures in the book feel very dry and honestly just straight up boring to fight one wave of Sahuagin after another. Replacing those encounters with epic ship battles or other things found in the Appendix will be a lot more fun for both the players and the DM.
Thank you very much for covering this! The only campaign I have running right now is Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I put it on the Menagerie Coast in Wildemount, while adding some elements from the Runeterra supplement to spice up the global piracy organizations surrounding the Revelry. I want ship combat to feel good, and after getting a taste of it in DiA with the post apocalyptic vehicles in that campaign, I know it can work.
My goodness, there's so much! I wish I knew about all of this back before I tried and eventually failed to get an island themed adventure going... also, hell yeah, merfolk representation
With spelljammer now out, this video is useful because Spelljammer didn't fill in the details as much as it should have re: ship movement and combat. I'll be suggesting my DM use these rules when the Spelljammer rules are silent (as they often are)
Cheers, my dears. I prefer Limithron's Guide to Naval Combat myself, not a big fan of what's in GoS! Would love a review of that if you ever have the time to go over it :)
It suggests the Captain’s attributes is high intelligence and charisma those are two attributes that don’t usually team up. I wonder what kind of build would be best here. 🤔
I wish there was more guidance on ships above gargantuan. Like, depending on what kind of naval campaign you're playing, under normal dnd rules you might expect every fighting ship you run into to be gargantuan. It would be nice if there was more recognition that for those purposes dnd sizing isn't so useful, and you need a different scale.
I didn't know I wanted this video, but wow I might have to change some plans around for an upcoming campaign. I wonder how rangers could mechanically/thematically fit into a naval adventure to be able to use survival skills to stand out at navigation etc.
There’s also a small expansion to these rules in mythic odyssey’s of theros, it’s probably not enough for its own video but you could go over it aswell in your next one
Before any of that... before any rules, stats, and procedures... Are the PCs part of the crew, or are they passengers. If they are passengers and the ship is under attack until boarding actions, there's not much for them to do. It's narrative, unless the PCs have actual skills or abilities to aid the ship/captain (spells like Gust of Wind, etc). If the PCs are part of the crew, (maybe the captain and command crew, like Star Trek, or the whole crew, like in most everything else), someone is on fire control, rolling the 'to hit' dice, someone is on damage control and makes the decisions on ship/crew safety (tracking hull points, conditions of sails), and so on. Something that is often forgotten is that a ship is 3-dimensional. There's a thing called draft, a ship may be long and wide, but flat, so navigation into shallow waters is good, some have a deep draft, and the crew need to use longships to get to shore or port. If a DM and party want to take on a life on the high seas (pro or anti piracy), it's almost worth breaking into a mini game. The speed is also inportant, it's the length of time to outrun or board the enemy ship. Sea battles aren't like modern naval combat. It doesn't need to be so complicated, just complicated enough.
Do you like damage threshold as a mechanic? It seems weird to have a 19 damage hit do NOTHING but a 20 dmg hut do the full 20 damage. I wish there were like 2 thresholds (say, 10 and 20). Between 10 and 19 damage, the material has resistance. At least it would do *something*.
It's pretty realistic in that for a lot of materials, you either do zero damage, a fraction of an HP in mostly cosmetic damage that's absolutely not worth tracking, or you exceed the threshold of what the molecular bonds can handle and deal some real damage. In actual play it's also about as fast as such such a mechanic can be. And considering how 3e's Resistance, Damage Reduction, and Hardness all worked and how widespread they were, we've got over a decade of playtesting proving how well it works in that regard (very well, but with a lot of room for streamlining, such as 5e's solution). I mean, you can go ahead and add in different thresholds, each with different Resistances to particular damage types, if you really want... But expect to see your game slow down as everyone consults their cheat sheets to make sure they've got such a complex mechanic right. Even 3.5, arguably the most complex p&p ruleset ever created, wasn't that so insane as to have multiple thresholds despite having three different damage threshold subsystems interacting with each other.
He should be able to if your DM reads "on a surface that can support it" as possibly the sea, or if you create it on land and transport it into the sea
Chris, have you seen the new sourcebook "The Islands of Sina Una" which is based on the culture and mythology of the Philippines? Could you make a review of it and state your analysis of the campaign setting?
All I see is "The galley has advantage on all saving throws relating to crashing when it crashes into a creature or an object. Any damage it takes from the crash is applied to the naval ram rather than to the ship. These benefits don’t apply if another vessel crashes into the galley." nothing there about what happens to the ship that was rammed.
I dont know, this style of ship combant dosnt seem to be as fun or engaging as the rules for vehicles in "Descend to Avernus". Im still waiting for a naval version of that.
It's been a while since this video and a gew 3rd party supplements since. How do you feel like these rules hold up now over time? Are there any glaring omissions or changes you would recommend?
Does anyone know of a book or resource that makes exhaustive encounter tables like these for other environments? Does the DMG have more than I remember? This video made me want to do a session on the sea!
The biggest problem with naval combat is that the mere presence of a cleric drastically changes the severity of an encounter. Im curious if u’ll address this.
commeting mostly for algorithm but: How would you go about buffing the rogue and artificer chassis to increase their powerlevel to make them better choices as single class characters similar as you did with the monk?
The rogue needs something to come in right around level 5 (beyond what they already get). One possibility is to have the wisdom saving throw proficiency come in then instead of at high level. Artificer is fine except for the Alchemist and possibly the armorer. Indestructaboy recently did a custom Artificer class that was really good I thought.
Hi I have a question for you. Is spell casting in 5e inherently bad? I ask because it seems when you factor in saving throws it's almost always better to swing a sword than cast a spell for damage. Sure there are spells that debilitate but they now come with ongoing saving throws. I know this is off topic to naval adventures, but honestly it's really bothering me.
In general, weapons do more damage to a single target, while spells do more damage overall (assuming you can get multiple targets in an AoE) but spread that damage to many targets.
You say, "That would be an hours long video" like it would be a bad thing.
Same. I consume hours of this kind of thing like a kid consumes candy.
I was thinking the same thing 😂
If not a single video would definitely be an epic series.
And we have a new volunteer for unpaid editor.
I’d be down for more content like this. Maybe even get your fellow content creators together for a one shot!
Thanks for the review of the rules. Sounds tempting to run a seafaring campaign, right? But, the problem is: The source book contains 8 adventures, but none of it is a naval campaign! One is a dungeon inside a ship, but none of it includes seafaring! These rules don't come into play at all! You gotta do all the work yourself. Again. Well, what do you expect from Wizards of the COAST, landlubbers... I'm looking forward to your follow-up encounter video!
There's three primary sources I use for nautical campaigns. Ghost of Saltmarsh, the two pages in the Theros book on magical islands, and the party headquarters and NPC staff section of the Acquisitions Incorporated book. Between those three sources you have everything you need to run island hopping campaigns, and if you scale things up these sources will probably be good fallback options for Spelljammer when that setting is released soon.
One complaint I keep hearing is that the three crew positions with special actions feel like they waste the turns of those characters. The simplest solution is that those actions become reactions taken on the ship's turn, provided that PC has at least 3 redshirt crewmates on hand to do the action.
I was literally looking into this today. The timing here is impeccable.
Treantmonk's Wavelength
I love how detailed this is! I kinda wish DMs got this much support in most official sourcebooks.
Treantmonk... how would you handle combat on a moving ship or vehicle and the complications there would be with casting spells? What spells would be allowed to target ships? And what about casting things like Leomunds Tiny Hut or Spiritual Weapon on moving vehicles? As you said, there arent very many definitive rulings so it would be interesting to hear your take on it since it has brought up a lot of debate at our table.
Yeah, the rules don't really cover that. I would probably consider the deck of a ship as a static thing in regards to spells.
Had a Fathomless Warlock player throw their tentacle onto the other ship and grab the wheel with it, i had to decide right there, the deck is static
@@TreantmonksTemple I was doing a descent into avernus game where my best buddy was dm'ing and he said my clerics spiritual weapon would be lost on the infernal machine. Dm's ruling is obviously dm's ruling, but I was trying to make the case that spiritual weapon has to be "anchored" to something. If not, it would be lost on regular ground with the earth rotating. But yeah, brings up some interesting questions that I wish there were official rulings for. Especially since I will be running a saltmarsh campaign next lol. Personally, i think factoring in vehicle's movement is too complicated and each individual round should be looked at as its own static picture/snapshot of sorts. That way you dont need to break out a calculator for seeing if you can jump to a different moving vehicle at different acceleration or other things of the sort. Spells and combat get very complicated when on moving objects lol
@@JDRightsUSA I like how Shadowrun does it where static spells are anchored to the planet, which means that static spells dropped while moving on a vehicle can cause humorous things, e.g., when something like a floating wall is used on a train.
I don't like the idea of anchoring spells to the vehicles since it takes away the unique nature of vehicular combat where things _should_ be different and make you think differently. If all of the spells act like normal it's just the same-old battles playing out with slightly different maps and creatures.
You do probably need to nerf Wall of Force, though, and other such invulnerable, non-movable abilities since they can basically TPK with a single cast. I never thought that was good design, but it's what we've got. I'd have preferred a max weight that can be held (to avoid destroying vehicles or blocking kaiju or other such huge things that shouldn't be able to be blocked), an HP total, and a strength check to destroy with DC relative to the HP.
In my take the spells are not anchored to the ship, neither to the terrain. They are anchored to the meta object called the battlemap. So it changes on the situation. When you are running an at sea encounter you are using a battlemap as if the ship was a fixed building on the map, when you are in a situation where ship movement counts like docking at a harbor or something similar you are using the terrain as static and the ship as a moving object. Effects work differently in those situations and it's up to the DM when to choose which. But if you agree with that it's pretty straightforward and not up to debate every single time afterwards.
I know this is a really gamist viewpoint, but 5e is a wargame with a roleplay extension and not the reverse, so I feel pretty confident handling it in a boardgame or wargame way ignoring roleplay aspects. Since the game system does that all the time too.
I feel like this setting offers a lot for setup. My thought is along the lines of the adventure party is hired as mercenaries on a ship seeking treasure/pirates/whatever. Give them one journey as hirelings so they get an idea of how a ship is run without being the primary decision makers and at the end maybe give them a small ship that they can handle with a minimal crew. I also love naval settings for the variety of quests you can give, transport cargo, seek out what happened to a ship, rumors of buried treasure, piracy or privateering against a given nation.
Seafaring is something most DMs want to try at least once, and WoTC did an excellent job in GoS. Another supplement I really like is Pirate Borg, through not 5e, it is D&D-neutral enough to be easily adapted.
This book (especially the appendix) seems really inspired by some indie OSR books with awesome tables to roll and build the campaign and the world. Great source, probably the most useful book of 5e, useful in any RPG.
My son was just saying he wanted to develop a pirating campaign to take us through. Your timing is impeccable. I forwarded this to him to get him started.
This has me all excited to do a naval campaign, thanks for this!
This is perfect! I wanted to do another seafaring campaign (as my forever DM needs a break) and this is exactly what I need.
I know your DM will appreciate that. We need more players like you!
With my interest in boats I've long thought about a nautical campaign of some sort. Neat to see that there are rules already written for this. I also kickstarted a new third-party book that's out soon "Tempest: A Seafarer's Sourcebook" that looks promising. One of the things I'm hoping for is nautical variants of some of the classes. I can see marine/estuarine/riverine versions of druids and rangers easily.
I also use a modified version of the mishap rules from Descent into Avernus for both sailing ships and flying ships which adds even more interesting detail to ship based adventures.
your timing in the last year or so has been eerily on spot, from making videos about builds days after i send mine to the DM to now this in the middle of preparing a ship based campaign.
Thou art thy patron saint of D&D. Blessed be the DMs.
THANK YOU I've been struggling to run a boat campain and here you are saving me
I've herd a lot of people complain about these rules, but I haven't had a proper chance to run it myself, so watching you run the rules through their paces is going to be interesting.
Anyone else here because of Chris's video about starting a RUclips channel?
I'm glad I came to check out this video. Now I know what book to buy my DM for Christmas 🎄
Thank you for this overview. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is, in my opinion, easily the best adventure supplement so far created by WotC.
The adventures themselves are pretty good, but they are disconnected enough to just simply be run as a series of standalones that have a running theme.
The real gem though is that it fleshed out very well a huge otherwise neglected aspect of fantasy gaming in the ship rules. It really is a must-have for any DM that wants a great naval campaign regardless of whether they intend to use the included adventures.
I can't wait for an even deeper dice into these rules in action!
Thanks for the info here! I have a campaign that is not focused solely on the ocean, but it does predominately span across two specific coastlines in the world I made, as well as some islands. I did not know this stuff existed, so I borrowed mechanics from Blades in the Dark, using sectioned "clocks" to track various events during seafaring and I made hidden checks. On failed checks from officers the clocks would tick up to crucial events.
I was quite proud of my dumb captain concept, and I'm going to share it because acting it out was such a treat:
A kenku captain.
Treantmonk,
Thank you so much for covering this content brother! This has so many awesome implications and I can’t wait to try it out. I bet a lot of this could even be reflavored to fit a spelljammer campaign. Thanks again for putting the time in and covering this topic in the way that only you do.
I have to think the Spelljammer campaign book will have a similar set of rules.
I have the book on my shelf and thumbed through a couple of times. But having your input on it gives it much more value. I did read some of the stuff but had no perspective of how it works and compares to other stuff. (Same is true to spells and the like ... I read the words, but they only find their way to my brain when someone explains their meaning.)
I loved the Saltmarsh series back in my AD&D days, and I've heard nothing but good things about this book. I'm looking forward to your 2nd part.
Thanks for reviewing! This appendix is awesome, and I have used it for so many fun adventures. Even better, with some creativity, you can adapt for different settings other than the maritime theme.
Oh, man, love this series!
“Clockwork Oars” is one of my favorite Kubrick movies! lol
I can't believe it. I swear to god I was going to email Treantmonk with a question about an encounter I'm building which is a naval battle and about rules for naval encounters in general.
You make me feel enthusiastic for new stuff. So fun!
Wow. I might need to pick up this book. I thought it was just an adventure book, but this all seems like really useful stuff.
I wonder how things will hold up once Spelljammers is out in a month. Is WootC going to run similar mechanics of go with something completely different?
Good question!
Beat me to the comment. I feel like there will be big updates
this aged well...
lol
Narrator: they went with something completely different.
Chris has me all kinds of hyped to try this out
Love the enthusiasm.
I like the team based skill throws, that would be neat to see that expanded in more adventures
If you're a DM who's running GoS, I highly recommend you to go through these rules and include encounters. Some of the adventures in the book feel very dry and honestly just straight up boring to fight one wave of Sahuagin after another. Replacing those encounters with epic ship battles or other things found in the Appendix will be a lot more fun for both the players and the DM.
Thank you very much for covering this! The only campaign I have running right now is Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I put it on the Menagerie Coast in Wildemount, while adding some elements from the Runeterra supplement to spice up the global piracy organizations surrounding the Revelry. I want ship combat to feel good, and after getting a taste of it in DiA with the post apocalyptic vehicles in that campaign, I know it can work.
This all sounds surprisingly exciting!
My goodness, there's so much! I wish I knew about all of this back before I tried and eventually failed to get an island themed adventure going... also, hell yeah, merfolk representation
I was already considering running a naval-based adventure some day, now I'm sold. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
With spelljammer now out, this video is useful because Spelljammer didn't fill in the details as much as it should have re: ship movement and combat. I'll be suggesting my DM use these rules when the Spelljammer rules are silent (as they often are)
Cheers, my dears. I prefer Limithron's Guide to Naval Combat myself, not a big fan of what's in GoS! Would love a review of that if you ever have the time to go over it :)
I should add that I didn't know about the way Of Ships and Seas handles encounters like the whirlpool and storms so thanks for pointing that out too!
Ship cannot squeeze : inspiration for a squeezable ship
I like the idea, I imagine it working like the Knight Bus from Harry Potter.
I'm writing a short pirate adventure right now. Nice timing.
I was planning to run a campaign inspired by the Dishonored video games so this helps!
It suggests the Captain’s attributes is high intelligence and charisma those are two attributes that don’t usually team up. I wonder what kind of build would be best here. 🤔
Maybe an artificer/bard multiclass?
Really makes me want to run an odyssey type campaign
Doing that just now, ancient Greek vibes and all, it's great fun.
Have a look at Odyssey of the Dragonlords, it's an epic campaign from the lead designer of some of the best Bioware games.
@@Selektionsfaktor And if you do make sure to join it's discord!
Thank you King!
Never thought I'd want to run a seafaring campaign. But now I kind of do!
I wish there was more guidance on ships above gargantuan. Like, depending on what kind of naval campaign you're playing, under normal dnd rules you might expect every fighting ship you run into to be gargantuan. It would be nice if there was more recognition that for those purposes dnd sizing isn't so useful, and you need a different scale.
Yeah, a ship doesn't have to be big at all to be gargantuan
There was "colossal" in 3.5, but it got scrapped
@@texteel There was also "Collosal +"
Ghosts of Saltmarsh is my standard for what a D&D book for DMs should be.
My greek epic themed campaign is going to feature alot more ship stuff after watching this😁
Nice summary of naval rules. I wonder if spelljammer is going to implement the same rules for space naval combat.
I didn't know I wanted this video, but wow I might have to change some plans around for an upcoming campaign. I wonder how rangers could mechanically/thematically fit into a naval adventure to be able to use survival skills to stand out at navigation etc.
There’s also a small expansion to these rules in mythic odyssey’s of theros, it’s probably not enough for its own video but you could go over it aswell in your next one
Before any of that... before any rules, stats, and procedures...
Are the PCs part of the crew, or are they passengers.
If they are passengers and the ship is under attack until boarding actions, there's not much for them to do. It's narrative, unless the PCs have actual skills or abilities to aid the ship/captain (spells like Gust of Wind, etc).
If the PCs are part of the crew, (maybe the captain and command crew, like Star Trek, or the whole crew, like in most everything else), someone is on fire control, rolling the 'to hit' dice, someone is on damage control and makes the decisions on ship/crew safety (tracking hull points, conditions of sails), and so on.
Something that is often forgotten is that a ship is 3-dimensional. There's a thing called draft, a ship may be long and wide, but flat, so navigation into shallow waters is good, some have a deep draft, and the crew need to use longships to get to shore or port.
If a DM and party want to take on a life on the high seas (pro or anti piracy), it's almost worth breaking into a mini game.
The speed is also inportant, it's the length of time to outrun or board the enemy ship. Sea battles aren't like modern naval combat.
It doesn't need to be so complicated, just complicated enough.
So a crew captained by a rogue with reliable talent or an eloquence bard will almost never mutiny?
Unsuprisingly.
@@TreantmonksTemple awesome!
One shot Naval Battle!
Do you like damage threshold as a mechanic? It seems weird to have a 19 damage hit do NOTHING but a 20 dmg hut do the full 20 damage.
I wish there were like 2 thresholds (say, 10 and 20). Between 10 and 19 damage, the material has resistance.
At least it would do *something*.
It's pretty realistic in that for a lot of materials, you either do zero damage, a fraction of an HP in mostly cosmetic damage that's absolutely not worth tracking, or you exceed the threshold of what the molecular bonds can handle and deal some real damage.
In actual play it's also about as fast as such such a mechanic can be. And considering how 3e's Resistance, Damage Reduction, and Hardness all worked and how widespread they were, we've got over a decade of playtesting proving how well it works in that regard (very well, but with a lot of room for streamlining, such as 5e's solution).
I mean, you can go ahead and add in different thresholds, each with different Resistances to particular damage types, if you really want... But expect to see your game slow down as everyone consults their cheat sheets to make sure they've got such a complex mechanic right. Even 3.5, arguably the most complex p&p ruleset ever created, wasn't that so insane as to have multiple thresholds despite having three different damage threshold subsystems interacting with each other.
There’s these three little brown books that had naval combat rules. Some guy named Gary wrote em.
Here is my question can a creation bard creat a huge ship?
He should be able to if your DM reads "on a surface that can support it" as possibly the sea, or if you create it on land and transport it into the sea
Id say yes i mean a sea often supports a ship so why wouldn’t it.
I would assume so. Note that a "huge" ship is still not very big as far as ships go.
It would be more of a large rowboat but probably.
Which, considering how uttterly lacking the SJ set was on ANYTHING close to ship-to-ship combat, we're gonna HAVE to adapt some of these rules.
These random encounter rules are strong enough to also easily be ported to another RPG if you wanted to.
Chris, have you seen the new sourcebook "The Islands of Sina Una" which is based on the culture and mythology of the Philippines? Could you make a review of it and state your analysis of the campaign setting?
Ramming is covered in the statblock for warship, under Naval ram. Yeah, it’s not intuitive
All I see is "The galley has advantage on all saving throws relating to crashing when it crashes into a creature or an object. Any damage it takes from the crash is applied to the naval ram rather than to the ship. These benefits don’t apply if another vessel crashes into the galley." nothing there about what happens to the ship that was rammed.
I dont know, this style of ship combant dosnt seem to be as fun or engaging as the rules for vehicles in "Descend to Avernus". Im still waiting for a naval version of that.
It's been a while since this video and a gew 3rd party supplements since. How do you feel like these rules hold up now over time? Are there any glaring omissions or changes you would recommend?
Chris, what do you think of Gritty rules? What classes become elevated and what classes become irritating or down right unpleasant to play?
now i want to see a naval lvl 20 one shot
Thanks
How in the world did Spelljammer not have space/astral sea versions of this appendix!?
Does anyone know of a book or resource that makes exhaustive encounter tables like these for other environments? Does the DMG have more than I remember?
This video made me want to do a session on the sea!
The biggest problem with naval combat is that the mere presence of a cleric drastically changes the severity of an encounter. Im curious if u’ll address this.
In what way?
How so? What is a cleric going to do in naval combat they can't do in land based combat?
Well Create or Destroy water can be a problematic spell
I would assume a Druid with access to spells like Tsunami would be a greater threat myself
Yes, spellcasting changes a lot of things on naval combat. But why you mentioned specifically Cleric?
LoveThis ^❤^
Is it in the rules to sing "Whalers on the Moon" while sailing the seven seas in D&D?
Looking forward to this! Do you have any recommendations for channels to learn about the lore of DnD and the creatures?
AJ Picket (from the mighty gluestick channel) might be 1 off your best bets.
Jorphdan is also really good
I watch Jorphdan, good content.
MrRhexx
@@elliotbryant3459 I haven't heard of Jorphdan MrRhexx is also really good, but I had forgotten what it was called.
All those ship upgrades and no corvus.
commeting mostly for algorithm but: How would you go about buffing the rogue and artificer chassis to increase their powerlevel to make them better choices as single class characters similar as you did with the monk?
The rogue needs something to come in right around level 5 (beyond what they already get). One possibility is to have the wisdom saving throw proficiency come in then instead of at high level. Artificer is fine except for the Alchemist and possibly the armorer. Indestructaboy recently did a custom Artificer class that was really good I thought.
Nice summary. These rules are horrible though. Would definitely use a homebrew. They are super generic and I wotc random stuff is really poor
Noice
Hi I have a question for you. Is spell casting in 5e inherently bad? I ask because it seems when you factor in saving throws it's almost always better to swing a sword than cast a spell for damage. Sure there are spells that debilitate but they now come with ongoing saving throws. I know this is off topic to naval adventures, but honestly it's really bothering me.
In general, weapons do more damage to a single target, while spells do more damage overall (assuming you can get multiple targets in an AoE) but spread that damage to many targets.
algorithm comment