dmtreat
Squire
Posts: 48 
Favorite D&D Class: Ranger
Favorite D&D Race: Dwarf
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Post by dmtreat on Aug 16, 2016 6:37:42 GMT
Hey guys! Wasnt completely sure where to post this so I thought I would put it here to start.
So my players are on their way to the pirate islands of my world known as "The Crescent isles". So this is my first time doing ship battles and sea themed stuff. Ive been a DM for 10 years and never done a sea campaign, sad. lol
Anywho, I just wanted to see if any of you had good ways to do large scale ship battles. I dont necessarily mean the cannon shooting parts and stuff, thats pretty self explanatory. I was wondering if anyone had a good idea on the part where two ships actually meet and the two opposing teams start to battle by hand to hand combat. THe DMs guide for 5e sais the ship has around 80 crew members, or 60 for the other ship, and as we all know simulating that many people on a board can be taxing. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Also if you have any suggestions on good encounters to do while on the ocean, cool stuff for the Islands 2 towns, or other stuff in general, it would also be welcomed with open arms!
May Crits greet you all
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Post by dmsam on Aug 17, 2016 0:45:06 GMT
Large scale combat is always difficult to emulate with 5e. Here are a couple things you could do:
1. Treat blocks of sailors/pirates as units. There is an unearthed arcana on mass battles about how to arrange creatures into different blocks of units and how to deal with hits/etc.
2. Make a random event table to emulate the chaos of a massive battle. Roll a die (dn, where n equals the number of pre-designed random events)at the beginning or end of each round. Sample events may include:
- A hazardous aoe lands near an ally. They must perform a DC10 dex save or take whatever damage.
- An ally NPC is fatally wounded next to a PC. Its corpse becomes difficult terrain.
- An ally NPC stumbles and shoves into a PC. The PC must perform a DC 13 acrobatics or athletics save or be knocked prone.
- A hazardous aoe lands near a PC. It must perform a DC 13 save or take whatever damage.
- A stray projectile hits a PC (roll randomly for target, then go through the attack/damage rolls)
- A hazardous aoe lands near an enemy. They must perform a DC 10 dex save or take whatever damage.
- An enemy NPC is fatally wounded. His corpse becomes difficult terrain.
- A enemy NPC stumbles and shoves into a PC. The PC must perform a DC 13 acrobatics or athletics against the enemy or be grappled.
3. Separate the actually fighting units into waves. For example, if it is a boarding party, board them several at a time and replace fallen units as they go. This actually keeps the combat snappy and emulates the feel of a large battle quite well. Another added benefit of using waves is that you can fine tune the difficulty up or down during the encounter. You can withhold or add waves as needed as you monitor the PC's resources.
Hopefully, this kind of thing will add to the chaos in a large-scale battle that you are looking for.
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dmtreat
Squire
Posts: 48
Favorite D&D Class: Ranger
Favorite D&D Race: Dwarf
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Post by dmtreat on Aug 17, 2016 6:25:13 GMT
Heck yeah thanks man! I never thought of using a random encounter table during my random encounters lol. Im definitely gonna use that.
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Post by dmsam on Aug 17, 2016 22:11:45 GMT
The biggest danger to avoid is bogging down the battlefield with too many participants at once. Pretend that you are a low-tech graphics card that needs several seconds to calculate what each character must do. I usually limit myself to 6-7 baddies actually engaged in battle at a time (their other hundreds of friends can wait as a backdrop, just make sure that the PCs know about them). When your baddies die, have another handful charge into the fray.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2016 23:25:04 GMT
I think Sam is basically right on all counts, but the greater danger IMO isn't that the battlefield will have too many participants, it's what happens if you're doing a lot of rolling against yourself. Your players don't want to watch your set pieces fight each other while they sit around waiting for their turn. To prevent that, I would resolve the background fighting purely through narration. How much the actions of the PCs affect the outcome would be circumstantial, though I would try to include options for PCs to affect the fight using their environment or special abilities.
If I really wanted to bring uncertainty (i.e. dice) into the scene, I would consider the opposing forces in terms of their overall power, and invent a quick roll that simulates their contact.
Here's an example. Two crews are evenly matched in terms of skill and equipment, but one group is 80 strong and the other is 60. At the end of each round, I simulate their engagement by rolling a d20 as a "group attack," modified by the crew size. Let's say +1 for every 10 crew members. The difference between the final result and 10 is the number of crewmen who die each round on the opposing side. So at the end of the first round, it's +8 and +6 to attack. The 80-man crew rolls 7(+8), the 60-man crew rolls 15 (+6). The 80 man crew loses 11 men, while the 60-man crew loses 5. At the end of the next round, they'll repeat the rolls with +6 (69 crewmen left) and +5 (55 left)
If one group is much better equipped or more skilled than the other, that can translate into even greater bonuses.
It's an elegant enough system to be viable, I think, but again, I would still much sooner handle it purely through narration.
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Post by DM_tonofbricks on Oct 4, 2016 7:26:47 GMT
I know this is a bit late, but you might also check out the Total War games (Empire and Napoleon specifically). They had pretty cool naval combat and can give you some really fun ideas for how a battle might suddenly go sideways. I did a pirate one shot a while ago and spent an hour or so watching Total War naval battles on youtube. It's always funny when one player thinks they have it in the bag and the other player just lights their own ships on fire and rams.
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