Ship Combat

Ships in Combat The following are the rules for how ships act in the combat round.

Combat Order
1. Determine which ship has the upper hand (When Pilot LvL is unlocked) (Ignore this till high level)

Not applicable yet

2. Initiative At the start of combat, players, NPCs, and monsters all roll their initiative as normal. In addition the Pilot makes a Pilot Check to determine the initiative of the ship.

The ship's turn is a special turn where all players may engage in officer actions and when the ship moves. However doing so forfeits their standard turn in the round. Creatures can perform any action as normal on their standard initiative turn.

The ship moves at the during its turn, If a ship has no pilot, it moves uncontrolled at the end of the ship turn or on a turn determined by the GM.

The players may rearrange the order of their initiatives at the beginning of combat, dropping initiative score in order to synergize better with their crew if desired.

3. Perform Actions After all initiative is rolled and the weather gauge is assigned, the GM runs combat as normal, starting at the top and working their way down the list. On the ships initiative officers can give up their turn that round to perform officer actions such as firing or boarding during the ship turn. If they do not use officer actions the PCs may perform any action they wish on their initiative turn.

See the Officer Roles section below/on another page for Role abilities.

Generally speaking, crew members and other unimportant NPCs do not get their own actions during a naval engagement — it would be an impossible nightmare to roll and follow initiative for the hundreds of potential crew members on all sides of an engagement.

4. Effects of Damage When a ship is reduced to below half its hit points, it gains the broken condition. When it reaches 0 hit points, it gains the sinking condition.

Broken Condition: Ships—and sometimes their means of propulsion—are objects, and like any other object, when they take damage in excess of half their hit points, they gain the broken condition. When a ship gains the broken condition, attackers have advantage to hit it, it has disadvantage on pilot checks, and other maneuver checks. If a ship or its means of propulsion becomes broken, the ship’s maximum speed is halved and the ship can no longer gain the upper hand until repaired. If the ship is in motion and traveling faster than its new maximum speed, it automatically decelerates to its new maximum speed.

Sinking Condition: A ship that is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points gains the sinking condition. A sinking ship cannot move or attack, and it sinks completely 10 rounds after it gains the sinking condition. Each additional hit on a sinking ship that deals more than 25 points of damage reduces the remaining time for it to sink by 1 round. A ship that sinks completely drops to the bottom of the body of water and is considered destroyed. A destroyed ship cannot be repaired—it is so significantly damaged it cannot even be used for scrap material. Magic can repair a sinking ship if the ship’s hit points are raised above 0, at which point the ship loses the sinking condition. Generally, nonmagical repairs take too long to save a ship from sinking once it begins to go down.

5. Counting Casualties

Inevitably, crew members will get injured in battle, due to weapons or their environment. Hopefully, the Surgeon and his team are skillful enough to patch up the majority of the injured. Typically, a ship has more crewmen than it needs — some crewmen are sleeping while others are working. During combat, though, it’s all hands on deck. So, for the first few rounds, casualties likely have no major impact. Sometimes, though, battles are more a war of attrition than a war of dominance, and the ship that’s best prepared to outlast the opponent wins the day. Crewmen are a resource, and you track them like an archer tracks her arrows or a wizard tracks his spell slots. Throughout your ship, you are required to maintain a minimum number of crewmen to perform tasks such as operating sails, loading and firing cannons, and so on. As long as you have enough crewmen to fill all those roles, you don’t have to worry about allocating crewmen.

Once the number falls below the minimum, you must make choices about where to assign crewmen; for example, to the guns, the sails, or being sent to fight that terrifying monster chewing on the prow. If there is not enough crewmen to operate the ship it is considered uncontrolled.

Taking Casualties: When the hull of the ship takes damage and when attacked by weapons that target the crew. At the end of each round, all ships total the number of crewmen left alive. Add in any crewmen recovered by your Surgeon and his team — those crewmen weren’t really dead, just knocked around a bit. Crew casualties scale with the amount of damage the ship receives. Each weapon should have a modifier but a weapon without one defaults to the 1d2 pear weapon hit. Different weapons have different crew mortality modifiers.

6. Repeat 1-5 until Naval combat is concluded.

7. Boarding Combat Boarding Combat is primarily an Officer battle with some grunts thrown in while the crew battle happens in the background. However the Crew battle can have ramifications throughout the fight that affects the PCs. This quick and dirty simulation for the crew's part in boarding actions is done on their own initiative turn in combat. This system offers some way to determine how well your crew performs and also provides ways for players to influence it by preparing or motivating their crew. The ultimate victory/defeat is still based on whether the players win their fight against the officers, but this offers a way to simulate what else went on during that time and have possible influences mid fight because of it.

Crews will clash in a contest of Effectiveness. Effectiveness is a combination of Level, Numbers advantage, Morale Bonus, Equipment. Effectiveness is calculated before the start of combat and every combat round thereafter. This number can change throughout the combat allowing the winning side to have an advantage as combat momentum occurs.

Effectiveness = Prf + #ad + Mor + Equip + Misc

Prf: Equivalent Proficiency bonus for the crews

Mor: Morale Equip: Equipment Bonus Misc: Miscellaneous bonus, situational and GM favoritism
 * ad: Numbers advantage, Difference in crews divided by 2 ( C1-C2)/2

See Ship Crew for more details.