Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 WolfgangDroven Sep 12, 2015 8:22:36	My group is going to be traveling across the ocean in thier upcomming mission. I have run many campaigns, but never a sea battle. How do you do it. They will be fighting from a ship and the monsters will be attacking from the sea. Do monsters attack then submerge as they move? How does targeting something underwater work (weapons and spells). How do you work damage/ac/hp for the boat. The boat is wooden but sturdy enough for sea travel and big enough to hold 8 people plus supplies.   I imagine it is a lot of the group reading thier actions until the see what to attack. Then attacks of opportunity as the monster(s) submerges. What happens to characters that fall or go into the water. I know metal armored ones sink, but can you fight while tredding water ? Is there penalties?   My mission is taking them to a hidden island. Yes I could do this on main land, but my group has been talking about how awesome a sea fight would be and I want to deliver on the experience.   Also say a character is swimming, how do you determine swim speed if they do not have that stat from a item or magic?
#2 iserith Sep 12, 2015 9:31:24	WolfgangDroven wrote:
#3 WolfgangDroven Sep 12, 2015 9:47:53	Thank you very much
#4 Awakened_Gazebo Sep 12, 2015 9:59:17	I would use the ship stats as guidelines, and not really roll for any damage on it. But instead force the characters to spread their resources out on several fronts, defending the ship itself, keeping it seaworthy and kill the evil monsters trying to kill them. For example 5 shahuagins attacks the party in the first wave of monsters. 3 of those goes after the heroes, and the 2 others begins throwing supplies overboard or dismantling the ship itself. After the ship has suffered 5 attacks, it begins taking in water. after 10 attacks it begins sinking, and the heroes need to delegate someone to do some emergency patching up. Several waves of enemies could arrive, sometimes the heroes will be able to disatch all the ship dismantlers, other times the ship will suffer more damage.   If you have some charcaters good at swimming, or brave enough you could have some of the monsters attack the boat from below, requiring the herous to plunge into the water after them... or summon creatures to take care of the threat.   You could also have a giant octopus monster attack them. Represented by a bunch of tentacles rising from the sea all around the ship, grappling characters, supplies, monsters and generally being a real #%¤%, Each tentacle would count as a seperate monster, which the octomonster retreacts into the sea when the tentacle reaches 0 hp.   Other effects you could add to the combat: Bad weather conditions, causing balance checks Too many monsters/damage on on side might tilt the boat dangerously Taking in water Creatures trying to grapple and pull the herous down Attacked while trying to manuever through nasty rocks rising from the sea (and a possible safe haven for those heroes dragged overboard)
#5 Imaculata Sep 13, 2015 1:37:26	In Stormwrack, harsh weather can require all combatants on a ship deck to make balance checks, or fail their spells/attacks. But Stormwrack is a 3.5 book, but I think a lot of the same rules can still apply. Combat on a ship is generally considered as fighting on a static platform, since both ships tend to remain at a certain distance of each other. When you start involving cannons and other siege weapons, it gets a bit more tricky though. Generally it is assumed that a ship is divided into sections, each with their own hardness (same as wood) and hitpoints. The bigger the ship, the more sections it has. If a section is out of hitpoints, it is holed, and starts taking up water. This can then spread to adjacent sections as well. Depending on the size of the ship, a minimum number of sections need to be flooded before it starts actually sinking. For this sinking checks are used, and seaworthiness and such. But that's a whole differrent can of beans, and I don't know how well that converts to 5e edition.
#6 Ralif_Redhammer Sep 14, 2015 11:50:22	My two CP would be to have the battle feel different from a battle on land. I’d throw heavy waves crashing into the boat, to see if people get knocked prone. Rigging for resourceful adventurers to climb up on and swashbuckler from. Maybe even have the boat start to sink, and need to be saved mid-battle. Also, I wouldn’t begin the battle until the monsters are on the boat (or conversely, if they’re not going up there, until they’re in melee range). Otherwise, there will be lots of readied actions or a round of free ranged shots for the PCs.   I wouldn’t have metal-armored PCs automatically sink – maybe they have to make a swim check. Sure, in real life they’d be goners, but these are Adventurers!