So I was thinking of creating a small Adventure for Daggerheart. One that would involve Sailing. I saw in the Adversaries that, Hey?! They have Pirates! Perfect. But hmm… I dont see anything about Ship to Ship combat. Which I get it, its beta or I am am just not looking in the right place. Is there Ship vs Ship combat? If no, would you just forgo ship damage and go to straight boarding or evasion scenarios based on some kind of skill?
As far as I could read in the Open Beta information there is no Ship to Ship combat mechanic (yet) or stats for a ship.
Personally, I would run it as a combat scenario (if that’s your plan) against the boarders/individuals aboard the ship and give yourself a good old Countdown Timer of your choice, or even one for PC Ship and one for the Adversary Ship.
Either that’s the amount of time before ONE of the ships sink, or you treat your GM turn and make the ship a part of the combat and the players can either roll to damage the ship, give it some evasion stat, and if the players hit it, knock it down on the timer. If they roll a failure with fear, the cannon can explode and it knocks down a tick or two. Failure with Hope, cannon misfires, but they don’t have to reload next turn or something like that, success with fear, they hit the ship but the enemy ship returns fire on the next gm turn, success with hope, knock it down a tick and a ship mate already loads the cannon up for the next shot. Critical Success, you damage the ship and the enemy cannot return fire for on the next GM turn.
I think you could combine all of that into one intricate combat scenario but that ups the stakes as the enemy ship can also sink the PC ship. Or you can forgo it all and just make it a climactic skill challenge as well.
Got my GM brain spinning here for my next session for a ship to ship combat myself now Hoogie!
I’ll come back and edit if I find any Ship to Ship combat stuff in the document.
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All excellent suggestions. I myself thinking about it more last night at work.
Hope/Fear. Perhaps if X amount of Fear is reached. The ship starts Sinking / Capsizes or something.
And with Hope, they can evade and escape or keep the boat from sinking if they defeat the Pirates.
Perhaps some Experience in their character background could be used to save the day?
I like the X amount of fear is reached mechanic. Maybe even state that you are spending X fear this round to add to the counter towards sinking and players could spend a turn/hope to counter it as they find ways to repair it. Make it visible and it adds to the tension at the table.
Overall I think it will be a great encounter for you to run!
Think of what could be a Critical Failure and Critical Success too just in case. Make it dramatic and epic.
Critical Failure:
“You see that the ship has started to sink and the commotion has caused sharks to start to swarm around the ships.”
“The crew of your ship begins to lose heart and jump ship or begin surrendering.”
Critical Success:
“A cannon ball bursts through the enemy mast and it falls, crushing several of the enemy sharpshooters/crew.”
“The enemy captain begins shouting orders, but some of the pirates begin a mutiny.”
“The ship begins to crack in half as the gunpowder in the lower deck erupts, instantly destroying their cannon supplies and several enemy adversaries go up in smoke.”
I hope it goes well!
I am going to play in this event today. I will get my first learning lesson at Daggerheart. And I Bought Tale Spire 6 months ago and will get to learn about that as well.
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