Ship Combat

[Slimcreeper]

So: Riverboats, Airships, and the Aras Sea. Vehicle combat is central to Earthdawn, but the rules suck. What have you guys tried; what are your ideas?

[Flowswithdrek]

My group pretty much ignores ships as an 'entity' because the rules are so bad. I only use ships as a flavorsome platform to host melee combat. It would be good to see some simple but effective ship rules.

[Tanthalas]

My group does the same thing. Over a two year campaign we have had some river combat and more than a few airship tussles. In each case the actual ships were largely narrative devices to keep the battle feeling dynamic. With a system that is supposed to be as Narrative heavy as Earthdawn, I feel like this sufficient and players accept it.

Some sort of mass (or vehicular) combat rules should be explored, though. Even if it is just 'have the captain roll this skill, add ranks of talent if relevant'.

[Slimcreeper]

The biggest question is how involved do we want to get into ship-to-ship combat? And the 2 scales we are operating at.

In early navel combat the ships were basically mobile platforms for melee combat. I can't imagine it is much different in Earthdawn. Yes, they have Fire Cannon, but they are slow and expensive. And I can't imagine they are very accurate. With water-born craft, at least, you are only worried about 2 dimensions. Grapples are actually probably more useful.

But I think the movement system needs to be pretty robust. The attack/damage mechanic really only needs to attack Mobility and the crew. Only in the most catastrophic cases would the ship be destroyed. What the characters really need to know is where the ships are in relation to each other. It's just really hard to put together without requiring a map; I think that's just how things are. Fortunately, the world of Earthdawn doesn't really suggest massed battles of ships or boats - there just aren't enough in the province.

The captain would be allocating his crew between offense and mobility - the more the captain has allocated to combat, the less maneuverability and speed he can bring to bear.

[Stormcrow]

I am so relieved that people now recognise the problems with ship combat. I used to go on about it on the old forums years ago but was largely ignored. I have a campaign that has made extensive use of airships. My biggest grievance with it (and I have a lot) when characters start interacting with the combat system (casting area effect spells etc) it all goes a bit pear shaped. The second biggest grievance is there is not enough distinction between the different classes of airships to support the fiction. I really could go on for pages on problems with this system though. I've tried to redesign airship combat one (and a half) times now. The first time I made a rule set which worked but was hugely complicated and ended up not being much fun. The second time I never finished it because the campaign started going in a different direction. This is a shame because I think I was onto something. The first step was redesigning airship stats to be similar to character stats with defenses etc. It could even have it's own 'character' sheet. To help with character interactions I outlined specific roles that someone could fill on the airship and how that would affect the combat (Pilot, Captain, Gunner etc.). The crew could be assigned to different areas of the ship. There were lots of things I was playing around with but alas never finished them.

[Slimcreeper]

Yeah, I don't know exactly how this will play out, but I'm working out some rules in my head. Running a pirate or merchant marine adventure should be a fun option.

I agree that the ship should be almost like a character.

[Telarus_KSC]

I've played with redesigning Airship combat rules. I also struck on having a "character sheet" that would scale with the PCs (My thought was to just use the higher step numbers to scale up to the ship scale), crew positions (which may suffer Critical Hits affecting the PC stationed there) and a few "floating" Engineer type positions that can be shifted around to provide tactical bonuses. There's a few Space Opera games out there that have innovative rules to grab. I then decided to come up with a mass-combat system as well, because my girlfriend was playing a t'skrang Airsailor Lieutenant & I didn't like the purely abstract boarding mechanics. I"m still playing with each idea, trying to balance to the other.

Does anyone know how much damage a Fire Cannon does to individual characters? I think that's the place, mechanically, to start.

[Stormcrow]

[bleeding]

From what I've seen in ED3, the damage of your weapons on an individual target depends on the Firepower of the ship.
If the ship Firepower is 15, it will do step 15 but armor-defeating only needs a Good result. I find that kinda lame because behemot is only 30... and you can fire once every minute.

[Slimcreeper]

I've been thinking of running the boarding party something like this: The Player and Named characters would play out 5 rounds of normal combat. Each craft has a Boarding Party Rating equal to the number of crew members assigned to it and still active. Maybe plus a crew skill or battle leader rating. That functions as the attack and damage step. The target number is the wound threshold of an individual soldier. For each success, one crew member is disabled. If we figure equally matched boarding parties of 25 members with a crew skill of +5 for a total of 30, and a Critical Number of say 8, then an average of 4 crew would be downed each round. I'm still trying to nail down the specific numbers - I need to run a mock combat.

But really, that's all background. I don't think a more specific tactical mass combat game is required. Earthdawn should be focused on the players, and the players are masters of individual combat. They aren't playing for small unit tactics, they are playing to repel the boarders before they kidnap the crown prince. They are playing to face down the undead pirate captain in a climatic duel. Maybe the boarding party could be split if there are specific tasks that they are trying to accomplish (like guard the prince), but I think the mass combat shouldn't take more time than an extra character's turn - maybe less.

The conditions of victory will be something like repel the boarders or force the surrender of the other crew, or scuttle the craft. Whatever the end mechanics look like - that's what they should be resolving, not figuring out the exact location and health of every sailor or even every abstract unit of 5 sailors.