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Ahoi Mateys!

My group has been running an air ship pirate campaign for the past half year. We're using the 4th edition rules, but obviously we have to fall back to 3rd edition (or improvise) when it comes to air ship actions. Mataxes, is there any update planned to the air ship rules? If so, is there anything you could share on that? Are there any houserules somebody would like to pitch?

Thanks!

There is an update planned.

It will not show up until the Companion.

There isn't really anything I can share about it at this time, as I'm not sure how far from the ED3 baseline we will end up.

Thanks for letting us know! I assume the update will be included in the companion?

That's the current plan.

Just to throw this out there: I was never really happy with them or the way Air Sailing talents worked. I don't have a working replacement system, but I would imagine something like

1 round of airship actions, 4 rounds of character actions
Average Air Sailing rank is the base for the ship's feats. Trim ships would get bonuses (i.e. +2 to maneuverability; +5 to speed; -2 to gunning)
Officers can use 4-round sustained actions to provide a bonus to a specific ship action. The test would be air sailing vs average air sailing rank. The bonus would be = to the number of successes and could stack. Perhaps there would be a secondary skill that could limit the number of bonuses? For example, a Master Gunner with Missile Weapons 4 could provide a bonus of up to +4 to Gunning.

Captain/First Mate: Can work to add a bonus to any type of ship test.
Sailing Master/Pilot: Can add a bonus to Speed or Maneuverability.
Gunner: Can add to Firepower.
Lieutenant of Marines: Can add to boarding/small arms barrage.
Player Characters: Can fill any void that makes sense.

One thing that could happen in Air Sailing that couldn't have happened much historically is boarding from a distance - dropping down from above, great leaping, swinging over, and so on.

I'm not looking at the rules right now (we just moved and everything is packed up) so these are just thoughts. Also - we really need some mass combat rules that work with the individual time scale developed in conjunction with the ship rules. So you could run a general, overall flow of combat with simple strategic options at the same time the characters are doing their thing. In fact, some characters that are less amazing in individual combat may choose to opt out of normal combat and just run the mass combat. So you could have a boarding action with a character leading several unit in an attack on the ship's sails (maneuverability/speed) to keep them from getting away while the thief fights his way to the hold to save the prince and the elementalist works with the Carpenter to repair damage ...

Ohhh. The whole thing could be a strategic resource management, with units assigned to specific tasks. A ship may have a 4 5-Name-Giver (N-G) units. The units could have different rating depending on their purpose. An A.B.S. (Able-Bodied Sailor) unit may have Air Sailing 3, Gunnery 3, Repair 3. On the ship's turn, you would allocate your units. One unit could be defending the rigging, another staging a full assault. You'd have a number of actions based on how many units you have. Anyway, I'm thinking aloud and I have to defuse my children.

New rules for boarding actions were the impetus for my playing with mass combat rules. My girlfriend was running a t'skrang Airsailor leutenant, and we wanted a better way of expressing her scale of tactics (officer plus 5-50 men). I think my system works pretty good (my 3E version is on , and I'm reading up on the GM guide to adjust them for 4E). It's on the same time-scale as the players actions, and it reduces the die-rolls otherwise needed (which reduces the GM rolling 10 times as mucha s the players, and getting 10 times the # of exploding rolls). It was based on the "swarm" rules from earlier editions, but as a template you can apply to any other statblock in the game.


I also really like the idea of "role" based mechanics for Airship crews, lots of great starship games make good use of that. As combat rounds are roughly 6 seconds, I'd go with 5-round blocks of time for Airship maneuvers. 10 rounds is too much (sometimes, you want the captain to have to make that quick decision while his boarding party is on the enemy's deck locked in melee).

Were the Airship Talent's rules adjusted for 4E? I'm going to have to go check.

I too like the general idea of using Officers to make pro-totum rolls for the whole ship (not necessarily in the way Slimcreeper suggested, but the basic idea is great IMHO). While having individual stats for the airship (crew / moral etc.) might make more sense in a simulation, the actual gaming in ED is centered around a group of heroes venturing out into the world. Even after studying the rules, it often just felt more natural to "somehow" let one of the characters roll. If there could be a simple (!) system to use officers (often player characters) as the defining factor, combined with a mass combat mechanic, that'd really be great. What do you think Mataxes?

I think it will have to wait until after I'm done with the GM Guide.

It is on the list, but I need to be careful not to go down the rabbit hole and get distracted.

my 2 cents, Pavillon Noir is a pirate rpg that makes a ship more interactive with players. I'm not suggesting to copy, but it might inspire some good ideas.

Understandable Mataxes. Thanks for looking in in any case. Great to see you interact with the community like that