To fit with the age of sail technological timeframe I'm needing to create ships from scratch to create a basic library of ships and come up with a basic idea on the rules regarding how ships are built. After my last post about the cannons (very good suggestions from people on some of those things), people gave me some good directions on what to check out as far as Pathfinder is concerned.
As usual Pathfinder has done a great job taking rules that were needlessly complicated, vague and/or unplayable and streamlined them into something nice. Attacks with a massive numbers of siege engines (cannons in my case) have a simple system for resolution, ships are consistently statted which makes reverse engineering their building easier, etc.
I've been able to make the appropriate adjustments to my custom ship lists to finally start statting the ships. There are still somethings to work out but I have my starting point.
My anachronism senses are tingling though with some of this though. The rules on masts, rigging and sailing speeds are off and might need to be tweaked on the individual ships. (There's no way the Constitution and Victory would have the same speed as a brig let alone each other. The Victory also didn't have 7 separate masts. It doesn't make sense!) These are fixable from a design perspective though without any real rules changes.
I am creating 6 categories of ships with 3 baseline versions each. A Light, Standard and Heavy version. The categories are Frigates, Ships of the Line, Brigs, Indiamen, Sloops, and Galleons.
Each category will be built using the standard models. The light versions will be quicker, but smaller vessels with less space/armaments. The Heavy version will obviously be the opposite.
I am also going to use/create some ship modifications that will allow customization of every ship if the captain (or DM) so desire. Pathfinder has a good list to start with, I'll be building on that with a few others.
It looks like I'm going to have to design each type of ship with a standard set of gun mounts/ports. Each one will be of a specific size. I think I'll make carronades downgrade the size of a cannon to fit the next size down for historical accuracy (eg a ship like the Constitution couldn't carry 32-lb cannons unless they were carronades).
I think I'm also going to make a generic set of nautical hirelings for this setting now, since as soon as PCs get bigger ships, they're going to need crews to man them.
As soon as I work out the ship stats I'll post them. I'm also finishing up several modifications to the cannons I posted earlier so expect that to show up too.
As usual Pathfinder has done a great job taking rules that were needlessly complicated, vague and/or unplayable and streamlined them into something nice. Attacks with a massive numbers of siege engines (cannons in my case) have a simple system for resolution, ships are consistently statted which makes reverse engineering their building easier, etc.
I've been able to make the appropriate adjustments to my custom ship lists to finally start statting the ships. There are still somethings to work out but I have my starting point.
My anachronism senses are tingling though with some of this though. The rules on masts, rigging and sailing speeds are off and might need to be tweaked on the individual ships. (There's no way the Constitution and Victory would have the same speed as a brig let alone each other. The Victory also didn't have 7 separate masts. It doesn't make sense!) These are fixable from a design perspective though without any real rules changes.
I am creating 6 categories of ships with 3 baseline versions each. A Light, Standard and Heavy version. The categories are Frigates, Ships of the Line, Brigs, Indiamen, Sloops, and Galleons.
Each category will be built using the standard models. The light versions will be quicker, but smaller vessels with less space/armaments. The Heavy version will obviously be the opposite.
I am also going to use/create some ship modifications that will allow customization of every ship if the captain (or DM) so desire. Pathfinder has a good list to start with, I'll be building on that with a few others.
It looks like I'm going to have to design each type of ship with a standard set of gun mounts/ports. Each one will be of a specific size. I think I'll make carronades downgrade the size of a cannon to fit the next size down for historical accuracy (eg a ship like the Constitution couldn't carry 32-lb cannons unless they were carronades).
I think I'm also going to make a generic set of nautical hirelings for this setting now, since as soon as PCs get bigger ships, they're going to need crews to man them.
As soon as I work out the ship stats I'll post them. I'm also finishing up several modifications to the cannons I posted earlier so expect that to show up too.
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