Naval Combat

Since DEEP, system used in Arrowflight, is a more advanced version of the XPG system, it shouldn't be surprising that the naval combat system introduced in Bloode Island XPG forms the basis for the more advanced version in Island Nations.

Ships have five stats: SAIL, OAR, GUNS, HULL, and CREW (a measure of the crew’s competence and morale, not its size). A single roll determines both initiative and the distance each ship can move in a round, treating SAIL+OAR as the attribute (i.e., the number of d6's rolled) and CREW (plus the captain’s Seamanship skill, if applicable) as the skill (i.e., the target number for the roll). Likewise, when firing, GUNS becomes the attribute and CREW (plus the applicable skill of any PC leading the gun crew) becomes the skill.

The number of successes on an attack roll translates directly into damage, and HULL measures how much damage a ship can take before sinking; however, weapons can be loaded to attack SAIL, OAR, or CREW as well. SAIL and OAR are reduced at the same rate as is HULL, but CREW is a special case: no matter how many guns are fired at crewmembers, only one point of CREW may be lost per barrage. In essence, this represents a reduction of crew morale, not actual losses – in fact, there's no mechanic for translating CREW losses into actual numbers. This mechanic is simply for the benefit of drama, preventing broadsides from robbing the PCs of the chance to board and conquer. When a CREW takes losses, it must make a morale check on 1d6 vs. the new score plus the leader's Command skill. Failure gives the crew an increasing penalty to all actions, while a roll of 6 causes them to instantly surrender and a roll of 1 increases the CREW score by one up to the maximum.

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Playtest: For a trial combat, I decided to pit the pride of the Corvellian fleet, a galleon, vs. the pride of the Kilmoorian fleet, a heavy galley. The galleon had a big edge in GUNS (11 cannon per side vs. 4 cannons per side and two squads of archers) and HULL (50 vs. 40 + one point of armor); however, the heavy galley had the edge in speed (4 SAIL and 6 OAR vs. the galleon's 7 SAIL). I decided to give the opposing captains scores of 2 in all relevant skills and to give both ships a CREW of 3. To speed things up a bit, I put a hypothetical PC with a score of 2 in charge of all gun crews.

Initially, I was under the impression that all ships' actions fell on their initiative. Run this way, the heavy galley won initiative, fired first, damaged the SAIL and CREW ratings of the galleon, then ended its move outside of the firing arc of the galleon's guns. This meant that the galleon got in no hits on the first round. Since the heavy galley won initiative even more easily in the second round, it was able to finish off the galleon's sails, leaving the ship dead in the water – again, before the galleon could fire. So, seemingly, speed was the pivotal factor.

However, upon discussion with Todd Downing, I learned something that I'd missed in my first reading: ships can fire at any time during the combat round, including while the enemy vessel is moving. In other words, there's really nothing a ship can do to dodge incoming fire so long as it's within gun range. So, I re-racked the battle.

Again, because HULL scores are so much higher than SAIL and OAR scores, I decided to have the ships go after the latter first. In the initial exchange of fire – which was now simultaneous, for all practical purposes – the galleon was reduced to SAIL 3 and CREW 2 (due to the galley's archer squads) and the heavy galley was reduced to OAR 1 and SAIL 2.

(Note that initiative and movement had gone from being pivotal in my erroroneous battle to irrelevant in this one. There's no way movement can prevent an attack aside from fleeing the battle, which neither side was going to do, and neither was either side going to attempt to close and board.)

In the second round, the galleon was reduced to SAIL 2 and CREW 1, while the galley was reduced to OAR 0, SAIL 0, and CREW 2. At this point, the galleon's crew actually got a 6 on the morale check and gave up – which seemed odd, since they'd just completely immobilized the enemy ship.

Deciding to ignore that result just to see how things would have gone, I noticed something odd: the battle was now at something of a stalemate. Why? Because immobilized or not, the heavy galley could still fire its cannon and launch its arrows, and all it would take was one hit to finish off the CREW of the galleon. Contrariwise, there was no way the galleon could finish off the galley's CREW score outright, since it could only reduce that score by one point per round. True, the galley's crew might surrender due to a failed morale roll, but that wouldn't have done the galleon much good with its own crew defeated.

What did I learn from all this? Well…

1. Since initiative order doesn’t affect attack order and since it’s not possible to maneuver into an advantageous position, speed really doesn't make any difference in naval combat.
2. Because speed doesn't matter, destroying a ship's propulsion doesn't make victory any more likely if neither ship intends to flee.
3. Because destroying a ship's propulsion doesn't win the fight outright, going after HULL or CREW is necessary.
4. Unless one ship has an overwhelming advantage in guns and CREW, going after an enemy's HULL is suicide – the typical CREW rating will run out much sooner than will the typical HULL rating, even given the one-point-per-round limit on CREW damage.

So, it would seem that naval combat is something to fear even in the mightiest warships. The best tactic, then, is to eliminate the enemy's crew rating as quickly as possible… but that can't be done quickly with heavy weapons. That's where boarding comes in.

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Boarding actions pit CREW scores against each other in competing Morale Checks, the winner gaining the advantage and the loser losing a point of CREW. Here, actual numbers matter, insofar as a numerical advantage of 1-1/2x, 2x, or 3x the opposing force gives the larger side a bonus of +1, +2, or +3 to the Morale Check, respectively. If one side gains the advantage three times in a row, the other side surrenders. This serves to keep boarding actions from bogging down into wars of attrition – like, say, two ships might experience while trying to sink each other. Here, if your side wins an exchange, the other side doesn't get in an effective hit. Furthermore, this mechanic makes the Command skill of a leader – like, say, a PC – absolutely pivotal. Consider that a boarding party with a CREW of 3 led by a captain with a Command skill of 3 has the edge over a group of leaderless defenders with a CREW of 5. And unlike during ship-to-ship attacks on CREW, the Command skill of the leader serves to help protect the CREW score as well as increasing the effectiveness of the crew’s own attacks. Besides which, the actual CREW score needn't be eliminated for a victory – all that's needed are those three victories in a row.

Bottom line? The rules make ship-to-ship combat a highly abstracted affair in which the key to outright victory a boarding action. I can appreciate the thinking behind this design, since it minimizes the complexity of actions that don’t directly involve the PCs. Still, I’d prefer a few tweaks to make ship-to-ship combat a bit less of a formality and a bit more of an interesting tactical exercise.

Having superior numbers affect boarding actions is all well and good, for example, but it seems to me that there ought to be a way to factor in actual losses from cannon fire. As it stands, a ship could take any amount of CREW damage from cannon fire without technically losing a single sailor, possibly leaving them with a numerical advantage bonus to pit against a boarding party.

In addition, I’d prefer to have speed and maneuverability be something between the total trump they were in my flawed initial trial combat and the total irrelevancy they are in the actual rules. Perhaps the difference between opposing initiative rolls could translate into an offensive and/or defensive bonus for the winning side, for example. That would also give ships’ gunners a good reason to target SAIL and OAR scores rather than CREW. Allowing called shots against a ship’s GUNS score would give gunners yet another valuable non-CREW target. And differentiating between cannon ranges might help as well, causing heavily armed heavy ships to try to destroy the SAIL and OAR scores of smaller, faster ships before the latter could get within range.

The chapter also includes suggestions for using spells in naval combat. These are fairly nebulous, mainly involving spells reducing targeted ship ratings by a point or two. This system seems to wash out any differences in spell power level in the same way that the GUNS rules wash out any differences between varying cannon sizes, barring GM fiat.

Speaking of differences between cannons, however, the chapter does go one better than Bloode Island XPG in that it offers standard weapon ratings for cannons, ballistae, and catapults, so that a hit from such weapons can result in something other than a flat “You’re dead.” This makes sense, given the fact that it’s far more likely that artillery in Arrowflight will be turned against living targets that can survive more than one hit.

Finally, the chapter provides stats on a dozen sailing vessels, from the mighty brigantine to the small-but-speedy sloop.