Announcement - Some new Rules

[Kelly]

Actually I did not manuveur the ship ever. It was already delegated, with me giving the general orders of where we want to be and either the navigator or helmsman moving the ship into place to get us there(since I really do not understand all the technical crap of moving a ship to intercept another ship).

[CosmicHorror]

shadowbane said:

May i suggest a slight change to the following

Open Formation - All members are assumed to have 5 feet of space around them, thus doubling the area that a closed squad covers (ie. A 9 man closed squad is a square 3x3, a 9 man open squad is a square 6x6). A squad in open formation only counts 1/2 its numbers when determining it's attack bonus.

Thus, a 9 man squad of veteran marines (War 3) has an attack bonus of (BAB:3 + 8 members beyond the first) +11. The same squad in open formation would have an attack bonus of (BAB:3 + (8/2) members beyond the first) +7.


I wouldn't think spreading out a unit of archers would severly affect either their accuracty or effectiveness, yes inmelee a open unit would be at a disadvantage, but i don't think it shouls reduce the effectiveness of an open units archery/crossbow. (( or am i missing something here? tell me if i am ))

Well, in a tight group, archers can loose a more concentrated volly of arrows, so I suppose it would still be affected.

[Hussar]

While hunting through some of my stuff, I came across a sweet little set of rules for morale of crews. I’m going to use these rules during ship combat. It makes sense.

Morale: Whether engaged in a ferocious harbour battle or fighting off pirates on the high seas, few men are willing to be slain or drowned as their ship is continually pounded by a superiour enemy. A sustained attack on an enemy ship may very quickly cause them to strike their colors and surrender.

Morale checks are made whenever the circumstances listed below are met.

Ship hull points reduced to one half – DC 15
Ship hull reduced to one third of current score in one attack – DC 10
Ship receives a critical hit – DC 10
Crew reduced to one half – DC 10
Attacked by multiple ships of same size or larger – DC 10+2 per ship
Ship damaged three consecutive times without causing damage in return – DC 15

The following modifiers apply to Morale checks:
Captain - + captains charisma modifier
Morale modifiers in existence - + morale bonus (ie bless)
Captain has the Captaining feat - + Captain’s character level
Crew has worked double shifts - -4
Pressganged crew: -4

If a Morale check is failed, the crew surrenders. Player characters are under no obligation to surrender, but, from this point, they will be fighting on their own. There is also, however, no guarantee that an enemy will necessarily honour a surrender and may simply carry on bombarding their targets.