Ship Combat (Apath)

Unofficial rules compendium

These are modifications to the Ship Combat rules from the Skull & Shackle's Player's Guide.

Attacks

In the ship combat portion of the game, only ships and lone individuals away from ships can be targeted, not individual crew members on board ships. An attacker can choose to attack the target ship's hull, rigging, or oars.

Attacks must hit the ship in order to cause damage, and saving throws are allowed as normal.

Once a hit is scored or a saving throw made, subtract the Hardness of the target and then multiply by a factor depending on the type of attack used. Use the first category that applies

Attack	Hull or Oars	Rigging
Siege engine firing burning or chain shot	x½	x1
Siege engine	x1	x½
Slashing weapon	x1	x1
Fire arrow or bolt	x½	x½
Other personal weapon	x½	x0
Fire or Acid energy damage	x1	x2
Cold, enervation, dessication, positive or negative energy damage	x½	x½
Other energy damage	x1	x1

All parts of a ship are vulnerable to area attacks. If an area attack has a radius of 15 ft. or more, is a cone of 30 ft. or more, or has a remaining length of line of 30 ft or more once it reaches the ship, it causes double damage. This doubling is made last, after all other modifications.

Indirect fire weapons have a hard time hitting a moving target, such as a ship. There is no accumulation of attack bonus from round to round. A failed targeting roll when firing at a ship from the front has a 50% to hit the water. If the miss did not hit the water, or the attack was from the arft or stern, the shot scatters normally.

Fire

Fire attacks to a ship's hull can start fires. Each round's worth of fire arrows and each individual attack by a fire weapon requires the ship to pass a saving throw. The DC is equal to 10 + ½ the fire damage dealt. This is based on damage after Hardness but before multipliers.

A ship on fire takes 2d6 damage each round to the ship's hull, ignoring hardness.

A ship's crew can try and put out a fire, this needs a ship's officer and a fire-fighting party from the crew. A ship with several heroic officers (such as player characters) can make one attempt for each such person not otherwise engaged. This requires a Saving throw with a DC of 25, +1 for each round the ship has been burning. A ship that puts it entire crew on fire-fighting duties, taking no other actions, gains a +10 bonus on this check. These checks do not automatically succeed on a roll of 20, it is possible for a ship to be burning so badly that the fire cannot be put out.

A ship is either on fire or it is not - multiple fires are not tracked. Once fire on a ship is put out, the ship can be lit again normally, but the difficulty of putting out the fire is back to 25.

Effects of Damage

Broken Condition

Ships—and their means of propulsion—are objects, and like any other object, when they take damage in excess of half their hit points, they gain the broken condition.

When a ship or its means of propulsion gains the broken condition, it takes a –2 penalty to AC, on sailing checks, saving throws, and on combat maneuver checks. The ship’s maximum speed is halved and the ship can no longer gain the upper hand until repaired. If the ship is in motion and traveling faster than its new maximum speed, it automatically decelerates to its new maximum speed.

For each broken section (hull, rigging, oars) ¼ of the ships crew becomes incapacitated.

Immobilized Condition

A ship whose means of propulsion is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points is immobilized. It can no longer move or take maneuvers. Half its crew is incapacitated. The means of propulsion can be repaired, but to no more than half it's normal hit points and it retains the broken condition until the ship undergoes extensive repairs on shore.

Sinking Condition

A ship that is reduced to 0 or fewer hit points gains the sinking condition. A sinking ship cannot move or attack, and it sinks completely 10 minutes after it gains the sinking condition. Each additional 25 points of damage reduces the remaining time for it to sink by 1 minute.

Magic (such as make whole) can repair a sinking ship if the ship’s hit points are raised above 0 before it seinks, at which point the ship loses the sinking condition. Generally, nonmagical repairs take too long to save a ship from sinking once it begins to go down.

A sinking ship has half its cargo destroyed by water, and half its crew is incapacitated.

Sunk Condition

A ship that sinks completely drops to the bottom of the body of water and is considered destroyed. A destroyed ship cannot be repaired—it is so significantly damaged it cannot even be used for scrap material. ¾ of its cargo is lost, as well as any crew still left on board.

Crew Casualties

Ship's crew become incapacitated as the ship takes damage. Each broken section indicates ¼ of the ship's crew is incapacitated, each destroyed/sinking section indicates ½ the ships crew is incapacitated. Officers are normally exempt form such casualties.

How many of these actually die depend a lot on the medical and healing abilities of the ship. Make a Heal skill check for each incapacitated crew member to save his life. A character capable of casting the stabilize spell can substitute a concentration check for the Heal check. Using healing spells or powers adds a +5 bonus; one spell or power use is required for each such roll, but the decision to use healing can be made after the roll. If the roll fails by 4 or less, the crewman survives but is handicapped. On a failure of 5 or more, he is killed.

The difficulty depends on the damage level the ship's hull suffered, and on whether medical attention was provided during the battle or only after the engagement was over. To provide medical attention during ship combat, the healer can provide no other function.

Circumstance	DC
Base DC	15
Propulsion destroyed	+5
Hull broken	+5
Hull destroyed	+10
Ship Sunk	+15
Post-battle medical attention	+10