Our previous effort tested two magazine-published sets of rules for fighting magical flying ships - the 3e adaptation Shadow of the Spider Moon and the 5e Aces High aerial combat rules from Arcadia #3 published by MCDM as well as the original AD&D Spelljammer and the to-be-published OD&D compatible Calidar.
This set is the house ruleset for the Spelljamming focused 'Tales from the Glass Guarded World' podcast. You can hear them play it out themselves on episode 101 and 141/142. Given that this was created while 5e Spelljammer was still a rumour and actually table-tested and refined, this is a window onto an alternate trouser-leg of possibility, happily one we can pick up and use ourselves.
Cover by Mike Hammock and Ignacio Corva
An interesting system with the focus firmly on giving players tools to use; there are a number of officer positions (Captain, Helmsman, Bosun, Gunner) and the default role of Deckhand which all offer lists of ship actions that can be taken during a round. There is no grid, just range bands of 'extreme', 'long' and 'close. Most weapons only work in long or close. This has a lot of the base elements of 2e ported forward and updated for 5e. Things like Ship Rating, the speed of a ship, being dependent on the type of helm and the level of the wizard remain. There is a lot of cunning redesign work here for the things that were retained to make them relevant to 5e.
Much of this work went into the helmsmans maneuvers - the maneuverability class of the ship gives it more or less access to options. Another very nice touch is that Spelljamming is achieved by the helmsman casting a level one spell 'operate spelljamming helm' - which can also be upcast to achieve boosts to ship rating / speed. I like the options this brings.
For the ships AC, hit points and damage thresholds are three dials that get twiddled to give ships an interesting different feel - you don't have much trouble hitting a Hammership but it takes a while to wear down 600hp even if you overcome the 20 point damage threshold. Compare that to a Damselfly which has a few points higher on the AC but if you do hit it the threshold of 10 points is going to stop very little and the 100 hp won't last very long against 6d10 heavy ballista.
We ran a pair of tests, the classic scenario of a heavy trying to get away from lights. First set up we started at extreme range; diced initiative, the Hammership helmsman declared 'Flee' the pair of Damselflies declared 'close' - a pair of opposed maneuver checks later and the Hammership was away and clear. Test one, successful escape for the Hammership.
Second test, we started at long range, the Damselflies managed to get the drop on the Hammershi. First round the Hammership won initiative, tried a Parting Shot to get advantage on attacks as they fled. One Damselfly tried to close, the other tried to get advantage on attacks with Broadside. Only the closing Damselfly succeeded and got in to close rang. Next phase all the support crew acted, the Hammerships Riggers giving advantage to the next maneuver and the Damselflies doing no more than crewing their weapons. In firing phase the Hammership fired on the nearest Damselfly, striking them with all weapons and putting 87 points of damage on it. The Damselflies fire back, getting hits even at long range and putting 71 points on the Hammership.
A solid round of firing but relatively, much worse for the Damselflies.
Next round the Hammership attempts Parting Shot again, the near Damselfly tried to Dodge and the far one attempts to Close. The far Damselfly fails its check, the others succeed; the Hammership pulls away putting the near Damselfly at long range, the other at extreme range. The crews aboard act - both Damselflies being lightly crewed they choose to forgo firing for repairs (near) and rigging to maintain pursuit (far). The Damselfly bosuns fail at assisting repairs (near) and succeed at rigging (far). The Hammership Bosun fumbled his 'organise riggers' roll, the Captain takes his action to shout at the Bosun and Command them to try again! This time the Bosun succeeds and gets advantage to the next maneuver check for their Helmsman. The Hammership, even with half crew still has a deep well of spare deckhands (17) to set to work on repairs and they manage to patch up 28hp compared to the palty 7 hp the reassigned ballista crew on the near Damselfly manage to achieve.
Next, the gunners let loose - only the Hammership has weapons crewed and the first ballista shot lances through the near Damselfly, breaking its keel and causing it to break up.
Starting the third round, initiatives are rolled and the Hammership attempts to flee while the remaining Damselfly attempts to Close and maintain pursuit. Opposed maneuver rolls are won by the Hammership and off it slipped once more.
Running through the battle, differences between lights and heavies are very big, the Hammership could have taken on twice as many small ships with reasonable chance of success. We did not even land any critical hits to get to use the criticals table which would have made things even worse for the small ships.
This is a pretty great system in its niche - if you are looking for a Theatre of the Mind system, do not care about the absence of grid combat - this is very good. I like the stylistic elements like variable SR - the level of your wizard matters - but that is a pretty old-school view, where not every encounter is balanced. I think with those SR elements pulled out, just keeping the casting of the Operate Spelljammer to give you variability for your ship speeds, that is enough variability to keep things interesting without making the encounter a foregone conclusion as soon as you pair a high level wizard with a major helm.
The action lists for the officer positions are good, some meaty decisions but not too complex, lots of ways to give other people advantage and lots of options to trade off advantage/disadvantage in attacks. The maneuvereability of your ship dictates options for your helmsman - but the more maneuverable options are still quite hard; just because your ship can withstand that maneuver does not mean it is easy to pull off. All these things are laid out both in a detailed section for each officer and in a handy reference sheet that I would recommend having in front of each player as they play.
All in all I think this is a good time for the players - lots of roles, lots of options gives each turn interesting and meaningful choices to make. As a DM you will need to do a bit of pre-prep to figure out who your enemy force is and what they are likely to do as you will be pushing the same partys-worth of buttons. Definitely one to recommend for a campaign likely to see more frequent combat as the system has enough meat to justify trying to get the hang of it.
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