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Time to follow the tides and float into another look at the latest issue of Vodari Voyages. This time, we’re looking at Issue number 4, with the theme of Naval Combat. The Seas of Vodari campaign setting book did an excellent job of converting ship statistics into the format introduced in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Which WotC promptly ignored any time they revisited vehicles, most notably in the Spelljammer release.

Naval combat may be one of those subsystems that has been tackled over and over across the lifespan of D&D. AD&D 2nd edition had different naval combat rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide series, DMGR 9 Of Ships and Sea, as well as rules in the Forgotten Realms product Pirates of the Fallen Stars, and in the Birthright setting in Havens of the Great Bay. That’s all in addition to the vehicle combat rules in the Spelljammer boxed set.

Sometimes it’s just something simple like giving vehicles the same stats as PCs or monsters, complete with armor class and hit points, which is the direction 5th edition went before it began to split vehicles into different sections with their own armor class and hit point totals. Ghosts of Saltmarsh gives vehicles ability scores, a number of actions the ship can take, and what actions the ship can use with the actions it can take.

Now that we’ve taken a very quick and abbreviated tour of the current state of the naval game, let’s roll into this issue with a little more depth.

Disclaimer

I am working from my own copy of Vodari Voyages, which I received from my subscription to the Vodari Voyages Patreon. I have not used the rules included in this issue, but I have run and played D&D 5e quite a bit, including using the vehicle rules that were expanded in Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

Vodari Voyages Issue Number 4: Naval Combat

Designer: Shawn Ellsworth
Editing: Brandes Stoddard
Graphic Design: Dave Jumaquio
Artwork: Mariam Trejo

Navigating the Document

The PDF for Vodari Voyages Issue 4 is 14 pages long. There are also some extras you can get, which include tokens for the ships presented in this document, as well as a big, gridded map of open sea, so you can upload these to your VTT of choice, should you so choose. The document is split up into these sections:

• Naval Combat
• Shipboard Roles
• Ship Stat Blocks
• Ship Upgrades

The Rules of the Sea

Core D&D 5e is pretty sparse on vehicle rules. You have a vehicle with an armor class and hit points, and if you do something to get the vehicle to go somewhere or do something, someone with the right vehicle proficiency can make a check with proficiency to see how well the vehicle responds.

In Ghosts of Saltmarsh, as mentioned above, ships had more of a creature stat block, and it also rolls initiative and takes its turn when it comes up. There are some ship roles included, which give the captain, first mate, and bosun additional actions, Take Aim and Full Speed Ahead.

Now, if you want to run vehicle, or specifically ship based, combat in the 2024 rules . . . there isn’t really anything published yet. In fact, the 2024 rules don’t reference vehicle proficiencies at all, and don’t include any vehicle statistics. This could change with the DMG, but for now, vehicles rules are in limbo, minus a default tool that existed before to portray proficiency.

What’s New

This issue is rolling back some of the granularity of vehicle combat from Ghosts of Saltmarsh and mirrored in the Seas of Vodari campaign setting. While the rules pull back a little from the Ghosts of Saltmarsh paradigm, it still keeps the general concept of a vehicle having a stat block similar to a creature. That means it still has ability scores, armor class, and hit points. In fact, let’s look at what we’re tracking on vehicles from these rules:

• Size–these sizes correspond to creature sizes, meaning most significantly large ships are Gargantuan
• Armor Class
• Hit Points
• Crew–you don’t want this to drop below 50%, and ship weapons have minimum crews
• Cargo
• Speed–expressed in the same scale as regular characters
• Ability Scores–Int, Wis, and Cha by default being 0
• Damage Threshold–the damage the ship subtracts from damage done when the ship is hit
• Damage Immunities–the standard things you would expect from an object
• Condition Immunities–see above
• Ship Actions–most ship actions are attacks, and we’ll talk about that in a moment

The ship’s initiative is always 0, however, the player characters can use their actions to trigger the ship’s actions. That means that the cannon isn’t going to fire unless a player character gives the order, and they have to have enough crew available to run the weapon or ship component. The comparison made in the text is that when PCs are on the ship, the ship functions like a mount, meaning that it doesn’t have its own actions while the PCs are directing it.

There is a sidebar explaining how to handle proficiency checks to pilot the ship if you are using the 2024 rules. Unlike standard combat, facing does matter, mainly because your ship can spin around fast enough to shoot all of its cannons at an opponent, so you need to know what’s facing your opponent.

What is it You Would Say That You Do Here?

The number of roles has been expanded, as have the actions that player characters can use that interact with the ship. The roles included in this include:

• Captain
• Quartermaster
• Sailing Master
• Boatswain
• Chaplain
• Cook
• Gunner
• Lookout
• Mage
• Musician
• Surgeon

Most of these roles get a persistent ability, as well as abilities they work once per short rest, or in some cases, once per long rest. Captains get a boost to initiative, they can grant someone on the crew an extra partial move and an action, or they can boost ship actions taken. The quartermaster can bolster allies or attempt to impose the frightened condition. The Sailing Master can take evasive maneuvers making the ship harder to hit or give the ship a quick burst of speed. The Boatswain cobble together extra ship defenses or makes emergency repairs. The chaplain has a limited ability to heal the ship itself, even if it’s not normally a valid target, and you can manipulate probability. The cook can make food and drink that grants a number of extra benefits. The gunner can increase the damage of ship’s weapons and can use more precise attacks. The lookout increases your range for what you can perceive and have a more reliable Perception check. Mage’s get better range for spells and can use the ship as their focus. The musician can grant certain actions as a bonus action, and let people reroll dice under a certain set of circumstances. The surgeon gets a limited ability to bring characters making death saves back to 1 hit point, as well as a limited healing function outside of spellcasting.

Player characters gain the option to use the following new actions while on the ship:

• Board–when you are close to another ship, you can move to another ship and impose penalties to that ship while you are there
• Hoist Flag–you can attempt intimidate or dissuade another ship, based on your Charisma check (modified by an appropriate skill) and the flag you decide to fly
• Repair–do some minor patching up of the ship
• Scan–find out information about the opposing ship
• Ship Action–trigger one of the actions detailed under the ship’s stat block

They’re More Like Guidelines

There are a number of optional rules included in this document as well, including rules that address the following situations:

• Side Initiative by Ship–each ship rolls initiative, and its crew goes on its turn
• Broadsides–fire identical weapons as a group with average damage
• Running Aground–taking damage when the ship bottoms out on something
• Targeting Smaller Targets with Ship Action Weapons–how hard is it to shoot the halfling ship’s wizard on the opposing ship, with the ship’s cannon
• Targeting Ship Components–splitting out damage to components

Cross-Section

Not every ship presented in the Seas of Vodari campaign setting book are converted to this new paradigm, but a few are, including the Brigantine, Eleven Warship, the Galleon, the Ironclad, and the Sloop.

There are a number of ship upgrades included. Some of these are modified from the Seas of Vodari, and some are new options.

Shifting Hull, Vessel of the Mists, Spectral Sails, Windchaser Sails, Arcane Cannons, Thunderstone Mangonel, Basilisk Figurehead, Mimic Figurehead, Skeleton Figurehead, Moonglow Lanterns, Ghost-Lantern, and Hidden Compartments are all reworked from Seas of Vodari.

Some of these are almost the same, but have had their costs adjusted, from a moderate change to a significant drop in price. In many cases, these have also been reworded to address the way the 2024 rules expect rules to be expressed.

Final Thoughts

Without getting too specific, I’ve seen other 3rd party vehicle rules that I was less enamored of, because they completely reinvent the wheel. I am very happy that these rules build on the core game rather than creating a subsystem that fights against it or ignores it. I like having the PCs being responsible for the ship taking its actions, because it reinforces that they are part of the crew, not just adventurer’s standing off to the side of the crew.

I was a fan of having components separated out, because it facilitated tactics like blowing out your opponent’s sails. That said, I can understand dialing back some of the specialized parts of the ship to make combat simpler, and I like that it’s only a half-step back, maintaining the more “creature style” stat block for the ship. I really like individual roles that PCs can assume, and I like that there is a mechanic for characters shifting roles, keeping the game from slowing down compared to just allowing players to shift roles each turn. Thinking back to when I was reviewing the Pirates of the Aetherial Expanse adventure series, you can recruit people in different locations that have specialties in various ship roles, and I like that you could keep that structure while using these roles, and possibly allow NPCs with these assigned roles to sit aside from the crew and take ship actions like the PCs. I say this mainly because I can see smaller parties, with three players, for example, having a harder time fully utilizing their ship’s options.

There are a few fuzzy areas that either I didn’t fully understand, or that I feel could be a little more defined:

• The ship is compared to a mount, but we don’t have a default number of actions the ship can take, if the PCs all end up boarding another ship or incapacitated, so the ship can take actions like an unmounted horse might
• The Targeting Ship Components optional rule is basically just saying, separate out hit points like the Seas of Vodari setting book does, but how does that work with the adjusted hit points for the ships, and is there maybe a formula for what percentage you should allocate to different components?
• Some of the ship’s roles provide some useful skills, especially for a team of adventurers that don’t have the standard bases covered, but some roles either give more of something similar to someone taking that role of certain classes, or encroach a bit on their niche–this could be fine if you want to free up characters to step away from their usual roles, but it’s something to consider
• The Broadsides optional rule feels like it’s almost a necessary standard rule–the Galleon has 15 guns per side, meaning if the PCs are the only ones that can trigger the cannons being fired, they are going to be really short on standard firepower for their ship type

I’m interested in taking these vehicle rules for a spin, and my PCs may be sailing somewhere soon, which may give me a chance to do so. The issue mentions that there will be more ships and components being converted in future issues, and I’m looking forward to this.

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/10/03/what-do-i-know-about-patreons-vodari-voyages-issue-number-4/

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