# Repost: Admiral o' the High Seas: Weekly Update 1



## RangerWickett (Jun 19, 2012)

From http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...60-admiral-o-high-seas-weekly-update-1-a.html

Ryan here with a weekly update on the development of *Admiral o’ the High Seas*, the upcoming naval adventure book produced by E.N. Publishing. We received funding through Kickstarter, and I'm releasing short blog entries to keep our backers up to date on our status. I figured some folks on EN World might be interested too.

It amused me last night that I felt the need to sketch a map for a longship to send to our cartographer, like it was some vastly complicated shape that he needed my guidance on. Tonight I’ll be playing in the D&D Next playtest a friend is running, and while I don’t expect to be bored, I’ll have an iPad and a pad of graph paper handy so I can design a believable deckplan for galleons, steamships, and clipper ships. Those are a tad more complicated.

Something else that’s complicated, and that I’m looking for comments and feedback on, is pricing items in a fantasy setting. In particular, the different price regimes for *Pathfinder* and *D&D Fourth Edition*.

In the ‘simple version’ of the ship design rules, the general concept is to bundle everything into a single Ship Level. So being X size would add 3 levels, having speed Y would add 2 more, your cannons/ballistae/etc. could be another 3, and if you had any special magical components (fire-breathing figurehead, animated winds, ability to submerge, etc.), those would add extra levels. The total level would determine the cost of the ship. Two level 10 ships would have the same price, even if one was a lightly-armed but heavy ship, while another was a flying skiff armed with cannons.

Now, the level isn’t intended to really be some sort of ‘game balance’ element. Sure, 1st level PCs probably won’t be buying a level 20 windship-of-war, but if they have one it’s not a game-breaker. Unfortunately, the way both 4e and PF are designed, money = power, and if your party captures a huge ship, sells it, and gears up with magic weapons and armor, it throws off the ‘non-naval’ part of the game. So we’re including ship levels as a guideline for what you should let the party get access to if you want to keep the party at their expected wealth-by-level.

Folks who like _Farscape_ can of course still hand super-ships to low-level PCs. I mean, who’d pay them for their ship when they’re so puny it’s easier to just kill them and take it?

(And D&D Next seems to be moving away from 'wealth-by-level' expectations, so I might even include a "this is what it would really cost" entry.)

Now, 4e handily has prices for magic items based on levels, but PF doesn’t work quite the same way. Also, 4e goes up to level 30, PF kinda caps out at 20. Right now we’ll probably just have two different charts of prices, so a party of 20th level PF PCs will be able to afford a level 30 ship. But I want to see what people think of this idea before I settle on it.

So, what do you think of the basic idea?

And there’s a yet more complicated aspect. I recognize that some groups will want to be able to acquire components for their ships piecemeal. I grew up playing *Battletech*, so I can appreciate the desire to custom-design a vehicle down to the varying armor ratings of different sections, and the trouble deciding whether to add one more light weapon, or a bit more speed, or some sort of special gadget. My tastes have changed since then, but I don’t want to abandon gamers who still like to tinker.

I’m confident that the default system offers enough options for customization to satisfy most groups, so that your ship can be distinctive and memorable. And due to the sheer complexity of actual ships, it wouldn’t be that useful to try to work from the bottom up (“Okay, our ship is 75 ft. long, three masts currently in a Bermuda rig; the wind is coming from the northeast at 6 miles per hour, and our hold is filled sufficiently that our draft is 9 ft., so by consulting table 7:01-b, it looks like our speed this turn 6 squares, and our maneuverability class is B.”). 

So we’re not going to have a completely simulationist system. Small improvements will still be priced separately, particularly stuff like luxuries that don’t affect combat. But I’m curious how much people care if their ship costs 65,000 gp vs. 63,000 gp because it has 32 cannons vs. 30 cannons. 

Next week, we'll talk crew.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 19, 2012)

I personally tend towards the tech/detail/tinkering end of the spectrum; I suspect the reason for that is the enjoyment I got building ships in the FASA's _Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator_ as a kid.  But that's just me.


----------



## Ajar (Jun 21, 2012)

I have pretty reasonable players, but also, when they captured _La Grifoni Grinyande_, they actually turned it over to the RHC, so I expect them to continue doing that until they are no longer in the RHC's employ. If it gets to that point in Paragon or Epic, I doubt there would be any buyers for the kinds of ships they'd be looking at anyway.


----------

