Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Alright, rules time. Keep in mind that this is a first pass and feel free to point out anything I might have missed or any nonsensical bullshit that arises.
Let's start off with a small discussion on scale. Ships in a chase are likely going to be at a distance to each other that is measured in miles, while ships engaged in active combat will be at ranges of "only" tens to hundreds of feet. These distances are different enough from the standard range bands that a new scale should be used.
Close: Entangled ships, as from ramming or boarding actions. The place where melee weapons come into play, as usual.
Short: Anywhere from five to fifty feet between ships. This is where most thrown weapons will be usable. (Equates to short or medium range in the standard scale).
Medium: From fifty feet to five-hundred feet between ships. Archery weapons and most sorcery will find their limits here. (Equates to medium or long range in the standard scale).
Long: From five-hundred feet to half of a mile between ships. The usual maximum range of ship-mounted weaponry such as ballistae and catpults. (Equates to long or extreme range in the standard scale).
Extreme: From half of a mile off to the horizon. Only supernaturally enhanced attacks will be useful here. (Equates to extreme range in the standard scale).
For example, the Mounted Crossbow in the example writeup is literally a standard crossbow attached to the rail of the ship with a swivel mounting, and thus only merits a maximum range of medium on the ship scale. This doesn't keep someone from pulling it off of the mount and attacking someone at the standard scale long range.
On a related note, most ships are going to be large enough that, should boarding happen or melee combat break out on deck, they will contain multiple range bands. This will likely create a "zooming" effect in which a broader view of ship-to-ship-scale conflict is pushed into the distance to focus on the three-to-five standard range bands of a medium-sized ship or grappled pair. In this case, Initiative should be re-rolled and a whole new battle started. However, it should likely remain within the same scene for Charm duration purposes.
Now, on to the actual rules. For the sake of brevity, I'm only going to bring up points where this hack diverges from the standard Mass Combat rules.
- Ship-to-ship combat takes place on a much longer scale than regular combat. Ship units only act every 2-4 turns. This rule is discarded once a boarding commences.
- Substitute Sail for War as the skill used for all Command and Strategic Warfare actions.
- The Parry defense is inapplicable unless the ship itself possesses an active method of self defense. However, an attack targeted only at the crew can be parried.
- Rout checks may cause a mutiny on a botch.
- The Engage action is used for ramming or boarding other ships.
- Ships that sail themselves or otherwise don't require a crew have perfect morale. They also have a fixed Size for abstracting into a battle group.
- All ship-to-ship battles and boarding actions are subject to the Back to the Sea stratagem. (Rally for numbers restores 1 Magnitude per 3 successes, lost Magnitude represents more casualties and surrenders than desertions, and slaughter actions are extremely effective.)
- Pursuit is done as per the standard Sail rules. When ships catch up to combat range, they begin at long range with respect to each other.
As always, I'm open to suggestions for improvement.
PS: @sebsmith I hope that whatever your ST is in the hospital for gets better
EDIT to avoid triple-post:
It could, but we'd need a decent Bureaucracy system for the resulting organizations to hook into. This only works because both the core combat system and the mass combat system are already there and mechanically solid (before Charm fuckery). With Bureaucracy, there just is no system to work off of because the devs decided that people "should just roleplay it". However, lifting the way that battle groups are done and applying it to organizations, with the head of the organization playing the "general" role, would likely work with some fiddling.
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