If you’re looking at this post, you’re probably among the many who are not exactly satisfied with the ship-to-ship combat rules provided by Wizards in last year’s Spelljammer release. While boarding parties being preferable to ship combat can be okay in the context of Light of Xaryxis, the lack of useful or enjoyable rules in the product is still a sore disappointment. Not only does it fail to give much player engagement, it’s just a slog to work through.
So, rather than just complain about ship combat or avoid it, I’m overhauling the rules to make them more fun for my group as we run Spelljammer Academy->Light of Xaryxis. What follows is very much a work in progress, and highly derivative of rules from the first edition of West End Games’ Star Wars RPG, but it’s already more engaging than playing rules as written had been.
There are three things I hope to accomplish in these rules: Combat that is quick, comprehensible, and exciting; combat that enables most/every player to do something every round; and make upkeep/maintenance both relevant and simple.
Without further delay, here are the rules changes we’re currently using in Spelljammer 5e:
Range: We’re doing away with feet when it comes to range in ship-to-ship combat. Instead, we’re breaking range into five categories: Boarding, short, medium, long, and escaping. For the sake of weapon and spell measurements, these categories will correspond to the following distance:
– boarding = < 30 feet
– short = 30-120 feet
– medium = 120-300 feet
– long = 300-600 feet
– escaping = > 600 feet
Changing ranges: Every round, the spelljammer of each ship decides whether they want to approach the opposing ship, stay at the same distance, or move away. Both ships’ spelljammers roll speed, and the higher roll decides the outcome of which range category is used for the round. If both spelljammers want to close in, no roll is needed; the move toward each other one range category. Similarly, no roll is necessary if both ships wish to put distance between each other.
When a ship enters “boarding” range, the spelljammer has the choice to ram the opposing ship (assuming it has the ability to ram an enemy ship). When a ship enters “escaping” range, combat ends, and the fleeing ship can initiate high speed travel.
Speed: The flat speed mechanic in Spelljammer 5e is perhaps the most boredom-contributing mechanic of all. Instead, each spelljammer rolls Xd10 where X equals the ship’s speed / 10. (Example: Star moth’s speed is 50, so its spelljammer rolls 5d10 to determine the ship’s effective speed for the round.) As above, the effective speeds for the round are compared and the winner’s speed decides the range for the round.
Funding adventures: I am confident that Wizards did not have “the party assembles their own fleet” in mind for Light of Xaryxis, but in light of such endeavors, crews are needed to maintain and operate the party’s expanding collection of ships. Keeping fully stocked crews, regardless of how many ships a party claims in their adventure, allows every player character to fire on enemy vessels every turn.
In order to keep upkeep costs part of the roleplaying experience without getting bogged down in bookkeeping, this simplified “crew tax” is implemented on net gold gains.
– A full crew is hired on to man the party’s ships. A full crew is the sum of all ships’ crew size less the size of the party.
– The crew is to be paid an agreed-upon wage, typically ranging 2sp-5sp per crewmate per day.
– This number is summed up and withheld from gold pools found during adventuring at a rate of 1 gold tax per 100gp found.
Example: The party’s ships would have a sum crew of 26 people. The party is six number. This means 20 crew slots need to be filled. The party has agreed to pay each crewmate 3sp/day, so their tax would be 60sp/day (or 6gp/day). This tax is removed from every 100gp found. So, if the party finds 100gp, 6gp goes straight to the crew, and the party then splits the remaining 94gp among themselves as they see fit.