PC's and more than one Ship


Skull & Shackles


I am getting ready to start a S&S campaign and something one or two of my players have asked and I havent answered yet is what if they (some of them) want their own ships?
Has anyone addressed this and if so what are your thoughts?


As long as they can deal with the upkeep and they have enough crew to operate the boats, I don't see why not. Logisitically, they're hopefully mature enough to know that splitting up the party has its own drawbacks from gameplay-flow and survival standpoints. If you end up with 4 ships pursuing 4 goals in 4 locales, it could get lame.


If the party has multiple ships, it might trivialize some of the ship combat encounters, then again it might not. Not everyone is going to have a decent profession(sailor) to make the maneuvers they need to make in ship combat. Also, if you have 2 ships chasing, and only one of them succeeds in catching up to the runner, you then have 1 on 1 ship combat, then if and when boarding actions happen, half the party isn't there. Another problem I could see is, when the PCs encounter the Dominator, they might actually think they have a chance of beating it instead of running away. Just make sure to stress the fact that it is a very risky thing to do, and they should be cautious about going into a ship combat if their allies fail their check to chase.


Pretty much as above but remember you need a minimum of 20 crew per ship, a captain, navigator, cook and gunners mate at a minimum for the officers too.

This is where my guys have become stuck, they have 2 ships, enough crew but are lacking officers. They decided in the end to dock the ship at a safe port until they can get more officers. Hireing crew is one thing, finding capable and trustworthy officers is another.


Are you all counting officers as a part of those 20? I read in the book that in combat, gunners should't be considered as a part of the 20, but I don't see why they wouldn't outside of combat. Any definitive standards on this?


Officers are not counted (at least as far as I know), the 20 are sailors. In order to fire any siege engines you need sailors above the base 20.


ferrinwulf wrote:
Officers are not counted (at least as far as I know), the 20 are sailors. In order to fire any siege engines you need sailors above the base 20.

That has been my assumption as to how crewing a vessel works. In a life or death situation the officers would undoubtedly lend a hand in sailing the ship, but under normal circumstances I don't believe they are considered in the crew strength total.

Spoiler:
Counting the four PCs but not the officers, the Wormwood has 22 crew onboard as the AP begins (21 after Jake Magpie's keelhauling.) This is barely above the minimum 20 needed to sail the ship, and is why Harrigan forbids any killings among the crew. It also explains why Harrigan has to use members of the crew of the Man's Promise in order to have enough hands to man both vessels after the capture of the Promise.


In practice does this come out to mean that the crew equals everyone outside of the PCs?

In my game the PCs account for the captain (best prof. sailor), the boatswain (who as an additional job as the recruiter and infamy-builder due to diplomacy), the quatermaster (best appraise and in charge of ship's money and stores as well as selling plunder), the chief gunner (prof. engineer plus just a general interest in trying it out) and the ship's magic-user (basically this is a way to give a beginning player a officer job without a lot of responsibility).

Then there are officer jobs that really are just titles. Master at arms organizes the crew for combat, but really this is meaningless due to the ship combat mechanics, so Rosie Cusswell can do it. Ship's surgeon, once again, little need for a PC to play this in reality, so Sandara Quinn can do it. Boatswain's mate is Conchibar. Gunner's mate is Owlbear. Cook is still Fishguts. They will probably meet Jerren the Jinx from the NPC Guide at Rickety Squibbs and I'm going to put him forth as a possible guy to hire on as first mate.

If they can't count these people towards their 10 minimum to sail a ship, the game is effectively over now because there aren't enough crew left over to get them to Rickety's. Additionally, when you come right down to it, the officer jobs leftover have no real mechanical game impact, so it's just something to call NPCs they like. If they can't do that, there is no reason to let the NPCs be officers; just make them crew and not count them towards officers who serve no mechanical purpose.

So, does this make sense? I'd like to know if others handled it this way and if it's what the writers intended. Am I missing anything?


I would view the "10 minimum" needed to sail the ship as being the total number of souls onboard, primarily because operating the ship with that few crew is a desperation measure with everyone lending a hand. With that few crew the ship sails with considerable restrictions on various Skill checks, and would probably be lost if it faced a major storm or other hazardous situation. This is why you need to "crew" up at Rickety's first chance you get, and be careful to recruit more crew from later captures in order to replace combat losses. (From reading other campaign accounts, once the players have cleared Rickety's with a full crew it appears a lot of GMs are just assuming recruits balance losses and don't worry about tracking exact numbers unless something major comes up.)

If your players' crew falls below a total of 10 people then they have a problem. At that point they're more or less immobilized until they can come up with a clever plan to acquire more crew.... which you as GM may have to help out with a bit. (Shipwrecked castaways, etc. etc.) ;D


Shaun wrote:

In practice does this come out to mean that the crew equals everyone outside of the PCs?

I way I think and the way we run is the crew are just the normal everyday sailors on the ship. In game terms this would be all those with the wormwood pirate stats, shipmate stats or sailor stat block. Essentaily any stats the a group share (I would also count any marines on board as well as they would have a group stat block). Anybody else ie those that have thier own stat block are either NPC officers or PC's and are needed to make sure the jobs are done properly and to organise the crew.

The question I can see though is a good point. Does the minimum crew of 10 include EVERYBODY. As has been pointed out if there is a storm or a problem with the ship everyone pitches in to help (rigging, masts, squarring the deck etc). I personaly would say that looking at it, this would include everybody bar the Captian and the Navigator. The Captain needs to make sure everyone is doing things the way they need to be done and issuing orders and the Navigator does what he/she always does and steers the ship.

So my thinking is 10 crew minimum to crew the ship (rigging, masts and deck hands),PLUS the Captian to keep the crew in order and the Navigator to steer as he won't be able to do anything else, that would make it a minimum of 12 bodies on the ship..possibly?

However, This I would say would only be if the ship is in dire straits (limping back to port, crew decimated etc). You would only be able to sail the ocean, the remaining crew would start to get mutinous, there would be no cooked food and no way of firing any weapons(basically you are signing a death warrant to everyone on board).

A NORMAL everyday journey would need the minimium crew of 20 (that being a single stat block for all of them), The Captain, First Mate and Navigator, cook etc. Also remember of you have a min of 20 crew (single stat block) you can't fire any siege weapons effectivly leaving you a sitting duck. So a functional ship in my opinion needs a minimum of 24 bodies with a gunners mate and the crew to man any siege engines on top of that if needed (eg a ship with 3 ballistas would need 28 bodies on board to function).

Grand Lodge

My old party captured a second ship and they used to travel side by side (so the party wasn't that splitted).

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