Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[luisto]

I was comparing the 50 Fathoms ship combat rules to the Pirates of the Spanish Main rules in preparation for my upcoming PotSM campaign and a question came to me: Why the balance difference in ship combat between the two systems? Specifically, I'm referring to the fact that ships in 50F have 3 wounds as per standard SW rules, while ships in PotSM have 1-5 wounds, depending on the number of masts.

For example, when comparing a Sloop and a Man o' War between the two systems:

- Sloop: 13(2) toughness, 3 wounds in 50F; 13(2) toughness, 1 wound in PotSM.
- Man o' War: 24(4) toughness, 3 wounds in 50F; 26(4) toughness, 5 wounds in PotSM.

Obviously, a small ship in PotSM is at a much greater disadvantage when fighting a large ship than it is in 50F. My guess is, this is intentional (maybe so we could use the cool Wizkids ship masts as wound markers? )? For people who have played ship combat in both systems, is there a difference in "feel"? Maybe the 50F combat feels more pulpy? Or maybe the goal in PotSM was to make the big ships more "invincible" than the small ones?

Luis

[Wiggy]

It was designed that way so you could use the WK ships and remove the wounds to track damage.
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Wiggy
Creative Director Triple Ace Games

[Ron Blessing]

[Sordorel]

and your not even getting paid for it! Are you?

I bought a few of the PotSM decks at the local toy store for bargain price. Now I’m not sure but wouldn’t the masts brake after a while of use?

[Wiggy]

[Sordorel]

Actually one of the masts of my ships broke during first assembly. But I have no idea how common that is, in fact I’m not particularly sure how it happened as it was my girlfriend who was assembling that ship.

[luisto]

[TheLoremaster]

[Jordan Peacock]

I have found that the newer PotSM ships are far better in terms of durability than the older ones - that is, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ships, and those that came after them. The square-rigged ships were redesigned so that the tabs have a rounded bottom and are easier to fit into the slots, and they remove the thin "waist" points in between sails that tended to make for high-frequency break points. They're by no means unbreakable, but I've found the newer design to work much better.

Care should be taken in who does the removal and assembly of masts. My experience is that if it's YOUR ship, you're far more likely to take care than someone else who grabs it to "help out."

Mast repairs are possible with super glue, and, if you want to go the extra mile, a thin piece of wire to reinforce the back side of the mast. Of course, a piece of wire mars the pristine appearance of a perfect ship to a certain extent ... but if it's a rare ship that's hard to replace (and you really, really want that ship to use for your game), it's worth the extra trouble to salvage it, in my opinion.

Anyway, my experience with mast breakage is that it tends to happen more frequently with a new (early production) ship than with one that's been used for a while. The early square-rigged ships had much tighter fits, so it was a little harder to get those pieces in place. If a ship survives long enough to be assembled and disassembled, it'll be easier to put the pieces together the next time around. If anything, the eventual danger from too much usage might be that the pieces fit too loosely together, but I've yet to reach that point.
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[Magnus]

[Savage Oni]

[Jordan Peacock]

[Bhikku]

At my FLGS, all the Pirates players had their own supply of markers cut from thin foam, found at any craft store; these would have a slit in one end so they'd slide right onto a mast, no fuss, no muss. The coolest ones of course were cut and colored to represent something: billowing smoke for a mast that had been shot, or leaping flames for a mast that was on fire.
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You can't save the world without kicking a few old ladies down the stairs.

[theDevilofWormwood]

I have yet (sadly) to have any experience with 50F, but after running a few sessions of PotSM that included a good few 1- and 2- masted ship battles, I'm inclined to use the core 3 wound method instead. The survivability of sloops in PotSM is just too little to be fun. Yes, they should be more fragile that larger ships, but the lower relative toughness already covers that - having the lower toughness with just a single wound is rough.

Especially since Pirates assumes players will start with a sloop, one wound just isn't enough for the otherwise high-cinema swashbuckling action the game promotes.

Otherwise, the PotSM rules are awesome though!!

[Virgobrown72]

I think the three wound stamdard is more of a matter of action/cinematic approach. After all, it would be highly anti-climactic if you are charging the enemy man o' war and get sunk with one good shot...
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"Anything smaller is just fiddly, and fiddly is not one of SvgW's three Fs..."

[ValhallaGH]

[Sadric]

I guess this one wound for one mast ships is a result from trying to translate the wizkids rule to the rpg.
After all, it was the rpg to the game, so it should have something from the rules.

Maybe you could say that all ships have at least two wounds. This way you have the manicing five wounds Man-o-War botnot the brittle one wound sloops.

[Virgobrown72]