Shipyard Locked
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When you describe an action not detailed elsewhere in the rules, the DM tells you whether that action is possible and what kind of roll you need to make, if any, to determine success or failure. Characters can attempt to make any actions they want. A player can say 'I am trying to knock the lantern out of his hand'. The concept of Madness is an inherent part of D&D 5th edition. The rules for Madness are on p258 of the DMG and I intend to make use of them. They basically state that adventurers might be driven mad by spells or the terrible sights that they see. Open Game Content; This is part of the Revised (v.3.5) System Reference Document. It is covered by the Open Game License v1.0a, rather than the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike License.To distinguish it, these items will have this notice. Firearms are optional weapons for a campaign, though they are a prerequisite for having the Gunslinger class in your game. They can only be wielded by classes with Firearms proficiency, and otherwise just function like a club would (1d4 bludgeoning simple weapon). All firearms can be loaded. Given their insidious and deadly nature, poisons are illegal in most societies but are a favorite tool among assassins, drow, and other evil creatures. Poisons come in the following four types: Contact: Contact poison can be smeared on an object and remains potent until it is touched or washed off. A creature that touches contact poison with exposed skin suffers its effects. The DMG's rules aren't good enough? It has details such as investiments, types of bussinesses, possible random events and more. The material should solve many issues for groups dedicated to this kind of downtime activity. Flintlock Firearms for 5E. Eight guns, detailed rules, cost etc, everything the DMG lacks.
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Seeing as my next campaign is going to focus more on surface world skirmishes than dungeons, I want to include things like ballistas in the tactical mix. The 5e DMG provides rules for them, but they are honestly so perfunctory they need to be expanded on for actual play.
Here's my version of a D&D relevant ballista. Design goals:
- Not meant to be super realistic
- Can be operated by one character with Martial Ranged Weapon proficiency
- Ballistas are basically intended to be used by NPC forces, but a PC can take control of one and use it against their enemies.
- Semi-portable, but really meant to be left static
- I intend to eventually write up a Siege Weapon Master feat of some sort that makes ballistas and mangonel scale up with the levels. I don't expect any players to take it, but then I can slap it onto NPCs.
Tell me what you think?
Weapon: Ballista
Martial Ranged Weapon
Cost: 200gp, damage: 3d10 piercing, weight: 300 lb., range: 120/480
Heavy, Loading, Two-Handed
A ballista is not carried like a normal weapon. Instead, it is treated as a large object on the battlefield. It comes with wheels to facilitate relocation, but it is still cumbersome. A character using a ballista can move it when they move, but their speed is halved. A ballista cannot be fired during any round it was moved.
To use an unattended ballista, a character must move into its space, which counts as difficult terrain and provides half cover. He may immediately spend an action to fire. If an enemy moves into the ballista’s space as well, attacks made with the ballista have disadvantage. An enemy can attempt to take control of the ballista by spending an action to make a contested Strength (Athletics) check against the current user’s Strength (Athletics).
Firing the ballista follows all the usual rules of a two-handed ranged weapon with the Loading property, except that enemies merely standing next to the ballista's space do not impose disadvantage on attack rolls.
A ballista bolt can hit multiple targets that are lined up in a row, like a line spell. Each target requires an individual attack roll. Such an attack will hit the shooter’s allies if they are in the line. Alternatively, the shooter can arc the bolt to hit only a single target.
Here's my version of a D&D relevant ballista. Design goals:
- Not meant to be super realistic
- Can be operated by one character with Martial Ranged Weapon proficiency
- Ballistas are basically intended to be used by NPC forces, but a PC can take control of one and use it against their enemies.
- Semi-portable, but really meant to be left static
- I intend to eventually write up a Siege Weapon Master feat of some sort that makes ballistas and mangonel scale up with the levels. I don't expect any players to take it, but then I can slap it onto NPCs.
Tell me what you think?
Weapon: Ballista
Martial Ranged Weapon
Cost: 200gp, damage: 3d10 piercing, weight: 300 lb., range: 120/480
Heavy, Loading, Two-Handed
A ballista is not carried like a normal weapon. Instead, it is treated as a large object on the battlefield. It comes with wheels to facilitate relocation, but it is still cumbersome. A character using a ballista can move it when they move, but their speed is halved. A ballista cannot be fired during any round it was moved.
To use an unattended ballista, a character must move into its space, which counts as difficult terrain and provides half cover. He may immediately spend an action to fire. If an enemy moves into the ballista’s space as well, attacks made with the ballista have disadvantage. An enemy can attempt to take control of the ballista by spending an action to make a contested Strength (Athletics) check against the current user’s Strength (Athletics).
Firing the ballista follows all the usual rules of a two-handed ranged weapon with the Loading property, except that enemies merely standing next to the ballista's space do not impose disadvantage on attack rolls.
A ballista bolt can hit multiple targets that are lined up in a row, like a line spell. Each target requires an individual attack roll. Such an attack will hit the shooter’s allies if they are in the line. Alternatively, the shooter can arc the bolt to hit only a single target.
The 5e DMG has a short section on “handling mobs:” it has a chart for approximating, out of a group of attacking monsters, how many monsters hit.
It’s pretty simple: subtract attacker’s hit bonus from the target’s AC. Cross-index that number on the chart. If the number is 1-5, all the attackers hit; if it’s 6-12, 1/2 of them hit; etc., up to 1 in 20 of the attackers hitting on a 20.
I ran a big set-piece battle yesterday: 8 mid-level PCs and 10 gnomes against 20+ drow and other assorted creatures, including a drow spider chariot and a sinister angel. With a wizard and a sorcerer PC and two drow wizards, all slinging fireballs, the mob attacks weren’t much of a factor. With all those fireballs, what I COULD have used was rules for mob saving throws.
If I’d thought about it, I’d have realized that the same chart can be used for saving throws. Instead of subtracting attack bonus from AC, subtract saving throw bonus from DC, and use the chart as normal. For instance, a fireball save DC of 15, minus the drow dex save (+2) is 13, which, according to the chart, means that 1/3 of the drow succeed on their saving throw (and probably survive with 1 or 2 HP left).
In fact, this same chart can be used for ability/skill checks (how many orcs managed to climb the wall? DC minus skill bonus) or any other d20 roll.
To me, it seems this is all you need to run fairly simple battles with dozens or hundreds of creatures per side. The amount of HP tracking is not excessive: for instance, in this unit of 50 ogres, 24 have 15 damage and the other 25 have 30 damage. (For ease of bookkeeping, assume that melee attacks always target the most-damaged creature.)
Gun Safety Rules
You might also care about the base size of big units. I assumed that a close-packed formation of 10 Medium troops took up the size of one Large creature. I’d say that 25 troops are Huge and 50 are Gargantuan.
5e Gun Rules Dmg 2016
If we do any bigger-scale battles, I might find other rules that I need (after all, the Chain Mail rules are much longer than this blog post) but right now, this is looking pretty good for running big D&D skirmishes.