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So, I have been working on this for a couple of months. I put it on hold when Dreadfleet was announced, but when I saw that its more of a Hero-hammer game I decided to keep working.

I present the main rules for Waves of Death. a system where you can fight Fantesy Naval battles on a grand scale with the navies of the major powers.


This is just the main rules and they are untested and are in serious need of playtesting. I could use some volunteers

I will put up some Factions later today. I belive I will start with High Elves and Norsca as they are the ones used in my examples, but for now you can peruse my main rules and see if there are any holes.



And, Yes, I will add rules for magic at a later date, but for now lets keep it simple.

You should check out Dreadfleet.

I really hate to nitpick like this but please:


NAVAL


I don't care about rules concerning belly button combat as your thread indicates. A navel is your belly button. "Naval" is in reference to wet navy circumstances.

Again, sorry to nitpick, but it is in my nature.

Melkhiordarkblade wrote:You should check out Dreadfleet.

Like I said in my post, It smacks too much of Hero hammer. all the ships are unique, I want the option for faceless dudes clashing over a giant map.



@Mattlov: Thanks for pointing out my spelling mistake. Now do you have something truly constructive?

First, let me say that I'm impressed by your efforts here! I can tell you have put a lot of time and effort into these rules. However, I have a few questions and suggestions (I apologize for the random order!):

-Gunpowder: You have a Gunpowder crit table and mention that Fire weapons cause more..uh, problems for ships with gunpowder on board. I'm assuming there will be something in the ship's stats that tell the player if there is gunpowder on board or not? If so, it would be helpful to spell that out more clearly.

-Speaking of crit tables, I think it might be better to just condense them into one table; they don't seem all that different to me, other than a little bit of fluff text.

-Orders: It seems like some of the orders are automatic (no tests required). Is that the case? If so, I would recommend making them all either a Ld or Skill test, as I think it would add a nice "fog of war" element. Speaking of which, what are the consequences for failing a ld/skill test? In BFG, failing a leadership test has rather severe consequences; no more orders for that turn! I don't know if you need to go that dramatic, but maybe no more orders for that particular ship would be in order?

-Drop the Anchor: I'm guessing that this order allows the ship to not move? The description for it seems to be missing.

-Weapons: I'm a little unclear on how to apply hits for weapons that have more than one damage type; using the Bolt Thrower example, if I were to hit the target, and then roll a 6 on a D6, would I also cause a Crew damage? Or, if I do roll a 6, would the crew damage take affect instead of the hull damage?

-Firing Arcs: I'm assuming you are talking about each arc being a total of 90 degrees, correct? I found the 45 degree reference a little confusing.

-Turning: I think I understand what you mean, but this paragraph could use a little editing to make it clearer. As it is, it's basically a giant run-on sentence .

-Sailing Directions: I would recommend simplifying this so that the various sail arcs are 90 degrees and line up with the firing arcs. This would also simplify the wind chart, since only three columns would be needed. (Into, Abeam, With). Either way, a simple MS Paint diagram demonstrating the various arcs would be very helpful here.

-Movement: As a sailor, I applaud your efforts to really capture the way a sailboat works with your movement rules. However, I'm concerned that the game might bog down a bit if I had to calculate the movement for a large number of ships. I can think of a couple of ways around this; you could make it so that ships are in squadrons, and movement is calculated per squadron instead of per ship. Alternatively, you could drop the mass adjustment for the Stroke Stroke Stroke order. Also, I'm not wild about the "1/2 Round Up" modifier to the Stroke number...why not just reduce the number of D6 rolled for the order to 1 or 2 instead of 3 instead? Overall, the movement rules seem a bit too complicated to me, but it might not be a problem if there are only going to be half a dozen ships or so per side; how big of a battle were you envisioning?

-Turning: Obviously, turning will change a ship's relationship to the wind direction. However, if I understand it correctly, this does not affect the total movement distance calculated at the start of the ship's move, correct?

-Boarding/Crew: What happens to a ship when its crew is reduced to 0? Can it be captured as a prize, or is it simply destroyed?

-UGOIGO vs. Integrated Turn: I'm getting the impression you intend this game to be a UGOIGO system, but it doesn't explicitly say one way or the other. I think either would work; it just depends on your vision for the game.

All that being said, I like a number of ideas you have here. The concept of having different damage types is a really good idea, as it adds a nice level of detail without being too complicated. Also, the boarding rules seem to be a nice step up from what I'm used to with Spartan's method and also the one in BFG; being able to assign your boarders to various areas of a ship makes it feel like I have more input into the process. Overall, I think you have a good start, you just need to flesh them out a little bit (and, of course, I recognize this is just a first draft ). I would really like to see a few full examples of some ship profiles; I'm very curious to see what your thoughts are on how the different races should be set up. Keep up the good work!

PS - Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to give your efforts the attention they deserved!

Thanks for the feedback.

I wanted some orders to be automatic because they are based on your crew. a stat that can be damaged and can't be repaired. So at the beginning a ship will easily undergo orders, but if it takes some crew damage it will find it harder and harder to do.

I will add that the Anchor makes you not move. I will also add a line to Movement that says that a ship MUST move under wind speed unless the Anchor is dropped(they are assumed to also furl the sails) And I will add a Raise Anchor order.

Yes, ships will say if they contain Gunpowder by having the Gunpowder rule.

Multiple Damage. If a weapon causes multiple damage it will cause the basic damage automatically, but it will also cause additional damage on the indicated dice roll.


Ahhh, yes. I meant 90 degrees with those. I think I just mentally copy pasted from turning.


so a Bolt Thrower, if it hits, will automatically cause Hull Damage, but you must also roll an additional D6. if the result is a 6, it will also cause 1 point of Crew damage.

I will upload the updated, edited, and fixed ruleset as soon as i have some extra time(little busy this week)