Okay, I'm just running a test ship battle by myself at the moment so I'll be prepared (and somewhat knowledgeable) when we have our first ship combat in the campaign. I've run into a few questions I can't find the answer for...

1) Lets say a hero mans a cannon, and attempts to target an enemy figure on the enemy ship with it. Lets say there are 2 squares of water between the ships, and the enemy figure is 3 squares in from the edge of the water on his ship. So a distance 5 shot. I know you need to roll the red die, but lets say no X appeared on it, so we disregard it. Okay. The final range calculated is a 4. Obviously it misses the figure anyhow, but does it miss the ship? A range of 4 would still have the cannonball strike the ship, but from what I gather in the rules, this constitutes a complete miss as he never had the range for the space he was aiming at.. Yet the shot would succeed if the hero said he was aiming at the spot in front of the enemy...

Is this correct?

2) Heroes fire a coldsteel cannon at the enemy ship. They only roll 1 white die? And if the white die shows 1 heart, 3 range, they'd only do 1 damage do the enemy vessel? Can a hero add black dice to the cannon roll for each of his range traits?

3) A hero attempts to swing on a rope to board the enemy ship. He fails and lands in the water. He'd immediately suffer the fatigue loss for entering a deep water space with armor, correct?

4) A beastman attempts to swing on a rope to board the hero ship. He fails and lands in the water. What happens to him? Does he just drown and die? There is no fatigue to be lost, only movement. Is he able to try and climb aboard the enemy ship to try again, or climb aboard the hero ship?

5) A hero has landed in the water, and was unable to get on to land or a ship before the end of the round. Currents now come into play. Lets say he was moved two squares through deep water by the current. Does he suffer the fatigue(or soon to be wound) loss for each square moved by currents? That would suck if he used all his movement to attempt to swing to the enemy ship, and had no movement to remove his armor before the end of the turn. I'm sure that the hero IS able to remove his armor (i.e, stop swimming, and casually unbuckle everything and place it in his backpack) in the water?

I apologize if these questions are found in the manual, but I've been looking and looking and scratching my head a bit.

thanks

Disregard question 5.. Located the answer to that one under the swimming section. The overlord in me is disappointed that figures don't suffer fatigue damage when moved by currents.

1) Lets say a hero mans a cannon, and attempts to target an enemy figure on the enemy ship with it. Lets say there are 2 squares of water between the ships, and the enemy figure is 3 squares in from the edge of the water on his ship. So a distance 5 shot. I know you need to roll the red die, but lets say no X appeared on it, so we disregard it. Okay. The final range calculated is a 4. Obviously it misses the figure anyhow, but does it miss the ship? A range of 4 would still have the cannonball strike the ship, but from what I gather in the rules, this constitutes a complete miss as he never had the range for the space he was aiming at.. Yet the shot would succeed if the hero said he was aiming at the spot in front of the enemy...

Is this correct?

A shot either hits or misses its target square. There is no "falling short."

2) Heroes fire a coldsteel cannon at the enemy ship. They only roll 1 white die? And if the white die shows 1 heart, 3 range, they'd only do 1 damage do the enemy vessel? Can a hero add black dice to the cannon roll for each of his range traits?

Coldsteel cannons are magic weapons, so heroes and monsters get their magic trait in extra dice.

3) A hero attempts to swing on a rope to board the enemy ship. He fails and lands in the water. He'd immediately suffer the fatigue loss for entering a deep water space with armor, correct?

It's hard to say. The fatigue loss is a cost, not an effect. I'd assume so.

4) A beastman attempts to swing on a rope to board the hero ship. He fails and lands in the water. What happens to him? Does he just drown and die? There is no fatigue to be lost, only movement. Is he able to try and climb aboard the enemy ship to try again, or climb aboard the hero ship?

He continues his turn as normal. He doesn't have to worry about fatigue, but he'll still pay extra movement to enter water spaces. He can climb onto either ship as long as he's got the movement left (don't forget that railings cost 2 to cross).

Figure I'd chuck this on here, mainly cause I think I know the answer but just want to double check....

Hero skills and cannons: Skills apply to the cannon attacks right? So for example the skill Dead Eye which gives +2 Damage applies.

Also, monsters firing cannons: Does the Beastman still get the +X Damage to the cannon attack even though its not his primary attack type?

Big Remy said:

We're currently playing that unless an ability specifically STATES that it works with Cannons, it does not. Basically you get the cannon dice, plus your trait dice that match the type of cannon, and done.

No idea if this is correct or not, but seems fair for both sides.

I agree that playing it this way makes sense, it might even have been what was intended by the designers. But I believe that according to current RAW, it has to be considered a house rule. The only thing that changes when a figure fires a cannon is that the cannon is the figure's weapon, instead of whatever else it has equipped: "The figure targets a space within the cannon's firing arc, then rolls an attack using the cannon as his weapon."

I just did a full text search over the SoB rules to make sure, they never even imply that a cannon is to be considered as being something else than a regular weapon that does a special kind of damage.

Yeah, it's definitely a house rule. By RAW, cannons benefit from skills and character abilities that affect that type of attack.

It is a obvious rule. With tobin ability and beastman +damage and command.

Special ability don't trigger.

Can we add fatigue to power die when using a cannon. I doubt it.

whipko said:

Can you provide a rules quote that states this, please?

Games rules unfortunately often end up being not what intuition would expect. In other words, obviousness has nothing to do with this question.

So here is another potentially odd question.

I couldn't find a rule saying "cannons must face off the side of the ship". So is it legal for the heroes to point a cannon off the front of the ship? If you look at the picture on pg24 of the cannon in the "Assembling Ships" side bar, they are doing exactly that.

Big Remy said:

There is one, "facing outwards" on page 24.

Big Remy said:

How could I possibly not notice, that's fairly hilarious

I'd argue that i has to be a printing error though: The "empty weapon mount" displayed on the same page isn't what I thought an empty weapon mount is (I thought and still think it's meant to be what's shown on pages 28 and 38 as "empty weapon mount"), nor is it the same as where the cannons are shown on page 26 and 27. The not-actually-a-mount-thing on page 24 then is placed below a cannon graphic for the "cannon in mount" picture on both pages 24 and 38.

Furthermore, the cannon mount is described as a two-spaces region in which cannons can be placed, and this would be the first two-spaces region I'd encounter that spans one complete space and two half spaces on either side. The description also mentions boxes and crates, and the "mount" graphic shows the empty region between boxes and crates.

Odd that their editors didn't find this though.

Okay sounds good, except for...

haslo said:

Really? After all the experience with this game, you actually find that they didn't catch this "odd"? I thought it was par for the course now