Sail Skill

[The Rambling Midget]

Gatekeeping content due to PvP?

Land based PvP requires interaction. Ship PvP does not.

You're required to do two of three:
1. Change Flag
2. Fire a Warning Shot
3. Shout

So, you change flags while your warning shot goes over, and then sink the ship on the next reload.

What a fun story we're writing.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Why don't people without sail builds hire sailors to go do sea content? There are a bunch of groups actively taking people out if they want to do sea content.

[ProgENItorZ]

Gatekeeping content due to PvP?

Land based PvP requires interaction. Ship PvP does not.

You're required to do two of three:
1. Change Flag
2. Fire a Warning Shot
3. Shout

So, you change flags while your warning shot goes over, and then sink the ship on the next reload.

What a fun story we're writing.

This is what it boils to, the lack of story. Then I believe the complain about builds being overly hyper focused is nulled. If you want RP then RP it out, encountered a pirate that wants you to surrender? Surrender instead of resisting and getting sunk. PvP was never the answer to good stories RP anyways, if you think the actions were unfair after surrendering? Report it. I personally think sinking a ship is a waste, a lot more can happen when you don't sink them, and I believe the "cliques" that folks claim to "dominate" the seas are more than willing to provide RP other than sinking land lubbers who wish to PvP.

[-XXX-]

All I am saying is that it is not hard to hit 99 sail. And people who do simply...plan to be sailors or pirates
Check this (basically what my character has):
8 Base WIS (-1 to sail)
33 ranks (32)
+12 WIS gear when in sea combat (38)
+22 from all +2 gear (60)
+3 SF: Sail (63)
+10 ESF: Sail (73)

As a full martial character, 8 base wisdom, I hit the "requirement"

Congratulations on hitting the requirement. The thread revolves around whether the components outlined in red should be a thing as SF and ESF can be supplanted by running a WIS build. Because without them you're sitting on 60 sail.
Having a bard in the group has nothing to do with building. It merely demonstrates how bards are mandatory for sailing, which isn't the best thing either.

There are warning shots and you can /s (shout) to people in the same zone as you (if you can engage, you're in the same zone). If you are being no-rp-pvped at sea, that is a separate issue you should take up with the DMs.

The warning shots and shouts are nice and fun and all, but it still does not change anything about the fact that the crew with the inferior sail skill is neither getting away nor is winning the fight.
The crew with the superior sail skill can simply fire a warning shot as a formality and then proceed to sink the other ship regardless of any following shouts or flag communication as they have both the speed and the firepower to do so - that's "one-liner PvP" level of interaction right there.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that the mechanic requires building to be good at, like every other niche. If you don't like it, don't sail

IMO the last thing that anyone wants to see are players swapping characters only to sink one ship.

[Rei_Jin]

I think that this is being blown out of proportion.

My main (and only) character, who spends the vast majority of her time wandering around the isle, has 54 sail skill.

How?

Wisdom 16 (including gear), 33 ranks in sail, three items giving +2 each, and the LM secret of the explorer.

That makes me a solid member of any crew if I happen to walk on deck, but am I a specialised sailor?

No, and I don’t expect to be.

PvP victory on land almost always goes to those built for it.

Why should sea-faring PvP be any different?

[Distant Relation]

IMO the last thing that anyone wants to see are players swapping characters only to sink one ship.

We're quite safe from that, as that would be a violation of several of the server's rules.

I'm sorry sail pvp hasn't worked out for you. I recommend reading up at ProgENItorZ' post as he mentions how ship pvp generally ends up between folks who do sail frequently. People will respect if you hoist the white flag. They will board, and have face to face RP. It's actually quite unnerving reading all these facetious accusations about what goes on at sea.

I don't think trying to change the rules of the game to fit your playstyle is very kosher, however.

Recognizing you are outmatched and surrendering is an option. Licking your wounds to come back better prepared and fighting another day is an option. Looking outside of your immediate circle of friends for people who've built for sea content is an option.

[Thomicus]

Congratulations on hitting the requirement. The thread revolves around whether the components outlined in red should be a thing as SF and ESF can be supplanted by running a WIS build. Because without them you're sitting on 60 sail.

Full Wisdom (40) with those two attributes gets you to 89. They still need a bardsong to hit 99. They require a lower level one, but still need some other bonus to reach the top tier.

IMO the last thing that anyone wants to see are players swapping characters only to sink one ship.

And again, as mentioned in my previous post, this is a completely separate issue that requires DM involvement, not mechanical change.

99 sail is hard for a single person (no crew) to get, no matter the class, attribute, feats, or skill distribution and that is the point.

There is no sailing clique. When we see a new Greenhorn saying "anyone going sailing", we don't say "Get lost till a crew picks you up muahahaa", we say "Aye, Come aboard".

I am sorry if you have had a bad experience with sail. The majority of us are all just saying that we do not see the issue.

[Nevrus]

Personally, I'd like to sail but I can't justify investing an entire skill into it.

Without the sail skill, I am actively a detriment to every single ship I'm standing on. That feels bad, because Sail cares about average, not highest.

I'd vastly prefer if the system leveraged Highest only but then curtailed it based on missing crew members. That way, one person with Sail can now support an entire crew of people without it without risking getting non-interactively murdered by roving pirates. This would make the entire radical mini-game system being developed WAY more accessible to the playerbase in general.

I think this is a place where how people want to actually work with the system and how the system actually works are in conflict. The binary nature of it- whichever crew has more sail has such an obscene advantage that they're sometimes capable of not even being TARGETABLE in the first place- really just hammers in that you shouldn't even go near a boat unless you're hitting that maxed-out sailing.

This isn't like Ride where there's some minor benefits in some areas- this is an entire ocean's worth of content that's like, hard-locked behind a skill investment. It would be like if you couldn't go into the UD or the Surface unless you had a skill for it without getting auto-murdered by any opposing player there without any chance of retaliation.

[FallenDabus]

I actually found sailing to be incredibly encouraging of an inclusive sort of attitude in Sencliff. It is one of the reasons why many players enjoy it as much as I do. Not only the crew factions but experienced, independent sailors immediately take new characters out to sea. If a new character is shyly loitering around the docks, you can be pretty sure they'll be waved over and offered to join a voyage. Sencliff even has a noticeboard on the docks so people can check IC if a crew is out and sea when the docks are empty, send a halfling and be yoinked on deck.

There certainly are a good number of wisdom based builds but they hardly dominate the scene at the cliff. I'd estimate they make up a quarter of the characters there at best. There are five active crew factions and only one of them has bards, yet I know four of them very actively sail. The fifth I assume they do, but they are outside my timezone.

There is also currently only one faction that runs near-cap sail regularly and that faction is very much defined by their longstanding underdog struggle against the Dreadnought. Having needed to compensate for the power of the Dreadnought with a high sail score on an average charter for most of the time it was around.

I honestly only have a faint idea how things are like on surface Arelith and Andunor, but I just wanted to offer the context of my experience, as it seems to differ pretty significantly on a few things.

Without the sail skill, I am actively a detriment to every single ship I'm standing on. That feels bad, because Sail cares about average, not highest.

I'd vastly prefer if the system leveraged Highest only but then curtailed it based on missing crew members. That way, one person with Sail can now support an entire crew of people without it without risking getting non-interactively murdered by roving pirates. This would make the entire radical mini-game system being developed WAY more accessible to the playerbase in general.

This is absolutely already the case. Ships have crew slots (1-6, depending on the ship) and it fills those slots with the characters who have the highest sail - then averages them.

We constantly have new characters or players without sail on board. You can only improve a crew's sail score, you can never hurt it.

[Distant Relation]

Hi there I can help a bit.

Personally, I'd like to sail but I can't justify investing an entire skill into it.

Without the sail skill, I am actively a detriment to every single ship I'm standing on. That feels bad, because Sail cares about average, not highest.

A misconception here.

So, the term Average Sail is actually a bit of a misnomer. Its not the average of EVERYONE on board. Its the average of the top X people on board, with X being the ship's recommended crew size. Being below recommended crew size makes any empty slots count as zero on the average, so having someone with low skill is *always* better than having someone with zero skill or an empty slot.

Similarly, if there are already 3 talented sailors in your Iron Throne Courier (recommended crew size 3), you are not penalizing their rolls by being aboard.

So, the sail system already works as per your suggestion.


As for the rest, here are the issues that the current heavily invested sail players all generally agree on, and are very likely to be addressed in some form or another in the near future:
- Bardsong is mandatory for both pve and pvp. There need to be alternatives to bardsong for crews, otherwise there's a really tight constraint on a specific build being required for a high tier crew.
-At extreme levels of sail skill difference, its possible to shoot weapons in pvp with the other ship being unable to spot the attacker. The good news is this can only happen at extreme levels of sail skill delta, but really, it shouldn't happen *at all*.
-At extreme levels of sail skill and ship tier difference, its possible for pvp fights to be over in the single shot of a bombard with a lucky crit. Ideas are proposed to lessen the defensive impact of being too far under the sail skill average of your opponents, as well as maybe increasing the hp of lower tier ships.
-Ship repairs are percentage based instead of flat numbers. This makes it incredibly hard to repair lower tier ships (ie, the less max hp your ship has, the less each repair action actually repairs, while taking the same amount of timber).
-Reading your opponent's average sail and the damage reduction against your attacks is very obscure. Better feedback on how skilled the other crew is or how your weapons are doing against their hull is needed. This will help with onboarding new sailors too.

This and more has already been feedbacked to ActionReplay, an incredibly responsive and friendly developer who will no doubt be thinking of solutions around these problems.



--EDIT--

I am now starting to wonder how much of the current feedback is based on folks not understanding the minutia of the sail system such as how average sail score actually works. I can dig that, and if so we need to think of better ways to onboard people interested in sailing that are outside the Sencliff knowledge-sharing pool.

[DeepWebAssassin]

Personally, I'd like to sail but I can't justify investing an entire skill into it.

Without the sail skill, I am actively a detriment to every single ship I'm standing on. That feels bad, because Sail cares about average, not highest.

In addition to the other post that elaborated on this, I want to add that you can be pretty useful as a non-sail person because you can stand there in all your combat gear instead of your sail gear to deal with NPC boarding parties. You can even fire the ship weapons at the same AB as a fully invested sail member. Mages can ward, scry, etc. Lots of stuff goes on with ships where everyone can play a part.

This allows an experienced crew to take on low level PCs, non-sailors, and whoever else wants to come. You just need to interact with sail-invested characters instead of being able to do everything yourself. I think it's funny to see people say "I can't justify an entire skill on sail" but they take lore, umd, concentration, discipline, and cross class spellcraft on every single PC with the answer being "Well, I need it to be competitive in pvp". Well, you need sail to be competitive in ship pvp. It's actually super forgiving that it's all packed into one skill so a wider variety of builds can spare it.

I've also seen a lot of people putting a great deal of focus on "non-interactive pvp" but as someone who actually sails and engages in a lot of the pvp/pve content every day I just don't see that happening. I HAVE had it happen a lot of times on dry land. I think we're worrying way too much about a problem that exists mostly in people's minds that aren't even taking part in the content they're complaining about. My own experience has been that player ships (especially now that the naval map has been expanded) aren't even what I encounter most times while out at sea. Lots of NPC ships. Lots of random locations to explore. Then the occasional player ship, and out of those occasional encounters, only some lead to pvp. Sometimes we shout at each other as we pass and go about our business.

Not to say that the opposite hasn't ever happened -- I'm sure it has. But recent changes have worked toward making it mandatory to be more interactive and they only just went in, so maybe it's a little soon to talk about "how things always go."

[Distant Relation]

You can even fire the ship weapons at the same AB as a fully invested sail member.

This is actually a super good point.

Because everything runs off the average sail score (which again, is the average of the top X people), that means you can perform every ship function yourself even if you're not the one who invested in the sail skill, or you're a character still leveling and not having your full 'build'.

We regularly do this by having greenies perform most of the functions on ship, like managing sails, use the ship's wheel, firing weapons, or using the sextant and spyglass. Its a great way for them to learn while being buffered by the skill of the established characters.

If you want to be the captain of your ship, sit by the helm, bark out orders and interact with the ship's wheel, you don't need a single point of sail or a feat to do so. You just need to have hired a few salty deckhands.

[TooManyPotatoes]

Id probably lower the cap on sailing skill and reduce the bonus bard song gives significantly.

People are bringing up the super focused pvp builds but people are agonising over whether to spend a feat on +1ab in that environment. Esf sail gets you +2ab +2ac and wm crit range bonus (if the other side doesnt have it assuming otherwise same builds).

A 60 sail crew cant even land a shot on a 95 sail crew when we are talking a +7ab AND ac disparity. Not to mention these crews gravitate towards the higher tier ship crews which makes the difference even worse.

Bard/esf is basically mandatory for the high level content and definitely for pvp. Not having epic weapon prowess or esf disc doesnt actually gatekeep you from anything if you know what you are doing.

[-XXX-]

I am sorry if you have had a bad experience with sail. The majority of us are all just saying that we do not see the issue.

I've not had a bad experience with sailing. I've had a blast with it from day 1. Can't I nitpick at something that I enjoy?

I'd be careful about throwing the majority argument around though. It's understandable that the majority of players who currently build for sailing do not see any issues with how the sail skill works ATM.
IMO the more important question should be how many players do not partake in the sailing content precisely because they do not want to go the extra distance while building for it (taking the feats and/or WIS build) and how many of those would've been more keen on sailing had that not been the requirement (would have been able to get by just fine by simply having the 33 ranks and some gear).

[-stick-]

I am sorry if you have had a bad experience with sail. The majority of us are all just saying that we do not see the issue.

I've not had a bad experience with sailing. I've had a blast with it from day 1. Can't I nitpick at something that I enjoy?

I'd be careful about throwing the majority argument around though. It's understandable that the majority of players who currently build for sailing do not see any issues with how the sail skill works ATM.
IMO the more important question should be how many players do not partake in the sailing content precisely because they do not want to go the extra distance while building for it (taking the feats and/or WIS build) and how many of those would've been more keen on sailing had that not been the requirement (would have been able to get by just fine by simply having the 33 ranks and some gear).

I would for sure , invested 33 thinking its enough just to find out its worthless

[Rasha]

Land lubbers are land lubbers and sea rats are sea rats. I don’t think everyone should be able to sail like a pro. It’s a niche skill for those who play at sea. Why should everyone excel at it? Those who lack skill just need to hire a crew to sail them around. Which encourages RP. I think the current system is fine.

[Thomicus]

I would for sure , invested 33 thinking its enough just to find out its worthless

If you have to hire a crew for anything in the future, they'll thank you. You won't bring down the average as much as someone with no investment. Plus, if they give you gear, you can still hit 60ish.

Anyways, my overarching point has been this:
Yes, you have to invest in it to be good at it. Without a full investment (or any for that matter), you can still engage in sailing/sea rp.

[FallenDabus]

Id probably lower the cap on sailing skill and reduce the bonus bard song gives significantly.

People are bringing up the super focused pvp builds but people are agonising over whether to spend a feat on +1ab in that environment. Esf sail gets you +2ab +2ac and wm crit range bonus (if the other side doesnt have it assuming otherwise same builds).

A 60 sail crew cant even land a shot on a 95 sail crew when we are talking a +7ab AND ac disparity. Not to mention these crews gravitate towards the higher tier ship crews which makes the difference even worse.

Bard/esf is basically mandatory for the high level content and definitely for pvp. Not having epic weapon prowess or esf disc doesnt actually gatekeep you from anything if you know what you are doing.

Sooo! This is going to get super dry and technical. I apologize in advance for it, as a wall of boredom is never a great reply.

I'll break the mechanics apart a bit. There is a huge design vulnerability in the mechanics design of the sailing system and that is its overall simplicity. In order to keep it very accessible it has very little in ways of dials and levers to move around to balance it in interesting ways. This makes it incredibly delicate if anything is added carelessly to it, because it relies on the assumption that a very high sail average is quite difficult to achieve for high crew slot ships.

If the sail cap is lowered significantly or lots of sail bonus gear is added - it makes the capped sail score easily achievable. At that point, all that really will matter are the ship stats during encounters, as maxing the ship crew average will be relatively trivial. That is when the system will break apart.

That breaking point is when better-statted ship will more or less automatically win every encounter. The only counter will be a fleet meta to counter more powerful ships with multiple less powerful ships. That is an insane meta to have, because the quality of life of doing PvE content with multiple ships is really lacking.

The introduction of +9 sail fathomless warlock, the +12 sail loremaster exploration secret, the +6 sail from domains that clerics just got today (apparently a hard bonus even), the +6 sailing starter gift, the swashbuckler feats, etc. made this already much easier than when the ship balance was initially calculated. Not to mention 100+ sail characters being able to contribute more than 100 sail to the crew average calculation.

With all of ^ that, we are already well on our way in that direction. Which is why we are seeing high sail stats becoming more and more of a norm for high crew slot ships. IMO, that I can run a crew 5 ship at 95 sail with relative ease is already a major issue. Once the crew 6 ships can do so it will be even more so.

Getting a crew 6 or 5 ship to max sail average should be difficult, because it gives crew 4 and 3 ships an advantage by being able to more easily run a crew with a superior sail score. This comes at the cost of things like hull hp and fewer weapon slots. The idea that crew 6 and 5 ships should only sail with 85+ sail is insane, as a ship like the Dreadnought (crew 6) already has roughly the equivalent of a +15 sail advantage over ships like the First Sister (crew 5) built into its statblock. The first sister (crew 5) in comparison has roughly the equivalent of a +15 sail advantage over ships like the Iron Courier (crew 3).

The easier it has become to run very high sail on these powerful ships with high sail crews regularly - the less of a chance smaller ships have had. We basically get to a point where the sail skill itself lost a lot of its purpose.

As I and others have mentioned in previous posts, that in no way means there are not very real balance issues that need to be worked out. But to cap sail much lower without a major design rework of the system means you are in favour of a more powerful ship winning 99 out of 100 times against a smaller ship.

Something like a 60 cap, for example, would be insane. That is 33 skill + 22 gear + 1 prayer + 3 good hope - and you are already at 59 sail. Not counting any of the aforementioned sail bonus feats, class features, character creation gift, etc.

I honestly think we are already pretty near that point and we have begun to see a lot of cracks recently. Without a more complex core system its going to be really hard to avoid the point it just boils down to rock (smaller ship stats) - paper (larger ship stats) - nothing (no balance options in order to keep things simple). Which kind of sucks, as a more complex core system will mean making it less accessible to new players, while the system tipping makes it really one dimensional.

[ProgENItorZ]

I am sorry if you have had a bad experience with sail. The majority of us are all just saying that we do not see the issue.

I've not had a bad experience with sailing. I've had a blast with it from day 1. Can't I nitpick at something that I enjoy?

I'd be careful about throwing the majority argument around though. It's understandable that the majority of players who currently build for sailing do not see any issues with how the sail skill works ATM.
IMO the more important question should be how many players do not partake in the sailing content precisely because they do not want to go the extra distance while building for it (taking the feats and/or WIS build) and how many of those would've been more keen on sailing had that not been the requirement (would have been able to get by just fine by simply having the 33 ranks and some gear).

As the posts above has said, 33 is enough for most content out in the seas. To go further, you have to invest further, or ask "specialists" to help you reach that point. The things you are hinting at is akin to askining to make "commoners" to be as viable in adventuring as "adventurers". Yes as a commoner you can probably brute force your way through some dungeons, but NO MATTER what you do, it will never be as good as adventurers. How do you expect a ragtag bunch of leisure boaters to defeat T 3-4 galleons?

Here is another example, I spent 33 points in bluff, but everyone sees through my disguise? I spent 33 points in spot, but I can't see through anyone else's disguise? I spent 33 points in discipline, and I still fail every knockdown check? 33 is most of the time a starting point in character builds, believe or not.

Worried that clerics and other wisdom based builds are the one monopolising the meta? I can say that in Sencliff alone, there are maybe about 5-6 out of 50 that are wisdom based. There are actually roles in the "clique" being roleplayed. There are your usual str/dex powerbuilds that will board and make sure the raid is successful, while there are those who stay behind and keep the sail average up. If you wish to beat the "Gatekeepers" that invested into the memery minigame that the sea content was claimed to be earlier, perhaps they should join the fray.

I refuse to believe that people avoid to do the sea content because they find out 33 sail is not enough. It think it is more intimidation fromunknown content and rewards. Solution? Plan ahead. Find some of the hyper sail build to fill in the crew quota partly or fully. It is only after a scheduled plan to inform people that a boat in Sencliff reaches those 95s that are so dreaded. More often that not if an spontaneous sailing time is decided it will less likely than not hit those numbers. Which some folks already know about thus they scry for times when we take our "uninvested" greenies out to hunt.

Adventurers are not adventurers if every commoners can do what they can. The more generalized sailing becomes, the less sailors there will be, because you are you even considered sailor if every does with ease?

[-XXX-]

I honestly think we are already pretty near that point and we have begun to see a lot of cracks recently. Without a more complex core system its going to be really hard to avoid the point it just boils down to rock (smaller ship stats) - paper (larger ship stats) - nothing (no balance options in order to keep things simple). Which kind of sucks, as a more complex core system will mean making it less accessible to new players, while the system tipping makes it really one dimensional.

I don't think that a more complex core system would be necessary.

As I see it the current problem is twofold:

A) There are characters who had skill points to spare and/or their player thought that sail might have been a worthy investment. With some gear these characters can get their sail skill up to 60-62 depending on their hard WIS.

B) There are also characters that went really deep into the sailor theme with a sail skill reaching >100.


In an ideal scenario we'd have B) characters helping A) characters reach the target sail skill for the ship. What we actually get instead are crews formed by B) characters exclusively, essentially invalidating any build investment that A) characters might've made, because once we enter the top tier sailing PvE content or naval PvP, those sail 60 characters aren't really helpful.


From a design point of view this is still workable by placing sail skill caps on individual ships rather than the skill itself. Let's say that we'd have ships around that would allow for, say... max crew skill 80 (or any other number that makes sense). That way a crew with a single "super sailor" and a collection of "sailing dabblers" could still squeeze the maximum out of that ship.
This might further open up the design space around ship design - some ships could have their stats tweaked while accounting for a lower sail skill allowance (passive crew sail skill boost would be my first idea ~ let's say 10 for the ship in the above example evening it out at 90, but I'm sure that better solutions might exist) while other ships could be designed for more experienced crews featuring a variety of other perks (more stealth, speed, hull etc).

Here is another example, I spent 33 points in bluff, but everyone sees through my disguise? I spent 33 points in spot, but I can't see through anyone else's disguise? I spent 33 points in discipline, and I still fail every knockdown check? 33 is most of the time a starting point in character builds, believe or not.

If you spend 33 points in bluff and make a gear set with +2 bluff and +1 CHA, your disguise will hold the overwhelming majority of the time.
If you spend 33 points in spot and make a gear set with +2 spot and +1 WIS, you will beat a lot of disguises.
If you spend 33 points in discipline make a gear set with +2 discipline and +1 STR, you likely won't get knocked down every time.
If you spend 33 points in sail make a gear set with +2 sail and +1 WIS, you'll end up getting ROFLstomped anyway.

Also please dial the condescending tone down a little. It's great that sencliff crews RP during sailing, but that doesn't mean that players who do not take ESF:Sail do not.

[ProgENItorZ]

I honestly think we are already pretty near that point and we have begun to see a lot of cracks recently. Without a more complex core system its going to be really hard to avoid the point it just boils down to rock (smaller ship stats) - paper (larger ship stats) - nothing (no balance options in order to keep things simple). Which kind of sucks, as a more complex core system will mean making it less accessible to new players, while the system tipping makes it really one dimensional.

I don't think that a more complex core system would be necessary.

As I see it the current problem is twofold:

A) There are characters who had skill points to spare and/or their player thought that sail might have been a worthy investment. With some gear these characters can get their sail skill up to 60-62 depending on their hard WIS.

B) There are also characters that went really deep into the sailor theme with a sail skill reaching >100.


In an ideal scenario we'd have B) characters helping A) characters reach the target sail skill for the ship. What we actually get instead are crews formed by B) characters exclusively, essentially invalidating any build investment that A) characters might've made, because once we enter the top tier sailing PvE content or naval PvP, those sail 60 characters aren't really helpful.


From a design point of view this is still workable by placing sail skill caps on individual ships rather than the skill itself. Let's say that we'd have ships around that would allow for, say... max crew skill 80 (or any other number that makes sense). That way a crew with a single "super sailor" and a collection of "sailing dabblers" could still squeeze the maximum out of that ship.
This might further open up the design space around ship design - some ships could have their stats tweaked while accounting for a lower sail skill allowance (passive crew sail skill boost would be my first idea ~ let's say 10 for the ship in the above example evening it out at 90, but I'm sure that better solutions might exist) while other ships could be designed for more experienced crews featuring a variety of other perks (more stealth, speed, hull etc).

That's already how it all works. Ships have their own perks and depending on the perks you get, the amount of avg sailors to take sail into account is tweaked. You fly the flag ships with +3 DR? You need 5 to properly sail it. Capping the sails on the ships will do nothing. It will only make your ship weaker if people finally decide to invest into the content. Boositng sails and capping the max will just null the point of ship diversity and their perks. At this point you might as well ask them to remove sailing mechanic and make everything into an rng based minigame once more.

[-XXX-]

Capping the sails on the ships will do nothing. It will only make your ship weaker if people finally decide to invest into the content.

Capping the average crew sail skill on the ships would preserve the usefulness of both heavy and lite sail skill focused characters rather than having the former invalidate and disqualify the latter. It would not make the ships weaker, it'd keep them from becoming too strong. Also, sailing has been around for quite some time - I wonder how many players who have not "invested" yet would be willing to do so at this point.

Because from where I'm looking at it one of three things will happen moving forward:
A) Sailing gets tweaked to become more accessible for 33 skill rank + sailing gear type of characters
B) The player base will prove me wrong and players actually start going the ESF:Sail route/making more WIS sailors
^ For all those people at the "Yarr, sailing is for sailors" side of the argument A) and B) yield the same result as they will lose the temproary advantage that they are currently enjoying - if everybody has 95+ sail, nobody does.
C) The player base loses interest in the sailing content because of its overly demanding entry level


I honestly do not understand why you are so adamantly opposed to the idea of making sailing accessible to more characters. Players losing interest in the sailing content is probably the worst thing that can happen to Sencliff RP.

[Distant Relation]

.
If you spend 33 points in sail make a gear set with +2 sail and +1 WIS, you'll end up getting ROFLstomped anyway.

Lets say you manage to scrap together four 8 wisdom barbarians that do exactly what says above. These barbarians are so terrible that they don't even take Loremaster for the +12 sail bonus.
Lets say you also manage to score a bard that can cast level 25 bardsong, Good Hope. (Bards being a requirement on crews is a separate thing, which all the pirates will agree with you, so for now let's imagine you do manage to find someone to have parity here).

Your average sail score is now (33 ranks + 5 wisdom + 16 bardsong + 2 goodhope + 22 gear = 78), 78, with four identical awful barbarian sailors.

At this point, you are a mere 12 sail below the average sail of the typical sencliff crew, and 17 sail behind the golden 95 which is the effective highest number that matters. This is with possibly the worst chassis imaginable for making a sail build.

This is without gift of sail, without sf/esf, without fathomlocks or loremaster. This is literally taking the very scrummiest build outside of using genasi to tank the wisdom score even lower.

78 is plenty enough to do the pve content out there, even the edgewater galleons on the right ship as long as you don't go for the T3/T4 ones. 78 means you are at a 3 ab/ac disadvantage against a fully maxed out crew as well, whose only difference from you is literally sf/esf sail plus some change because they're not playing wisdom 8 barbarians.



"But its not enough to win at sea pvp and that's what I want to win at".

Easy. Take your sad barbarians and tell them to go Loremaster 4. It's a good dip. They get better barkskin wands, spellcraft, more skill points, lots of good stuff, but more importantly for our purposes, they get a free +12 Sail. Now sadly they'll hit the softcap, and 2 of those go to waste, but now your sad barbarians are Sail 88, and so is your average sail. At this point, you are a tiny speck away from having a world class sailing crew that can do any content and fight any fight as long as they're in the right ship. I bet most of your sad barbarians were already Loremaster 4, because its such a good pvp dip.

But how do you get that last 2 points for the 90? Well, this is where you'll need one person, ONE, who has a decent sail setup. A cleric or a druid will do fine, sure, but so will a swashbuckler, a fighter sparing two measly feats, anyone who didn't tank their wisdom to 8. In fact, if your sad barbarians were slightly less sad rangers with wisdom 14 instead, you'd already be there.

What FallenDabius said was right. It's far too easy to get a high sail score right now. Looking at a panoply of options before you and saying 'nah, I'd rather just have a ship with training wheels that is effectively +20 to my sail score so I can fight on exactly equal terms with people that have actually invested parts of their character to excel at this content' is really rich.


That said, we're just going in circles now. I recommend taking your crew of sad barbarians and making them actually wear sail/wisdom gear, and maybe, just maybe, they might be the force to be reckoned with that you want them to be.

[-XXX-]

I don't think that we're on the same page here. There's no wonder that we're going in circles.

The discussion going on here is akin to me saying that STR 255 is too powerful while people just keep listing all the ways to build for STR 255.
"X build 2 stronk? LoL just build it then!" is not a very good balance policy.

Attainable stats should never be so high that charactes can become exempt from variance.

[Rei_Jin]

Think of the oceans of Arelith as being like the Underdark. There's monsters there, and wealth, and loads of content, but if you go there without the right equipment, the right character, and possibly a guide, you're going to quite likely end up in trouble. And there's a city where the "big bads" live, and you can go there and survive (if you're respectful), and heck if you want to negotiate with them, they may be willing to do so. Things like a "peace treaty" are perfectly possible options that you can explore if you want to.

Surfacers don't get to tell the UDers that their builds are too strong and they should be weakened so that the surfacers can go explore the UD at their own whim.

The same is true in reverse for the UDers going to the surface.

In short, pirates are feared for good reason, and if you go into their territory, you have to be prepared for it.

The solution isn't to complain about the system as it is.

Instead, you prepare yourself, or you don't go, or you accept that things may go very badly indeed.

-------------

We're all here to have fun.

We may do that in different ways, but we also all have the responsibility to do what we can to try to ensure that others around us also have fun. The various crews on the ocean from all settlements (and the private crews) are there to have fun, and they may all do that differently too.

PvP is avoidable, if you don't want to fight others. You may have to surrender and pay a bounty or something, but you can avoid a fight, and you can avoid being sunk. There are rules, and those rules are to be followed, and if they're not followed, there are consequences for those breaching them.

Personally I do not enjoy PvP at all, and if there was a button I could push to opt out of it, I would. But, with that said, I much prefer ship based PvP to land PvP, because you actually have time to choose how to respond to a situation, and to act as a group rather than as individuals in a 6-18 second slug fest that can be over before your nerves recover from the initial !.

I am, admittedly, terrible at land based PvP. But that's okay, because I can avoid it in a number of ways 95% of the time.

We always have options on how we respond to a situation, even if we don't like any of those options.

And losing sucks, even if it's just the humiliation of having to hoist the white flag and let your enemy board you.

We all need to be able to step back, take a breath, and remember that it's a game where we exist to tell a co-operative story, and that in all stories there are setbacks.

If it's not fun, don't do it.

If it's causing stress that feels like it cannot be resolved, then disengage.

And if people are breaking the rules, or intentionally pushing the limits of the rules, then please, take it to the DMs, and let them arbitrate. That sort of thing is bad for everyone, and when we as players try to act as the police on one another, it ends very badly for all involved.