Sail skill

[TurningLeaf]

Every time I think of it I can't see why locking, or quasi-locking, all this content behind a skill makes sense in terms of benefiting Arelith. I have a max/feated sail skill character but I still don't get it. Maybe just for one character the captain, it might make sense. Otherwise I think it's a bad development/design choice. That's my feedback.

[ClockworkRed]

I must admit I am a huge fan of the sail skill design. Pros in my eyes are

1) It promotes team play. You need crew size bigger than 1 on most ships. Rewards also scale with crew/ship size as you can go for more difficult quadrants.

2) Capped at 100. Keeps skill range in check.

3) Division by 5 on some checks. The d20 roll counts.

I - for my part - never encountered that any crew would decline non-sail-skill-invested PCs to join.
Also there are other ways you can make yourself useful, boarding, carpentry, etc.

[JustMonika]

I think it's terrible because it heavily deplete's the population of 'Findable' PCs.
You're very unlikely to run into people dungeoning if they're on a boat. It's just splitting the playerbase in awkward ways, something Arelith already struggles with due to its vast size and inumerable starting points.

[Subtext]

I like the design of the sailing system seeing as how it promotes party play and involves also non sailors since you need all sorts of people for a successful voyage...sailors, boarders, repair folks, a bard, a good pilferer...

That said, I do think crew requirements are a bit steep across the board. For PvP or edgewater sailing you'll absolutely want to max out your sailing. With the galleons that means having five people with specialized builds and equipment on a ship at the same time. That doesn't yet account for a capable boarding crew.

This is a lot. I regularly sail with one of the biggest active factions without being an active part of it and even they absolutely depend on my external build. I see flagships not being used because the crew requirement is even higher for little benefit.
I see other boats seeing not all that much action either and I generally think the amount of groups managing to coordinate high level sails is very low.
Additionally running a ship takes a lot of materials with high storage requirements. The Galleon I frequent has a regular chest and a bigger ship storage. In between wood, cloth, ammo and other sail related things, that storage is regularly full. For the actual owner it's not very attractive since you essentially give up on personal storage.

Suggestion: Please consider either lowering the crew requirements across the board by one or let sail additionally take advantage from other stats (Strength, Dexterity or Intelligence all make a lot of sense to me).
I think people should probably have a bit of an easier time reaching higher break points to see ships being used more frequently.

Oh. And please give the Penny a harpoon so I can finally reenact Moby Pufferfish

[Good Character]

Sailing is one of the systems I outright despise due to the skills bloat. With most items locked behind 2 +2s on skills, and both tend to go to Disciple + another skill it gets tedious. Gear swapping is not fun.

I agree with the post above. Crew requirements need to tank. You literally cannot access certain areas without an obscene Sail value or sheer luck (i.e. rolling a 20).

I tried it for a month with the overhaul but it stopped being enjoyable quickly without having a dedicated sailor (70+ sail).

[The Rambling Midget]

I have to agree with a lot of what Subtext has said.

At present, it's nearly impossible to crew a larger ship without using external communication like Discord to round up people who have the necessary build (not just skill, because you have to be purpose built for checks that high). This makes spontaneous trips extremely rare, which I see as a really bad thing.

The high skill cap also means that a bard is necessary, whether or not a character is purpose built, to reach the maximum, so trips to edgewaters are typically canceled if a "wavesinger" is not available.

I'd love to see the system changed so that ships can be used more easily. Right now, a lot of them just sit in the harbor because a relatively tiny group of people can actually use them.

[msheeler]

Personally I don't like that any content is locked behind a skill at all, and sailing is one that locks a massive amount of content behind a lot of requirements really.

You need a good sailing build.
You need a good group to be crew
You need a boat
You need resources
You need . . .

I don't know how many areas there are that I never have, and at this rate never will see, but it is a bit disheartening to know that there are a lot of them.

To me it's like saying we should lock the deep wells (or some other dungeons) behind needing a 100 in climb. If you have less, just no. Can't go.

Or adding in whole sets of areas to all the dungeons with all the best loot possible that are all behind locked doors with a 127 dc pick lock.

[Subtext]

The amount of content locked behind a high sailing score isn't actually that high. It's mainly the various NPC vessels roaming the quadrant and unlike some have stated in the economy thread, it's not an overly high source of income either although it beats what you can get from running dungeons with a similarly sized group.

If anything, it is a reliable source of treasure map pieces but even that isn't an overly high amount these days. Again, they are only guaranteed on Tier 4 edgewater vessels to my understanding and those aren't common at all. Now mind you...the ship I frequent is actually regularly maxed out with 100 sail and 100 search, we do go hard on edgewaters with 10 to 15 people on the boat and still more often than not don't get a full map out of an evening. This is not a complaint, this is just for reference.

If you just want to make money via sailing, the loot pinatas are much much easier to access and are absolutely doable with a small group, rentals and middling sail investment.

Other (much more expansive and interesting) sea locations are *not* gated behind sail skill at all. Having one person with reasonable sail investment (nowhere near hundred) makes it easier to find them (spyglass) but even without you will reliably find them too.
You can absolutely take your group of five meatheads without any sail at all to edgewaters to visit the big tree provided you can deal with NPC boarders.

The biggest offender there may be diving locations. That's probably worth addressing since there are no rentals with diving bells to my knowledge.

[-XXX-]

The amount of content locked behind a high sailing score isn't actually that high.

Over 60% of runic dungeons on the surface server requires players to engage with the sailing system:

4 dungeons on the island proper (including RDI, since one doesn't actually need a ship to get there)
4 dunegons that can be accessed ONLY* with a ship (5 if we include Rauk Fields here)
5 distinct tier 4 ship "dungeons" gated behind 90+ crew sail skill


-----
* while technically these can still be reached with 0 sail ranks, it takes forever to reach that way and encountering a storm or pirates while doing so is an automatic game over = risk that a huge chunk of the player base just won't take

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

You guys realize that if you go out with a crew with an average score of 10 and have enough skill to take on the dungeons you want to get to you are more than likely going to be fine as long as you don't let the waves lull you to sleep out in the tougher parts of the sea, right? Yes, you will be going slow and will get boarded a lot, yes you won't be getting masterly roll xp (do you really care about that? You just want them runics amirite?) and yes, ship vs ship pvp is going to end poorly. But you can always surrender and roleplay that last bit out, just set your flag to white.

Just to touch on a few other things being said in this thread

-Lowering the threshold of a crew would be a tragedy for this system. One of its best aspects of sailing is that it not only encourages you but requires you to branch out to maintain a functioning crew from your usual gang if you want to throw down in ship pvp. You lower that number any more than it already is, and it will just be insular sailing groups rolling about.

-The one thing I would change were this my baby is the galleons. I would make them rarer, somewhat harder to successfully board and raid, and remove all the treasure maps from them. Pretty much every sailing group I have come across since the galleons were introduced have fallen into the trap of essentially circle grinding them to the point of tedium, and I had a lot more fun with the system before treasures were introduced. That's not a slight against the treasure system as a whole, I just think it shouldn't be something you grind for. Everyone was a lot happier when these things were rarer and the treasure was better, because finding a random one in a dungeon often meant good coin if you took the time to find a buyer. Not to mention the sheer amount of sunken amnian galleons would be piling up to the point to build a bridge from arelith to Amn.

[TurningLeaf]

You guys realize that if you go out with a crew with an average score of 10 and have enough skill to take on the dungeons you want to get to you are more than likely going to be fine as long as you don't let the waves lull you to sleep out in the tougher parts of the sea, right? Yes, you will be going slow and will get boarded a lot, yes you won't be getting masterly roll xp (do you really care about that? You just want them runics amirite?) and yes, ship vs ship pvp is going to end poorly. But you can always surrender and roleplay that last bit out, just set your flag to white.

Don't try this at home. Going very far offshore with an average skill of 10 is a good way to have a bad time.

[Subtext]

-Lowering the threshold of a crew would be a tragedy for this system. One of its best aspects of sailing is that it not only encourages you but requires you to branch out to maintain a functioning crew from your usual gang if you want to throw down in ship pvp. You lower that number any more than it already is, and it will just be insular sailing groups rolling about.

As much as I agree with branching out of your usual gang being a desired effect of the sailing system, it does fall flat if only a very small subset of groups can muster the necessary amount of people to pull off a successful voyage. Again, as it stands, flagships aren't used much...in fact, most bigger vessels don't see much action.

My crew relies on Discord coordination for that simply because there is no other way to organize a core group of at least five specialized people plus boarders, carpenters and so on without it taking ages to the point of the actual voyage being rendered moot or it requiring so much advance notice that the actual ship sees little action. And despite it being a big, organized and dedicated group to work with that involves plenty of "outsiders", we rarely manage to pull off more than one or two bigger sails per week.

Don't forget that most of us only have limited playtime and would rather not spend two hours rounding up a sizeable crew only to realize after 30 minutes that Jimmy McSailbot has to go sleep.

And I am fully aware that this isn't entirely ideal. Having to do the same thing without that sort of backing however is utterly prohibitive and I'd personally like to see a lot more people out there. Keep in mind that lower crew sizes would exactly not benefit the big established groups but smaller ones or people wanting to sail spontaneously.

Also, removing the treasure map pieces sounds like a bad idea. They already don't show up in massive amounts and the chest rewards are an amazing incentive to put in the effort.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

You guys realize that if you go out with a crew with an average score of 10 and have enough skill to take on the dungeons you want to get to you are more than likely going to be fine as long as you don't let the waves lull you to sleep out in the tougher parts of the sea, right? Yes, you will be going slow and will get boarded a lot, yes you won't be getting masterly roll xp (do you really care about that? You just want them runics amirite?) and yes, ship vs ship pvp is going to end poorly. But you can always surrender and roleplay that last bit out, just set your flag to white.

Don't try this at home. Going very far offshore with an average skill of 10 is a good way to have a bad time.

I guess this is one way to look at it. To me a bad time is going through the motions of gathering loot so my giant min maxed crew can get more loot so we can eventually be strong enough to feel safe as part of a giant gank sqaud in pvp without any kind of friction along the way. On the flip side of that, while I am well aware that things can get hairy out at sea, those usually make for the best of times win lose or draw.

And considering there have been clerics with 0 investment in sail that have traversed the roughest parts of the sea alone on the penny rose to get to the runic dungeons (at least before one in particular was made tougher) I think a group of level 30s will be fine.

[TurningLeaf]

You guys realize that if you go out with a crew with an average score of 10 and have enough skill to take on the dungeons you want to get to you are more than likely going to be fine as long as you don't let the waves lull you to sleep out in the tougher parts of the sea, right? Yes, you will be going slow and will get boarded a lot, yes you won't be getting masterly roll xp (do you really care about that? You just want them runics amirite?) and yes, ship vs ship pvp is going to end poorly. But you can always surrender and roleplay that last bit out, just set your flag to white.

Don't try this at home. Going very far offshore with an average skill of 10 is a good way to have a bad time.

I guess this is one way to look at it. To me a bad time is going through the motions of gathering loot so my giant min maxed crew can get more loot so we can eventually be strong enough to feel safe as part of a giant gank sqaud in pvp without any kind of friction along the way. On the flip side of that, while I am well aware that things can get hairy out at sea, those usually make for the best of times win lose or draw.

And considering there have been clerics with 0 investment in sail that have traversed the roughest parts of the sea alone on the penny rose to get to the runic dungeons (at least before one in particular was made tougher) I think a group of level 30s will be fine.

I'm getting the sense though that these low-sail scenarios are mostly if not entirely theoretical for you

[Tarkus the dog]

people dont want to subject themselves to the questionable antics of ship pvp which a majority of the time results in you getting sunk and while writing a plethora of reports is indeed an option nobody wants to write a plethora of reports

but more importantly players actually want to experience the sail content the way the developers intended it without needing to have a separate set of gear ( which nobody can even argue against anymore now that there's actually command that quickly swaps your items ) which if actual vanilla bags were in the game it wouldn't even be that big of a deal but just taking one look at the average level 30 character's inventory you'll quickly notice why this is a problem

and we're not even at the bard part yet

honestly if you just significantly reduce all the sail checks and make it so that only base points + feats + starting gift + similar effects count ( not including bonuses from gear and soft buffs ( prayer, good hope, bard song etc. )) , a lot of people would be able to get into sail better and have an easier access to it if so they choose while still maintaining a difference between those who are heavily invested into it ( feats + starting gift + whatever else exists out there that I don't know about )

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Don't try this at home. Going very far offshore with an average skill of 10 is a good way to have a bad time.

I guess this is one way to look at it. To me a bad time is going through the motions of gathering loot so my giant min maxed crew can get more loot so we can eventually be strong enough to feel safe as part of a giant gank sqaud in pvp without any kind of friction along the way. On the flip side of that, while I am well aware that things can get hairy out at sea, those usually make for the best of times win lose or draw.

And considering there have been clerics with 0 investment in sail that have traversed the roughest parts of the sea alone on the penny rose to get to the runic dungeons (at least before one in particular was made tougher) I think a group of level 30s will be fine.

I'm getting the sense though that these low-sail scenarios are mostly if not entirely theoretical for you

I mean, I'm fairly certain I have engaged more with the system than most at this point, but I haven't played in a few months so you get the nod on any recent updates I suppose. But no, not theoretical at all.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

honestly if you just significantly reduce all the sail checks and make it so that only base points + feats + starting gift + similar effects count ( not including bonuses from gear and soft buffs ( prayer, good hope, bard song etc. )) , a lot of people would be able to get into sail better and have an easier access to it if so they choose while still maintaining a difference between those who are heavily invested into it ( feats + starting gift + whatever else exists out there that I don't know about )

I have no issue with this in theory, but as I and a few others have said every time this conversation comes up you need to do it in a way that does not make wisdom based classes and swash/loremasters the standard of sail builds.

[Tarkus the dog]

the details can be thought out. all i know is that at the question "is skill dump enough to sail?" the answers ive usually got are "no, either have gear or dont bother". this is enough to get me disinterested and im guessing that's the case with others

[The Rambling Midget]

the details can be thought out. all i know is that at the question "is skill dump enough to sail?" the answers ive usually got are "no, either have gear or dont bother". this is enough to get me disinterested and im guessing that's the case with others

If it was just gear, it'd be fine. Right now it's a full gear set, maxed skill, SF/ESF, maxed WIS, some sort of class feature that helps you bridge the gap, and a bard.

The skill cap really should be what can be reasonably achieved by any build which fully invests skills and feats, and gets a full gear set, with bards and class features only there to make capping out possible with fewer sacrifices.

[MissEvelyn]

Gear swapping is what I despise the most, regardless of what skill we're discussing. Sail definitely gates content (I agree), but gear-swapping encourages it even further. It's tedious at best, and a terrible MMO-like practice at worst, that, in my humble opinion, should take more effort than just clicking a few buttons.

It also encourages cramming your inventory with 2-3 sets of armor, something no other adventurer in the rest of the Forgotten Realms actually does.

Personally I think we should either slap a cooldown on it, or only allow it between rests. Or, you know, we could just use 3.5's rules about donning and doffing armor.

[Wethrinea]

High-end sailing is a specialized skill, and the fact that those optimized for sailing are usually not optimized for PvP is a good thing as far as I am concerned, as it introduces vulnerabilities and stops characters from being awesome at everything. Even with 100 sail skill, you can still roll a 1 on encounter checks, and there are few things more terrifying than a Gith Gank Squad boarding your vessel of sail-geared crew. Especially if you did not have the good sense to bring some competent warriors.

As for locations gated behind high sail, there really are none save for ships. You don't need a single point in sail to take a rental to RDI. It just takes longer time to manipulate sails and you'll be boarded a lot. But if you can handle RDI, you can handle whatever boards you. And you only need one crew member with OK sail skill and a spyglass to find locations in the Edgewater.

As for ship PvP, yes you'll be in for a rough time. But the same goes for any crew encountering a hostile ship that is either bigger than your own or with a better crew. Most pirates respect the Black as they say, so if you are not hellbent on never giving in, chances are you can sail pretty much wherever you want. Even with mediocre or very low sail skill.

[AstralUniverse]

Gear swapping is what I despise the most

Here's a friendly life hack for those who arent up to date with the new functions.

wear your combat gear > type -saveoutfit combat
next, wear whatever sail items you have at the time > type -saveoutfit sail
every time you have a new sailing item obtained, wear it > type -saveoutfit -r sail.

You do not need to have sail on the same gear as your combat gear. There are exactly 0 instances as far as I know in this game where you need to function as a sailor rolling sail checks *while* in actual 'real' nwn combat.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

You do not need to have sail on the same gear as your combat gear. There are exactly 0 instances as far as I know in this game where you need to function as a sailor rolling sail checks *while* in actual 'real' nwn combat.

A spawn of 6+ giths while sailing into a storm is the only remote possibility I can think of. Thats a legend creating situation though, at least along the docks on the server.

[-XXX-]

5 WIS modifier (8 base +12 gear, buffs)
33 sail (hard ranks)
22 sail (gear)
--------------------------------------------------------
60 sail
Githyanki patrol DC: 62

Rolling a hard 1 falls into the "when bad things happen to good adventurers" category and even a dedicated sail build crew undergoes the same risk here.

[Mattamue]

Having the skill makes sense to me. Being proficient in something through skills, feats, class features, whatever is a core concept of dnd. Thats simply something fundamental about the system. You have choices to make and there's things that are chosen over others.

Otherwise I agree the level of checks seems a little crazy. Making it just hard sail would give more characters access to the content. Or, just the Capitan's score counts or something would mean more randoms could join in.