Vehicle Combat

This week we continue our look at military combat in the Tome of Whispers, taking it in a completely direction. So far, we've examined army combat, now we're going to dive into vehicles. Like army combat, vehicles can be difficult to incorporate into a tabletop RPG in a satisfying way. Vehicles end up being used as exotic settings for fights on deck while en route to a destination or simply glossed over as a tool for bringing the time forward and changing location.

In many great stories, however, the ship serves as an important base of operations, an important character in its own right, and maybe even a home. Getting this feeling across is the bedrock of the vehicle combat rules. Not every party needs or wants a ship, but having one changes a story's potential dramatically. As with army combat, there's a lot to discover with the vehicle combat rules, and we'll be devoting several future installments into giving this topic its due diligence. Today, we're going to take a wide-angled overview.

Vehicle combat is used when each side in the encounter has a ship. Much of the terminology in these rules has a distinctly nautical theme, but ships in vehicle combat can be land ships, air ships, or even spaceships. Characters aboard the ship take on important roles among the crew, while large ships may have large numbers of additional crewmates helping out in the background. Vehicle combat is designed with the assumption that the technology level is age of sail, but the rules are flexible enough that they can easily adapt to higher or lower levels of technology and magic.

The most important factors in vehicle combats are the capabilities of a ship and its crew. Ships and crew act as a single unit in vehicle combat, with each crew role handling important aspects of the ship's behavior. Skill and teamwork are critical to effectively utilizing a ship. Every member of the crew is significant, and ships suffer if there are not enough crew to appropriately handle all of the roles.

Like army combat, vehicle combat uses a different scale in time and space than standard combat. In fact, the scale is not just similar to army combat but is actually the same. Also, like army combat, vehicle combat proceeds in a series of phases that happen simultaneously without initiative, all ships completing the same phase together before moving on to the next one. The phases in vehicle combat are Orders, Throttle, Helm, Execute, and Aftermath. Three of these phases are the same as those of army combat. The similarities between these modes are important for learning these rules, but also for other reasons. We'll take a deeper dive into the options that open up as a result of these similarities in a future installment.

At the scale of vehicle combat, most ships occupy a single hex on the map. This is especially important for vehicle combat as, unlike standard or even army combat, the facing of a ship matters for vehicle combat. We'll take a closer look at ships themselves in a future installment, but for now it will be enough to point out that turning a ship is not always easy, and a ship's hull is broken down into sections that can be damaged and repaired separately from other sections. Shipboard weapons also tend to have firing arcs that correspond to directions defined by their relationship to the direction the ship is moving. The orientation of ships in vehicle combat is part of the challenge!

Orders

During this phase, each ship determines its strategy for the round during this phase. Each ship decides its plan for the upcoming round simultaneously and in secret. The orders determined during this phase will be carried out in the subsequent phases, as best as possible. The ship's captain is the most likely crew role to be active during this phase, though other crewmembers may have important things to do as well. While the captain may give orders for a specific course and speed, achieving those goals may not be as simple.

Throttle

Each ship adjusts its speed during this phase. Most ships only need to use this phase to speed up or slow down. Galley ships, powered by people using oars, must actively maintain their speed and may slow down unintentionally. Which crew roles are most likely to active during this phase largely depends on what kind of propulsion the ship uses. A boatswain is typically in charge of maintaining the pace of rowers on a galley or setting the sails on a sailing ship. On a ship with magical or technological engines, an engineer is usually responsible for making adjustments to the ship's speed. Other crewmembers may have important things to do as well. Once the ship's speed is determined during this phase, however, it remains the same for the rest of the round, whether you want it to or not!

Helm

Each ship decides an overview of its course for the round during this phase. All of the ship's hexes of movement, as determined in the throttle phase, must be planned for now so that any dangers in those hexes can be anticipated. The more complicated or dangerous the course, however, the more likely it becomes that the actual path will deviate from the plan during the execute phase. A ship's navigator is the most likely to be active during this phase, and their skill in charting the hazards along the ship's course will be instrumental in preventing disaster during the next phase. If the ship deviates into unplanned hexes, whether intentionally or unintentionally, hazards become much trickier to deal with.

Execute

Each ship enacts the plan determined during the previous phases in this phase. Every ship resolves one hex of its movement at a time, possible firing at other ships, coming under fire from enemies, or passing through hazardous hexes. After resolving a hex, each ship that still has movement remaining resolves another hex. This continues until all ships have used all of the hexes of their movement. Because some ships might be traveling at different speeds, this can mean that faster ships continue resolving hexes after slower ships have completed their round. Speed can be an advantage in this round against other ships, but resolving more hexes at a time in hazardous waters might be a liability. Most crew roles are active during this phase.

Aftermath

Any damage dealt during the Execute phase is applied during this phase. This allows ships to take damage, possibly multiple times, during the Execute phase without have to dynamically adjust things like speed or crew casualties. Those consequences are instead applied all at once now. The ship's surgeon is most likely to be active during this phase, attempting to preemptively reduce the ship's casualties, if any, before proceeding to the next round. Whether the next round is necessary depends not only on the continued presence of enemy ships, but also on the dangerousness of the environment. Hazardous waters may require a ship to go through another round of vehicle combat, even if all foes are defeated, or even if there never were any to begin with...

Purpose

...because vehicle combat is designed to be fun and engaging even if there are no enemy ships at all! Simply navigating challenging environments can be a fun encounter all by itself, keeping all members of the crew engaged and involved. Because the environment itself can be an intriguing encounter, the vehicle combat rules can be much more than just another, different way of fighting. Racing through treacherous areas, cleverly evading enemies rather than fighting them directly, and necessity driving the crew on through perilous storms are just some of the ways that vehicle combat can bring exciting vehicle action to your game.

This diversity of purpose is what makes the vehicle combat rules in the Tome of Whispers special. We'll continue exploring these systems in more detail in future installments. Next time we'll return to the card game to introduce another new villain, however, so stay tuned!