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-In certain rare situations it is possible for a ship to occupy the exact same position as an iceberg. When this occurs, the ship loses one mast as normal. If the ship moves first it must move entirely off of the iceberg if possible; if the iceberg moves first, the ship remains in place and does not move with the iceberg. In either case, the ship will not take additional damage from that iceberg until they leave contact completely and then move back into contact.
What “rare situations” other than the Lost UT could make this occur?
Lost was the primary one. I feel like there was some other weird situation where it could occur too, but it’s not coming to mind.
With a lot of entries like that, I tried to keep it just open-ended enough that it could still be applied if something else came along later and caused a similar situation. Being too specific about everything made upkeep much more of a chore and made it much more likely for things to get missed as more stuff got added to the game over time.
…do not want the game to end…
Even though it’s in the context of unloading treasure, this speaks to a larger issue that needs to be considered with many potential rule changes. Anything that allows one player to artificially manipulate the length of the game has to be handled with a delicate touch. If it’s made too easy to do, history has proven time and time again that it WILL be abused.
On the one hand, you’ve got things like refusing to unload treasure or simply always sailing as far away as possible to avoid fights, which can make games last well beyond the point of when it should end, and often past the point where it’s obvious which player will be the winner. Official tournaments often included extra rules specifically to minimize issues with players that would purposely stall games, but it’s better when the game itself addresses it somehow.
On the other hand, there are things like suicide fleets designed specifically to end the game as quickly as possible, with just enough of an advantage to claim the win, or simply to irritate other players who had longer-term plans. A single, lightning-fast ship with a skeleton crew and some icebergs nearby is potentially enough to completely spoil large, carefully designed fleets and strategies.
In either case, they can be extremely difficult to stop unless an opponent both realizes what’s happening early enough to counteract it, and actually has the means to do so.
-Follow up: If standard treasure unloading was optional, would it hurt or break the game?
Gold bonuses could be abused more easily
This issue, also significant, could be resolved by completely revamping how gold bonuses work.
For example, instead of applying it when the treasure is eventually unloaded, which requires extra tracking and gets messy with HI raiders and such, it could instead be applied when treasure is first loaded while exploring an island, to increase the value of what’s found. If you found a pile of 2s, but had a +2 Gold ability on your ship, you could instantly “upgrade” one of those to a 4 by removing the 2 and literally replacing it with a 4 from outside of the game. You could add a variety of restrictions and variants to it, like a maximum starting value before the upgrade, affecting multiple coins at once, etc.. (Thematically, instead of the character making better deals or something at home, they’re better at finding the treasure.)
This would eliminate any need for tracking, makes HI-raiders slightly more valuable, and prevents all sorts of shenanigans that can occur by keeping a Gold-adder parked just offshore at your home island. PLUS, from the moment that the “upgraded” gold is loaded, what happens to it becomes irrelevant. The modified value is locked in whether it gets stolen, sunk, unloaded, or anything else.
Connecting that back to the above issue, unloading treasure to your home island could be made entirely optional as long as other endgame triggers are used. The gold on ships can counts the same as gold at home or in forts, ships could carry it around as long as they wanted. Unloading at home would be available only as a way to keep it more protected (think of it like the “stash” in Merchants & Marauders).
You could even go so far as to decouple gold storage from cargo space on ships, by making treasure take up no space, or at least less space. (Cargo values in general could be revamped to reflect this change.) It’s always been thematically odd how a 1-value coin takes up just as much space as a 6 or 7, when they represent drastically different amount of loot. If the 1 is just a small amount and the 6 is a large pile (or a fully-loaded treasure chest), why can’t the 1 just be tossed in with the rest, or why couldn’t it be consolidated with other low-value treasures?* If ships were still meant to be focused on carrying treasure (or other duties instead), they could all be given a maximum total value limit. A small ship like Banshee’s Cry might be restricted to a total value of 5, while a monster treasure galleon like La Joya could be allowed 30 or more.
*Sidenote: Automatically making change with coins could be a worthwhile switch. Instead of handling a bunch of random small ones, they automatically stack together to make larger values. Make the maximum stack size a 6 and you could track them with dice kept on the ship’s deckplate card (or even literally placed on the ship itself). Or just keep a bunch of extra higher-value coins off to the size for this purpose if you’re concerned about the die values getting bumped.
How many ships can you board with the S-Board ability on the same turn? Can you even use that ability to board more than one ship in a move action?
You can only use it to board a single ship with each move action, but if you gain an additional move action, you can use it again against the same target or a completely different one.
Also, the Brave Selkirk. Can it use it’s ability while submerged?
Yes. Just like the S-Boarder ability, it can be used while submerged (or against something submerged) unless specifically prevented by some other ability.
Abilities that steal or trade treasure by touching another ship, can those abilities be used by submerged submarines?
For example, Nikos Cheilos on his linked Fathom Submarine. Would he be able to take treasures from a ship while the Fathom is submerged?
Submerged ships cannot touch other ships, so Chelios will have to be on the surface to use his ability.
The submerged ramming ability is an exception to the no touching part, but allows only for the ramming, not the use of any other abilities.
Can you target a ship that cannot be shot at while docked with Neptune’s Trident?
The Trident targets an area, not the ship directly, so that defensive ability will not provide any protection against it.
Can you finish taking treasures from an island that the Whirlpool UT is found on?
You have to take and apply any other face-up UTs that were on the island, but then your ship gets sent away before you can take any facedown UTs or standard treasure. The “Useful Lists” section at the very end of the PC goes into much more detail on the precise timing.
Can turtles be moved under the hull of a 10 master to essentially stop it when it has to move and immediately hits a turtle?
Nothing can be moved “under” or inside another object, even if the physical pieces would fit there, unless ability/rules text specifically allows it. Lost is the only exception that comes to mind.
The best you could do in that scenario is park the turtles tightly against the hull so the ship can’t move or rotate in any way without hitting one.
And then you get the Eye of Maru aboard (from RtSS) for a 16L freak cannon? XD
Yep : )
At that point, it’s pretty much “roll a 6 to remove one mast from any opposing ship in play”.
The Rats UT says it cannot be unloaded from a ship. Does this mean that it cannot be transferred to another ship?
Correct. Transfers between ships involve unloading the thing from one ship and loading it onto another, so any abilities that refer to one or the other will apply.
I think this has been asked/discussed before but…..
What happens when you put the Power Cannons UT on a ship like El Neptuno? The code seemed to indicate that the Neptuno could shoot at targets 4L away, since the cannons would have a range of L+L that was then doubled to 4L.
An additional layer, what happens when you get Extended Range on that same ship? If for example you managed to get Davy Jones onto El Neptuno along with the Power Cannons, and Jones copied Extended Range from somewhere else. Would the feasible max range be 8L?
Just for reference:
El Neptuno: You may double the range of this ship’s cannons each turn, but you must roll a 6 to hit.
Power Cannons: The range of each of this ship’s cannons becomes 2 L. Remove Power Cannons from the game when this ship succeeds at a shoot action.
Extended Range: This ship’s printed cannon ranges are doubled.
Power Cannons changes the ship’s printed cannons to 2L.
Extended Range doubles the printed ranges, which applied with Power Cannons will make the ranges 4L.
El Neptuno’s own ability will double things again (but you have to roll sixes). Combined with just PC or ER, that’s 4L. With all three together, you get 8L.
It’s probably not even remotely worth the effort/cost required to do it, but it is possible.
Largely echoing what the others have said…
Name: Corodum
Ability: On the turn this treasure is loaded roll a d6, That is the gold value of this treasure and if you
stay away from your home island for up to 5 turns it increases the value of the treasure by 5 adding on to the d6 roll.
But if you come back to your home island before the 5 turns are up then it is equal to the the d6 roll plus however many turns you spent at sea.
But if the ship carrying Corodum is boarded and Corodum is taken by that ship, The ship that took Corodum has to roll a d6 and so on.
This could be simplified greatly, and Ben has a good idea for how to track the time away from home:
“After loading Corodum, roll a d6; Corodum is worth gold equal to the result. If this treasure is not unloaded at the end of your turn, add 1 to its total value, up to a maximum of +5. If Corodum is transferred to an opposing ship, reset and reroll its value.”
Name: Black Arrow
Ability: Load this treasure face down. Reveal it when this ship is given a shoot action, She gains the Keywords: Extended Range and Broadsides Attack for this turn only, Then eliminate Black Arrow from the game.
Is the intent of this to allow the ship to use Broadsides Attack at double range? As written it doesn’t do that, so you’d be forced to choose one ability or the other for the shoot action because BA doesn’t play nice with other abilities.
If it is meant to combine them, which range is doubled: the ship’s printed values (potentially up to L+L), or the reduced range of BA (S+S)?
Name: Turkish Delight
Ability: When loaded, Move to the ship in your fleet with the most crew.
Roll a d6 for every crew onboard, Minus the each crew’s point cost from the d6 result. The remaining points on the d6 results are the value of Turkish Delight when unloaded at your home island.
You should say “place this treasure on the ship in your flee with the most crew”, because as written, “move to…” could be interpreted to mean that you must move the entire ship that found this. Or worse, it could be argued that the ship must use its own actions to deliver this to the other ship.
It should definitely specify whether or not negative values are possible, because on a ship with several high-value crew, or even just a series of bad rolls, this could be brutal. If it cannot go negative, you should specify if the value zeros out with each crew individually or if you keep a running total until they’re all rolled.
For example, imagine if each of your five crew rolls were: (+2), (-4), (+3), (-5), and (+3) . If negatives are zeroed out after each crew, the -5 and -4 would go away and you’d end up with 8 Gold. If you kept a running total and only zeroed out a final negative, you’d end up at -1, which would become 0. That’s a very big potential swing to be left ambiguous.
In any case, if the final total can go negative, you’ll need to address where the gold comes from if a player does have to make up the difference, and what happens (if anything) if they have no gold to pay in.
Can Windcatcher be copied to a 10 master to allow it the 180 rotation?
The Code says: “-If part of a keyword refers to a specific ship type, such as catamaran or submarine, that part can be used only by ships of that ship type. Copying a keyword does not change a ship’s type.” Windcatcher starts with “when a ship with this keyword”….
Yes, you can copy (and use) the Windcatcher keyword with any ship. Copying the keyword gives your ship the keyword, which is all that this particular ability needs to work. The actual ship type doesn’t matter because it doesn’t refer specifically to a “windcatcher” in any way.
I get that turns v. actions makes it more complex, but I’m envisioning a ship being able to use “Once per turn” crew/abilities twice.
The best solution might be to have it state that directly, something like this:
After completing all other actions, this ship may take an additional action and use any of its “once per turn” abilities a second time. This ship’s total action limit for the turn becomes 4 (instead of 2).
Re-work for the Vahi:
Load this treasure face-down. You may reveal it at the beginning of one of your turns and roll a d6. On a result of 6 this ship may take it’s turn twice. On a result of 1-3 this ship may not be given any actions this turn, and it’s next turn. Once revealed this treasure cannot be removed from this ship, if this treasure is removed from play, the game ends immediately.
Anything with an effect great enough to instantly end the game should probably be revealed immediately when found and kept that way, but even then it could become very problematic. An opposing player will only derelict the ship instead of sinking it unless they have a definite advantage. Meanwhile, the player with it could trigger scuttling the ship, then on their following turn use their actions to quickly unload as much treasure as possible before letting the ship actually sink.
The turns vs. actions is adding more complexity than is necessary. You could instead say that the ship gains one additional action that ignores the action limit. To avoid any weird timing issues, you could specify that it must apply after all other actions.
Is the rolling for actions effect meant to be every turn, or just once the first time it’s revealed?
If you have an explorer and a captain on a ship, you get both abilities during the move correct? You also order the resolution of those abilities?
You can apply those two abilities in any order, but whichever you use first must be fully resolved before starting the other.
(It’s generally better to do the Captain first, just in case the Explorer finds a negative UT that kills off crew or harms your ship in some other way.)
Huh? I thought they had the rights, or had part of the rights.
As far as I’ve ever understood, they still do. Who knows who actually sent that latest message to me.
If they were only licensing it from someone it’s far enough out at this point that they may not have the legal rights anymore. The last time they touched it was Shuffling the Deck way back in 2012, and the RPG is even older.
If they do fully own the license, it’s been sitting long enough that it would take a massively increased general interest in pirate things for them to dig that treasure back up. A new Pirates of the Caribbean movie (assuming it still happens, and is good) might give some push in that direction, but it would probably still take more than that.
148. The Kaukau: At the beginning of your turn, roll a d6. The result is the number of turns this ship may use the Seafloor Traveler keyword.
What does the Seafloor Traveler keyword do? (I assume you’ve posted it elsewhere, but you should include it here for reference.)
If this is meant to be a single-use UT, it should say “when revealed” or something similar along those lines. The way it’s currently worded, it could be argued that you can roll again every single turn, effectively making it permanently provide the keyword (which might not actually be a bad thing, depending on what that does).
This has similar tracking issues as the revised Olmak above, but at least with this one the use of the die suggests that it can also be used to track the effect. It also helps that it specifically applies the effect to only the ship that uses it, as opposed to being a potentially global timer.
A re-work of the Olmak UT
Olmak
Ability: Load this treasure face-down. Give this ship a move action but do not move her. Instead reveal this treasure and dock this ship at any wild island. Turn this treasure face-down, it cannot be used for three turns.
I’m not sure if this is better or worse than the previous version, but this is closer to what the source does.
The island-warping effect is fine. It’s very similar to being a reusable version of what Hidden Cove should have been.
The timer for reusing it could be problematic, though. There can be tracking issues with any non-permanent effects that last more than a turn or two. A ship that’s completely immobilized for X-number of turns by Mermaids is one thing, but a LOT can happen to a face-down treasure token over the course of three turns. It could be transferred between multiple different ships within a fleet or even change hands between different players. Do any of those “reset” the timer, or is the three turn restriction a hard limit? Does it refer to the most recent user’s turn only, or all player turns?
This may be the wrong place to ask, but is there a thread for custom game rules?
The Custom Ships thread is probably the best place for custom rules, unless you have a whole bunch of custom rules in a set, then there’s no major harm in creating a new thread just for those.
18 points HMS Dauntless (Lawless) Pirate faction
4 Mast 5 Cargo L speed 3S 2L 2L 3L cannons
Crew of any nationality may use their abilities on this ship. Whenever this ship docks at it’s home Island, you may eliminate a treasure from your island. If you do, assign a generic crew to this ship with point value equal to or less than the value of the eliminated treasure. This ability cannot cause you to exceed the ships cargo limit.
As a free(?) action that can be used each time the ship docks, this could be abused fairly easily with a SAC character, as Xerecs said.
To reduce that potential somewhat, you could make using this cost a full action (essentially “banking” that action for future use), or you could require that the coin be on the ship rather than the island (so you can’t bounce along the coast repeatedly to convert a bunch of coins).
To prevent that potential abuse entirely, you could say that any crew “hired” in this way cannot be eliminated by friendly abilities, so then they’re useless to the SAC ability.
Interesting, would creating a house-rule that allowed for Sea Monsters (or creatures for that matter) to have treasure transferred to them be game-breaking or inherently unfair in any way that you can imagine?
Try it, to see how it works! I think the biggest issue is the fact that once treasure gets put on a sea creature/monster it’s nearly impossible for other players to get it back, because they can’t be boarded or made derelict. The only reliable options are to use specific treasure-stealing abilities, or to apply the (bad) general rule for sunken ships where treasure gets split between the attacker and the defender.
Silly question, but a Sea Monster that has cargo space can have treasure transferred to it, correct?
Kinda. The sea creature rules forbid loading treasure, which blocks transfers from other ships (even when the other ship is doing the “exploring”). The Sea Monster keyword doesn’t override that, but does allow the SM to take non-unique treasures after boarding, if it has cargo space.
In a quirk of the wordings (or more of an oversight), there are no such restrictions on Equipment, so go nuts!
151. The Ignika: Once at the beginning of each of your turns roll a d6. On a result of 4-6 place a crew worth point cost 3 or less on this ship. On a 1-3 eliminate a crew on this ship.
152. The Olmak: At the beginning of your turn, roll a d6. On a result of 6, this ship has D movement for this turn.
Both of these could be abused somewhat with a reroller, but otherwise would work fine. Neither has as much game-breaking/wrecking potential as some that already exist, like Lost or Altar of the Loa.
For wording The Olmak, and just as a general rule, you should avoid referring to things that are only addressed within specific keywords. Giving a ship “D” movement means nothing if you don’t also know the Sea Dragon keyword. Instead, you should write out exactly the effect it provides, which also gives you more opportunity to limit or at least fine-tune it.
For example, you could say,
“On a result of 6, you may place this ship within L of any island.”
or
“On a result of 6, you may dock this ship at your home island or any wild island.”
If you want the full, equivalent effect of D movement, go with something like, “On a result of 6, this ship has unlimited movement this turn. It ignores all terrain, islands, and ships when moving, but cannot end any movement overlapping a ship or island.”
Adding the part about not overlapping an island prevents issues where the ship could get stuck (or purposely hidden) on land until it rolls another 6.
I don’t think any version of the ability specifically lets you look through and choose what to take, so the “Who Picks?” rule applies and the person being raided gets to decide what you take.
To get the good stuff you’ll need to use it multiple times, and/or catch the opponent early enough that they’ve only brought back high value treasures and haven’t started collecting the scraps yet.
Where in the Code is the home island raiding ability covered?
“This ship may dock at an enemy home island and load one treasure. If able, she must leave on your next turn.”
I’ve looked in the code and can’t find a specific entry for this ability or the few variants of it. Am I just not seeing it?
I can’t find it either. I thought something had been in there, and it might have fallen out somewhere in a previous edit, but it’s not showing up in any of the last several versions. I’ll flag it for a potential (but unlikely) future update.
What specific questions did you have about it?
I recently added the MI SR’s to my collection… The ability of Shaihulud & Cadara is only shoot actions according to the Pirate Code, but I dont understand that because isnt a Ram considered an attack?
I don’t recall the exact details of what prompted it (likely something came up that broke the game), but it was clarified/ruled sometime after the set came out that the Shaihulud/Cadara ability only applies to shoot actions, and does not allow ramming.
Many, many of the entries in the Pirate Code are there to address things that would otherwise break parts of the game.
I have three questions:
– when you build a fort on a wild island you must have a ships with the same nationality in your fleet ? (It would make sense but I didn’t find it explicitly stated in the game rules nor the Code)
You must have at least one ship of the matching nationality in your fleet when you build it. The ship that actually builds it does not need to match. (The full rules are on Page 58 of the PC)
– For 3-masts or 4-masts schooner what is the firing arc ? I assume it is 180°, on one of either side, for masts which overlap
Schooner arcs are weird, and there are significant limits to where they can fire to the sides. You have go by the physical constraints of the ship, and treat them as if they exist only as 2D images viewed from directly overhead, so any gaps above or below parts of the masts are ignored. That essentially means you can only fire about half of the cannons directly to either side, but you can still fire most, if not all, at a target directly in front of or behind the ship by simply aiming each cannon just slightly to one side or the other.
As Xeres mentioned, the physical designs were changed in later sets, so those schooners will have different firing arcs from the originals, and function much closer to standard ships.
– The shoot action mentionned in the Ut neptune’s trident can be a free shoot action given by a captain ?
The shoot action provided by a captain counts as a full shoot action for the vast majority of abilities, including Neptune’s Trident.
(The “reverse captain” ability is one of few exceptions that cannot be applied to a captain’s shoot, and vice-versa.)
would prevent other players from using them against your ship.
Even UT’s that don’t affect the ship directly? Like Altar of the Loa, etc.?
That’s part of the issue with it being too vague, but it would have to follow rules similar to what’s already established for cancelers. Indirect effects can’t be prevented, like if some other UT gives an opposing ship an action which is then used to attack the “protected” ship.
Something with a global effect like Altar of the Loa would still work against all other ships in the fleet, but the ship with this particular UT would ignore it, and could be given actions (by its owner) normally.
I have a question about a custom UT (not my own)
This ship cannot be affected by unique treasures unless you permit it. This treasure cannot be unloaded.
The way that the above is worded, would it be prevent UT’s from affecting the ship ONLY when it explores a wild island, or would it prevent a UT from affecting the ship period?
For example, if someone tried to use the Explosives UT against a ship that had this UT on it. Would the Explosives work?
The wording is a little too vague, but as written, it would block other UTs during explore actions, AND would prevent other players from using them against your ship. Explosives wouldn’t be able to activate against your ship at all (and would remain on the opponent’s ship to be used in the future).
If it’s meant to apply only when exploring, or only when activated by another player, it should specifically say so.
when there is a ransom crew on an enemy derelict you can only transfer it (after an explore action) on your own ship if it has the same nationality as the crew (since zero point crew can not be assigned to ship with different nationality), did I get it right ?
The enemy Ransom crew is considered “captured” when you make that transfer, which effectively turns it into generic cargo with no abilities and no point cost, so nationalities and point restrictions don’t apply on the ship that takes it. Its other abilities shut down too, so if you have something else in your own fleet with Limit it won’t prevent you from capturing that Ransom crew.
I take it then, that if an opponent tried to cancel something else (like a captain for instance) that was on the same ship as a canceler crew, I could use my canceler to cancel theirs, thus allowing my captain to function?
Exactly. If you cancel a canceler, it’s almost like it was never used at all. (Aside from the once per turn restriction that prevents either canceler from being reused on other things.)
I’m wondering if periscope can cancel keywords or not.
Keywords are treated the same as any other ability, so yes, Periscope can cancel them if they’re on a ship or crew.
