Cannon with grapeshot... point blank

[ediz]

Hi,

we are at the major naval battle in book 3 and my player wants to fire the already loaded cannon of grapeshot onto the deck of the enemy vessel, I am thinking the cannon would work similar to a blunderbus but at a larger scale in both size and destruction. So how much damage should a hit be on a person plus how large and wide should the cone go?

Any help would be much appreciated?

Thanks!

 

[RangerWickett]

How point-blank are we talking? I'd either make it a line or a 3-square wide line, and do 4d6 damage (save for half in PF, or half damage on a miss in 4e) to each person in the area.

That's assuming we're talking more of a canister shot - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canister_shot - with lots of small projectiles.

A more traditional grapeshot - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapeshot - might do twice as much damage on a hit, and none at all on a miss, since the projectiles are larger but fewer.

 

[ediz]

Part of the team has already boarded the other ship. here is my combat map. They mounted two cannons on each of the three ships. Here is my map. I was going to give him a strength check to aim on the top deck, or he can just fire into the gun deck.

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1KvfIV0U4GlCsq9unKgiQX7ulV6BwXYx_L2TWL8kbxcY/edit

I am not the best map guy. The ships aren't to scale. I only started using maps for this campaign because of their well drawn out nature.