Thinking about it, how well would the Keen Mind feat work for a Spelljammer campaign?
Keen Mind
You have a mind that can track time, direction, and detail with uncanny precision. You gain the following benefits.
Increase your Intelligence score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You always know which way is north.
You always know the number of hours left before the next sunrise or sunset.
You can accurately recall anything you have seen or heard within the past month.
I am not intimately familiar with the Spelljammer lore, but for a campaign focused on traveling the Astral Plane or through Wildspace (where sunrises/sunsets and the concept of magnetic "north" dont exist), how helpful will this feat be? On one hand, it seems mostly useless if the majority of the campaign is spent "space faring." On the other hand, if the campaign is spent exploring new "planets" or planes that the players are not native to, being able to immediately pinpoint north and a sense of time for the new location could be super useful.
What do you think?
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So in Spelljammer you don't just float around the Astral Sea (formerly Phlogiston) in a ship. You'll land on more traditional worlds, or more "spacey" things like asteroids comics, Spelljamming equivalents of Flying Dutchmen that are just a literally free floating dungeon, cities built in the bodies of dead gods .... The direction sense of Keen Mind would be very much in play regardless of magnetic north. Keen mind has phenomenal spatial relations and sense of direction. On an (possibly literally) alien behemoth ship, I'd ditch "north" in favor of aft/bow/port/starboard orientation.
Now as for the Astral Sea ... that's a little more chaotic especially if they use prior lore on the Astral Plane. I could see Keen Mind as a sort of "initiate" feat for some sort of spelljamming innate astral-gation ability. I forget how navigation used to work in Spelljammer, I know Wizards in general were used to power the ships, I forget whether their arcane powers were also how you navigated, whether magic was involved, or if it was the sort of thing where you sat down with maps and tables.
Thinking about it, how well would the Keen Mind feat work for a Spelljammer campaign?
I am not intimately familiar with the Spelljammer lore, but for a campaign focused on traveling the Astral Plane or through Wildspace (where sunrises/sunsets and the concept of magnetic "north" dont exist), how helpful will this feat be? On one hand, it seems mostly useless if the majority of the campaign is spent "space faring." On the other hand, if the campaign is spent exploring new "planets" or planes that the players are not native to, being able to immediately pinpoint north and a sense of time for the new location could be super useful.
What do you think?
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
So in Spelljammer you don't just float around the Astral Sea (formerly Phlogiston) in a ship. You'll land on more traditional worlds, or more "spacey" things like asteroids comics, Spelljamming equivalents of Flying Dutchmen that are just a literally free floating dungeon, cities built in the bodies of dead gods .... The direction sense of Keen Mind would be very much in play regardless of magnetic north. Keen mind has phenomenal spatial relations and sense of direction. On an (possibly literally) alien behemoth ship, I'd ditch "north" in favor of aft/bow/port/starboard orientation.
Now as for the Astral Sea ... that's a little more chaotic especially if they use prior lore on the Astral Plane. I could see Keen Mind as a sort of "initiate" feat for some sort of spelljamming innate astral-gation ability. I forget how navigation used to work in Spelljammer, I know Wizards in general were used to power the ships, I forget whether their arcane powers were also how you navigated, whether magic was involved, or if it was the sort of thing where you sat down with maps and tables.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.