hello folks! my players recently acquired a sailing ship and i wanted to do a short sidequest where they have to recruit NPC characters for their crew. what im currently trying to accomplish is to make a very basic character sheet on DnDBeyond that is supposed to represent the ship. and then i can equip homebrewed weapons like cannons or balista. the bigest issue im running into is trying to use the website to make homebrew crewman i can equip as if they were armor or other similar items.

heres an example, one potential crewman i am using the NPC archetype of The Privateer. he has STR +1 DEX +3 CON +1 INT +0 WIS +1 and CHA +2

i want to be able to equip this homebrew character as an item onto the ship's character sheet in order for this new crewman's stats to affect the stats of the ship. but i have no idea how to get that to happen because so far nothing ive tried has worked. any help would be appreciated!

Instead of making the crew as characters, make them as monsters and then they can be loaded under the “extras” section of the character sheet you are using to represent the ship. However, if you look under the extras section you can add vehicles to a character sheet, you might find the vehicle you want there.

thats not a half bad idea. but! there are 6 positions they need to fill on their ship: the navigator, cook, 1st officer, surgeon, gunner, and engineer. each position will have 3 different choices. so thats 18 different NPC characters they can recruit or otherwise persuade to join their ship. my hope is that i can make these NPCs equipable onto the ship's character sheet so that these NPC stats affect the ships stats. does that make sense?

i guess the problem im really running into is in dndbeyond's homebrew creation page. i havent figured out how to make an item that adds or takes away from ability scores. the only thing ive been able to figure out is how to make an ability score to a set amount. like how the Belt of Giant's Strength automatically sets your Strength to 21.

Quote from deadeyekael >>

thats not a half bad idea. but! there are 6 positions they need to fill on their ship: the navigator, cook, 1st officer, surgeon, gunner, and engineer. each position will have 3 different choices. so thats 18 different NPC characters they can recruit or otherwise persuade to join their ship. my hope is that i can make these NPCs equipable onto the ship's character sheet so that these NPC stats affect the ships stats. does that make sense?

i guess the problem im really running into is in dndbeyond's homebrew creation page. i havent figured out how to make an item that adds or takes away from ability scores. the only thing ive been able to figure out is how to make an ability score to a set amount. like how the Belt of Giant's Strength automatically sets your Strength to 21.

 That’s easy. Either make the “crew” as Magic Items or Feats. (“Class Features” might be interesting too if you make the ship as both a Race and a Subclass [maybe for Fighter?])

• Modifier—>Bonus
• Modifier Subtype—>[name of Ability] Score
• Fixed Value—>X

That will allow you to raise that score by the amount specified up to the maximum of 20.

• Modifier—>Bonus
• Modifier Subtype—>Ability Score Maximum
• Ability Score—>[name of Ability]
• Fixed Value—>10

That one will raise the cap from 20 to 30. (If you put 4 instead of 10, it raises the ceiling to 24 instead of 30.)

• Modifier—>Stacking Bonus
• Modifier Subtype—>[name of Ability] Score
• Fixed Value—>X

That last one will raise the Ability score and can exceed the standard max of 20 up to whatever new maximum yo may have set.

Edits: Corrected for accuracy.

Sorry, I made a mistake last time. I corrected the instructions.