I, as our airship's bosun, (Articifer choosing Artillerist later) have taken it upon myself to outfit our little boat with some extra umpf as a mid to long term goal (Our DM has already ok'd this) and I'd like to go to her with material and time costs figured out to reduce the amount of work she has to do. She has been asking for input from us on various so the input is welcomed by her.
I was thinking of all the usual, ballista, catapult etc but then it hit me why not something like a cannon that you load a melee combatant in which cast's fly on them? A giant static wand with charges of the spell that doesn't require attunement.
I soon realised that I've never done magic item crafting in 5e so where do I start? IIRC there are some info in the DMG and XGTE but anywhere else?
Also are there any other ideas you guys can think of for non traditional ship mounted weaponry?
I like your cannon of flying idea. Probably have something like 10 charges, can be used as an action by a creature, that creature has fly cast on them for full duration without concentration and they are moved 60 feet away from the cannon. The spell ends early if the cannon is destroyed/disabled. It regains 2d4+2 charges each dawn.
There are some upgrades listed that I think could translate onto an airship, but keep in mind this book also introduced the concept of ships having stat blocks and different sections of it having different AC and HP, if your airship doesn't use similar rules, not all the upgrades will be helpful.
Whether you choose to buy the book or not, a part of the rules I think you will find helpful is:
Adding an upgrade costs 15,000 gp and requires 1d4 weeks of work. During that time, the ship must remain in port. If the ship leaves, the work must start over, but you don’t need to pay the gold piece cost a second time.
Besides maybe hired mercenaries besides a crew to man the ship, you could have things like razer nets to be thrown over the sides for anyone trying to climb up, rocks/heavy objects at the ready to dump onto anyone trying to raid the ship, and besides stronger artillery like ballistas and catapults and canons you could also have grapple guns to sink or grapple a hull of an enemy ship and pull it closer if that's your savvy. But make sure to put some armor on that thing too, especially on the balloon if you can. Not quite sure what you'd be able to put up there without it weighing to much or being too much a hazard but there's definitely lots of cool ideas.
Also a murder hole at the bottom to drop bombs through hahahahaha
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I, as our airship's bosun, (Articifer choosing Artillerist later) have taken it upon myself to outfit our little boat with some extra umpf as a mid to long term goal (Our DM has already ok'd this) and I'd like to go to her with material and time costs figured out to reduce the amount of work she has to do. She has been asking for input from us on various so the input is welcomed by her.
I was thinking of all the usual, ballista, catapult etc but then it hit me why not something like a cannon that you load a melee combatant in which cast's fly on them? A giant static wand with charges of the spell that doesn't require attunement.
I soon realised that I've never done magic item crafting in 5e so where do I start? IIRC there are some info in the DMG and XGTE but anywhere else?
Also are there any other ideas you guys can think of for non traditional ship mounted weaponry?
First, I think you should check out these rules for upgrading ships of the non-air variety:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/gos/of-ships-and-the-sea#SuperiorShipUpgrades
I like your cannon of flying idea. Probably have something like 10 charges, can be used as an action by a creature, that creature has fly cast on them for full duration without concentration and they are moved 60 feet away from the cannon. The spell ends early if the cannon is destroyed/disabled. It regains 2d4+2 charges each dawn.
Ah one of the few books I don't have. Ask DnDB for commision as you may have got them a sale :-P
There are some upgrades listed that I think could translate onto an airship, but keep in mind this book also introduced the concept of ships having stat blocks and different sections of it having different AC and HP, if your airship doesn't use similar rules, not all the upgrades will be helpful.
Whether you choose to buy the book or not, a part of the rules I think you will find helpful is:
Besides maybe hired mercenaries besides a crew to man the ship, you could have things like razer nets to be thrown over the sides for anyone trying to climb up, rocks/heavy objects at the ready to dump onto anyone trying to raid the ship, and besides stronger artillery like ballistas and catapults and canons you could also have grapple guns to sink or grapple a hull of an enemy ship and pull it closer if that's your savvy. But make sure to put some armor on that thing too, especially on the balloon if you can. Not quite sure what you'd be able to put up there without it weighing to much or being too much a hazard but there's definitely lots of cool ideas.
Also a murder hole at the bottom to drop bombs through hahahahaha