I'm posting this as a player this time. Our DM has asked those of us that require travel from one island to another, to build our own ships. I have absolutely NO experience in building ships for d&d and I need some help. I have no idea what I'm doing at this point. I need to build a special transport vessel that can act as a warship. I'm having trouble with the weapons and the defenses. The DM is allowing us to use magical weapons and defenses. I'm not sure what type of weapons ships of the 15th and 16th century would use, nor what kind of defenses they would have. The DM has already worked out the travel speeds and such. I mostly need help with weapons and defenses. I do want this particular ship to have some sort of magical weapon and some sort of magical protective shield. Can anyone help me with this. I'm new to playing a campaign with sea warfare involved.
I'm posting this as a player this time. Our DM has asked those of us that require travel from one island to another, to build our own ships. I have absolutely NO experience in building ships for d&d and I need some help. I have no idea what I'm doing at this point. I need to build a special transport vessel that can act as a warship. I'm having trouble with the weapons and the defenses. The DM is allowing us to use magical weapons and defenses. I'm not sure what type of weapons ships of the 15th and 16th century would use, nor what kind of defenses they would have. The DM has already worked out the travel speeds and such. I mostly need help with weapons and defenses. I do want this particular ship to have some sort of magical weapon and some sort of magical protective shield. Can anyone help me with this. I'm new to playing a campaign with sea warfare involved.
Defenses, Ship:
The single most important ship defense is having a ship's pilot who's proficient in the vehicle, so they add their proficiency bonus to the ship's AC.
The other basic element of defending the ship itself is to have a magic ship - if you have a ship already, it has some AC, HP, and DT (damage threshold), and it's immune to poison and psychic damage. It also has damage vulnerabilities and resistances based on being wood, but none of those are actually statted out anywhere, so they're up to DM fiat. If you make it a magic ship, it'll by definition have resistance to all damage types (in addition to those two immunities, and in addition to any vulnerabilities your DM says it has).
If you can manage it, an airship has one of the best defenses in the game built in: flight. If you have that, no ship incapable of flight can pose a credible threat to you. Curiously, despite being weaker than an airship, 5E has almost no rules for submarines. The only rules I've seen are in Rime of the Frostmaiden, which contains
a sperm whale wearing a rowboat as a hat; the rowboat is enchanted with a bubble that won't let seawater in and recycles the air inside itself.
If your DM will allow a submarine enchantment, this can be a huge improvement over a normal ship, if they're disallowing a flight enchantment.
Defenses, Crew:
The best crew defense is to have a crew. Get rules from your DM for hiring a crew, then hire a competent one - for example, gladiators and swashbucklers are very competent. Shop around, see what NPCs fill what roles competently. You absolutely have to have at least one ship's spellcaster, ideally multiple - use the same logic when building a crew you use when building an adventuring party. Melee crew is necessary if you get boarded (unless you have a way to prevent being boarded - don't forget, flying ghosts exist), ranged crew is how you'll generally engage threats like a nearby flying narwhal, and spellcasting crew is the most vital, since they'll use the ship as cover while flinging spells out.
Your crew wants magic weapons and armor if your DM is allowing that and has a mechanism for pricing it.
Offenses:
The DMG has rules for siege weapons, which are what you want on your ship. Get rules from your DM on which ones exist, how much they cost, etc. All of them will require crew to operate, which comes back up to what I just said about crew - typically, a siege weapon takes unskilled labor to reload and then a single competent person to fire the thing, which means if you can move the weapon (as all real-world golden age of piracy ships could - the cannons were on tracks), you should, so the weapon can be reloaded while out of danger. If your DM will let you enchant the siege weapons, +1 weapons are nice, but you want at least 1 siege weapon of warning to prevent ambushes.
The anthology module Ghosts of Saltmarsh has a whole chapter on ships from Rowboats to Sail and Warships covering cargo, crew, and weaponry. See if your DM or one of your players has that book as it would be a huge asset for what you are trying to accomplish.
If you don't have firearms in your world, Greek fire is another option. Barring that, ramming and boarding were the most popular naval tactics before cannons. For ramming you need oars and a ramming beak. For boarding you want grappling hooks.
Geeezz. there's a lot to having ships. I've never played one before and the DM definately wants to use them, especially this comming session, not sure I can have one by that time. There's a lot of info to take in. I will ask if she has that book, maybe there are some pre-made ships I can use for now.
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I'm posting this as a player this time. Our DM has asked those of us that require travel from one island to another, to build our own ships. I have absolutely NO experience in building ships for d&d and I need some help. I have no idea what I'm doing at this point. I need to build a special transport vessel that can act as a warship. I'm having trouble with the weapons and the defenses. The DM is allowing us to use magical weapons and defenses. I'm not sure what type of weapons ships of the 15th and 16th century would use, nor what kind of defenses they would have. The DM has already worked out the travel speeds and such. I mostly need help with weapons and defenses. I do want this particular ship to have some sort of magical weapon and some sort of magical protective shield. Can anyone help me with this. I'm new to playing a campaign with sea warfare involved.
Defenses, Ship:
The single most important ship defense is having a ship's pilot who's proficient in the vehicle, so they add their proficiency bonus to the ship's AC.
The other basic element of defending the ship itself is to have a magic ship - if you have a ship already, it has some AC, HP, and DT (damage threshold), and it's immune to poison and psychic damage. It also has damage vulnerabilities and resistances based on being wood, but none of those are actually statted out anywhere, so they're up to DM fiat. If you make it a magic ship, it'll by definition have resistance to all damage types (in addition to those two immunities, and in addition to any vulnerabilities your DM says it has).
If you can manage it, an airship has one of the best defenses in the game built in: flight. If you have that, no ship incapable of flight can pose a credible threat to you. Curiously, despite being weaker than an airship, 5E has almost no rules for submarines. The only rules I've seen are in Rime of the Frostmaiden, which contains
a sperm whale wearing a rowboat as a hat; the rowboat is enchanted with a bubble that won't let seawater in and recycles the air inside itself.
If your DM will allow a submarine enchantment, this can be a huge improvement over a normal ship, if they're disallowing a flight enchantment.
Defenses, Crew:
The best crew defense is to have a crew. Get rules from your DM for hiring a crew, then hire a competent one - for example, gladiators and swashbucklers are very competent. Shop around, see what NPCs fill what roles competently. You absolutely have to have at least one ship's spellcaster, ideally multiple - use the same logic when building a crew you use when building an adventuring party. Melee crew is necessary if you get boarded (unless you have a way to prevent being boarded - don't forget, flying ghosts exist), ranged crew is how you'll generally engage threats like a nearby flying narwhal, and spellcasting crew is the most vital, since they'll use the ship as cover while flinging spells out.
Your crew wants magic weapons and armor if your DM is allowing that and has a mechanism for pricing it.
Offenses:
The DMG has rules for siege weapons, which are what you want on your ship. Get rules from your DM on which ones exist, how much they cost, etc. All of them will require crew to operate, which comes back up to what I just said about crew - typically, a siege weapon takes unskilled labor to reload and then a single competent person to fire the thing, which means if you can move the weapon (as all real-world golden age of piracy ships could - the cannons were on tracks), you should, so the weapon can be reloaded while out of danger. If your DM will let you enchant the siege weapons, +1 weapons are nice, but you want at least 1 siege weapon of warning to prevent ambushes.
The anthology module Ghosts of Saltmarsh has a whole chapter on ships from Rowboats to Sail and Warships covering cargo, crew, and weaponry. See if your DM or one of your players has that book as it would be a huge asset for what you are trying to accomplish.
15th and 16th century ships had cannons.
If you don't have firearms in your world, Greek fire is another option. Barring that, ramming and boarding were the most popular naval tactics before cannons. For ramming you need oars and a ramming beak. For boarding you want grappling hooks.
Geeezz. there's a lot to having ships. I've never played one before and the DM definately wants to use them, especially this comming session, not sure I can have one by that time. There's a lot of info to take in. I will ask if she has that book, maybe there are some pre-made ships I can use for now.