What is the best Spelljammer ship?

[Tvtyrant]

I don't mean most powerful, but what is the best ship for an adventuring party?

[Toofey]

Probably a converted Ship, it's less conspicuous, relatively easy to find places to 'land' and readily repairable if necessary.

[Hecuba]

I don't mean most powerful, but what is the best ship for an adventuring party?

That depends heavily on where you are going.
A vessel entering Truespace, for example, has markedly different requirements than a vessel that needs to pass as a local sea-fairing ship on Oearth.

[Digitalelf]

I don't mean most powerful, but what is the best ship for an adventuring party?

If the party is new to Wildspace, to get their feet wet so-to-speak, I would suggest a tradesman, Galleon, or Dragonfly. If you are looking for something with a little more firepower, then perhaps a Hammership, Squid, or Wasp would be more appropriate...

But personally, if the characters are new to wildspace, I would keep the choices to one of the former until they can “acquire” one of the latter.

[Tvtyrant]

If the party is new to Wildspace, to get their feet wet so-to-speak, I would suggest a tradesman, Galleon, or Dragonfly. If you are looking for something with a little more firepower, then perhaps a Hammership, Squid, or Wasp would be more appropriate...

But personally, if the characters are new to wildspace, I would keep the choices to one of the former until they can “acquire” one of the latter.

I was thinking primarily about crew size issues. Short of everyone taking leadership as a feat, there just isn't a way to make all of the redshirts a Whale would need feel personalized and important. A smaller ship makes the party the center of attention, but it is also teh-squish compared to the bigger ships.

[graymagiker]

A short reply (more to come later):

Have them hire crew. I run spelljammer in 3.5/houserules and charge 1sp per day for a 1st level crew member. This is a decent sum, but I charge the characters per month. The advantage over Leadership is there is no real downside if crew die. I still make them pay, as pay is in advance and either held by someone-else in port or willed to an heir.

This makes crew important, as it costs resources (ie gold/money), but also expendable. PCs are important because they have the funds to hire crew.

[Khedrac]

Another important point is what type of helm will they be using, and is there an NPC spellcaster to power it if it's fairly conventional?
Having the party's main caster on 0 spells for the day can be really boring for the player as well as limiting for the party.

[Starshade]

Hm, about powering the helm: would a lvl 1 commoner from Haluraa or Evereska With the Magical Training feat be able to use the helm?

[Telok]

As ship size is determined by volume and hull points / AC by the material it is best if the characters make a ship to fit thier needs. For higher level peeps I always advocated a D<something> Instant Fortress inside a granite boulder of maimum size for your helm. For combat operations I suggest an enormous raft, two or three feet thick, with a metal box in the middle for your helm. Load as many catapults and ballista on both sides as you can justify and arm your troops with bows and pavaises in addition to melee weapons.

[Lord Torath]

If your DM will allow it, take the Viper Ship (Darkviper). It is 29 tons, MC:A, and has a minimum crew size of 1 (ie. the helmsman does everything). It can land anywhere, and has a pretty decent Armor Rating as well. It also has no sails or control surfaces for your opponents to target, so your MC is safely locked at 'A'. Pending critical hit results, of course.

(Personally, I think there was a lot of Power Creep in the later ship designs in Spelljammer, so I would nerf this ship substantially before letting my PC's have it. Which means before letting any NPCs have it who might come anywhere near the PCs).

[Tvtyrant]

If your DM will allow it, take the Viper Ship (Darkviper). It is 29 tons, MC:A, and has a minimum crew size of 1 (ie. the helmsman does everything). It can land anywhere, and has a pretty decent Armor Rating as well. It also has no sails or control surfaces for your opponents to target, so your MC is safely locked at 'A'. Pending critical hit results, of course.

(Personally, I think there was a lot of Power Creep in the later ship designs in Spelljammer, so I would nerf this ship substantially before letting my PC's have it. Which means before letting any NPCs have it who might come anywhere near the PCs).

The Vipership does look pretty cool. It brings back the problem of how to get a good helmsman so the party caster doesn't have to just be the ship....

Unless someone played as a doombat?

[Lord Torath]

Umm... Pick up a Furnace? Buy a Lifejammer, and have your warriors take turns using it?

Unless you're going to completely redesign your helms, they either need to hire a pair of casters to helm their ship, or someone's going to be spell-less most of the time.

An interesting fix might be to have the helm only wipe the highest level of spells you can cast. An in-game reasoning for this is hard to come up with, however.

[Jay R]

The ... umm ... Spelljammer?

[Lord Torath]

Um... not really so much. There are a lot of ... strings... attached to the Spelljammer. It's certainly powerful, yes, but not as useful to adventurers as you might think.

[Jay R]

Giggle. I wasn't serious of course, but I will point out that a ship that ensures a quiet life is not what adventurers need.

An adventurer is seeking difficulties.

[lightningcat]

Um... not really so much. There are a lot of ... strings... attached to the Spelljammer. It's certainly powerful, yes, but not as useful to adventurers as you might think.

What do you mean? The Spelljammer is a great ship to have a city campaign on.

Oh, you mean you want a ship where you get to choose where you go, and have spacefaring adventures. Yeah, not such a good choice.


I always like the Battle Dolphin for use as a group base. But that goes back to needing a crew and helmsman...

The Dragonfly and Damselfly are specifically mentioned as being good for adventuring groups.

[Lord Torath]

The Mosquito is actually a pretty solid ship as well. Six tons, so perfect for your average party. Good AC and MC, and lands on land and water. And not too pricy! Well, not too pricy once you've purchased your helm. Of course, there is the fact that it's called "The Mosquito," but you could always rename it "The Insectoid Vampire" or something.

[Mutazoia]

This is a very subjective question as the varying answers will show. The best ship depends on your needs. Personally I always liked the Octopus (http://www.spelljammer.org/ships/deckplans/Octopus.gif). 5 decks, all enclosed (protects crew from taking damage) giving you lots of room to customize and the "tentacle" mounted weapons swivel out to give you nearly a 360 deg. firing arc. In addition, there are only two small areas where a boarding party can safely land, and they easily defended. It has a decent main cargo area, with several smaller cargo holds...in fact the entire cargo deck can be used to either carry cargo (by utilizing the cargo crew's quarters and muster/mess hall) or converted to other purposes if cargo isn't your thing. Although she tend's to be slightly slower than other ships, she is more versatile and packs a greater punch than most of the others which, IMHO, more than makes up for the slight drop in speed.

[kalos72]

My team uses hammerships...and has developed a new line of super heavies.

Now all we need to do is figure out how to link them like the elves do for a super fortress. :)

[D+1]

The Vipership does look pretty cool. It brings back the problem of how to get a good helmsman so the party caster doesn't have to just be the ship...This is sort of a designed-in drawback with Spelljammer and explains why people have created a lot of alternate types of helms. If you put a PC caster on the helm he's all but utterly useless as a spellcaster. He's just a battery to make the ship go. You need a different kind of helm and/or an NPC to power it.

It sounds like you want a ship that doesn't need any NPC crew. Ships that would be operable by a PC only crew are typically going to be small which naturally presents issues with what kind of encounters the PC's get thrown at them. Small ships won't survive any kind of serious fight. If they're going to be fighting ship battles then just go with a Hammership and a good NPC crew. It's a sizeable enough ship for PC's to all have some personal space, it has decent stats, good weaponry, and looks cool.