PDA

View Full Version : Does Magic and Sea-Based Adventures Mix?



Scalenex
2007-01-09, 02:13 PM
Now, I have always seen a great appeal in sea based D&D adventures. I guess it's because I used to be a huge fan of Greek mythology and that's what a large portion of their adventures entail. Also I like pirates, a lot.

That being said, I don't a D&D world works too well for sea epics. Unless you modify it for a low magic or non-magical world or boost the magic up to even greater levels with ships that are supernaturally durable or invent transmutation spells that instantly repair damage (making a lot of profession and craft skills far less important).

Think about it. A hard fight with a monster on land and you have to rest and replenish supplies and heal up afterwards. A hard fight with a sea monster and you are sinking. If you survive you lost a giant investment of your ship.

Sea monsters capable of wrecking ships is just one element of the potential for imbalance and I'm talking about spell casters, particularly arcane casters. All you have to do to take a large warship down is puncture a hole in the hull and/or set it on fire. I suppose you could simply have wizards on ships being the norm and have them be the "cannons" of naval warfare though I think sea battles revolving around dueling wizards ruins the swashbuckle feel. Less so for airships since airships need a lot of magic to fly, but I'm going to assume that magic isn't prevailent enough that even the mightiest empires can afford more than a small handful of airships.

Darrin
2007-01-09, 03:20 PM
Think about it. A hard fight with a monster on land and you have to rest and replenish supplies and heal up afterwards. A hard fight with a sea monster and you are sinking. If you survive you lost a giant investment of your ship.


From a mythological standpoint, very few fights in the Odyssey or Argonauts involved monster-to-ship battles. Mostly it involved the ship transporting the hero+redshirts to whichever island was featured in the next part of the story. Most of the islands sported a local enchantress that wanted to 1) kill the redshirts/transform them into tasty snack food, and 2) have sex with and/or kill the hero, who cleverly outwits her and rescues the remaining redshirts so they can move on to the next island/enchantress/etc.

So, no real problem there... in fact it makes the DM's job a little easier, he doesn't have to justify why there are so many ancient ruins/dungeons/wizard towers overflowing with monsters and treasure within easy walking distance of the rest of civilization. Each island "dungeon" can be designed as a self-contained chapter without worrying too much about continuity or geography. PCs killed the One True King? Collapsed the economy? Destroyed the Great Temple? No problem, just get in the boat and move to the next island.

Most of the ship-based encounters while actually sailing are environmental hazards, such as the bag of foul winds or Charybdis (technically a monster but navigationally a giant whirlpool), so those might be easily handled mostly with skill checks and "don't sail the boat in that direction" kind of rolls. The two monster encounters that spring to mind (Sirens and Scylla on the other side of Charybdis) are treated more like environmental hazards than combat encounters with CRs/init rolls/etc. And they're easily adapted to the "land on island, kill everything that moves, strip everything valuable, move on to next island" kind of scenarios. Sirens ran off with half your crew? Land on their island, go through the whole daring rescue in the underwater siren tunnels, get your men back and continue. Scylla can destroy the boat with just a little pinkie-flick? Hey, let's land on the backside of her island, sneak into the cave Scylla's guarding, maybe there's something in there that can get rid of the darned thing.

Essentially its very similar to running an Enterprise+Away Team campaign. Very few episodes will involve ship-to-ship combat. If there is a significant risk to the ship, then it's something an Away Team can fix by going to the planet/island/dungeon.

mikeejimbo
2007-01-09, 04:48 PM
Darrin's advice is awesome, so I can't really elaborate. Just be sure to have a druid on board to mess with the winds and stuff.

tarbrush
2007-01-09, 05:34 PM
Also, with the wonderful world of magic available to you, your party aren't limited to playing D on the high seas. Water walking, the various breathing underwater things and freedom of movement etc means that you can quite easily take the fight to the watery lair of the beasties.

I don't know if you have lords of madness, but one of the horrors in there are some bizarre fish monsters, and they have a few samples of underwater combat and hazards

Gamebird
2007-01-09, 05:48 PM
That being said, I don't a D&D world works too well for sea epics.
...
Sea monsters capable of wrecking ships is just one element of the potential for imbalance and I'm talking about spell casters, particularly arcane casters.

I agree. I would say Darrin's advice is excellent - to run a logically consistent sea adventure you have to design a specific sort of campaign and remove the vast majority of sea monsters and boat-to-boat conflict.

Maybe have the campaign center around the PC's discovery and ownership of a magical boat that can't be sunk, or that has a lyre of building built into it that repairs otherwise fatal damage to the boat once a week. Come to think of it, having a lyre of building on a boat would make it nearly unsinkable except in cases of damage sustained over a period of time longer than an average D&D combat (ie, longer than a few rounds).

Vance_Nevada
2007-01-09, 06:39 PM
I'll point out that high level mages have much less reason to go on sea-based adventures than other characters. The basic reason - get from point A to point B - can be done faster and more effectively with any number of transport spells (teleport, shadow walk, etc).

For going exploring generally, why sail when you can fly? Why take a ship when you could Wildshape into a blue whale and swim much faster and more effectively?

Ships and sailing are for lower level characters, like caravans and roads. Past a certain point of magical capability, they simply cease to matter.

mikeejimbo
2007-01-09, 06:46 PM
There's plenty of good reasons a high-level mage would be on a ship.

Money, moolah, coin, cash, dough, payment!

goken04
2007-01-09, 07:01 PM
I am currently running a pirate DnD campaign and am thoroughly enjoying it. I made it clear to my PCs that the typical pirate ship in my world is equipped with at least one arcane caster and one divine caster. The Arcane casters are the equivalents of cannons and the divine casters are to heal the crew and ship after battle. I told them their ship would stand little chance without these important niches filled.

Stormwrack has great rules for this stuff. If you can get your hands on it, do so. Not all [Fire] spells set fire to a ship. Each section of the ship has HP and it's going to take more than a couple of fire balls to see that any sea-faring vessel would sink. The simple low-level spell Make Whole can do a lot to fix a ship in danger of sinking. Finally, once the ships close range (which happens fast), boarding actions are taken and the swashbuckling begins. If the enemy's arcane caster contiues to try to sink your ship instead of aiding their allies in melee (most don't), that's okay. Just kill the other crew and take their ship.

It takes a lot of learning and thinking about the rules (if you don't have Stormwrack), but it's more than doable and a lot of fun!

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-01-09, 07:08 PM
I'm actually planning on a lot of ship-to-ship combat in my campaign right now, but it's also starting to grow beyond simple party ventures into larger army battles. The ship battles won't be one-on-one. It'll be fleets.

Pity this is when I choose to introduce the Tarrasque, huh? I made up an aquatic variant. Besides being a capable swimmer, it can also inhale seawater quickly to pull in people/ships and shoot regrowing horns like torpedoes. Bwahaha, and this all when the party's level 8! Oh man, I can't wait to see their faces. They're gonna need those cannons/NPC army fodder.

Scalenex
2007-01-09, 09:56 PM
Good call on both the island hopping and giving different sections of the ship hit points! Yes, high level mages are often above petty concerns such as sea travel but mid and low level ones aren't. Particularly when naval warfare is concerned. In my world the major kingdoms will subsidize people through wizard schools. The weekend wizards get their tuition paid in exchange for a couple years of service at first and then something akin to two weeks a year, one week a month. Join the Wizard Reserves!

Jack_Simth
2007-01-09, 10:20 PM
I'll point out that high level mages have much less reason to go on sea-based adventures than other characters. The basic reason - get from point A to point B - can be done faster and more effectively with any number of transport spells (teleport, shadow walk, etc).

For going exploring generally, why sail when you can fly? Why take a ship when you could Wildshape into a blue whale and swim much faster and more effectively?

Ships and sailing are for lower level characters, like caravans and roads. Past a certain point of magical capability, they simply cease to matter.
Oh, any number of reasons. Getting treasure somewhere you can exchange it for goods (ships can carry a LOT, and not all treasure is as easily transported as platinum pieces. Iron, for instance, is valued at 1 sp per pound. If you give the party a X,000 gp worth of Iron, they're going to either have to leave it there, or find some way to transport a full X0,000 pounds of stuff. With a ship and a bunch of redshirts, that's not too much of an issue. If you're teleporting, you're going to have to make quite a lot of trips.

A comfortable place to rest up while exploring (as long as it isn't readily saleable, what's inside the ship doesn't much affect the game, so you can have a cusioned bed, an unspecified large amount of prepareable food, a good cook, et cetera without hurting game balance).

A storeage location (after a point, you can't really put up any defenses that a skilled rogue can't eventually bypass while you're away. With a ship, you don't have quite as much of an issue, what with being hard to find).

Minion transportation (e.g., redshirts).

I could go on... but there's not too much point.

Wehrkind
2007-01-09, 11:10 PM
Also, keep in mind fire, while dangerous, is not quite so horrific in the short term. A fireball does not necessarily vaporize your clothing if you fail your save (unless you are playing that sort of game), and you can assume that salt water drenched decks and ropes are not going to burn well either. Even if they do light up, you have a good deal of time before it becomes a more pressing problem than the mage casting fireballs itself.

The era you are playing in also will affect things. Putting a hole in the side of a large masted ship of the 18th century doesn't do much, unless it is at or below the waterline, at which point you have a serious problem. A hole in a Greek trireme? Who cares? The entire boat is boyant, so other than tossing over some weighty treasure to maintain boyancy, you are just gimped a bit.

I might assume as well that if magic is fairly prevalent, technological advances would account for it. Simply washing the decks down with sea water would go a lot way to help avoid fireball issues, and perhaps treatments can reinforce the wood to be more resistant to fire. Lord Dupont's Unflammable Ungent?

Jack_Simth
2007-01-09, 11:13 PM
Well, if a ship qualifies as an attended object, simply having *someone* on board with a ring of fire resistence would go a long way towards stopping fireballs.

FdL
2007-01-09, 11:27 PM
I'll be the one then to bring the example of what happens in the last book of the Legacy of the Drow Trilogy (sorry if Drizzt is a four letter word in these forums, it shouldn't).

In the first part of the book a lengthy sea adventure takes place, complete with ship to ship fight, magic AND wizards on board. I don't want to spoil you on the plot, but it's only common sense to bring a wizard or other spellcaster to the ship, for attack, defense or utility.

So there's a FR antecedent.

A Pointy Object
2007-01-09, 11:28 PM
The swashbuckler base class (Complete Warrior) and the Dread Pirate PrC (Complete Adventurer) add awsome flavor for characters who feel the need to embrace their inner pirate. The Spell Compendium also has some amazing sea-based spells as well (swirling vortex, tsunami, standing wave).

Besides that, magical seige weapons (like cannons and stuff) can be found in Heroes Of Battle.

I thought that might help.

Thrawn183
2007-01-10, 12:36 AM
The swashbuckler base class (Complete Warrior) and the Dread Pirate PrC (Complete Adventurer) add awsome flavor for characters who feel the need to embrace their inner pirate. The Spell Compendium also has some amazing sea-based spells as well (swirling vortex, tsunami, standing wave).

Besides that, magical seige weapons (like cannons and stuff) can be found in Heroes Of Battle.

I thought that might help.


I'd really like to see a profession: seafaring check or something to make a save for the ship against spells like those. It'd be kind of like a ride check for your mount, but for an entire ship instead.

Bears With Lasers
2007-01-10, 12:44 AM
I don't see the problem. The ship gets damaged? Repair it. With magic. Isn't that what Ship's Wizards (or Druids or Clerics) are for?

Not every wizard knows Teleport. Those that do can't or won't teleport to places they aren't very familiar with. Teleport can't transport mass amounts of goods. Besides which, spellcasters help a ship fight monsters, fight pirates, weather storms, navigate, etc. etc.

goken04
2007-01-10, 01:21 AM
I'd really like to see a profession: seafaring check or something to make a save for the ship against spells like those. It'd be kind of like a ride check for your mount, but for an entire ship instead.

Stormwrack helps with that, Profession: Sailor. It's an invaluable source if you're running a sea campaign.

Vance_Nevada
2007-01-10, 02:13 AM
There's plenty of good reasons a high-level mage would be on a ship.

Money, moolah, coin, cash, dough, payment!

OK, but who's paying the mage? Any ship owners or captains wanting to hire a high level mage for protection would find it cheaper to pay the mage by the spell, to transport their goods by teleport (or teleport object, or teleportation circle, depending on how much needs to be moved).

If it isn't economically feasible for them to do so, then it's even less feasible for them to hire the mage for the weeks or months necessary for the voyage to occur. Even the multiple teleports required for larger amounts of goods are cheaper to hire by the spell than by hiring the mage - and of course they save you even needing the cost of the ship in the first place!

The higher level the mage, the more ridiculous it gets (particularly the suggestion that a ship is a good place to rest - it's easily locatable by scrying, and high enough level mages will have their own private Planes they keep their Magnificent Mansion on instead - much harder for a rogue to break into).

axraelshelm
2007-01-10, 03:54 AM
because the captain needed the extra fire power but can't afford one so he asks around in a tavern and then there you are.
A low level wizard not even a magic item to his name and adventure in the high seas means anciant forgotton lore or items waiting to be handled by a wizard such as yourself who is on his way up.

axraelshelm
2007-01-10, 04:01 AM
[quote=Vance_Nevada;1807389]OK, but who's paying the mage? Any ship owners or captains wanting to hire a high level mage for protection would find it cheaper to pay the mage by the spell, to transport their goods by teleport (or teleport object, or teleportation circle, depending on how much needs to be moved).

Teleport? teleport is dangerous if you didn't know the terrain your goods can end up the otherside of the world and that mage has to be pretty sure of himself to cast that spell and a wizard at high level would go out to adventure because of the spells he has cost expensive spell ingredients and focus.
The don't come cheap and he may just do it for fun wizards get bored too I know mine does, all my great spells and no one/monster/object to use it one hmmmm.

axraelshelm
2007-01-10, 04:02 AM
[quote=Vance_Nevada;1807389]OK, but who's paying the mage? Any ship owners or captains wanting to hire a high level mage for protection would find it cheaper to pay the mage by the spell, to transport their goods by teleport (or teleport object, or teleportation circle, depending on how much needs to be moved).

Teleport? teleport is dangerous if you didn't know the terrain your goods can end up the otherside of the world and that mage has to be pretty sure of himself to cast that spell and a wizard at high level would go out to adventure because of the spells he has cost expensive spell ingredients and focus.
The don't come cheap and he may just do it for fun wizards get bored too I know mine does, all my great spells and no one/monster/object to use it one hmmmm.

axraelshelm
2007-01-10, 04:04 AM
[quote=Vance_Nevada;1807389]OK, but who's paying the mage? Any ship owners or captains wanting to hire a high level mage for protection would find it cheaper to pay the mage by the spell, to transport their goods by teleport (or teleport object, or teleportation circle, depending on how much needs to be moved).

Teleport? teleport is dangerous if you didn't know the terrain your goods can end up the otherside of the world and that mage has to be pretty sure of himself to cast that spell and a wizard at high level would go out to adventure because of the spells he has cost expensive spell ingredients and focus.
The don't come cheap and he may just do it for fun wizards get bored too I know mine does, all my great spells and no one/monster/object to use it one hmmmm.

Thomas
2007-01-10, 05:33 AM
Teleport? teleport is dangerous if you didn't know the terrain your goods can end up the otherside of the world and that mage has to be pretty sure of himself to cast that spell and a wizard at high level would go out to adventure because of the spells he has cost expensive spell ingredients and focus.

Dangerous compared to what? Overland travel? A controlled, precisely known risk of teleportation mishap is much preferrable to the uncontrolled, unknown, probably much, much higher than 3% risk* of an extended journey on land. (Sea journeys are likewise sure to be much more dangerous.) And that error is assuming the 5th-level teleport spell or the 7th-level teleport object spell, not the 7th-level greater teleport. (And smart wizard will teleport people carrying their maximum load with the 5th-level spell. That's the wizard and 3 people at minimum.)

* Achieved by studying the target location for one hour with scrying. That's a few minutes of work daily over a week.

The going price for the teleport spell is 450 gp per casting, minimum. That racks up to some pretty impressive gold pieces for less than an hour of work, if you can arrange enough contracts to cast all your teleport spells each day. For teleport object or greater teleport, it's 910 gp, minimum. And that's sure to be a lot cheaper than outfitting a caravan (including hiring all the necessary people) or a ship, so it's a far more attractive option for the merchants.

Smart mages don't go adventuring. They stay home and use their magic to become filthy rich.

paigeoliver
2007-01-10, 06:20 AM
In my world most ships have mages but almost none have one capable of casting teleport. Usually 5th to 7th level casters are the standard for ship's mages. Higher level casters usually are not interested in the pay a ship's mage can expect. Some ship's wizards are as low as first level.

There are plenty of reasons for a mid-level caster to take a shipboard position. It is a MUCH safer endeavor than adventuring. Plus it allows mid-level spellcasters to really fill up their spellbooks by visiting exotic ports (who will have all different high level casters around and thus different scrolls for sale), and by copying any spells that might exist in spellbooks belonging to the ship.

As far as teleporting goes. The teleport object spell requires a 13th level wizard to cast it (or a 14th level sorcerer), and most 13th level wizards won't even know the spell. You would probably never meet a sorcerer with it at all, and it isn't exactly on the short list of spells most high level mages are wanting to learn either.

Even a "Metropolis" sized city is only going to have 4 wizards capable of casting the 7th level spells. There are 35 7th level wizard spells in the player's handbook, if each one knows 5*** of them, then you have decent odds that there won't even be a wizard capable of casting the spell in a metropolis, much less a wizard for hire to cast it for you.

Also, fantasy ships can carry A LOT more cargo than real world ships can. At least they can if they have portable holes on board. If your world's magic goes that direction then you can probably bet that there are much bulkier (but cheaper) extra-dimensional crates available that can really up the capacity of any ship. I know back in BECMI D&D my player group had a ton of stuff stowed away in a scroll of shelter (Old edition magic item, it was a scroll with a picture of a room, you could go inside the room if you hung the scroll on a wall).

*** I based the number of spells known off my own experience as a GM, in that wizards tended to know very few of the higher level spells just because the scrolls were massively expensive to purchase and spellbooks with high level spells in them are not common finds. Scrolls of 7th level spells rival a lot of permanent magic items in price. I couldn't imagine most players spending 2975 GP to get teleport object in their spellbook when they would probably never memorize it and would be unlikely to scribe any scrolls of it, since those cost 1137 GP to scribe.

Darrin
2007-01-10, 09:22 AM
I'll point out that high level mages have much less reason to go on sea-based adventures than other characters. The basic reason - get from point A to point B - can be done faster and more effectively with any number of transport spells (teleport, shadow walk, etc).

One of the things that's not very well explored by most D&D campaigns is how hugely disruptive magic might be to the economy. Teleport is an obvious example, but it's actually the lower-level spells that would be much more devastating.

Cure Light Wounds, for example... would you ever see any medical science or any professional doctors when 99% of all injuries can be fixed by a basic spell available to five out of eleven base classes?

The havoc wrought by Continual Flame would be monumental. Serfs and slaves could be forced to work after sundown to maximize production. The industrial revolution and urbanization of cities would start centuries earlier... workers would migrate towards the factories in the cities lit 24/7, you'd see two 12-hour shifts or possibly three 8-hour shifts. Unsafe conditions/Workers Comp? Doesn't exist with CLW.

One single druid with Plant Growth could turn a backwater nation into a military powerhouse by increasing their food production by 33%. Even worse, get enough casters together to feed an army with Create Food and Water... imagine Napoleon with armies that can feed themselves and don't have to depend on logistical support, reserve units, or cannibalizing their agricultural production to supply the war effort.

So, when you say "magic trumps conventional sailing ships"... well, yes it does. Which is why, if you wanted to run a campaign based around a sailing ship, you'd have to put a lot of thought into which spells you might want to put on a "restricted" or "banned" list. Teleportation or Fly is obviously much more expedient than getting on a boat, but economics-wise there are some serious limitations to the amount of mass you could transport that way. It would be horrendously expensive to teleport or fly a few tons of coal/wool/grain/lumber to the markets they need to go.

It'd also be fairly easy to say "Teleport isn't available in my campaign", or "the max duration for all Fly spells is 10 rounds, so no flying off the island".



Ships and sailing are for lower level characters, like caravans and roads. Past a certain point of magical capability, they simply cease to matter.

That depends a great deal on what kind of campaign you want to run and what sort of magic level you prefer. If the NPC mages starts demanding a 100,000 GP "material component restocking fee" or "spell failure insurance premium" for that six-person Teleport spell, even a high-level group might put "hoofing it" back on the table.

mikeejimbo
2007-01-10, 09:39 AM
I suppose this is a bit off topic, but Darrin, isn't it possible that the industrial revolution would occur centuries later? Why have steam engines when you have golems? Why build railroads with teleport?

Of course, with Plant Growth one person could probably run a whole farm, so it's not like you'd need everyone to be growing food...

Hmm, magic seems to ruin the economy completely, but maybe, just maybe, the fact that it's so wide-spread would balance it out? Sure, your military nation has plenty of food, but so do the people you're attacking.

General_Ghoul
2007-01-10, 09:50 AM
Think how much cargo can be stored in the hold of a standard galley. About 4 tractor trailer loads. Now how many teleports is that going to take. Thats why caravans and shipping still takes place in these fantasy setting. Plus adding the cost of teleporting adds an incredible about to each item. For a 25000 gp magic item no big deal, for a 2cp item, well its not cost prohibitive. Shipping expensive, hard to replace items might go MagicEx, but everyday mundane stuff still has to go regular mail. So a mid level caster on board for a few gps a day, plus expenses for any spells cast, might make sense, just like the captain might hire extra warriors for pirate infessed waters. Same for overland caravans, and those are in every other adventure.

Scorpina
2007-01-10, 10:17 AM
There are plenty of reasons why a spellcaster might be on a ship, aside from basicly being payed to be there by the captain:

-She likes the sea, and want's to spend her time there.
-The captain happens to be his close friend, lover or immediate relative.
-She lost a loved one out at sea and is looking for them.
-He is a worshiper of Umberlee, Valkur or another appropriate sea god*
-She's interested in sea based magic, of the kind that might be found on mysterious islands.
-He's not yet powerful enough to cast Teleport and is running away from something.
-She's fallen in love with an aquatic elf, and so wants to stay near the ocean but obviously needs some means of support, and is so willing to accept less pay for Ship's Maging.

*Yes, I suppose that's more apt for a Cleric, but Wizard's and Sorcerer's can have faith too, damn it.

Orzel
2007-01-10, 10:22 AM
My friend's DM used huge, dispelling, caster eating pelicans, sharks, and turtles. All With SR. Every pirate captain keep them as pets.
Not too mention cannibals with anti-magic villages.
Flight and teleports was suicide.

"...And the main villians were orca-like beings who were all sorcerers. Every ship needed wizards to counterspell them when they jumped over the ship while casting spells. Sometimes they just land on you."

Darrin
2007-01-10, 10:43 AM
I suppose this is a bit off topic, but Darrin, isn't it possible that the industrial revolution would occur centuries later? Why have steam engines when you have golems?

Nope, earlier. Clarke's 3rd Law: the golem would be called "John Deer" or "Forklift."



Why build railroads with teleport?


The "cost per pound" has already been mentioned, but assuming you could trump that with Craft Wondrous Item to make a "teleport gate/pad/room" that functions via command word or a certain number of times/day... you'd still get a lot of the same developments that characterized the development of railroads:

* Raw materials and manufactured goods would have to conform to "rolling stock" dimensions to fit on the teleporter. You'd probably even see lighter rail systems develop around the "gate head" in order to maximize how much material you could quickly and efficiently move through the gate... engineering-wise, an axle/wheel on a standard-guage track requires the least amount of energy to move... although an army of Unseen Servants moving raw goods in 2-lb increments could be very interesting. Golems? Sure, but walking could be very slow and inefficient, you can probably get more material through the gate by creating rolling golems or having them push rolling carts.

* Cities with a "gate head" to other major production centers would see a huge boom in prosperity, while the further away a village was from one of the teleport nodes the slower it would grow.

* Big warehouses around the gate heads, with the companies running the gates most likely demanding large land grants from the government for all the real estate to store and organize all those goods going through the gates. You can skip all the intervening land grants between major cities since you're not laying track, but probably not saving any money since building all those gates at the stations is going to cost more.

* If you wanted to go all-out "Larry Niven", teleportation to a destination at a different elevation would create a lot of excess heat due to the differences in potential/rotational energy, so Endure Elements or Chill Metal might become important. Teleport enough mass, and you could start pumping energy into or out of the planet, causing it to heat/cool at an accelerated rate, possibly even causing it to speed/slow it's rotation, which could have catastrophic consequences.

Now there's an interesting idea for a Steampunk campaign: a scatterbrained old codger wizard stumples across evidence that the kingdom's mass-transportation-system is gradually tearing the planet apart. Without the gates to transport food, the major population centers are three days away from starvation. Do you risk shutting down the teleport gates, only to plunge the kingdom into massive famine? Kill the wizard to prevent the "conspiracy" from getting out to the public and causing a panic? Send the PCs on an epic quest to ressurrect the long-forgotten God of Dodgy Thermodynamics?



Of course, with Plant Growth one person could probably run a whole farm, so it's not like you'd need everyone to be growing food...

One druid can't harvest a whole field. Golems and maybe a few slackers with Unseen Servant can help out there, but yes, machinery/golems/magic would replace agricultural labor, and people would migrate toward the cities where jobs making manufactured goods would be more plentiful.



Hmm, magic seems to ruin the economy completely, but maybe, just maybe, the fact that it's so wide-spread would balance it out? Sure, your military nation has plenty of food, but so do the people you're attacking.

Yes, the "invisible hand" or whatever would quickly balance things out. Breakthroughs in one area would quickly be matched with something else to fill in the gaps. But it's hard to imagine all of the implications on that scale.

Matthew
2007-01-10, 12:02 PM
You make some good points, Darrin, but with respect to the mythological view of Ships, don't forget that shipwrecks were part and parcel of the story. Indeed, Odysseus is the only one of all his men to return home to Ithica.

Magic causes problems for every aspect of D&D. The more powerful it is, the more problems it creates. The usual reaction is to have magic cancel magic, as Bears with Lasers points out.

Ethdred
2007-01-10, 12:36 PM
The going price for the teleport spell is 450 gp per casting, minimum. That racks up to some pretty impressive gold pieces for less than an hour of work, if you can arrange enough contracts to cast all your teleport spells each day. For teleport object or greater teleport, it's 910 gp, minimum. And that's sure to be a lot cheaper than outfitting a caravan (including hiring all the necessary people) or a ship, so it's a far more attractive option for the merchants.

Smart mages don't go adventuring. They stay home and use their magic to become filthy rich.

That's probably not cheaper than outfitting a caravan - 50 people at even 1gp per day for a week is a lot less than 910 gp - and don't forget, that's the price each way. And you need a wizard who can cast two of these spells a day or you're having to pay for his (five star) accomodation. And even then you can't carry much weight, so you may need several round trips to sort things out. And that's even before we get into the fact that while the list price may be 910 gp, that doesn't take into account the fact that 'smart mages' realise they are in demand and start racking up the price. Hey, if there are only 4 of them in town, then they almost certainly have some sort of cartel going.

Teleport would work for small high value items, but not for most types of cargo. Sure, the guy with the black opal mine has a teleport superhighway to the necromancers' college, but the guy with the coal mine? He's hiring.

Or to put it in modern day terms - why do you think they send crude oil by supertanker and not plane? Or cars, furniture, DVD players... And which modern firm would accept 3% of shipments going astray?

As for your last sentence - they may want to become filthy rich, but they probably also want something a bit more interesting than just shuttling from one warehouse to another (with the occasional hair raising diversion into totally unknown areas!)

Orzel
2007-01-10, 12:51 PM
If mages started teleports goods on a regular basics, other mages would learn how to steal the large amount of valuable goods when it's being tranported magically. All it'll take is one powerful wizard to desire the wealth and create the spell and entire kingdoms would crumble all over. And it won't take an army of bandits.

You only break a system that is worth breaking.

GryffonDurime
2007-01-10, 01:17 PM
If you really want to create something both magical and nautical, you could find other ways to deal with troublesome spells from your casters--like, define your world as a place where the ocean "washes away magic". Basically, for some reason (Godly decree, ancient mishap, simple quirk of nature), you have a nearly flooded world where the ocean is basically covered by an incalculably vast Antimagic Field. The only exceptions are the islands (land would have some sacred protection from this edict), and maybe even some ships that can afford to outfit their masts with something that projects a Magic Field just around the ship.

Now your mage crew's helpful in that they can mend the ship, keep the crew healthy, and defend the boat against incursion. Likewise, they can also help greatly whenever you drop anchor at an island. But no more teleporting, and certainly no flying out of the ship/island's magic field.

Thomas
2007-01-10, 01:30 PM
If mages started teleports goods on a regular basics, other mages would learn how to steal the large amount of valuable goods when it's being tranported magically. All it'll take is one powerful wizard to desire the wealth and create the spell and entire kingdoms would crumble all over. And it won't take an army of bandits.

It'll also only take one high-level wizard to loot all the caravans in a country, really. He'll be busy, but it'll be easy, and won't require spells that don't currently exist (which are always at DM discretion); and who says there's a "while"? Instantaneous transporation is pretty much the definition of teleporting in D&D.


That's probably not cheaper than outfitting a caravan - 50 people at even 1gp per day for a week is a lot less than 910 gp - and don't forget, that's the price each way.

Food, horses, wagons, equipment (including weapons and armor for guards), tolls... it adds up.

Gamebird
2007-01-10, 01:54 PM
(And smart wizard will teleport people carrying their maximum load with the 5th-level spell. That's the wizard and 3 people at minimum.)

Additionally, if you're going to do this as a regular thing, hire three or four incredibly strong fellows to carry the stuff. Your STR 18-20 Barbarian half-orcs. Since you're a wizard capable of casting 5th level spells, make sure you know Bull's Strength. Cast it on everyone before the Teleport. Then have the Barbarians Rage. Then pick up the gear. Then cast Teleport before the Rage wears off.

Not to mention portable holes, which hold a pile and teleport just fine.

Wolf53226
2007-01-10, 04:25 PM
Well, if a ship qualifies as an attended object, simply having *someone* on board with a ring of fire resistence would go a long way towards stopping fireballs.

While an excellent idea, Page 29 of Stormwrack, first sentence of the second paragraph under Magic, "Vessles count as unattended objects, even if they're occupied by someone."

Dervag
2007-01-10, 04:58 PM
Also, keep in mind fire, while dangerous, is not quite so horrific in the short term. A fireball does not necessarily vaporize your clothing if you fail your save (unless you are playing that sort of game), and you can assume that salt water drenched decks and ropes are not going to burn well either. Even if they do light up, you have a good deal of time before it becomes a more pressing problem than the mage casting fireballs itself.Err... what about the sails?

Seriously, sail-era vessels were firetraps. The wood was usually dry, though you could soak it in a pinch. Everything was impregnated with tar to keep water out. And there were lots of ropes and sails that burned like extremely large pieces of tinder. Fire was a terrifying threat to wooden ships, and no two ways about it.


The era you are playing in also will affect things. Putting a hole in the side of a large masted ship of the 18th century doesn't do much, unless it is at or below the waterline, at which point you have a serious problem. A hole in a Greek trireme? Who cares? The entire boat is boyant, so other than tossing over some weighty treasure to maintain boyancy, you are just gimped a bit.Now that's a much better point. Wood floats; it's a simple as that. Very few age of sail ships were sunk in battle, no matter how many holes the enemy managed to punch in them. They might be sunk by long-term taking on of water. And there was a good chance that a damaged ship would sink in the next major storm. But they wouldn't normally be sunk by gunfire.

Of course, burning to the waterline was a much more probable threat...


Cure Light Wounds, for example... would you ever see any medical science or any professional doctors when 99% of all injuries can be fixed by a basic spell available to five out of eleven base classes?Injuries yes; diseases, no.

Diseases can be fixed too, of course, but not as easily. And it's an open question whether certain types of chronic disease qualify for cure disease. Can you fix arthritis with cure disease?


The havoc wrought by Continual Flame would be monumental. Serfs and slaves could be forced to work after sundown to maximize production. The industrial revolution and urbanization of cities would start centuries earlier... workers would migrate towards the factories in the cities lit 24/7, you'd see two 12-hour shifts or possibly three 8-hour shifts.Definitely two 12-hour shifts, unless you want to introduce labor unions.

Unsafe conditions/Workers Comp? Doesn't exist with CLW.Well, many industrial accident injuries in those conditions will kill or dismember a worker, which makes CLW useless, but I see the point.


I suppose this is a bit off topic, but Darrin, isn't it possible that the industrial revolution would occur centuries later? Why have steam engines when you have golems? Why build railroads with teleport?But if golems can do the work of steam engines and teleportation can do the work of railroads, then you already have an industrial revolution. The only difference is that the 'technologies' in question are magical.

Of course, railroads were invented to haul freight, which is the exact opposite of what teleport is best suited for. Teleportation is more like aviation- it's fast, but it's expensive and it doesn't work well for massy cargoes.


Hmm, magic seems to ruin the economy completely, but maybe, just maybe, the fact that it's so wide-spread would balance it out? Sure, your military nation has plenty of food, but so do the people you're attacking.Of course, but the point is that magic completely changes the rules. Magic is as potent as most 19th-century technology, so you'd expect the world to look a lot more like it did around the year 1900 and a lot less like it did in the Middle Ages.


It'll also only take one high-level wizard to loot all the caravans in a country, really. He'll be busy, but it'll be easy, and won't require spells that don't currently exist (which are always at DM discretion); and who says there's a "while"? Instantaneous transporation is pretty much the definition of teleporting in D&D.Except that it won't be easy; he'll be running around the country all the time. It will be simple, in the sense of not requiring him to do anything he can't easily figure out how to do, but it won't be easy at all. And he'll be vulnerable to interception- he has to get out in the open behind whatever defenses he's set up in his home base. As soon as a few equally powerful casters get wind of what's going on, he's toast.

Teleport interception spells, on the other hand, are practically effortless. All a hypothetical wizard has to do is sit down and research for a while (which is pretty much what he'd do naturally), then cast an occasional spell. The riches materialize on his doorstep.

I refer everyone to the webcomic "Schlock Mercenary" for examples of a society where both teleportation and teleport jamming are common. Of course, it's epic science fiction and not fantasy, but some of the concepts are similar. If it's feasible to interfere with teleportation, then suddenly teleporting becomes a much less attractive option for moving freight and so forth.


Additionally, if you're going to do this as a regular thing, hire three or four incredibly strong fellows to carry the stuff. Your STR 18-20 Barbarian half-orcs. Since you're a wizard capable of casting 5th level spells, make sure you know Bull's Strength. Cast it on everyone before the Teleport. Then have the Barbarians Rage. Then pick up the gear. Then cast Teleport before the Rage wears off.That's all a good suggestion, except that I wouldn't allow the Rage part as DM. Raging barbarians shouldn't be willing to be used as porters; Rage is an ability that simply doesn't make sense in that context.

Gamebird
2007-01-10, 05:52 PM
That's all a good suggestion, except that I wouldn't allow the Rage part as DM. Raging barbarians shouldn't be willing to be used as porters; Rage is an ability that simply doesn't make sense in that context.

Alright. Tell your idiot porters (is it any surprise that mental stat won't be their strong suit?) that it's time for another contest of strength: they each must get under an across-the-shoulders yoke with more than their normal max lift capacity, and lift it off the ground. (There's no way they can do it without invoking Rage, which makes sense to do in terms of a testosterone-fueled competition.) Last one standing wins, though you will teleport them during it (tell them that's just a distraction to see if you can rattle them).

There.

There's no reason that raging barbarians wouldn't want to work as porters for a wealthy, powerful wizard, unless you start reaching back to previous editions when Barbarians hated magic. They get paid well for very little work, get to visit exotic locations, wench all they want and brag about how they could break their boss across their knee if they were so inclined.

Jack_Simth
2007-01-10, 06:02 PM
With Teleportation, you CAN make it much like a railroad.

It's just that you don't use Teleport, you use Teleporation Circle:


Teleportation Circle

Conjuration (Teleportation)
Level: Sor/Wiz 9 Components: V, M Casting Time: 10 minutes Range: 0 ft. Effect: 5-ft.-radius circle that teleports those who activate it Duration: 10 min./level (D) Saving Throw: None Spell Resistance: YesYou create a circle on the floor or other horizontal surface that teleports, as greater teleport, any creature who stands on it to a designated spot. Once you designate the destination for the circle, you can’t change it. The spell fails if you attempt to set the circle to teleport creatures into a solid object, to a place with which you are not familiar and have no clear description, or to another plane.
The circle itself is subtle and nearly impossible to notice. If you intend to keep creatures from activating it accidentally, you need to mark the circle in some way.
Teleportation circle can be made permanent with a permanency spell. A permanent teleportation circle that is disabled becomes inactive for 10 minutes, then can be triggered again as normal.
Note: Magic traps such as teleportation circle are hard to detect and disable. A rogue (only) can use the Search (http://www.rpgoracle.com/srd/skillsAll.html#search) skill to find the circle and Disable Device (http://www.rpgoracle.com/srd/skillsAll.html#disable-device) to thwart it. The DC in each case is 25 + spell level, or 34 in the case of teleportation circle.
Material Component: Amber dust to cover the area of the circle (cost 1,000 gp).
RAW, it costs 2,530 gp to hire a Wizard 17 to cast Teleporation Circle and 23,350 gp to Permanency it. So, for 25,880 gp, you get a circle five feet wide that sends anyone who walks across it to a particular location, along with everything they are carrying. This also applies to horses and such, as it affects creatures. If you want it to go both ways, you do this twice. Do note that these spells won't be commonly available, which may incurr additional expenses.


What do you get? Instant two-way travel over any distance, free after the initial investment. This is essentially a full set of rails from point A to point B and back. You make a large building with a lot of five-foot alcoves, all labeled. Half of the alcoves are incoming (that is, they are the destination point for a Teleportation circle elsewhere), half of the alcoves are outgoing (that is, they have Teleportation Circles sending anyone walking into them to a designated spot).


At most locations, you have a smaller building with just two alcoves - one that takes you to the distribution nexus, the other reserved for incoming teleporation circles.

At it's simplest, this lets you go from any linked city to any other linked city at the cost of walking to the nearest link center, and walking across two rooms. You'll want to make it a little more complex than that to cut down on how many people are in a given room at a given time, but it takes some pretty hefty traffic to require more than four or five room crossings.


Charge a fee at the door to get in, and you're a very effective railroad company.

Fax Celestis
2007-01-10, 06:15 PM
And set up customs too.

Yakk
2007-01-10, 06:31 PM
L 17 Wizard can teleport themselves and 5 other medium creatures -- that's 6 medium creatures, 3 large creatures, or 1.5 huge creatures. So the circle can teleport up to a huge creature.

The cheapest network that covers N cities would be a one-way chain. Each stop would have an incoming location, a custom's house, and an outgoing circle.

With N circles you can provide complete connectivity to N locations. Half as expensive as doing a back-and-forth network to each location.

Fax Celestis
2007-01-10, 06:49 PM
Right, but what happens if the chain goes clockwise, and you're counterclockwise one step from your desired destination? You have to go through customs and pay fees for the whole circle, instead of one step. It may be cheaper, but it's simpler to set them up two-ways.

Jack_Simth
2007-01-10, 07:12 PM
L 17 Wizard can teleport themselves and 5 other medium creatures -- that's 6 medium creatures, 3 large creatures, or 1.5 huge creatures. So the circle can teleport up to a huge creature.

The cheapest network that covers N cities would be a one-way chain. Each stop would have an incoming location, a custom's house, and an outgoing circle.

With N circles you can provide complete connectivity to N locations. Half as expensive as doing a back-and-forth network to each location.

Yes, but there's a few catches:
1) Assuming all destinations are equally likely, in such an N-circle, on average, a each trip requires N/2 passages through the circles, and a trip from A to B back to A always requires N passages. If 1,000,000 people decide to go on a day trip on the same day you've got N,000,000 passages - a traffic nightmare; rush hour on the freeway. It doesn't matter if they are going to different locations or not; they all have to traverse the entire circle. In a central location setup, yeah, everyone's going through the same area, but it's a larger area (just due to the requirement that there be lots of send/receive pairings) and people are going to different lines. A small amount of overhead on networking a double-linked setup (multiple "central centers" that are each chosen in size and number of destinations based on the traffic to and from those destinations, linked to each other) and this isn't too hard to deal with.
2) The N-circle has to be done all at once. You can't readily expand the N-circle; once established, adding a center makes it no longer a maximally effecient N-circle (as you either have to destroy one of the circles or double-link the new node... unless your DM lets you put the Teleportation Circles on something portable, and you plan ahead). A Double-linked setup can start with just two nodes, no problem. You can start it relatively small and grow it as your finances grow without making any meaningful changes to the setup (although it does help to start with at least one node that you can call "central" in that it's very large with room for many more links).
3) When part of the N-circle fails, it doesn't fail partially, the entire thing grinds to a halt. You knock out one Teleporation Circle, nobody can do a round trip until it's fixed. With a double-linked system, you only require a total of four circles work to make a round trip (home to central, central to destination, destination to central, central to home). If one circle is knocked out, only a portion of your customer base is inconvenienced, rather than very nearly your entire customer base. Occasionally, it will come up (if nothing else, a war completely unrelated to your business will make one of your centers a non-viable destination; the magic is all still there, but there's now a pile of rubble at the destination, so the teleport fails).

Thomas
2007-01-11, 02:57 AM
Except that it won't be easy; he'll be running around the country all the time. It will be simple, in the sense of not requiring him to do anything he can't easily figure out how to do, but it won't be easy at all. And he'll be vulnerable to interception- he has to get out in the open behind whatever defenses he's set up in his home base. As soon as a few equally powerful casters get wind of what's going on, he's toast.

Teleport interception spells, on the other hand, are practically effortless. All a hypothetical wizard has to do is sit down and research for a while (which is pretty much what he'd do naturally), then cast an occasional spell. The riches materialize on his doorstep.

The only existing teleport interdiction spell I can think of (from Spell Compendium) just allows you to delay teleportation into the spell's area; if you can get into the "target zone" and prepare some sort of ambush, you're good. But that's not exactly easy. You can houserule whatever spells you like into existence, but that's not pertinent to a discussion about the effects of existing spells and game mechanics.

And the bandit wizard's not running around; he's teleporting around. Teleport in, cast one or two spells to take out the caravan crew, teleport out. If you want to actually get away with everything that caravan has, you just need bags of holding or portable holes, like Gamebird mentioned.


RAW, it costs 2,530 gp to hire a Wizard 17 to cast Teleporation Circle and 23,350 gp to Permanency it. So, for 25,880 gp, you get a circle five feet wide that sends anyone who walks across it to a particular location, along with everything they are carrying. This also applies to horses and such, as it affects creatures. If you want it to go both ways, you do this twice. Do note that these spells won't be commonly available, which may incurr additional expenses.

And that's the expensive way. In Faerūn, for instance, you get a guy who has the feats to create portals. (This is actually part of Faerūn's history; there were trade portals between Ammarindar and Calimshan thousands of years ago, for instance. Of course, that ended poorly when Calimshan was invaded and some pasha escaped through the portal with his household, then proceeded to try to conquer the dwarfhold...)

purple gelatinous cube o' Doom
2007-01-11, 03:04 AM
If you're interested in doing something ocean based, I suggest getting Stormwrack.

Beren One-Hand
2007-01-11, 03:52 AM
To counteract fire threats have a cleric Hallow (or Unhallow if you swing that way) the ship. Not only are you protected from drowned zombies, but you can tie a Fire Resistance spell to it, affecting everything within the 40' radius.

Ethdred
2007-01-11, 06:56 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ethdred http://www.giantitp.com/forums/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1808546#post1808546)
That's probably not cheaper than outfitting a caravan - 50 people at even 1gp per day for a week is a lot less than 910 gp - and don't forget, that's the price each way.

Food, horses, wagons, equipment (including weapons and armor for guards), tolls... it adds up.

Most of that (horses, wagons, equipment) is start up capital, not current expenditure (though there will be a certain amount of depreciation). So you could still do each trip for a lot less than the number of teleports required.

Someone's mentioned the setting up of permanent teleport circles, but that requires a 17th level wizard with the spell and the inclination, which is rather a campaign-specific thing.

Jack_Simth
2007-01-11, 07:19 AM
And that's the expensive way. In Faerūn, for instance, you get a guy who has the feats to create portals. (This is actually part of Faerūn's history; there were trade portals between Ammarindar and Calimshan thousands of years ago, for instance. Of course, that ended poorly when Calimshan was invaded and some pasha escaped through the portal with his household, then proceeded to try to conquer the dwarfhold...)
Yes, but Faerūn isn't Core. Teleportation Circle and Permanency are (and are thus at least possible in the vast majority of game worlds). With the "standard" population distribution, a wizard Capable of casting both will be available in most metropolises. Then it just becomes an excercise in convincing said Wizard (which is what money is for).

The Dirge
2007-01-11, 07:51 AM
I once had i campain in which there was a teleport system similar to the one described here. Everyone stopped playing though because any enemy they fought would hit them with entangle or something like that and in 2 minutes could be anywhere across the globe. Unless you want to have all NPC enemies fight to the death, i think that them flleing to a random, untracable part of thee world happen alot with a teleport system.

Thomas
2007-01-11, 08:01 AM
I once had i campain in which there was a teleport system similar to the one described here. Everyone stopped playing though because any enemy they fought would hit them with entangle or something like that and in 2 minutes could be anywhere across the globe. Unless you want to have all NPC enemies fight to the death, i think that them flleing to a random, untracable part of thee world happen alot with a teleport system.

That depends on the system; you can actually create cool adventures centering around Faerūnian portals, using magic and deduction to track an opponent through multiple jumps, exploring the locations he's entered, trying to find the next portal, trying to figure out why he's going to these locations, etc.

And I'm personally intending to use song portal paths as rewards for my PCs in my campaign; once the game moves into the strategic sphere of action, the players will appreciate them a lot.

Gamebird
2007-01-11, 10:10 AM
I once had i campain in which there was a teleport system similar to the one described here. Everyone stopped playing though because any enemy they fought would hit them with entangle or something like that and in 2 minutes could be anywhere across the globe. Unless you want to have all NPC enemies fight to the death, i think that them flleing to a random, untracable part of thee world happen alot with a teleport system.

I could see the "enemy fleeing" problem occuring in only two situations:
1) The combat happens to occur close to a portal/teleportation circle. The DM can easily fix this by having combats not happen here. Unless there are portals within a few minutes of all locations, in which case you have too many of them. Seriously. Besides, if the bad guys can run through a portal, what's keeping the PCs from following them, even if they do so a few minutes later?

2) The bad guys have access to teleportation magic themselves and when the combat is going badly for them, they teleport to the nearest portal they know about and get gone. This isn't really a problem either, because if they have access to teleportation magic then they could have gotten away anyhow.


There are some other fixes for situation 1, like saying that all portals sit around "idle" and take 10 minutes or an hour to "warm up" before they can port someone.

Or lock the portals and say they require a key, which only authorized individuals have. Like in Jack_Smith's teleportation railroad example, you'd have a staff member with a key escort each passenger or group through the alcove and back, collecting tolls and making sure all the appropriate customs and rules were followed.

Yakk
2007-01-11, 12:25 PM
Don't build one huge loop. That isn't needed.

But don't build back-and-forth to each location. A back-and-forth link is only "worthwhile" for a heavily trafficed location.

Build loops of size 5 that visit 5 locations. If you have a centralized hub, that's 4 new locations added for the price of 5 portals -- 1.25 portals per link, instead of the naive 2 portals per link.

As the size of a given loop goes up, the efficiency gained from making the loop larger goes down.

1 new city per loop: 2 portals per new city
2 new cities per loop: 1.5 portals per new city
3 new cities per loop: 1.33 portals per new city
4 new cities per loop: 1.25 portals per new city
5 new cities per loop: 1.2 portals per new city
6 new cities per loop: 1.17 portals per new city
7 new cities per loop: 1.14 portals per new city
8 new cities per loop: 1.125 portals per new city
9 new cities per loop: 1.11 portals per new city
...
100 new cities per loop: 1.01 portals per new city

Making extremely huge loops doesn't make sense. Making small loops makes lots of sense.

One also wants to be slick about it. Each portal should be in a corridor with T junction in front of it, and teleport to a similar looking corridor. On the wall, "left to exit, right to continue" would be written in both pictograms and script.

Directions would be a simple as "walk down that corridor, make 5 right turns, and then a left turn". Easy to navigate.

Customs would be charged at the exit and entrance of such portal-loops. 3 to 5 cities per portal loop (or 4 to 6 steps per loop) looks about optimal for most travel.

Travel between hubs would be using size 2 loops only after the trade load justifies it.

The use of corridors that don't change much when you step on the teleportation portal is somewhat important. It reduces delays caused by people/animals stopping and gawking at the effects of the teleportation. One wants to make it as seamless as possible.

Yakk
2007-01-11, 12:44 PM
Back to the original topic: with magic, you can make a ship really really tough.

With the ability to shape and make metal via magic, iron based boats become much more practical. And those are hard to damage.

Repairs via magic can be done as well.

...

Practically, I'd simply have ships be nearly unsinkable using various magics. It is a cop out, but it deals with alot of the "instant death" problems.

This forces the fighting to be between people on ships -- boarding actions, monsters eating the crew, etc.

Matthew
2007-01-11, 02:04 PM
I would think that Ships would probably be routinely magically warded against fire in some way in a default D&D type magic environment.

Ravenscroft
2007-01-12, 03:52 AM
Eberron plus Stormwrack makes a great setting for Sea-based campaigning.
Not everyone has an Airship after all.
Artificers would be a must (if you can get one) , but Magewrights would be more common.
Plenty of scope for Piracy in the Lhazaar Principalities.
Travelling to Xen'drik using Airship or Teleportation isn't always an option.
Plus you need to make deals with one of the local tribes of Sahuagin to be led through the reefs to get there.
Always the chance for an attack by a rival tribe commanding sharks or even a direshark.

Overall , Eberron is balanced in terms of magic use integrated into the fabric of society.
The lack of high level casters and the general lack of Divine Casters compared to other settings.
Meaning that even fairly low-level PCs would be welcome aboard ship.

There is also the option of working for one of the Dragonmarked Houses.
House Tharashk employs monstrous humanoids and some monster races as Mercenaries.
It would be easy to have a crew that included a Harpy or two (though they would probably prefer an airship).
Having a Medusa on board would be possible as well.

Play a bunch of monstrous Mercenaries that hunt Pirates.
(rather than being Pirates , as Droaam is possibly trying for Diplomatic ties to other Nations)
House Tharashk has the Mark of Finding and does bounty hunter work after all.