Pirates of Dark Water

[Jack_of_Spades]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0pUCSsAo638
I want to run a campaign based off the shows premise. The world is overrun with Dark Water and there's a lot of pirates. I'll use the map from Wizard of Earthsea as my world and I'll make up places and people as I go.

If there anything I should know about nautical and/or pirate adventuring besides read Stormwrack?

Any suggestion for story hooks or adventures?

Is spell casting over powered on the high seas?

[Matthew]

Great! Pirates of Dark Water. Somebody was building a similar campaign a while back...

Water World (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21795)

Here's what I found and posted there:



This idea reminded me of this cartoon series:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_Dark_Water

I once tried adopting the idea for a campaign world, but I lost my enthusiasm for the project fairly quickly. However, it's always been at the back of my mind to try again one day, so I will be interested to see how this turns out.

A PDF of the official Pirates of Dark Water RPG can be found here, along with a full colour map:

http://www.piratesofdarkwater.net/buriedtreasure.html


You should probably use the Defence Bonus Variant, as Armour doesn't fit the setting too well.

[Saint George]

Oh good god I loved that show. I have nothing really to offer here, but I love that freakin show.

[Jack_of_Spades]

Where can I find that variant? I've wanted to use it, but can't find it.

[cferejohn]

Arms and Equipment Guide (3.0), has some stuff on ships. It's just a couple of pages though.

[Matthew]

Here:

Defence Bonus Variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm)

It works well in combination with:

Armour as Damage Reduction Variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm)

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

best book for water based adventures is Stormwrack.

[TheThan]

oh yeah, I remember that show

I love the idea of making a dnd campaign out of it, so I got some ideas.
Mainly I’m thinking you should use these variant rules for it:

With using the defense bonus I’d go with the core classes and homebrew them a bit to make them fit a swashbuckling game. Give the fighter and barbarian the tumble skill as a class skill, for the ranger you could ditch the spell casting and borrow the skirmish ability (and progression) from the scout (complete adventurer). That’s really all you need. Stormwrack has just about everything else really.


I’d also use the action points variant:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm

it’ll give it more of a swashbuckly feel.


Alternatively if you don’t want to use those variants I’d go get a copy of complete adventurer and complete warrior. They have swashbuckling classes, which will fit. Plus they have the scout with can work well as a ship board warrior.

[Jack_of_Spades]

Luckily I have all the first 4 Complete X books.

Should I still include wizards? I'm trying to picture the world and the strength of their spells seem very strong for a somewhat low magic campaign. I'm thinking about making the wizard and clerics spell progression like the bards.

I'm thinking about taking out clerics and having bards rangers and paladins be the ones with healing.

I'm also considering replacing the Wizard with a modified Warlock.

Thoughts?

And I am totally using that map!
Except I'm going to have to add more things between the islands.

[TheThan]

Well ok for wizards you could go with the NPC adept class or if you have the PHBII you could use the beguiler. With a little work the adept can fit in just about any campaign, and beguilers seem appropriately roguish.

Or for an even stranger twist you could use the psionic classes instead of spell casters.

[Jack_of_Spades]

I will be usin the Beguiler, Dragon Shaman, and Duskblade because they fit reasonably well into the world. But, I still want some sort of spell caster.

Their spells are just so big! A fireball could damage large sections of hull, and even Darkwood only offers Fire Resistance 5. That's not counting the effect it would have on the crew of target ship. A druid could easily sink a ship with warp wood or similar effects.


What if I gave the Warlock a wizard's spell casting? They could have the Bards spells per day only from the Wizard/Sorceror list and learn new spells like a wizard. Or, they could choose to draw from the cleric list. They'd of course have to choose at 1st level which they wanted.

[Darkshade]

first remember that magical fire sucks at damaging objects, half damage then the objects hardness applies. I would think that you could get away with sorcerers and just replace their spells known/per day entry with the bards.
Warlocks make find and dandy casterish things. I would also suggest looking at special materials in the stronghold builders guidebook to use on shipbuilding.

the Stormheart regional feat from FR is pretty badarse too

[TimeWizard]

Man, this brings back memories, i remember that badass samurai and cunning thief woman. You can make special armor out of the hides of those big water worm monsters, whatever they were. They are immune to dark water. Did they ever get the last 7/8 gems, or was the series cancelled?

[TheThan]

It was canceled unfortunately, I don’t think the world was ready for it…

[Jack_of_Spades]

I thought there were 15 treasures. I know he got at least 7 because he put them in a light house and destroyed about half the dark water.

[GryffonDurime]

Why not just homebrew an Ecomancer class using the Warlock as a base? Beyond that, the only real magic-users I can remember from Dark Water were either just scientists or alchemists.