DMing airship campaign with homebrew ship roles

[therealdude]

Hey yall!

I'm a first time poster and first time DM of an campaign that I have been designing for a while. The campaign itself takes place in a land of floating islands (tentatively named Celestia). Because of this people in this world often travel via airships. I decided that I wanted people to have specialized roles aboard the ship that add bonuses on top of their class/background/race. Right now I have the following:

Captain
- commands ship
- charisma (intimidation, persuasion, deception, etc.) checks to interact with other ships and crew members
- wisdom checks to make decisions for ship
- can choose one extra charisma skill proficiency upon character creation
Navigator
- navigates ship
- Uses dexterity to navigate in high wind or in battle situations to steer ship
- Uses intelligence checks to see if he knows where to go
- Uses perception checks when navigating unfamiliar areas and avoiding potentially dangerous areas
- Automatically proficient in perception

Boatswain
- Fixes and adds new features
- Uses intelligence and athletics checks to fix the ship
- Gets proficiency in either athletics or investigation
- Proficiency with ship repair tools
- start with the tome of all things airship maintenance and repair tools

Master Gunner
- Operates guns on ship
- Can shoot cannonballs 100x strength modifier feet (every other crew member is at 75x strength modifier)
- Can load and shoot a cannon in the same turn (every other crew member needs to use an action to load and another to shoot)

Mate
- May choose a crew member to be their “master”.
- If within 5 feet of his/her master, can add his ability modifier + proficiency to the rolls of the the master.
- Can add proficiency modifier to rolls of other crew members that are within 5 feet, but may not choose multiple in the same turn. -
- May choose new master if old one dies.

Cook
- Cooks ****
- Likely an NPC unless you really want to be it

Let me know what you think. I'm open to suggestions, criticisms, etc.

Cheers!

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by therealdude
Navigator
- navigates ship
- Uses dexterity to navigate in high wind or in battle situations to steer ship

I would recommend separating this into navigator and steersman as two distinct roles. The navigator would be Int-based, mainly as you’ve described, while the steersman would be either Dex- or Str-based and would do the actual hauling on the ship’s wheel. And keep in mind that you're not moving in just two dimensions, so you'll need other crew to address sudden changes in altitude. Real-world airships can be swept thousands of feet higher in just a few minutes by a strong updraft.

You might also consider a dedicated lookout for the Perception checks—someone who spends a watch constantly scanning the entire horizon and the airspace within. This will be especially challenging for an airship lookout, because of the greater area to visually scan and the immense volume, which requires active attention to different depths of field. You’d want at least two lookouts every watch, fore and aft, with several crew dedicated to this task who would take it in shifts.

I would also recommend adding a purser to take responsibility for supplies, logistics, finances, etc. Note that a good captain should be able to cover this role in a pinch, as well as replacing the navigator if need be, but ideally you’d have three separate people for these roles, with the captain providing oversight and double-checking figures for both the purser and the navigator.


Originally Posted by therealdude
Master Gunner
- Operates guns on ship
- Can shoot cannonballs 100x strength modifier feet (every other crew member is at 75x strength modifier)

How does physical strength affect how far a cannonball can be fired? That depends on the powder charge and the weight of the ball, as well as the design of the cannon's barrel.

Also, cannons on seafaring ships are typically one or two tons each, and that will be a tremendous amount of weight for your airship. Something lighter would make more sense here.

[Debihuman]

By people do mean NPCs or PCs? These look like NPC classes to me. There are a few 3rd party products for airships. It will even will save you a lot of time and effort if you look at those and pick what you like from them without reinventing the wheel so to speak.

Airships by Bastion Press is pretty good and what's even better, they have a nice free supplement available as e-ships as a pdf. This link will take you right there so you can check it out: http://www.bastionpress.com/assets/e-ships.pdf

There is also material on the Pathfinder site that you can modify as well. Google is your friend.

Debby