Party has a boat

[Redhood101]

So a large part of my campaign revolves around the party having a ship that they get at the start. The entire story is that there is a dragon to kill. The idea is that they sail around the islands and get upgrades for their ship. I’m wondering how to best go about different ship upgrades. Also how to do ship be dragon combat.

[Spriteless]

What kind of boat? Canoe? Junk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_(ship))? Galleon? Boats are a very complex subject! There are many naval war games devoted to them. I would look up such a game, and just use those rules. 5th ed's vehicle rules are soooo simple otherwise.

If the party captures opponents' boats, they might want a fleet, with the party split between several boats. Message is a useful spell in such circumstances.

[Jgosse]

Switching from a rudder to steering wheel, various weapons, armored siding, a front ram, extra mast, and there is always flying?

[Jgosse]

Also check this out. https://books.google.ca/books/about/Stormwrack.html?id=ENyiPwAACAAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y

[Droodicus]

Where's my dragonator!

[Knaight]

You're probably going to have to go pretty heavy on homebrew for this - the core campaign structure is a bit unconventional. Getting prepared to fight a dragon is familiar, which should make it easier to do, but you'll have to make up the naval upgrades side. Fortunately this also has a lot of structure you can borrow from elsewhere, if you're looking for a more heavily gamified campaign (which looks to be pretty heavily implied by the opening post) the obvious thing to do would be to compile a bunch of upgrades, and put them in some sort of structure, starting with something pretty simple. This might involve explicit choices between conflicting options, a bunch of different things to spend money on, an upgrade tree, or a whole bunch of other things.

Regardless a viable option of some sort might be:
Base Ship Options: Rowboat, Raft, Canoe
Upgrades
Sail (Probably several different upgrades)
Keel
Outrigger
Iron Cladding
Rudder
Cargo Hold
Ballista Mount (Probably several)
Ram
Internal Ribbing
Life Boats


Magic adds a few more options. Notably:
Base Enchantments: Enchanted Oil (special oil the ship is soaked in that makes it hold spells better), Living Wood (Makes the ship alive, helps justify improvements)
Upgrades
Magic Growth
Icecutter Prow
Bag of Winds
Hydrofoils
Magic Turbo Boost
Deployable Balloon
Regeneration
Searchlights
Fire Resistant Coating
Seeker Ballista
Spell Cannon


A few of these are more critical than others - magical growth lets you work what would normally need to be ship improvements into upgrades, and can probably work as a pretty core part of an upgrade tree, where some upgrades are size locked. I'd probably refine this a bit if I were doing this as an actual campaign myself and not just throwing a quick basic structure at the wall, and you probably should too, but it could work.

[Callak_Remier]

Expect them to immediatly sell it for Money