I am thinking about getting a spelljammer rounds started, but there are a few things I just can't find info on in my books. Maybe I am just blind...
- What is the price of a) a minor helm, b) a major helm, c) a Ki helm, and is that price included in the costs of the various ships?
- What is the price you have to pay for a) helmsmen per level, b) officers per level, c) sailors per level, d) cannoneers per level, d) marines per level? The book gives lots of rules for weapons and number of crew necessary for the rigging, and the adventures say how much money the characters get for this or that adventure, but I have a hard time figuring out the costs of running a ship.
- How many hours can one operate a helm? I could just find that for the Ki helm. Most enemy ships I found in the books seemed to have just one spellcaster. Wouldn't they be adrift quite some time?
- Isn't the Ki helm the most effective helm there is? The 3eshipcombat pdf states that veteran riggers are level 6, expert riggers are level 9. So if my group is level 12, it seems reasonable that they could hire professionals of such levels to do their sailing. But if they just got a Ki helm and hired 8 level 6 monks, their ship will have an MV of 12, outrunning any enemy and driving circles around slower ones. Take level 8 monks, and that instead is MV 14. Wouldn't that make almost any encounter situation unbalanced, seeing that they can just circle an opponent to ram him from behind before that opponent can even reach them?
- The skulls and crossbows adventure gives players letters of marque to hunt pirates. How is that done when the players have no such letters? Are they not allowed to keep the conquered pirate ship and its content? Traditionally, letters of marque were only needed when attacking enemy ships, not pirate ships, which didn't effectively belong to one country.
- How does the gold balance out? It seems to me that adventures have grossly different return values for the players. Capture a pirate ship, and you have several tenthousands of worth on your hands from ship and helm alone I guess. Fight a neogi, and you have lots of repairs and only a few thankful but naked slaves for your effords. How does a DM balance that to let the players neither grow too rich too fast and neither too poor to pay their men?
- Are there more detailed stats for the ships anywhere other than in the War Captains Companion? I am especially interested in Nautiloid, Darkviper and Triop details, regarding hull/plating/rigging etc. Because if my players get a ship, they will have to figure out which improvement and which repair costs what, and for that, they need to know what the ship is made of now in detail. Where do I find that input for the typical ships?
- How are small ships like flitters powered? Do they each really have a complete helm? Isn't that a bit expensive?
Thanks.
But here's my answers & advice on them:1) Minor helm - 100,000 gp, Major helm - 250,000 gp, Ki - priceless? (not sure, books at home). Helms are not included in the price of a ship; that's for a hull & maybe weapons.
2) Helmsmen are like 100 gp per level per month. Sailors were something like 2-3 gp per month (per level). Marines I think are double what sailors earn, something like 4-6 gp per month (per level). Officers are usually PCs and get a cut of the treasure taken; otherwise, pay rates vary (as per real-world), probably comperable to helmsmen.
3) You can use a helm up to 12 hours. After that, fatigue sets in and performance degrades rapidly.
4) Yes, the ki helm is extremely potent. However, only 6 exist, and those are tightly controlled. Taking one would require tackling a 200-ton behemoth, and setting the Empire of Wa at your throats. Taking one would likely be the focus of an empire campaign centered on Realmspace. Treat kinda like getting the Hand of Vecna.
5) Taking a pirate ship without the proper Letters is tricky. Depending on the port, you yourself could be arrested & charged with piracy, if the pirates are well-connected. I think there are special provisions for "self-defense", but require the proper bribing & payments of taxes. The end result is often a lot of trouble and very costly.
6) Helms are generally the hardest part to work with. There are a couple of ways to deal with it. 1. My DM has introduced "mage-helms" (create major helm + permanency) at a much cheaper rate, which creates lesser helms. 2. Because there are mage-helms & an abundent helm market, prices are forced down. Used helms sell for less; afterall, you could be picking up an elcheapo helm and paying top rates. I'd suggest that used ships & helms sell for at most 50% of listed value, less if extensively damaged. And my DM has made helms rather fragile, no hardier than the chair their made out of. If destroyed, they unleash 1-4 wildsurges that can wreck havoc. We lost a captured ship that way (it turned into green slime!).
I think the product you need to get is the original Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space, which explains most of your questions. You can either get it used or as an electronic download (though I'm not sure if these are still available). If you're willing to wait til July, you could pick up Hackjammer, which is a Hackmaster version of Spelljammer.
The nautaloid is detailed in the boxed set I just mentioned, as are rules for plating & other modifications to SJ ships. The vipership is from Lost Ships. The Triop is from WCC and has no more info about it elsewhere.
Flitters can be powered by "non-magic helms", which are pretty cheap (10k gp) or, if you want to elaborate & modify some rules a bit, fly spells. Only rarely are they fitted with full-blown helms, namely when they want speed.
The helm prices are still a difficulty to me. Even if I halve the prices, if every captured major helm is worth more than 100.000 gp, I have a feeling it is hard to keep the gp balance halfway straight. I just can't damage the player ship enough to warrant repairs in that category, an entirely new hammership just costs 60k. Given, you can make helms fragile, but the "oh, and your helm got smashed too" routine should get old pretty soon.
So I'll make the prices rather 1/10 of those you mentioned, I guess (and selling something is at half price, of course).
Hmmm, I guess I'll have to experiment on it.
I thought I have the "Spelljammer Adventures in Space". Isn't that which consists of the Lorebook of the Void and the Warcaptains Companion? Or is there an older version that I am not aware of?
The Spelljammer boxed set consisted of the Lorebook of the Void & the Concordenance of Arcane Space. War Captain's Compendium is a second, completely separate boxed set.
The baseline statistics of a ship are found in Lorebook, or the Ship guide from WCC. These are the basic stats of a ship. There are no really solid rules on how TSR originally got these numbers; many were just set down because they looked good. The WCC did present a system, but numbers generated from that system will not match those of the official ships. Thus you get some quirky results (such as the vipership-gawd ship, or the quarter-sized mindspider that has a size 1/4th its tonnage indicates).
Rules for applying plating an all of that is in Concordenance. Generally, an improvement in one stat has a cost in another, plus cash. You can only do an improvement once. Rule of thumb is to just use your best judgement.
The skulls and crossbows adventure gives players letters of marque to hunt pirates. How is that done when the players have no such letters? Are they not allowed to keep the conquered pirate ship and its content? Traditionally, letters of marque were only needed when attacking enemy ships, not pirate ships, which didn't effectively belong to one country.
Speaking of letters of marque, can someone explain exactly what benefit a person gained by obtaining one? I mean, an enemy nation is hardly likely to let you get away with attacking their ships because you have a letter of marque, so what's the point of having one?
Wyvern
Speaking of letters of marque, can someone explain exactly what benefit a person gained by obtaining one? I mean, an enemy nation is hardly likely to let you get away with attacking their ships because you have a letter of marque, so what's the point of having one?
Wyvern
As I understand it, Letters of Marque are legalized piracy. Where the benefit of having them comes into play is attacking enemy merchant vessels. In real life, they were highly prized because it gave legal cover to attack the rich Spanish treasure ships returning from the New World. The Crown would get a cut of the booty, but even if they took say 60%, you still got enough gold, after expenses, to set yourself up as a landed lord.
In SJ terms, how valuable Letters are would depend on how you set up your universe. If you have at least a "core" area of civilized spheres, they all might reconnize universal laws about piracy. Thus, you seize a treasure ship & try to sell it in the port of a rival country without a set of Letters, you'd be arrested for piracy and your ship impounded. If your universe is more like a chaotic jumble with ports across 10,000 spheres, than it might not be likely you'll be caught.
In real life, basically, only navy ship could freely engage enemy ships. All other ships attacking ships were considered pirates. Just imagine someone today stopped a truck on the highway to steal all its cargo. Noone would first look at the licence plate before calling that a robbery.
Letters of Marque were the exception to that rule. With a letter of marque, a private ship owner could start hunting ships of a certain nation, capturing them and keeping them as a "prize". Then, he wouldn't be a pirate, but a privateer, which was entirely legal. The problem was just that it was hard to be sure which nation a ship really belonged to. In spanish waters, all ships flagged spanish, whether they were spanish or dutch. So there was some danger of attacking the wrong ship, which would be a problem. Famous Captain Kidd was a privateer originally and claimed to be one till his execution, although in reality he quickly slipped into real piracy when he couldn't find good prizes.
For spelljammer, that's hard to transfer since the void is much more lawless and not as controlled by powerful nations. Also, a letter of marque against pirates is sort of a contradiction, of course anyone could fight a known pirate. The adventures in that book use the letter more as a way to give the players money for caught pirates.
It could be interesting to implement such items in the spelljammer universe, but would take some tinkering with the universe...
It could be interesting to implement such items in the spelljammer universe, but would take some tinkering with the universe...
I believe the thing to remember is that the primary purpose of the Letters was to ensure that the Crown got a cut of the action...
The adventure in Skulls & Crossbows is sorta misnamed; I guess it should have been using Bounties rather than Letters.
I believe the thing to remember is that the primary purpose of the Letters was to ensure that the Crown got a cut of the action...
Not so much. The main purpose was to damage the opponent's trade without producing total anarchy on the oceans which would disrupt your own trade too. The cut the crown got from the prize money wasn't that much, when a privateer was involved. Even with a navy ship capturing the prize, the crown didn't get more than a quarter if I remember right.