Folding boats, pirate ships and how to make them fly

[Piratecat]

My group has a pirate ship that also is a larger-than-normal folding boat. They also have an air keel, a magic item that I pulled out of my butt which (when attached to a ship) allows the ship to fly. They want to insert Tab A into Slot B, and this brings up all kinds of interesting and esoteric questions... all of which would be easier for me to answer if I could find my copy of Mongoose's Seas of Blood.

Darrrrr.... Suggestions are welcomed!

1. What's reasonable for a small pirate ship -- 50'? 60'?

2. If you head down to your local shipyard and buy/commission a fast 50' or 60' ship, how much would that ship cost?

3. If folding boats really only cost 7200 gp, much cheaper than a similarly sized boat (I believe), how come every merchant in the world doesn't have one?

4. How much would you increase the cost if you doubled the size of the standard folding boat (48' long, 16' wide)?

5. If you had the aforementioned air keel, do you think it's reasonable that it could be enchanted to fold with the rest of the boat for the cost of a standard folding boat (7200 gp)?

6. What enchantment would you add to an air keel to stop its magic from being temporarily nullified by a dispel magic (which would drop the ship)?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

 

[Shallown]

1) Its easier to express it in terms of crew and how many people you want on board then extract a size. Small is very relative. 50-60 feet can hold more poeple than one would think. a 50-60 foot would be 8-10 crew or so, If I remember correctly.

2) maybe 4-5 thousand. Hard to say with D&D economics.

3) Fear of magic.. Something people don't have a lot of in some games. Just because it is more common doesn't make superstitions go away.

4) Maybe double the price. Your not gaining a whole lot with increasing its size. Its not like the boat is getting more powerful. Most of that would be raw material cost for a larger ship.

5) You could make it just become part of the ship and gains the properties of the ship attached to it so it folds cause the boat does. If anything it would be worth 2-3 times as much since flight is superior than other forms of movement and add to the fact of increase "cargo" it could then haul unlike a flight spell you notonly move the ship but everything in it.

6) Just make the caster level higher just for that reason. Maybe layering the flight spells so if one is dispelled another remains, or maybe a featherfall affect that is also always on but no one notices cause the ship flies. Anti-magic is the real danger.

Later


6)

 

[AuraSeer]

The Arms & Equipment Guide has some stats and prices on vehicles.

1) A ship of the size you describe would probably be a Keelboat, which is 60' x 20'. It has both sails and oars, but isn't intended for sea voyages-- it seldom goes out of sight of land. Standard crew is 15 people.

2) A standard keelboat costs 3000 gp. It's not exactly "fast", but the next quicker listing is the Sailing Ship; that one is 80' long, goes twice as fast in the same wind, and costs 10k gp.

3) A folding boat is much more expensive than a nonmagical boat. Its ship form is abou the same size as a Launch, which costs 500 gp. This is basically a lifeboat rather than an independent ship of its own.

4) For a double size folding boat, I'd probably just double the price, then add a few thousand more for the extra flexibility. (It now has three forms instead of two.) So call it around 17,000 gp.

5) I'd say that is more than reasonable. In fact, I might even drop the extra cost entirely. I'm inclined to say that magical enhancements placed on the boat will automatically be folded along with it.

6) How about a modified version of the ring of counterspells power? Three times a day, any dispel cast on the keel is automatically countered. The power can be recharged up to its daily max of three, by having a friendly caster expend a sixth-level slot into it.

NB: The AEG lists a magic item called a Cloud Keel which lets ships fly, but it costs 200k gp. I think that's obscenely overpriced, especially since the ability to sail between planes only costs 72k.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Not directly related, but you may want to check out the githyanki Astral ships from the Incursion... I believe there are some rules on constructing those vessels that may be helpful in pricing and size.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Aura covered the ship prices great, .Wouldn't a dispel magic also make folding-boat fold back up if successfuly dispeled? Yikes, I'd see why some folk wouldn't want to have one of those then. As for adding the magic keel to the folding boat, I'd use the DMG adding a second magic ability to a magic item for costs as this is essentially what they are doing. Perhaps a craft contingency spell on the ship that casts fly if it's fly is dispeled. The fly spell does have the affect of feather fall if the spell is ended, so why not the same for the boat? Lol, though I like the idea of a Mast or Anchor of Counterspells!

 

[Pbartender]

Heya, PC, I've been doind quite a bit of piratey research for my next campaign, which will feature a flying ship. Here's my advice...

Your typical pirate ship from the Golden Age of Piracy was a sloop. These ships had a single mast, with a fore-and-aft rigged mainsail, sometimes a square-rigged mainsail, a jib sail, and a sprit sail, though actual rigging varied widely from sloop to sloop, they all had only the one mast (sloops with more than one mast are schooners). They were normally between 40 to 60 feet in length and weighed in at about a 100 tons. As few as a half dozen to a dozen men could sail one, though pirate and military crews often had 40-50 men aboard (for boarders and gunners for the cannons). If you are using cannon, the typical sloop could might mount anywhere from 4 to 24 cannon of various sizes.

I would suggest not having anything to counteract dispelling... It's a danger the crew must endure, and would encourage the crew to keep the ship at a minimum altitude. If the ship sails only ten or twenty feet off the ground, it and the crew won't take much falling damage if the effect is dispelled.

Alternately, instead of Flying, give the ship the double effects of Levitation and Feather Falling. This does two things... First, though the ship floats over the ground, the crew must still sail the ship, and if the winds are not favorable, they may get slowed down or stuck entirely. Second, if an enemy casts Dispel Magic, they must over come two spells before the ships crashes from the sky... If the Feather Fall is dispelled but not the Levitate, then the ship continues on. If the Levitate is dispelled but not the Feather Fall, then the ship slowly floats down out of the sky.

I can't honestly help with the pricing... I've never been very good at that.

Oh... And if you haven't given the item yet, it'd be much cooler to make it a figurehead, than a keel. A figurehead of a pegasus, or a winged angel, or a valkyrie or something similarly appropriate.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Hmmm, let me check Broadsides, my favorite ship sourcebook.

1 & 2. Pirate ships tended to be small and fast, relying on deception more than pure firepower. In a D&D game that doesn't have to be the case, but a 50' to 60' ship would be just fine. In Broadsides, such a vessel would run 18,000 to 36,000, roughly speaking. Three masts, a crew of as few as 6 to as many as 20, with the usual complement being 9-13 sailors.

3. A folding boat's largest size is normally 24', and a similar sized boat in Broadsides would run between 2,500 (sail boat) and 3,500 (fishing boat). So 7,200 gp for a magical one is still a little cheap, but still more expensive than a real boat. Would I love to have a Honda Civic I could stick in my pocket? Sure, but I can barely afford the full-size one sitting in the parking lot now, much less one that cost me 35-50 K.

4. I'd double it in each dimension, so 4X. Call it 28,000 gp.

5. Sure! I mean, it's designed to meld with a boat, so why not? I might make the cost = the increased cost of the larger folding boat, if I felt it had to cost money at all - like I said, it's what the item is meant to do, so why not just let them do it for free? It's not their fault they found a really cool ship to attach it to...

6. Well, by standard fly rules, the spell doesn't end suddenly. So it would be likely to cause a gradual drop in altitude - though there would be some danger, as dispel magic takes out a magic item for 1d4 rounds, and fly drops slowly (60' per round, though 10' a second is still a bit scary) for 1d6 rounds - then plummets. Best to fly low.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

And BTW, I really like Pbartender's idea of making it Levitate, not fly, for exactly the reasons he puts forward - it's much cooler if it still has to be sailed.

 

[AuraSeer]

AEG's "cloud keel" gives its boat a fly speed of only 40' (clumsy), but it can still use its sails if they give it a better speed. That means most any boat will use sail power in all but the calmest weather.

 

[The Weregamer]

Oddly enough, in our last campaign, one of our PC's, who wanted to become a pirate, got a folding boat and had it enchanted to fly. Basically, it had the "levitate and use the sails" design suggested above. Not only was it a great mode of transportation for the party, it sparked a revolution in trade in the kingdom, as all the wealthiest merchants went scrambling for their own flying ships.