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Spelljammer: A 5E Fan Conversion
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<blockquote data-quote="guildsbounty" data-source="post: 6802177" data-attributes="member: 6810481"><p>Yeah, balancing prices while not messing with the feel of the game is a challenge. So far, I've tended to look at the spelljamming helms and think this: "Yes, that's what a brand new spelljammer helm purchased straight from the Arcane might cost." But...with the exception of some exceedingly powerful spells, spelljamming helms are imperishable and indestructible. You could fill a ship to the brim with smokepowder and Alchemist's Fire, then sail it out into The Phlogiston and have a sorcerer stand on deck and cast a Maximized Fireball at Level 9...and the entire ship would be reduced to dust...except the Helm. The Helm would be just fine. And with the nature of The Phlogiston being that it tends to dump things back in proximity of a Crystal Shell...someone is going to find it eventually.</p><p></p><p>The sourcebooks even explicitly say that "the most usual [way of finding a Helm] being discovery in old ruins, or raiding an enemy ship for its helm." According to the core book, most Helms are not purchased, they are found or stolen, and then migrated from ship to ship with their owner. This makes a sort of sense, because for however many thousands of years spelljamming has been a thing, Helms have been produced and sold...and only seldom destroyed. It's entirely possible that the spelljamming helm you just installed is older than your civilization.</p><p></p><p>So yes...the cost of a shiny new spelljamming helm, purchased from the Arcane, is incredibly expensive. But how about buying it from that black market dealer who bought it from a fence who bought it from a thief who stole it from the estate of some noble who went down in a peasant uprising and has had the 'fancy magic chair' in their family for generations without anyone figuring out that it wasn't just some fancy chair with a 'secret' enchantment on it that (as far as anyone could tell) served to make the chair show up as a 'magic item' to impress people...but nothing else. No one who isn't involved in spelljamming is going to have any idea what the fancy magic chair actually is, or how much it is worth. Heck, you might run into a Fence who is trying to get rid of the stupid thing after he called up a Wizard buddy who didn't know what a spelljamming helm was, and told him that it was a stupid worthless chair that showed up as magic but didn't have any real magical effects apart from being, apparently, indestructible. As a DM, I would almost never have the party paying 'new' price for a Helm.</p><p></p><p>That said...I may look at the variety of Helms available and see if I can add some more possibilities to the list...especially given that the cheapest possible spelljamming-type helm you can buy is a Gnomish Helm at 50Kgp.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and as for 'what the Arcane are up to,' that's actually covered in the source book "The Astromundi Cluster." Where we learn that...</p><p></p><p>[sblock]All Spelljamming Helms are actually living artifacts derived from "The First Helm," and they all have a link back to it and transmit information stolen from the minds of every pilot. Whether or not it is malevolent, it is intelligent and was responsible for the wars that destroyed the Reigar homeworld. In short, The Arcane are selling Spelljamming Helms, and then harvesting information from the pilots so they know basically everything going on everywhere in the galaxy and have access to an abundance of secrets, stolen from the minds of nearly every race.</p><p></p><p>Regrettably, this explanation doesn't really make sense, given that it is theoretically possible for a high level spellcaster to create a spelljamming helm, despite the fact that the rulebook says all helms are 'grown' from this First Helm thing.[/sblock]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="guildsbounty, post: 6802177, member: 6810481"] Yeah, balancing prices while not messing with the feel of the game is a challenge. So far, I've tended to look at the spelljamming helms and think this: "Yes, that's what a brand new spelljammer helm purchased straight from the Arcane might cost." But...with the exception of some exceedingly powerful spells, spelljamming helms are imperishable and indestructible. You could fill a ship to the brim with smokepowder and Alchemist's Fire, then sail it out into The Phlogiston and have a sorcerer stand on deck and cast a Maximized Fireball at Level 9...and the entire ship would be reduced to dust...except the Helm. The Helm would be just fine. And with the nature of The Phlogiston being that it tends to dump things back in proximity of a Crystal Shell...someone is going to find it eventually. The sourcebooks even explicitly say that "the most usual [way of finding a Helm] being discovery in old ruins, or raiding an enemy ship for its helm." According to the core book, most Helms are not purchased, they are found or stolen, and then migrated from ship to ship with their owner. This makes a sort of sense, because for however many thousands of years spelljamming has been a thing, Helms have been produced and sold...and only seldom destroyed. It's entirely possible that the spelljamming helm you just installed is older than your civilization. So yes...the cost of a shiny new spelljamming helm, purchased from the Arcane, is incredibly expensive. But how about buying it from that black market dealer who bought it from a fence who bought it from a thief who stole it from the estate of some noble who went down in a peasant uprising and has had the 'fancy magic chair' in their family for generations without anyone figuring out that it wasn't just some fancy chair with a 'secret' enchantment on it that (as far as anyone could tell) served to make the chair show up as a 'magic item' to impress people...but nothing else. No one who isn't involved in spelljamming is going to have any idea what the fancy magic chair actually is, or how much it is worth. Heck, you might run into a Fence who is trying to get rid of the stupid thing after he called up a Wizard buddy who didn't know what a spelljamming helm was, and told him that it was a stupid worthless chair that showed up as magic but didn't have any real magical effects apart from being, apparently, indestructible. As a DM, I would almost never have the party paying 'new' price for a Helm. That said...I may look at the variety of Helms available and see if I can add some more possibilities to the list...especially given that the cheapest possible spelljamming-type helm you can buy is a Gnomish Helm at 50Kgp. Oh, and as for 'what the Arcane are up to,' that's actually covered in the source book "The Astromundi Cluster." Where we learn that... [sblock]All Spelljamming Helms are actually living artifacts derived from "The First Helm," and they all have a link back to it and transmit information stolen from the minds of every pilot. Whether or not it is malevolent, it is intelligent and was responsible for the wars that destroyed the Reigar homeworld. In short, The Arcane are selling Spelljamming Helms, and then harvesting information from the pilots so they know basically everything going on everywhere in the galaxy and have access to an abundance of secrets, stolen from the minds of nearly every race. Regrettably, this explanation doesn't really make sense, given that it is theoretically possible for a high level spellcaster to create a spelljamming helm, despite the fact that the rulebook says all helms are 'grown' from this First Helm thing.[/sblock] [/QUOTE]
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