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13-14th century Venetian galleys were large, with something up to 200+ people (sailors, officers, rowers). War galleys would have archers and marines, boosting that number to 400-500 in times of war ( in peace time it was around 250 ) And those are ships for Adriatic and Mediterranean sea...

Also, when it comes to ships. Most type they used in Caribbean were sloops, schooners and cutters. Merchant sloops had as few as 6 crew members. Pirates and privateers usually had 40-60 (crew for cannons and boarding party). Cutters were even smaller, with 20-30 people. Schooners were a bit...

I'll C/P part of my first post on this topic. Turn pirate campaign into treasure seeking, with old incomplete or partially deciphered map, on some remote island, so you can skip hassle of ship to ship combat. You know, start with rumors in the inns, then quest to find map, then quest to find...

And that's why i recomend 1ed 7th sea. It has this genius thing called brute squads. Each squad is usually 3-5 people. One flesh wound you inflict-1 member down. Couple of brute squads on either side and you have 30 vs 30 people, but in play, it's 6 v 6. Oh, and best thing is, squads get weaker...

Cause One Piece uses pirates as aesthetic mostly. Yes, it looks like D&D cause it's fantasy adventure with pirate visuals.

Drawback is, you become weaker. DS balances offence and defense with them being proportionally opposite. With more encounters you gain more victories, you can use stronger offensive abilities. But, you don't rest, so you don't get those hp back. If you rest, you are back to full health, but you...

Remember back in the days of D&D Next, there was big talk about modularity? Well, with good rules modularity, you can go wide. But, with 5.5 they even went further away from modularity and went more into streamlining and unification.

And that is design problem of a game that tries to do all. It's mediocre at best in many things. While people blasted 4e, it had clear game play style in mind and was designed for that specific style and it did it pretty good. 5e was designed to cover as many styles as possible, but to...

Braking in sense that they use it to slow down? Sure. But on the other hand, it removes rewards of going murderhobo just to squeeze few extra xp. This. It's not hard to cram trash encounters. But DM knows they are trash, players know they are trash and all they do is serve to chip away some of...

Only difference is, in 3e, leveling by xp was kind of still norm. In 5e, people switched to milestones for the most part. When you level by XP you are more incentivised to fight, to squeeze extra encounter or two in a day so you can hit those last few XP's you are short of level up (cause...

Classification is misleading. It should be measured against 5 person party (or 4 person, if that's standard, but that should be written) with all resources and full HP. Most of encounters i ran are in deadly or above category, but most player deaths occur more due to sheer bad lack on their...

Adventuring day and number of encounters per day with number of encounters for leveling went out of the window when people stopped using XP and switched to milestone leveling. It opened up more play options and made circumventing encounters viable playstayle that didn't punish you. With xp for...

As for inspiration, for more fantasy take, The Pirates of Dark Water. Awesome early 90s fantasy cartoon, with just 21 episodes. But it's fun and it blends fantasy and pirate tropes well. You can just use plot of cartoon for solid campaign (find 13 macguffins to save the kingdom). Other one, is...

Our current campaign is set in the middle of civil war, with our party being elite mercenary company that sided with one of the factions and we are currently dealing with large influx of refugees while preparing for siege and possible naval blockade. Basically, 2 dukes are set by king against...

Not just spell pruning. If i would run it, i would prune classes. Fighter, rogue, bard and ranger only. They fit theme of pirate shenanigans best, you still have some magic via sub classes and bard/ranger. And this is ironically, one type of campaign ranger would fit great with it's abilities (...

You can run a pirate-themed campaign in 5e, but it’s not a great fit without some serious adjustments. The rules are built for land-based, small-party adventures, so naval combat and ship management rules are underdeveloped. The few official rules for sailing (like those in Ghosts of Saltmarsh)...

If you are going pirate, ditch D&D. It's seriously isn't that great. I would suggest 7th sea, 1st edition. It's game about swasbuckling adventures and pirates fit right in (there is also Pirate nations expansion). While spellslingers in dnd have some long range spells, fireballs 150 feet is...

While item is cool, from practical side, it does 5 more damage. Bonus to hit is better in long run since +2 gives you 10% more chance. It's trade off, but some people value more smaller damage that's more reliable than higher damage with less chance to land. Resistance to psychic sounds cool...

Mix. Very few were found since we rarely do classic dungeon looting, some bought, some were rewards. Ring was created by my character, along with few other items (except my sword, all others were just fun gimmicks with situational usefulness). Point is, if you shift focus away from combat...

It might be due to style of play. I'll give you two examples. One of my friends runs PF1. It's all about combat, almost 80% of every session I've played in his campaigns were - combat. So, what did we buy or make? Items that boosted combat capabilities. Were those boring? Hell yeah they were...