Help me flesh out ship's crew

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Good at crafting NPC's?

Show your stuff.

I've attached a list of characters for a ship in my D&D/AE homebrew called "The Southrunner" in both pdf and xls formats. Each has a name, race and level. They use a variety of sources. Take a look at the table and choose one, or more than one, to write up. When you are done, post your work here in this thread. When all of them are done, we'll put up a poll and vote on who creates the most most imaginative NPC within the rules. Suitable sources include all books published by WotC (including Unearthed Arcana) and Malhavoc Press (except Iron Heroes).

Remember, power is not what's important. Compellingly interesting is.

Unless some publisher comes along wanting to sponsor this contest, the only prize is bragging rights.

Finally, all submissions immediately enter the public domain, freely available for use by anyone.

 

[Animal]

too lazy to write it all up yourself?
seriously though, most of your crew is of unnecessarily high level. some of them should have enough skill and money (due to their levels) to own their own vessels. or is it some kind of aquapark for adventurers?
and what kind of ship is that? a greatship? otherwise it doesn't need so many crewmen.

 

[Bad Paper]

...all...PC...classes...head...hurts...

And there are four gestalt NPCs mixed in there. I thought the "gestalt" label got affixed to the campaign, not to each character.

um, yeah, unless this is a strange circumstance (and adventures usually are), the power-to-crew ratio is entirely too high. In particular, I cannot believe that the leadership would allow such a powerful crew to serve underneath it, for fear of mutiny. Crew is crew, meaning NPC classes like Expert and Commoner. How can you advance in, say, rogue, if you're busy hauling rigging?

I've been tremendously busy building NPCs for my campaign, so I'll likely be unable to get too involved, but I may try one of these sometime this weekend.

 

[Ilium]

I don't know, looks like fun to me. Nobody above 10th level means that a big chest of buried treasure with some good magic items is still enticing. And knocking over a wealthy convoy becomes practical with those spell casters.

I'll have a go this week-end.

 

[moritheil]

Merchant ship? Navy ship? Pirate ship?

 

[roguerouge]

I concur that this is a bit more complicated than it needs to be. Experts and Commoners will work fine. If it is a very combat oriented ship, I recommend rangers, for the skill points.

Detail the leadership, leave the 40 or so crew to one or two classes and individualize with a single trait only when you need to.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Actually if this is a fighting ship you look a bit short on crew. Even a tiny little brig of 200-300 tons could run into 80-100 crew. Remember you need watch and watch for routine sailhandling, plus covering gun crews (assuming you have guns, if not you still need a sorcerer and some meatshields to protect him), plus enough to detach a couple prize crews without stripping your own vessel beyond reason.

 

[Animal]

brig required not more than 20 crewmen to sail. where did you get your figures from?

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I don't want to give the impression that I'm ignoring the thread, or anyone's very sensible questions, but I also don't want to stifle creativity. If you see something wacky, explain it as you see fit. Not everyone's explanations will jibe. That's fine. Maybe this is a ship with a complement of 200 and these are only the named crew. Maybe this is the entire crew and there's a reason that they all have PC class levels. You decide.

Oh, and Bad Paper, yes, gestalt is normally applied to a whole campaign or not at all, but clearly, that's not the case here.

Animal, I have already statted and detailed these characters - in fact, some have been in use almost 10 years now, and, in any case, since AD&D 2e. I am convinced, though, by long experience, that ENWorlders as a community can make more interesting NPCs than I, as an individual can.

I will refrain from further commentary or explanation until the characters are done.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

brig required not more than 20 crewmen to sail. where did you get your figures from?

Remember I pointed out that it was short AS A FIGHTING SHIP. Merchant brigs could get by on a crew of about 20 because all they needed was sail-handling and maneuvering with enough reserve to handle storms and emergencies.

If this is a fighting ship they need that base of 20. Then you have the gun crews which would be from 4-6 per gun and an armed brig could expect to have roughly 8-12 guns. If there are no guns you have to replace these with teams of low level artillery sorcerers and guards which amount to about the same manpower. Then you need enough crew on top of that to put out an average of 3 prize crews without stripping the crew beyond its ability to keep the vessel operating. Then they need enough extra to deal with casualties (which were heavy in sailing navies). In British service brig sloops averaged around a hundred crew.