Looking Forward to "Stormwrack"

[cignus_pfaccari]

And as I pointed out I suspect that more than 50% of Stormwrack will be dealing with the surface and the shore, not the depths.

Good. I have no use for vast quantities of underwater stuff.

Brad

 

[DragonLancer]

I'm hoping that it will cover underwater environments as well though. Not including that would be a bit of a disservice I think.

 

[Mark Hope]

Just so long as it has stats for a super-advanced mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, I will be able to die happy. Swivelling hooks!!! What more can a man ask for??!!!

 

[Aeolius]

More on Stormwrack has been posted HERE . Lots of undersea stuff.. :: phew :: And a sea witch...now, where have I seen that before?

 

[Pinotage]

Thanks for the link! I hadn't noticed it was there yet. My aquatic campaing officially finished today!

Anywho, I was hoping for more underwater stuff, but this sounds more like sefaring pirates than anything else. If that's the case, it's been done to death. Why is everybody so afraid to tread beneath the waves?

Pinotage

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Dammit, I'm gonna be poor again.

Welcome to my world!

 

[Steverooo]

OK, I was considering asking folks why anyone would get so revved-up about the one earthly terrain that adventurers are least likely to spend any great deal of time exploring or adventuring in, but I figured I'd let it pass because I wouldn't receive satisfactory answers.

But now I have to take the bait. How the heck does water qualify as having "the largest appeal to the masses"? A party trekking through desert or tundra has a certain heroic appeal to it. I can paint a cool picture of that in my mind. But a party trekking across an ocean floor with schools of fish swimming around them and checking their watches every few minutes to see if it's time to take another swig of their water-breathing potions? That just strikes me as an absurd visual. I don't see that as having the greatest mass appeal.

Water is an obstacle that separates point A from point B. Sure, your ship can attacked by krakkens and pirates in transit, but that alone doesn't merit an entire book IMO.

In the ancient & Medieval world, land travel tended to be both slow, and dangerous. The quickest & easiest way to get to where you wanted to go was to take passage aboard a ship. Now ocean travel wasn't exactly safe, but it was about 10x faster, so you had fewer encounters along the way, so it was therefore far safer.

Hence, a book dealing with the ocean (and lake, and sea, and river, etc.) environment would be of more interest to more campaigns, as it is the logical way, at lower levels, to get from the (Ant-)Arctic to the Desert, without RPing MONTHS worth of overland travel!

(I once played in a campaign based upon ancient Rome wherein we spent a year going back from a Halfling village after having solved their Bulette problem. Too bad we were land-locked, and couldn't sail home!).

So y'see, matey, boats 'n' ships 'n' weather iz as important as Davy Jones' locker, and moreso, to the common man who'll ne'er see it! Arr! Har-har-de-har!

 

[Steverooo]

Why is everybody so afraid to tread beneath the waves?

Two words forya: Dispel Magic!

Besides needing Water Breathing & Free Action, there is no spell in the core rules to allow for dealing with the pressure variations, bends, etc. At least the dungeon, while a hostile environment, won't kill you if you enter an Anti-Magic Sphere. The ocean generally will. Sahuagin, encountering your PCs below the waves, will Dispel Magic, and be done dealing with you... Even if you have a Necklace of Adaptation, or somesuch, a targetted Dispel Magic will KO it for long enough to make you pretty surely dead.

At deep depths (more than 150'), any cold spell that strikes you will envelop you in ice, forcing you to the surface. The bends will then incapacitate you, and probably finish you off.

Now Oathbound: Domains of the Forge has some Prestige Race ways around all of that... They're not dispellable, but give you ways to "modify your race" to gain gills, become acquatic, survive crushing pressures, and even survive without air. As D&D stands now, the Anti-Magic magics rule, for surface dwellers below the depths! They SHOULD be very afraid to walk the ocean floor!

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Why is everybody so afraid to tread beneath the waves?

Dispel Magic & Mordenkainen's Disjunction.

 

[Mark Hope]

Chapter Two delves into the Races of the Sea, introducing three new seafaring races (the aventi, darfellan, and hadozee)

Hadozee - aren't those the "deck apes" from Spelljammer? They were a pretty cool concept back in the day - I wonder how they have been ported over to an an aquatic setting...