Voadam
Legend
JPL said:
Well if you go scifi and/or dragonstar pirates then www.sjgames.com has Traveller ship hex and 1" square maps. They have dungeon, cavern, and a haunted house that could be used for D&D but no sailing ships.
Pirates and d20
- Thread starter JPL
- Start date
Well if you go scifi and/or dragonstar pirates then www.sjgames.com has Traveller ship hex and 1" square maps. They have dungeon, cavern, and a haunted house that could be used for D&D but no sailing ships.
I think the biggest problem with standard D&D rules for swashbuckling pirate tales is that the classes are too magic heavy. Really the only classes that are all that appropriate without modification are rogue and fighter.
For this reason, I think that Swashbuckling Adventures is an invaluable resource. I liked the Broadsides! naval rules better though, and judging by that book I'd wager that the upcoming Pirates! book will also be top notch.
You could run a great game with just Swashbuckling Adventures though and it really adds a lot that standard D&D doesn't handle very well. Aside from the naval rules you get classes for courtiers and nobles, musketeers, pirates, etc. In addition there are feats to make the unarmored option much more palatable (which is essential in a pirate game) as well as nicely tuned equipment that can make heroes look forward to gear upgrades without relying on a bunch of magic items and over a hundred fighting schools to add lots of flavor and diversity to the combat.
What makes Swashbuckling Adventures so great is not the stuff you can get from naval supplements (which frankly handle that aspect more thoroughly than Swash. Adv.). It's all the other stuff to help the game get the right feel. The hubris/flaws is also great and adds a new dramatic dimension typical of swashbuckling movies but not typical of D&D games. Action dice would also be a good idea.
For this reason, I think that Swashbuckling Adventures is an invaluable resource. I liked the Broadsides! naval rules better though, and judging by that book I'd wager that the upcoming Pirates! book will also be top notch.
You could run a great game with just Swashbuckling Adventures though and it really adds a lot that standard D&D doesn't handle very well. Aside from the naval rules you get classes for courtiers and nobles, musketeers, pirates, etc. In addition there are feats to make the unarmored option much more palatable (which is essential in a pirate game) as well as nicely tuned equipment that can make heroes look forward to gear upgrades without relying on a bunch of magic items and over a hundred fighting schools to add lots of flavor and diversity to the combat.
What makes Swashbuckling Adventures so great is not the stuff you can get from naval supplements (which frankly handle that aspect more thoroughly than Swash. Adv.). It's all the other stuff to help the game get the right feel. The hubris/flaws is also great and adds a new dramatic dimension typical of swashbuckling movies but not typical of D&D games. Action dice would also be a good idea.
If you're all drooling over ship models anyway... have a look at this beauty presented by Rockrattled over in the Art Gallery board:
The decks are made of foam board covered with a printed-out wood planking pattern. The decks come apart, and are held in place by the three masts.
The decks are made of foam board covered with a printed-out wood planking pattern. The decks come apart, and are held in place by the three masts.
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drnuncheon
Explorer
alsih2o said:
made of a castable resin, very durable.
i am shooting for $20, and shipping is a mystery
Miniature scaled resin ships for ~$20?
Damn.
J
Renaissance Man
First Post
And don't forget the pirates of the Far East, or the Indian Sea for that matter. There are a lot of pirate traditions outside of the Caribbean!
Ditto that. Sigh.
Gotta be an errant decimal point out there somewhere. But if not, sign me up!
Jolly Giant
First Post
I've been running a pirate campaign with straigt D&D rules for a couple of years now. It soon became obvious that it just didn't work. Even the greatest warship can be sunk by a simple lightning bolt aimed exactly at the waterline, and a 5d6 fireball in the rigging will destroy a trading ships chances of outsailing the pirates.
The campaign went on, though, I just had to introduce a merchant/shipowner with close ties to a major arcane guild to give the PCs a decent challenge and keep things interesting...
We also sidetracked along some mini-campaigns within the big one, but the players were always eager to get back to their tropical island hide-out and trusty sailingship.
By now the players are at level 19, cruising the outer planes in a custom built, 300ft ship. It has permanent Levitation and is surrounded by a permanent Control Weather spell, so with it's well-experienced blackguard captain at the helm it can fly quite effectively. The ship also has the ability to Planeshift 1/day and whoever is at the helm can use Storm of Vengeance 1/day. Cost the PCs close 3.000.000 gp to make...
Wow, this got quite long...
I really just wanted to say that even though a classical pirate-style campaign only works under the normal D&D rules up to level 4-5, you can still have an enormous amount of fun by making a pirate-style D&D campaign! (Or maybe a D&D-style pirate campaign..? 
) And without bying any extra books...
The campaign went on, though, I just had to introduce a merchant/shipowner with close ties to a major arcane guild to give the PCs a decent challenge and keep things interesting...
We also sidetracked along some mini-campaigns within the big one, but the players were always eager to get back to their tropical island hide-out and trusty sailingship.
By now the players are at level 19, cruising the outer planes in a custom built, 300ft ship. It has permanent Levitation and is surrounded by a permanent Control Weather spell, so with it's well-experienced blackguard captain at the helm it can fly quite effectively. The ship also has the ability to Planeshift 1/day and whoever is at the helm can use Storm of Vengeance 1/day. Cost the PCs close 3.000.000 gp to make...
Wow, this got quite long...
I really just wanted to say that even though a classical pirate-style campaign only works under the normal D&D rules up to level 4-5, you can still have an enormous amount of fun by making a pirate-style D&D campaign! (Or maybe a D&D-style pirate campaign..? ) And without bying any extra books...
Snapshot from our current campaign...
Our lvl 5-7 party has just taken their newly finished 75' ship (3-masted carrack, with a hired crew of 20 NPC's) out on it's maiden voyage, trying to tackle the infamous Undead Fleet that's been terrorizing the seas lately.
We came upon a burning ship, which turned out to be just a decoy to lure us into an ambush. Soon after we boarded (after putting the fire out, of course) undead started to come out of the woodwork, and our crow's nest spotted two other ghost ships approaching from opposite directions.
We managed to make short work of the undead on the decoy ship, using up several lightning bolts in the process. Our druid used Shape Wood to make the ram fall off the ship to our rear (unfortunately, these things don't actually *sink* untill you kill off all the undead aboard...), which in combination with a Quaal's feather token (fan) allowed us to easily outrun them. We also managed to disable most of the siege engines of the third (largest) ship, using our own siege weapons, my gnome artificer's grenade launcher, and some fireballs. Then someone from behind a porthole on the third one used a wand of Meteor Storm on our brand new ship, centered on our main mast. Aaaargh!
So right now our party's ship is about to be boarded by a ghost ship about twice the size of ours, filled with a sh*tload of powerful undead (I believe there's one vampire ogre magi, for example), with a second ship slowly catching up to us from the rear. Over half of our 2nd level crew is at -8 or -9 hp (we got lucky!), and our 5-7th level party is scaredless that there might be more charges on that wand of Meteor Storm. That's where we ended off last session. 
Our current plan is to hold up the ship to our rear (the one with the big gaping hole where it's ram used to be) using Plant Growth and Entangle, then send in our own boarding party to the largest ship to take our the undead leadership there. Keep us in your prayers!
Our lvl 5-7 party has just taken their newly finished 75' ship (3-masted carrack, with a hired crew of 20 NPC's) out on it's maiden voyage, trying to tackle the infamous Undead Fleet that's been terrorizing the seas lately.
We came upon a burning ship, which turned out to be just a decoy to lure us into an ambush. Soon after we boarded (after putting the fire out, of course) undead started to come out of the woodwork, and our crow's nest spotted two other ghost ships approaching from opposite directions.
We managed to make short work of the undead on the decoy ship, using up several lightning bolts in the process. Our druid used Shape Wood to make the ram fall off the ship to our rear (unfortunately, these things don't actually *sink* untill you kill off all the undead aboard...), which in combination with a Quaal's feather token (fan) allowed us to easily outrun them. We also managed to disable most of the siege engines of the third (largest) ship, using our own siege weapons, my gnome artificer's grenade launcher, and some fireballs. Then someone from behind a porthole on the third one used a wand of Meteor Storm on our brand new ship, centered on our main mast. Aaaargh!
So right now our party's ship is about to be boarded by a ghost ship about twice the size of ours, filled with a sh*tload of powerful undead (I believe there's one vampire ogre magi, for example), with a second ship slowly catching up to us from the rear. Over half of our 2nd level crew is at -8 or -9 hp (we got lucky!), and our 5-7th level party is scared
less that there might be more charges on that wand of Meteor Storm. That's where we ended off last session. Our current plan is to hold up the ship to our rear (the one with the big gaping hole where it's ram used to be) using Plant Growth and Entangle, then send in our own boarding party to the largest ship to take our the undead leadership there. Keep us in your prayers!
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