The world is 99% ocean

[MEG Hal]

Feel free to take a gander at my undersea campaign (link below) for ideas. Also, be on the lookout for "The Deep" by Mystic Eye Games.

The Deep may be a huge help to you, you should look at it.

 

[Crothian]

Last year a few people on the boards including myself made Shark World, a world with very little land. It was a lot of fun and can be found all over these boards.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I've got something like this coming up... The world is typically an ice world produced by an Elemental Godling (was Cryonax in 2E but I've since switched to a homemade being since the whole OGL thing hit...). If the PCs manage to end his reign (35% of the world is still unfrozen, the rest is glacier), than all that ice is going to melt...

Quickly.

 

[d20fool]

Sea World

First of all, you HAVE to have a giant killer whale named Keiko. . .

Just kidding.

I run a piratical campaign in a world dominated by water. The largest continent is smaller than Australia. I have to recommend Fantasy Flight's "Seafarer's Companion" as a main source of info, and "Seas of Blood" has been helpful as well. The "Slayer's Guide to Sauhaugin & Kraken" are also great. The Seafarer's handbook contains some great settings, such as a submerged dwarven stronghold, gnome submarines, mind flayer ships and deep drow.

Some thing I did you could steal are Rafter Halflings- Halflings that live in cities of interconnected rafts that form large, flexible floating platforms.

The Ooloi from Fantasy Flight's "Mythic Races" might be a good optional race as well.

I use Freeport as a home base and have never been happier with a setting. I don't know if it will fit your bill though.

 

[Matafuego]

I had once something like that. I had giant albatross that worked like Rocs (the Giant Eagles)
They were trained as mounts to communicate the island faster than by boat.

Swim should be a class skill for everyone
And those "floating armours" from the Psionic Handbook should come very very handy

 

[Pbartender]

I am already figuring on gnomes being a BIG race since they can cast predistigation as a racial ability and that should be good enough to turn sea water into fresh.

Nope. Not by the rules in the book, they can't...

Aside from the fact that the effects of prestidigitations only last an hour (after that, the fresh water would turn back to salt and sicken the drinker), according to the spell description of prestidigitation, "Finally, a prestidigitation lacks the power to duplicate any other spell effects."

You are trying to use prestidigitation to emulate purify food and drink, the 0-level cleric/druid spell.

 

[just__al]

Nope. Not by the rules in the book, they can't...

Aside from the fact that the effects of prestidigitations only last an hour (after that, the fresh water would turn back to salt and sicken the drinker), according to the spell description of prestidigitation, "Finally, a prestidigitation lacks the power to duplicate any other spell effects."

You are trying to use prestidigitation to emulate purify food and drink, the 0-level cleric/druid spell.

Well, that changes a couple of things. People are going to seriously rely on clerics just for potable water. Perhaps clans of gnomes use some contraption to seperate out the salt water and they sell clean water. They would use the most powerful of their wizards and clerics to guard the secret of the process, maybe only the highest and most powerful of clan leaders actually know how it's done.

 

[Altalazar]

Well, that changes a couple of things. People are going to seriously rely on clerics just for potable water. Perhaps clans of gnomes use some contraption to seperate out the salt water and they sell clean water. They would use the most powerful of their wizards and clerics to guard the secret of the process, maybe only the highest and most powerful of clan leaders actually know how it's done.

Actually, they could just get water the way dolphins do - by eating fish. Animals in the ocean do not build contraptions to make fresh water - they are naturally able to get it from other animals or other means. If the planet is 99% water, odds are all of the races on it will also have other means of getting water - you are thinking in terms of beings that evolved in a land with less ocean - but that isn't appropriate here.

 

[coyote6]

You could always just switch out one of the gnomes' spell-like abilities, for purify food and drink once per day. Or just add purify as a new 1/day ability. Heck, go crazy, give everybody that ability.

There could be other ways of getting pure water, since this is a fantasy campaign. Perhaps there's an alchemical way of purifying water you could have a pricey alchemical item that purifies water a gallon or three at a time, and/or a large-scale alchemical process that purifies water in massive quantities. Perhaps there are currents of fresh water running through the ocean, or "springs" that flow up from the deeps to the surface. Obviously, they'd be fantastic in origin -- perhaps caused (or alleged to be caused) by the gods/spirits/elementals/whatever.

 

[WayneLigon]

Well, that changes a couple of things. People are going to seriously rely on clerics just for potable water. Perhaps clans of gnomes use some contraption to seperate out the salt water and they sell clean water. They would use the most powerful of their wizards and clerics to guard the secret of the process, maybe only the highest and most powerful of clan leaders actually know how it's done.

The thing that makes salt water salty is all the dissolved minerals accumulating from the land runoff over the aeons. Water is excellent at dissolving minerals and such and salt is quite a common and very easily dissolved mineral; then when water evaporates and moves back over the land as rain, the minerals get left behind in the remaining ocean water. Over the aeons, the ocean very slowly grows more salty as the runoff puts back in more salt than is locked down by the sedimentation process.

Virtually no land = virtually no runoff = your oceans are going to be drinkably fresh water.