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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5817972" data-attributes="member: 4937">It's been mentioned, but yeah it bears repeating.   The D&D magic system is only balanced with regards to a campaign centered around dungeon exploration and the presumed challenges raised thereby.   Spells are 'priced' according to the impact that they will have on such a campaign (1e fireball, for example, was 'balanced' by the fact that it was often unusable in most presumed dungeon situations), and with no consideration of there impact outside of such a situation.  So one of the problems that any one has when they write a setting/campaign book for anything other than dungeon crawling is that you pretty much have to overhaul stock D&D's magic system, economics, and sometimes even skills to accomodate the 'unanticipated' campaign structure.Honestly, all of my naval focused campaigning was in 1e, and things were just as bad then if not worst.  For example, 3e fireballs don't ignite objects and you have to make a ranged touch attack to fire one through a porthole or arrow loop, and they don't expand to fill the area they are contained in.  Likewise, 1e scrolls didn't require XP to create - all you needed was a recipe - wands begin with 100 charges and spells if anything had greater range.Zowie!  I never noticed just how broken that was.   Typical of D&D to cost out an item that produces probably 1200 g.p. worth economic value per day at a mere 13,000 g.p. and treat it like a minor item readily available to mid-level casters.  Talk about a return on investment.   It's wonder that masonry, carpentry, and the like is even practiced in a typical D&D world.   Sheesh.Good thing I rebalanced the magic item creation system early on and tended to ignore magic items made with the 3e assumptions.That's major consideration in ANY D&D campaign, but it especially applies to naval campaigns because like I said, D&D is notorious for not even considering the effects  of anything outside of a 20'x30'x12' stone room in a dungeons.   Broadsides from a reasonably well gunned ship are pretty darn impressive though, regardless of whether you are using cannons or 'mangonels/ballistas in the narrative place of cannons', and once you nerf the major problems (like magical fire) by assuming the existance of useful defensive magic and specify the interactions of things like gust of wind with a ship in a balanced way it's not that bad.</blockquote>

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