The Gaming Den

I'm working on a setting for a game which is basically being run because a friend like the Swashbuckler and wants to play it. I decided to go ambitious, though.

So I was thinking about colonial-era shipping and how that'd be affected by even low-level magic. For example, Sending would be great for keeping people notified of market prices or orders.

The Wish Economy isn't posing much of a problem, as that just turns everything in barter. The paying customer is highly interested in your goods, and potentially lots of them, so the inconveniences involved in transporting large amounts by magic could likely make using ships worth it (especially if it's magic augmented. Gust of wind, maybe.)

Thing is, trying to figure out what spells would be a key part is a long-distance shipping barter economy is a daunting job. Divinations are worth looking into for the spread of information, but what else would make a noteworthy effect in this sort of thing?

I know the Wall of Iron trick, but that's not terribly bad. They get free iron which may or may not be a high enough quality for high-grade uses.

But are there any SRD or relatively mainstream (I've got most of the relatively normal books, but the weirder ones, well, I didn't get bequeathed those) spells that could affect this sort of thing?

Even low-level magic will completely change most "real-world" sort of things. Hell, Create Water is a spell that would cause a huge change in such things. A level 1 cleric using Create Water can make 10 gallons of water a day. Not huge, sure, but it doubles every level (Create Water creates 2 gallons of water per CL), and with wands of it all bets are off. Ditto things like Mending or Purify Food and Drink. Shit, could you use Purify Food and Drink to turn seawater drinkable? If you could do that, water effectively ceases to be an issue when traveling by ship (where originally it was the limiting factor to how far a ship could sail without resupplying).

And those are level zero spells.

NativeJovian wrote:Even low-level magic will completely change most "real-world" sort of things. Hell, Create Water is a spell that would cause a huge change in such things. A level 1 cleric using Create Water can make 10 gallons of water a day. Not huge, sure, but it doubles every level (Create Water creates 2 gallons of water per CL), and with wands of it all bets are off. Ditto things like Mending or Purify Food and Drink. Shit, could you use Purify Food and Drink to turn seawater drinkable? If you could do that, water effectively ceases to be an issue when traveling by ship (where originally it was the limiting factor to how far a ship could sail without resupplying).

And those are level zero spells.

(Create water doesn't double... it moves up by 10s)

It also changes cuisine. A lot of cuisine is spicy because spices were used to hide the fact that the meat had gone "off," with Purify Food, it's not as needed. (though it's not like every kitchen's going to have a spellcaster).

Fabricate also changes things, obviously.

A Water Elemental (even the small one you get with SMIII) is able to fuck over ships using it's Water Mastery. Larger elementals fuck over larger ships. A Bowl of Commanding Water Elementals summons a Huge Water Elemental whenever you want as many times as you want. 100,000 gp, making it something that can't be Wished for. Good plot device.

For a one time use Large elemental 2,250 gold gets you an Elemental Gem of Water.

Gust of Wind is 50MPH, so the boat will go a bit less than that. 10,275gp per, so anyone backed by someone in the Wish Economy has as many as their ship needs.

Waterbreathe and waterwalk make docking for repairs never happen if you have the stuff you need to repair the ship. You can just anchor somewhere and do it there.

Most messages would be sent using a bard scroll of Whispering Wind or with high level stuff for cross-continental talks.

Ships can fill their hull with Bags of Holding.

A druid casting Control Weather can hold everyone in a three mile radius hostage by fucking with the weather. Also a good plot device. Non-druids can get the same for two miles using an Orb of Storms(48,000 gp)

Shrink Item lets you fold up a rowboat and put it in your pocket. In can be made permanent. Costs 10,400gp total per boat, a wishable amount.

A 9,000gp Decanter of Endless Water means that nobody goes thirsty on the ship. Likewise, the 5,400gp Sustaining Spoon will feed four people a day if the taste doesn't make them mutainy.

Dust of Dryness can absporb 100 gallons of water. Once used, you get a marble that produces 100 gallons of water when thrown. 850 gold per, so you can seriously get a sack full of them and throw them in the harbour.

Most boats will have at least a few 250gp Elixirs of Swimming.

A Bottle of Air allows scuba action for 7,250gp each.

Some feather tokens could be useful. 50gp for an instant anchor, 450 for a day's use of a swanboat (room for 32 men). A 200 gp Fan token will disperse fog.

A Horn of Fog could be useful for pirates. 2000 gold

A Horn of the Tritons, while not wishable, would be popular. It can end storms, kill water elementals, summon sharks and call for tritons.

Lyre of Building, 13000gp, can be used to repair your ship. Get one.

Grek wrote:A Water Elemental (even the small one you get with SMIII) is able to fuck over ships using it's Water Mastery. Larger elementals fuck over larger ships. A Bowl of Commanding Water Elementals summons a Huge Water Elemental whenever you want as many times as you want. 100,000 gp, making it something that can't be Wished for. Good plot device.

And damned good to keep on your own ship. Possibly better than cannons...

Gust of Wind is 50MPH, so the boat will go a bit less than that. 10,275gp per, so anyone backed by someone in the Wish Economy has as many as their ship needs.

Might as well just enchant sails with it.

Waterbreathe and waterwalk make docking for repairs never happen if you have the stuff you need to repair the ship. You can just anchor somewhere and do it there.

Barbarians can also be good at on the run repairs.

Ships can fill their hull with Bags of Holding.

Make sure your hull is warded against disjunction effects.

Shrink Item lets you fold up a rowboat and put it in your pocket. In can be made permanent. Costs 10,400gp total per boat, a wishable amount.

Flat out magic item in the DMG.

A 9,000gp Decanter of Endless Water means that nobody goes thirsty on the ship. Likewise, the 5,400gp Sustaining Spoon will feed four people a day if the taste doesn't make them mutainy.

It's always good to have good food aboard. Sailor mutinies are bad.

Dust of Dryness can absporb 100 gallons of water. Once used, you get a marble that produces 100 gallons of water when thrown. 850 gold per, so you can seriously get a sack full of them and throw them in the harbour.

Hell, give the person in the crow's nest a sling and a sack of 100 gallon marbles, good weapon against other ships.

Most boats will have at least a few 250gp Elixirs of Swimming.

Good emergency item for each crewman to have on him at all times.

Some feather tokens could be useful. 50gp for an instant anchor, 450 for a day's use of a swanboat (room for 32 men). A 200 gp Fan token will disperse fog.

A tree token will cause a tree to grow on a ship. This actually has a number of uses... new mast, smuggle it onto an enemy ship in battle and let it off in the hull...

Any book or issue of Dragon that deals with pirates will have plenty of items. Flags, Figure heads, etc.
Dragon 318 even has Pirate Grafts.

Ship to ship combat is just not going to look anything like it ever did in any part of human history. The D&D world invented wholly effective Frog Men before it invented the sail.

The default assumption is that any attack on the ship is going to come from underneath, because every faction can just do that. Ranged weapons of any kind probably never got developed for ship based warfare, because sending someone to take an enemy's ship apart from below was always easier. Ranged weapons, once they get developed at all, are there for shore bombardment.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Ship to ship combat is just not going to look anything like it ever did in any part of human history. The D&D world invented wholly effective Frog Men before it invented the sail.

The default assumption is that any attack on the ship is going to come from underneath, because every faction can just do that. Ranged weapons of any kind probably never got developed for ship based warfare, because sending someone to take an enemy's ship apart from below was always easier. Ranged weapons, once they get developed at all, are there for shore bombardment.

-Username17

It also invented effective artillery before it invented, well, just about anything.

A Dragon is more akin to a WWI (yes, one) plane than it is to actual artillery. Or to a bomber for that matter. The dragon flies, and that is good. And it can set shit on fire, also good. But to use its flame jets, it has to come down to within a couple dozen meters of the ground. Its weaponry has ranges in meters, not kilometers. It flies, but not supersonically, and not stratospherically.

Nothing in the D&D world is equivalent to an 8-pound mortar.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:A Dragon is more akin to a WWI (yes, one) plane than it is to actual artillery. Or to a bomber for that matter. The dragon flies, and that is good. And it can set shit on fire, also good. But to use its flame jets, it has to come down to within a couple dozen meters of the ground. Its weaponry has ranges in meters, not kilometers. It flies, but not supersonically, and not stratospherically.

Nothing in the D&D world is equivalent to an 8-pound mortar.

-Username17

Ok, but still.

To match an 8 pound mortar: Meteor Ninja.

Dunno, a high-level cast fireball is kinda like a mortar. But yeah, I always wondered what the point of ships would be in a D&D world... I always figured they'd look more like 19th-century steamers than anything else in history - a poorly efficient source of power pushing a blocky but cheap cargo hauler. Few people aboard, cheap to replace if destroyed, and never, ever armed. No science used to determine its ability to float of efficiency of motive power.

Why would they have spent the time to have advanced sails? They have elementals, water creatures to harness, wind creatures to push, plain magic just to move things without any outward engines.

Why would they have black powder weapons when one guy can blow up more things by wiggling his fingers? The fact that you could arm far more people would actually be to the disadvantage of those in power, so who'd invest in that?

So I always figures ships would really be afterthoughts, at most a plain cabin on flotation device. Fishermen would use them. Water-faring races might have hem if only to haul small cargo or pile up like huge artificial reefs. Mages use them as afterthoughts - like magical coracles to take people across the bay, sea, or river while the mage isn't there.

-Crissa

I think the reason people hold onto the idea of a sailing ship in D&D is two and a half fold.

One is that, people automatically link "fantasy" with "Medieval" or "Renaissance" periods in our history, which had ships. Sailing ships.

Two is that it's just sooooo romantic because now you have swashbucklers... with magic! It's like twice the awesome!

Two and a half is, the DMG says that you have sailing ships. That's the water transport. Period.

Again we run into the "the designers didn't fully explore the consequences of the world they created" issue.

Also, frankly, ugly boats are ugly. It's much nicer to have sailing ships and handwave the consequences of magic away while still being able to have magic sailing ships.

I'm with Aktariel on this. But I find the suggestions highly relevant. I have some ideas for organizations (Armadas, trading companies, etc.) and a lot of these would go well.

As for actual ships, I figure that, yes, you could magic a scow so it zipped along and had lots of extras, but I suspect that an actual skip would go be even better if you did the same thing to it.

Given that there's a lot of rival nations/companies which are all competing to see who can get the most stuff there,the fastest, and in the competition, it may be worth their effort to make the best ships they can afford, augmented with the best magic they can use.

Now, the trouble is deciding what high-level adventurers are doing. I mean, they can't all bugger off to have adventures in the planes, so I have to come up with places for them to go and things to happen.

As usual, getting things from one place to another the fastest is not the competition.

Getting things from one place to another safely, is the real battle.

Frank is right, with actual frog men, merpeople, giant monsters, water elementals, and potions of water breathing, you are likely to be attacked from the bottom (boats with holes in the bottom sink), or on your SuperFast Sails.

The real problem is that you are having a race. You boat move at roughly 50mph (- water friction). http://lmgtfy.com/?q=convert+50+miles+p ... +6+seconds

Call it a 200' move speed. Your boats are super-fast and hard to catch. They are vulnerable to the standard land D&D "give me all your money, I own this road" trap (Most likely Sahuagin, or other water-based civilization). You need to have an Armada to protect your trade routes.

Also, Airships are flat-out better than your boat. Come on, you are enchanting things with Gust of Wind anyways, why not give them Levitate? They move something like twice as fast.

Eberrons answer to the airship question was that magicked seagoing ships are faster and carry more. Not consistent with the spell descriptions and aero/hydrodynamics perhaps, but someone gave it a thought at one point.

The thing to remember is not that spellcasting used by powerful characters can't disrupt local economies, its that it won't.

Powerful characters live outside normal economic activity. At midlevel they create wealth by sucking it out of the economy and at high level they create wealth directly out of magic, but at no point do they care enough to set up a business selling some service or product.

I mean, even at first level a Wizard can charm food and shelter and pleasures to his heart content. Sure, there may be the odd low-level Cleric using spellcraft for the local pawnshop to keep adventurers from passing off fools gold or some other fake for real merchandise, but at no point is someone going to spend 60K gold in expendable magic items to protect a 25K ship. Sure, some idealists may chain-bind djinn and efreet to make some magic utopia, but the majority of powerful characters have bigger fish to fry rather than making big piles of gold into bigger piles of gold.

That being said, you have to create reasons for ships to make any sense. Commoners need the sea to move goods, but adventurers may need the sea to search out an isle or ship-going villain they can't find by magic, to respond to sea-based threats not amendable to teleport, or to transport objects nonmagically so that magic could not be used to interfere with the teleport. Something. It doesn't really matter what.

My difficulty in making ships (or rather airships) work in the kind of environment that D&D is in is one of the biggest reasons why I gave up on the whole Skies of Arcadia project.

While it isn't very hard to come up with reasons why people would want to sail everywhere in a ship--people constantly need to search for Moonstones which are only produced by meteor showers at random locations--one of the big things in that game is flying monsters of roughly human size constantly attacking your ship.

In one of my RPG group's 3.x campaign settings, airships are pretty important as a source of transportation specifically because they let you avoid most of the monsters. This argument can be made for water vessels in some specific campaign settings as well, depending on how they are structured. But just saying that fish men don't exist in your setting feels like a bit of a cop out...

What if sailing ships routinely dump toxic waste into the water? The seas are horriblely polluted, as if you took modern oceans and multiplied the icky stuff in them exponentially. Though that might mess with the "swashbuckling" image that is being sought. Too dystopian?

There was an old cartoon, The Pirates of Dark Water. There was some evil shit in the water that would kill people in the water, and crawl up ships and whatnot and attack the crew. If you stole this idea and ditched the "crawling up boats" aspect, you could simply make it dangerous to be in the water, but not on a boat.

You could have it show up randomly and be all creepy and shit, but not really harmful if you stay in the boat. Could explain the lack of mer-people, and why its a bad idea to pop some water breathing potions to go underwater. Sure, you can do it, but you might get dissolved by semi-sentient water-oozes.