The fluid Aether is poisonous to most mortal beings, though some creatures that swim within the Aether seas have been mutated to outlive within the depths. In some locations, the Aether crystalizes into Aetherium, a magical materials that can be utilized to energy varied magical gadgets.

Two Prime Materials airplane nations dominate the seas of this area and have portals that lead from their residence worlds to this expanse of the Astral. The kingdoms fought an open conflict on this area till just lately, they usually use the Aetherium to create issues like magical engines for ships and superior magical cannons.

The islands not managed by these two nations exist on the suffrage of the highly effective nations. One chain of islands, the Isle of Drakes, is managed by pirates from throughout the area. They coexist, however don’t particularly cooperate.

A number of ports are detailed, in addition to a number of NPCs that may be discovered at these ports. Along with the NPCs and ports, there are additionally a number of instance ships that can be utilized for seaborne encounters.

New Mechanics

There are a whole lot of new mechanical facets launched on this guide. Probably the most customary are the brand new participant races. These omit an alignment entry, however retain the precise capacity rating bonuses, with none particular reference to freely assigned capacity bonuses.

The primary of those is the Astral Emergent, which is a sapient dream that has inhabited a newly deceased physique. The fusion heals the physique and permits the sapient dream to make use of the physique. Whereas Aether can’t poison them, they could take drive harm from being drawn again into the stuff of the Astral airplane. Astral Emergents don’t want air, meals, or drink, and after they die, they both can’t be raised, or they require a particular course of that requires discovering a brand new physique for them to inhabit.

The second is the Astral Merfolk, a species resistant to Aether poisoning (since they dwell most of their life within the fluid). They’ll remodel their legs right into a tail, finally study animal friendship and animal messenger as a capability. They’ll additionally transfer particularly quick when dashing underwater. They use the extra present proficiency bonus restrict to their spellcasting, however not like a few of the newer choices, they’re locked in to utilizing Charisma as their casting stat.

There are additionally new preventing types that may be taken by fighters, paladins, rangers, and people who decide up the precise feat. This contains gaining benefit on assaults when surrounded, further cube of harm on piercing weapons when preventing underwater and gaining a charisma bonus to AC with mild armor and no defend.

The Large Stuff

The largest spherical of recent mechanics goes to the entire remodeling of naval fight away from the D&D 5e customary.

• Commonplace D&D ships have a pace, crew, passenger, cargo, AC, HP, and harm threshold statistics.
• Ghosts of Saltmarsh added bodily capacity scores, actions, and separate armor class and hit factors for distinct elements of the ship.

These statistics are decided by the person ship kind. In different phrases, there isn’t an total rule saying {that a} ship of X measurement can have a selected variety of hit factors or harm threshold.

Below these guidelines, ships are assigned a measurement, which is separate from creature measurement. Ships vary from tiny to gargantuan, and the scale of the ship units quite a few guidelines, from the ship’s motion, maneuverability, variety of fires it might probably have earlier than its powder explodes, and harm threshold.

Due to this separate scale, the ship hit factors don’t run analogous to creature hit factors both. If harm exceeds the ship’s harm threshold, it does one level of harm to the ship. If it doubles, triples, and so on., it does 2 or 3 factors of harm. The cannons and different ship weapons launched on this part are all scaled for this degree of harm.

Ships have totally different roles that have to be crammed, and the variety of ranks a personality has in these roles will enable them to do issues like put out quite a few fires or take away quite a few casualties every spherical of ship fight. Participant characters add their proficiency bonus to their ranks.

Totally different weapons would possibly do hit level harm, trigger fires, or trigger casualties. If a participant character is in a specific function, and that function is indicated as a casualty, the character loses 50% of their hit factors they usually depend as a casualty till they’re healed above this threshold. Ships even have a Most Crew and a Skeleton Crew, which act as thresholds for what number of actions the ship can tackle its flip.

Some roles, just like the Quartermaster, have talents that have an effect on the variety of provides wanted to journey for a leg of a journey. The Captain instantly contributes to the Mettle of your ship, quite a few d4s that signify morale and willingness to behave. Mettle might be affected by provides and dropping to 0 Mettle triggers a mutiny. When a ship makes an attempt a boarding motion, it’s a Mettle versus Mettle roll to see which crew prevails. Taking casualties removes Mettle, and also you lose extra in case your casualties are ranked members of the crew.

Ships have popularity and flying a particular flag could let you steal Mettle from a ship you are trying to overhaul. There’s a set of chase guidelines that tracks the variety of tokens between ships and getting greater than 10 tokens forward of one other ship often signifies {that a} ship has escaped.

Fight has the next phases:

• Motion Part
• Assault Part
  • Cross Climate Gage
  • Assign Hits and Resolve Harm
  • Boarding Motion
• Standing Part
  • Firefighting
  • Test for Ship Explosions
  • Give up and Victory

Initiative can change from spherical to spherical, because the ship upwind has a bonus on the ship downwind. Every section is resolved individually, so each ships transfer earlier than both ship assaults, for instance. Every ship has its personal Climate Gage, which is handed to the upwind ship, and might be spent to reroll assaults.

Of this, there’s a part on changing monster harm to ship harm, and ship fight guidelines in direction of hitting creatures, and changing harm upwards. There are additionally some notes about adjudicating these guidelines with out a grid by monitoring advancing and retreating and creates opposed checks to find out maneuvers between ships.

That’s so much to absorb. I do know the core guidelines for ships are fairly easy–ships transfer and ships assault. I do know the Ghosts of Saltmarsh guidelines are a bit extra difficult in including in particular areas of the ship with their very own hit factors and armor class. However I don’t know that this appears so much sooner to resolve to me. I might be unsuitable, as I haven’t tried them out.

I do suspect that these guidelines make a personality’s degree matter much less in the course of the ship-to-ship phases of sea battles. Making use of harm thresholds looks as if it’s going to maintain even highly effective spells in a comparatively constrained vary of harm when targeted on a ship. If the aim was to make ship fight that’s meant to mitigate greater degree talents, I don’t know if I’m all in on that, however I might have preferred just a little extra info on precisely why this method made sense for this sequence of adventures.

If you happen to solely need to keep on with the DMG guidelines, I notice they’re a bit skinny, however I believe there’s a little bit of distinction between “add some further actions to make fight extra detailed” and “redesign a few of the core ideas of the sport to make use of throughout a selected recurring a part of the marketing campaign.”

I do like the reason of the chase guidelines and I’d like to offer these a whirl, particularly when coping with ship chases, the place distances might be extra summary for many of the chase. I’m questioning how nicely these adventures will run if you happen to do try to reframe ship fight when it comes to what seems within the DMG or Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

I can also’t assist however surprise what, if any, adjustments to ship fight will appear to be when Spelljammer arrives. My hope could be that it builds on the Ghosts of Saltmarsh paradigm reasonably that rebuilding them from scratch, however that’s drifting a bit out to sea for this primary impression.

And Now, The Journey

The belief of the journey is that the participant characters are survivors of a number of ships that had been sunk in a multi-faction battle. They wash ashore collectively, discover that they’re all poisoned by the Aether within the sea, and have a restricted period of time to discover the small chain of islands earlier than their poisoning will get worse, they usually can now not profit from a remedy.

Just like the earlier Fables marketing campaign, this one begins off with a framing system that places the PCs in a dangerous state of affairs proper from the beginning. Not like the earlier marketing campaign, this one goes into intensive explanations on find out how to run a session zero, together with pitching the journey sequence to the group, and getting their buy-in about being from totally different ships and beginning off collectively, attempting to outlive the island collectively. I’m manner happier that this was included, contemplating the variety of “gotcha” moments that got here up within the earlier marketing campaign.

Characters can attain as much as third degree on this journey, and there are particular story factors at which they advance. Whereas the PCs are exploring the island the place they wash up, they will discover a rowboat. As they discover different islands, along with discovering the components they want for the antidote, they will discover the wreckage of different ships, a hostile captain in search of a legendary treasure on the island, and a cursed captain that has managed to patch collectively a working ship.

I like using the captain’s log to speak the potential treasure and a ship from which to flee the island, and I like that the journey offers measurements for when to tick off hours in the course of the search, to maintain the participant’s working beneath a time crunch till they full the remedy. I additionally admire that the cursed captain might be seen as a monster to battle to achieve the ultimate treasure and the ship, however he can be reasoned with, to a level, and even introduced alongside as a part of the crew.

This explicit journey doesn’t work together a lot with the brand new ship guidelines launched within the earlier part, nevertheless it does introduce a few of the factions, the idea of Aether poisoning, a few of the creatures native to the setting, and even a shiny new Aetherium treasure to underscore the worth of the fabric within the setting. It looks like a great introduction to this journey that (I believe) will set the tone for the remainder of the marketing campaign.

Last Ideas

I’m a simple mark for pirate adventures, and I actually like that they managed to not solely give you a pirate themed setting, however one that could be a little bit totally different on account of its location and the magical underpinnings. I additionally like that proper from the beginning it introduces some key components to the setting, together with colonial powers, folks caught within the center, and an island of pirates that will simply be ready for a brand new chief to forge them collectively into their very own energy. It made me need to begin watching Black Sails over again.

The beginning journey is strictly the sort of journey I like for a brand new setting, one which works in what makes the setting distinctive, and units up the adventurers for the sort of issues they are going to be doing for the remainder of the marketing campaign. I additionally tremendously admire that they take the time so as to add in a gross sales pitch for the group, and stress having a session zero to get everybody on board. The journey content material was very satisfying.

So far as the brand new guidelines go . . . I don’t know the way I really feel about them. I’m undecided the diploma to which it’s going to curtail gamers attending to really feel like D&D superheroes. I additionally surprise if folks model new to D&D and choosing up adventures to run need to flip round and study a brand new subsystem that doesn’t fairly do issues the way in which they’re carried out in the remainder of the system. I simply have flashbacks of all of the mass fight and seaborne fight guidelines from my days in AD&D 2e.

Future Needs

I’m actually curious the diploma to which ship fight shall be central to resolving plots, and the diploma to which you may nonetheless swap it out with both the DMG or Ghosts of Saltmarsh guidelines with out spending too a lot time adapting the journey. I’m additionally hoping that even when the finale is a battle towards a gargantuan warship, the PCs can have an opportunity to be superior as D&D characters no less than as a lot as they’re contributing to ship decision.

I actually like a whole lot of these setting components, and I’m wanting ahead to seeing the factions work together with each other, and the way the marketing campaign offers with the potential for the participant character’s to rally the pirate islands to their trigger.