Hi there, first time poster, sort of long time player.
I believe this is the right area but I've been recently thrusted upon the mantle of DMing and I've decided to use my sort of recently found favorite setting of Spelljammer (using the Pathfinder Alpha 3 rules for the most part.) And while I've been buying or have seen the original books for flavor inspiration I was kind of curious if anyone knew a good site on 3.x rules/information on Spelljammer. I know of www.spelljammer.org but it would appear sadly that they seem to either be somewhat defunt or turtle slow. Appreciate any help offered.
There's a site called 'Spelljammer- Beyond the Moons' at http://www.spelljammer.org/. I haven't read most of it, but it came up recently when my local group decided to do some Spelljamming. Unfortunately, it's a new setting for me so that's all I got for now. If the guys tell me about something else, I'll pass it on.
Well, the 2nd edition rules still work fairly well if you don't get into direct ship to ship combat. Long range speed, spellcasters using up their spells to power a helm, etc. all work fairly well. It doesn't really get bumpy until you start trying to get back into the tactical combat mode.
Which is probably why when I had Spelljamming in my 3.5 FR campaign I kind of skipped the tactical and just used the ships to get the PCs to exotic locales. I know, it was cheap, but it was mainly just to introduce the concept rather than run a true Spelljamming campaign.
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If you can get your hands on Dungeon 92, it's pretty darned helpful.
That said, if you can't, read up on some lore and do some loosey goosey conversions of Eberron flying ships.
IMO, Spelljammer is more about the flavor than the crunch anyhow. So, as long as you can pin down the flavor, you should have a lot of wiggle room.
Also on the WotC site there are archived PDF spelljamming ship deck plans, which are really nice Previous Edition downloads. They are a bit down the page, but are worth yoinking if you have plans of ship combat.
I bought Dungeon #92 a few minutes ago on PDF and looked through the Spelljammer article. I at least liked the firearms offered, I was using just the Wheel lock/Match lock firearm table, but somehow the guns in the article add something to it.
As for the space combat it was a little more meh, but I think I found something on spelljammer.org that sort of combines things from 3rd and 2nd edition, so as not to make those ship stat cards tottally useless. Thanks for all the responses, fortunately my players are still doing things in Bral, so I have sometime to perfect whatever ship combat I decide to use before they go off to the great unknown.
I played in a short spelljammer 3.5 game (until the Dm moved) but I discovered that the best class was my Warlock as i could sit in the helm all day and never loose spellcasting ability.
I don't know if it was done by the rules but sure made my character a hot commodity by numerous pirates.
Appreciate any help offered.
Hello! I recently went on a mission to obtain any and all Spelljammer stuff I could get my grubby little hands on. I actually want to see what I can borrow for a "Dragonstar" campaign I have working up in my head.
Anyway, while doing research online, I found that "Hackjammer" by Kenzer and Co. is actually a respected "Spelljammer" resource due to some of the tweaks it offers. One that was lauded was that helm prices were evidently given a much smaller gold piece value; keeps 1st level PCs from owning a magic item worth tens of thousands of gps...
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I have a soft spot for spelljammer, but if I were to run it, I'd definitely take away the need for spellcasters to lose their spells in order to spelljam. It's no fun for a spellcaster to not be able to, well, cast spells in order to move the group around. It's particularly frustrating in an ambush where the ship gets boarded or even when you want to land the ship and go adventure (rather than landing the ship, replenishing spells, and then adventuring). Even in 2e, my PCs tended to hire an NPC to man the helm for just this reason.
Now, this isn't to say that powering the helm should not have some cost, it's just that the 2e cost was too high.
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Beyond the Moons has been turtle slow, but some new things have been happening recently and a revamp is being planned. Keep your eye on Player's Guide to Spelljammer, Ships in Wildspace and Monsters of Wildspace because I'm sure there will be some updates fairly soon (even if the SJ3e project has been "turtle slow" in the past).
In the meantime you might want to check out Shattered Fractine. Shattered Fractine was a leading SJ website, but has recently been shut down and is in The Lost Spheres (the Beyond the Moons archive of SJ websites).
If you are looking for SJ monsters then the Creature Catalogue team might be able to help you out. They have a project to create 3rd edition versions of all the monsters that Wizards of the Coast didn't convert into 3rd edition monsters. Here is their list of Unconverted Spelljammer creatures. If you don't see a monster on that list then it has already been covered in a WotC product or converted by someone else. See Echohawk's Complete D&D Monster Index (June 2008) for the latest published version of an index that contains every known conversion of every known D&D monster! (The Shattered Fractine links in that index are out of date, but that is only because that website only went offline in the last month.)
There is a Spelljammer forum at The Piazza where you can ask other questions. Alternatively, you can join the Spelljammer Mailing List if you prefer emails.