How to build a cool ship?

The game I am in is a high seas campaign. We have mostly been going from ship to ship. My DM is fairly open to using stuff from 3.5 including stormwrack. I want to make a really really great ship any ideas how to make a really good one?

My character is aquatic Sorcerer and my team mate is a rogue planing to become a pirate lord. We are level 4 right now so the awesome ship is more of a long term goal.

Stormwrack has a lot of cool magic items that can be used as part of your ship.

The Eberron book called "Explorer's Handbook" has some cool options for airships, including magical life rafts and flying life boats.

I believe the Eberron campaign setting has a spell called "River of Wind" (it can be found in the House Lyrandar dragonmark section as well) that basically creates a wind tunnel to make a ship go faster. You might be able to permanency this on your ship, using the sails as the center, or something.

In general, permanent spells are good--energy resistance, that sort of thing.

You might want to check out the ship/airship rules from "Ultimate Combat" as well.

The game I am in is a high seas campaign. We have mostly been going from ship to ship. My DM is fairly open to using stuff from 3.5 including stormwrack. I want to make a really really great ship any ideas how to make a really good one?

My character is aquatic Sorcerer and my team mate is a rogue planing to become a pirate lord. We are level 4 right now so the awesome ship is more of a long term goal.

Hey, I'm interested in ships so I can give you a few links.

You'll probably want to have a more euro type ship something like this one (scroll down on the page for a few photos)

http://modelshipworld.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2028&highlight=bremen

The one on that page is a cog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cog_%28ship%29

To me this is kind of a starter ship. It is square rigged, and honestly my impression is European ships were kind of backwards compared to what the Arabs and Asians had. (Except for the viking and their most excellent ships.) That kind of changed sometime in the middle of the last millenia, but for most of recorded history most naval innovation happened in asia and got to europe by way of the Arabs.

You'd have to do some reading, but according to what I read in that wiki page the cog originated about the 10th century. If that kind of thing doesn't bother you. It is a very large ship for this era.

But just to show you the difference between a european ship (admittedly not the most impressive one Spain had) check this out:

http://fyi.soup.io/post/147759119/Santa-Maria-vs-Chinese-Treasure-Ship-1405

That was a top of the line Chinese ship though. I doubt the Europeans had anything comparable till the 1700's.

http://www.thepirateking.com/ships/ship_types.htm has one of my favorites, the Arab dhao at the bottom.

This page has some nice drawings:

http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/Genealogy/Documents/Asia/asiaShips.htm l

And it has a link to this at the bottom:

http://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/Index-virtualnau02.htm

Which is a very good set of drawings for an Indian cargo vessel of the type that may interest you.

That Indian ship is honestly much more advanced than I think of when I play this game, but it has some interior drawing at least.

If you need more things like actual deck plans or something, now that you have some names you can probably google up something.

From the sound of it I think I'd look up cogs or dhaos if I were you though. Maybe that viking cargo ship the Knorr or whatever it was called.

Just wanted to add this:

http://www.duyfken.com/CurrentVoyage/TourGalleryIndex.asp

This thing has cannons, but it looks right and it has some neat photos of the inside.

any ideas on how to cut down on crew? There are only three people in our party and hiring is a pain and drain.

A large number of permanent unseen servants?

A large number of permanent unseen servants?

In the 3.5 Spell Compendium

Wiz/Sor 3
Mass Unseen servant
hr/lvl
Summons 2d6+ 1/lvl (max15) unseen servants.

I've always loved that spell, but was never able to use it.

Get a scroll of Animate Object, or get the Craft Construct feat, and make yourself an animated ship. Its a sixth level spell, and you can animate everything on the ship to make it awesome. You can completely customize your ship with construction points, make it fast or unsinkable!

Here is a good place to look

Animate objects, control weather or gust of wind. Crafting and casting can make your ship steer itself, sail against the wind, or control the seas about it.

Or of course, animate some skeletal crew.