*SHRUG* I dunno, but a massive ship sounds like fun.
No, it's a one shot encounter as written in the AP. You can do whatever you want with it.
No, it's a one shot encounter as written in the AP. You can do whatever you want with it.
This is correct... though I caution you as a GM against allowing your players to 'abuse crafting rules and find loopholes' particularly if it includes building some sort of massive indestructible war machine... its very likely to ruin the game for everyone.
Players have to be able to trust their GM to keep them from derailing an entire campaign - that's why, at the end of the day, you have all the power. Use it wisely and use all of the tools at your disposal... like perhaps reading through the entire AP first, so that you know which potential problems to head off before they get beyond any of you.
This is beside the original question, but I'll repeat Story Archers advice against building a freaking huge ship... if nothing else, then because it makes actual piracy next to impossible. There's a fine link between size and speed, and freaking huge ships are, at least if they're windpowered, slower than not so freaking huge ships.
Merchants and everything else not specificly looking for a fight will likely outrun them.
I've run S& S to the end, the Dominator doesn't return, officially.
I had it show up at the end of Book 4 looking for revenge.
Even though they won and took the Dominator, the captain still kept the Mans promise as her flagship, for sentimental reasons.
DBH
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Crafting large ships costs a huge fortune, but it sounds like you've got bigger problems in your game.
Don't let your players (EVER) railroad you on crafting (loopholes). I've heard claims that the crafting rules were rock solid (or even good for that matter). You're the boss. Your home game is not Organized Play! You make the final decisions on which rules to keep and which ones to discard.
If you don't give them access to the wealth required to build a game breaking super ship, it never evolves beyond a player's pipe-dream.
Do you follow WPL guidelines for giving out treasure?
I hear a lot of GM's complaining about how their players get away with [blank] or they are exploiting [blank].
The buck stops with you. If you've made decisions that have allowed abuse to grow in your game, you have only yourself to blame.
Is it a hopeless situation? Not really. Be a strong game master and reign it in before it ruins your campaign. Sit down with your players prior to the next play session and have a discussion. You are the GM. It is not a democracy, be clear with them on this matter. Make fair choices. Stand strong by your decisions. The perceived loss of the player's fun factor from the removal of 'the carrot' will pay off when your campaign doesn't implode on itself.
Crafting large ships costs a huge fortune, but it sounds like you've got bigger problems in your game.
If you don't give them access to the wealth required to build a game breaking super ship, it never evolves beyond a player's pipe-dream.
Do you follow WPL guidelines for giving out treasure?
FWIW, our group had a pretty impressive flagship as well, but it was more built for speed, maneuverability and hardiness, using the rules offered up in the Players Guide (to the OP - are you guys using the Players Guide to build your ship? If not, that might explain part of the problem and its available as a free download on this site). The thing about their ship was that it was part of an on-going storyline.
In our campaign Aron Ivey lived and eventually joined the crew as the ship's carpenter until the end of book two where he lost his leg and 'retired' and oversaw the construction of what would eventually be the PC's flagship. It took a very long time, hampered by sabotage at one point and didn't even make its first appearance until the big sea battle in book five (we switched around events in book five and six). In the meantime, the PC's were constantly funneling money towards its construction and they even had a side adventure performing a service for the Master of Gales who, in return, cast a Hallow spell on the ship to make it immune to teleportation by enemies and to give it fire resistance. They also had one of those animated figureheads.
The players invested a lot of game time and treasure into its construction and had to play the 'delayed gratification' game but in the end they felt it was completely worth it. By the time they actually got the ship, they were about 12th level and it was the kind of ship you'd expect 12th level characters to have - they had long since evolved past simple piracy by then.
Heh - for what its worth we used a Master Summoner instead of siege weapons for the most part... Air, Water and Fire Elementals did the trick just fine, and saved us a ton of coin.
Since everyone seems so concerned. Here's the ship.
player spent like 2 weeks studying ship engineering or something like that
https://mavrickindigo-s-skull-shackles.obsidianportal.com/items/grand-audac ity
It may already be too late, but for what it's worth:
Making one of something that is five times as big as something else does not merely take five times as much material and time. Building a skyscraper is not just a matter of building five office buildings stacked on top of each other. The Grand Audacity is basically unprecedented in the Shackles, if not in the world - feel free to up the costs and gimp its stats, if you decide it's actually possible at all. Sure, it may be based on a historical ship, but that is a ship built at the pinnacle of the Age of Sail - which Skull & Shackles most definitely is not. Sure, the Wright brothers could have tried to build a 747 out of canvas and sticks, but their DM would have been entirely within his rights to make it cost ten billion dollars and blow up in their faces.