I agree with you on wotc laziness and lack of creativity. I am sick of them advising we make it up ourselves and then patting themselves on the back for saying "do what you want".
I can't find any info on what happens if your ship reaches 0 HP. Do you die? Do you float out into the Astral/Wildspace? Does the ship fall apart or is it just unusable? What happens to its gravity plane/air bubble? I can make this up, but it'd be nice to have some suggestions.
I saw a book on Twitter from dragoncrown games that has really cool ship rules and I'm gonna be using that, but it sucks wizards didn't make any effort. I saw another discussion about how they are offloading the work of actual game rules and developing stuff to people on DM guild and drive through RPG so they don't have to spend on really developing content.
I'm a amateur astronomer and super sci-fi fan that finds it hard to get into DnD. When I heard about this new addition, I was super excited. Hearing just the lack of rules in making a star system alone took me out though.
Bro. I feel you. Just play Traveller or some other scifi RPG, would be my suggestion. You can really tell Traveller was made by scifi fans, amazingly detailed. I know D&D is most people's go to system and therefore easier to get on the table, but some things D&D just does not do properly.
Grab the 2e content, scrap the whole astral sea content (it's lazy) in favor of the old phlogiston/ Crystal sphere system Then use the 2e ship to ship combat system and you will have a much better game
I said it before in a seperate channel post area, but I feel like they were definitely 100% lazy for making ships and the combat in the book. Reason why is because NONE OF THE SHIPS HAVE ABILITY SCORE STATS! I am not expecting charisma, wisdom, and Intelligence, but none for the other three when other NORMAL SHIP HAVE THESE SCORES!
0 rules about turn radius was a real head turner. We have rules for that in Saltmarsh for nautical ships. It was that hard? And the fact there isn't a character sheet for the ship to track hp of the hull and crew members or anything just feels sad and like a missed opportunity. Either we wait for someone to make one online to print out, or you write it on a piece of paper yourself. Feels bad
@@Jaedeok82 Oh no, that is the messed up part. The ships in SJ does have HP! They have HP, damage threshold, maps for locations on the ship, and actions for different parts of the ship for cannons and that. But that is all! Like, they literally half asked making it a character sheet!
@@Jaedeok82 The Saltmarsh turn radius is ridiculous, though. 90 degrees per move action, could be 270 degrees in a round. At least in space, the spelljammer can turn the ship in 3D much easier than a naval ship can turn.
@@jdsmith112363 Yeah. I foubd a honebrew supplement where smaller ships like the Damselfly, Wasp, and Shrike can do 180. Bombard only 45 to offset the advantage of that giant cannon a bit. Other Frigates and larger had 90. That seemed reasonable. Trying to maneuver an entire ship that large isnt easy and they should be a little wieldy. Most of those ships have a movement speed somewhere around walking speed so they arent really packing a ton of maneuverability
From what I can figure, they kept ship patterns, ship terminology, and races from the original Spelljammer material, and turfed everything else. No more crystal spheres, no more godless phlogiston, no more defined cosmology, and no explanation why it all went away. Haven't really gotten into the Spelljamming rules yet, but it sounds like WotC just shrugged and said "Let them homebrew it." The set is pretty much a setting monster manual with some races and vague ship mechanics tacked on, and if you want to play one of the major setting races, go buy another book.
Watch and laugh as scorpion ships not on the same axis as other ships(or other ships with melee weapons and small hp pools) use their melee weapon, thereby touching another ship with more hp causing their own gravity to be changed, dumping their own crew into wildspace.
Ship-to-Ship Combat; Um, yes there are. It's called closing within range of your ship's weapons, loading the weapon, aiming at the target and firing the weapon. The ships have AC and hit points listed. Just use the normal combat systems where your PC is the ship. Each individual who is manning a weapon uses their own number of attacks but are limited to the weapon's firing rate. Note: you can also the rules for siege weapons since this is what ship weapons are. In all, you have to use the major rule for DnD. Rule One - the rules are just guidelines to guide the DM in controlling the game. Rule Two - the DM is always correct. Rule Three - any issues with rules one or two refer to rule two. You have to use the DMG and PHB in addition to the Spelljammer rules.
The ship combat rules you are looking for are in the saltmarsh book. Most groups who maximize their characters will be largely unstoppable by level 12-14. If you want a tougher fight, send in multiple monsters of high cr. There is no need for rules when building wildspace. It's just your homebrew world. Done. I don't know how long you've played d&d, so that could be the issue for your frustrations. If there were rules for every little thing, it would be a simulation, not a role playing game.
I'm a little surprised, because one of your last videos said that all you need to track is distance from the other ship. You don't bother tracking facing or position in space, and you assume the ship can rotate to bring all its weapons to bear. That's pretty much what the WotC book says! I was actually thinking I would have to import the 2e facing and maneuverability rules and you actually convinced me it wasn't necessary!
Hey, could you in your homebrew rules implement the facing/maneuverability rules? The ships are also kinda strange. the ships' weapons are so weak compared to their massive health pools, it takes forever to take down a galleon (8 rounds). also why are these cool space-ships just chucking rocks at one-another? give me a mage-cannon, a lightning shooter and other magictech stuff! its literally the highest fantasy ever, fantasy sci-fi space combat! WHY ROCKS?!
It used to be rocks and arrows because anything flammable would ignite the phlogiston. But since they removed that, WHY ROCKS? you're right. I kinda get that you're building a player to play dungeons and dragons, so there is some wisdom in pushing the players towards actually using their class stuff in combat, having npc's fire the ship weapons when they close in range. But they totally could have thrown some items (a boarding plank?) or made the gravity less strange. Big ship? just ram a smaller one on a different axis and watch as all their crew fall off. Also with all ships simply having the same max speed, how do you chase them down? all the ships are close in cost too, so theres no incentive to try to get something better. Its literally just a book that tells you that you can have players board magic boats to visit other realms, we didnt need WOTC to tell us this.
Actually I'm reading through it now.. like 1/4 of the book is ships.. I would rather the "DM decides" part would be the ship type and layout.. then not put them in the book and instead use those pages to have actual content rules etc
Any thoughts on filling in some of these blanks with Traveller stuff? Not that me or my crew ever intend on switching to 5e, but just as a thought exercise. Probably wouldn't be too hard to slot some of those systems in if someone's looking for more harder Sci Fi out of their game.
As far as the astral sea stuff goes, I'd say that you need a level of specificity, similar to what you need for the scrying spell in order to get the mental crazy taxi arrow, thankfully it also gives the direction and thus shortest distance, not the safest path
Came to this later. What's the rule for that? Ask the DM How do I fix this? Ask the DM. Where is the development on this product? Ask the DM. Thanks Wotc for.... giving the dm more work
Seriously this is why I have gone Pathfinder 2E and Starfinder. D&D is D&D in brand only. I got sick of half-assed books and having to make up my own rules, so I looked in the Pathfinder 2E and Starfinder. It's a bit of an investment, but its worth it. If you got great players, they will play whatever you run. It's worth looking into Paizo, as Archives of Nethys is free with all the mechanics and gives you enough information on the system. Otherwise, for rules light I prefer ICRPG's Fantasy and Warpshell sci-fi system.
I think they do this on purpose. If they are intentionally vague in their books they know people will create supplemental material and sell it on DMs guild and WOTC gets a cut of those profits as well. WOTC is a big greedy corporation and making a good game is not their priority because people buy up D&D stuff just because it’s D&D stuff.
Luckily the indie community has supplements for everything WoTC lacks. Not to be all high and mighty but I’ve never bought a single overpriced official D&D book. I can’t justify $50 when everything I want (OSR player) is like a $5 pdf online. I’m sorry you paid $80 - that really does suck. I’d be pissed! WoTC kinda ruining MTG now too. Thanks for letting us all know.
I’ve thought that for awhile now. I’m still planning on getting this set and looking forward to the setting. The ship to ship combat is nonexistent from my understanding. Good video
Yeah, when you posted the video about getting your copy I kind of figured you were going to be disappointed. The books provide neither lore nor mechanics. Well I guess they gave a small amount of lore to the rock, but that's about it. Honestly had the books been like $20 I might have not been as critical, but they DEFINITELY didn't provide $50+ worth of content.
Personally, I was just disappointed in the lack of detail on piloting. Why does it require a spell caster if there is no casting or exchange? Can the pilot attack through their perception through the ship using the "A creature you can see" spells? In the spell for creating the chair they give the comment that it requires concentration, but that wasn't spelled out in the How Spelljamming Works? I had to piece together an assumption of how I will be the pilot for my party and I started from a point of "It's tingly and I don't know if I can do anything or not." Even a new spell of Empower Ship or something would have made sense. Action, Concentration. Need to do something fancy? Need to upcast.
@@gameon_ct Even a simple: For one Spell Slot you gain the following effects on the ship mutiplied by spell level. Increased speed, shield, spell fueled weapons so that the crew can just aim and fire... I mean they are maintaining concentration Give them something to do.
The issue with ship combat is that virtually every system out there is built on the bones of naval battle systems, which are in turn designed for one player controlling one ship, which leaves the rest of the party with nothing or extremely limited actions. It's very hard to make a system that will give the other players a set of options as robust as the captain's. While I agree WotC has gotten super -lazy under the guise of "DM freedom," this is one of the few scenarios where I can't blame them. Your options are basically "Make a complete mini-game" or "encourage players to get to the place where they have the most options." Some rules regarding creative boarding tactics and a few maneuvers would have been really nice. That or some unique ship attributes.
Wildjammer. What you want is Wildjammer. They gave bridge roles to all crew members that level alongside your character so there's progression, and they give you abilities and responsibilities on the ship. The helmsman is moving the ship (duh), but the Bosun is the one rigging the sails and determining your ship's turn radius and speed. The Captain is declaring what actions the ship takes, the gunner is shooting, and if you have any fighters on board there's a fighter pilot role as well. They also varied the ship to ship combat weapons by a lot, and gave suggestions for ship modifications much the same way that Ghosts of Saltmarsh did. It introduces spells appropriate to the setting, there's 3 new subclasses, and support for class options for every class now that they're spacefaring. I could go on and on. Go check it out, it's a free download (Dude's dropbox is getting crushed so hard the last 2 days it got flagged, so he had to put up a new one. If it's down, it's because of high volume)
@@gameon_ct And from a pure cutthroat about how the industry works, if you have limited word/page count, the "how to build a planetary system" is a tough thing to fit in. As the 2ed book showed us, actually providing real guidance on that ends up eating an entire section of a book. You can't really half-bake that: you either go all in or near nothing. That said, Planet Building should be a web extra on whatever platform they want to use. If corporate said they only get X pages, I can understand that, but the players _should_ get that information and help.
I with ya! I don’t understand Spelljammer travel and the astral sea now. I’m confused how the cosmology works. Is the astral sea no longer accessible by traversing the great wheel/planar travel? The way they changed it, it appears you can only access via spelljammer ships then exit realmspace into the astral sea and traverse it to other realm space or other points within the astral. If that’s not the case, if you can still access the astral via normal planar travel, then there are 2 ways to get to the astral, planar travel and spelljammer travel. Am I getting that right? The astral is now how you travel from one prime material to another. Can a Spelljammer ship leave the astral sea into the great wheel of any of the realmspace prime material planes??
I was under the impression that each plane had its own wildspace sphere but I'm kinda just using a Mashup of lore between 2e, the 3e unofficial remake and some of how I understand the 5e cosmology to work
It's not a enjoyable experience when I spent the money for what was given. It feels like Wizbro just slogged it together with no thought at all as to what made the classic setting so rich. Makes me wonder what will happen to other classic settings after this.
Yep 100%. I just watched their six and a half minute ad for One World (6e ??) and all it said was they’re going to dumb down the game even more and they’re copying all the popular competitors’ virtual tabletop/gaming apps. WotC is trash.
If you are travelling 100 million miles in 24 hours, is the spell jammer able to rest or are they gaining exaustion? Would you need more than one to take shifts? So many questions. And I am just a player...
Also, for the gaming circles that I am in, I can tell when someone legitimately loves something and they're passion is showing through their frustration. I'm feeling for this dude, even if I can't fully grasp where the devs messed up.
First off, I recommend watching this: ua-cam.com/video/1b15zaC6Nss/v-deo.html Secondly, I feel like you’re getting frustrated because you’re expecting a whole new system of play, and not really integrating the various things they’re giving us into 5e as a whole. 5e, as a general rule, doesn’t like to repeat itself unnecessarily. If an already existing system would work fine for something new with only a few tweaks, they’re only going to give you the tweaks, with maybe a reference to the original system if you’re lucky. A few counterpoints in response to some of your complaints: 1)Shipboard Weapons: These are for initial volleys from a distance or on the approach. The tip about using your own abilities and weapons is for after the ships have gotten closer, because they’re just faster to use than a giant weapon that takes either a bunch of people a single turn each or one person a bunch of turns to fire it once. The sheer size of the weapons require such numbers, and they’re most useful when the other ship is gonna take a while getting to you. After a certain point, yes, bows and spells are just gonna be faster at delivering consistent damage. And by the time melee is viable, someone’s getting boarded. Don’t forget about the ship’s damage threshold! Some ships need to take high damage numbers before their HP is even affected, so you might still need to use the big weapons if your regular stuff isn’t gonna do squat to their ship. Save your personal damage dealers for their crew. 2)Side Initiative: This is actually a really good method for two or more groups(ships) fighting at a distance. It boils down to each ship rolling a d20, highest goes first, then second highest, etc. As each ship takes its turn, everyone on board takes their turn, in no particular order. The crew decides amongst themselves who goes when, but everybody only goes once. -Personally, I’m gonna recommend rolling initiative amongst the crew to see who goes first. Either that, or the Captain gives orders that everyone else follows. 3)”Up to the DM”: Most of the things that say this actually make sense, when you consider that 5e has long bowed to the DM’s whims over any stated rules. It’s much the same as any normal encounter, the DM decides where things are in the world, so it’s largely up to them as far as the starting encounter distance is concerned. 4)Crew: Do you really need rules for crew members? They’re NPCs under the DM’s control. Either hire someone to do a job on the ship your party doesn’t want to cover themselves, or assign people that come with the ship to those parts. 5)Thought Travel: You make the mistake of assuming this is something the person Spelljamming is doing, but it’s not. Everyone basically has a Harry Potter style “Point Me” spell, or a Jack Sparrow style Heart’s Desire compass, while in the Astral Sea. It shows the direction only. You don’t know distance, or dangers, or anything else. This also doesn’t work within wildspace. -You also ask what the rest of your party is supposed to do while someone is flying the ship. That’s up to them to decide, right? Just like on any other ship? If they have a job, they can do something related to that. Maybe they just want to relax with a good spellbook? 6)Custom Systems: There aren’t any rules here for a reason. Any crazy ideas you come up with are all perfectly possible. This is the multiverse: there are no rules to hold you back. You want a planet the plasmoids came from? It can be a supermassive giant gelatinous cube. Wow! The Thri-kreen have built an ant farm around their sun that’s basically a Dyson sphere. Huh, that’s weird, the various construct races have turned their world into something resembling a Lego world, made entirely of small interconnected blocks. Basically, the sky’s the limit. I’ve been getting the impression lately that what you want, isn’t something D&D can provide anymore. You’re looking for an intricate rule set where everything is clearly defined and laid out explicitly, like in a video game. What you’re getting instead is a game designed around a free flowing system that largely leaves things up to the players and the DM, geared towards collaborative storytelling before anything else. I hope you end up finding what you need.
I appreciate your input, even if I disagree I can understand your viewpoints. Even if they copy and pasted the crew and ship combat rules from Ghosts of Saltmarsh I'd be a bit happier. OG Spelljammer and Wildjammer provide better ship combat rules, but this gives me an excuse to make up my own 😇
Sorry fanboy, but we didnt needa whole book where WOTC is just telling us we can have magical ships allow realm to realm travel. and its up to us to decide everything else. Lazy, terrible book :P
Personally, I like a rules light system. But, I understand your point of view as well. Being a busy adult usually doesn't allow much time for prep, so havening something from WoTC would have been nice. When it comes to ship combat, I really haven't found a good system for it. Starfinder ship combat is really boring IMO, and makes encounters take too long. The ship rules in GoS are also lacking. Honestly, ship to ship combat in a TTRPG is just not that fun IMO.
I skipped that series of books. I wasn't really intrigued with the weird ships in space aspect. Apparently wizards of the coast wasn't either hence the lack of rules for them. Wow. They really screwed the pooch on this one. Sorry Bud.
I agree with you on wotc laziness and lack of creativity. I am sick of them advising we make it up ourselves and then patting themselves on the back for saying "do what you want".
Yeah so annoying
All they had to do was copy/paste the original rules and tweak them for 5e. But they’re not even smart enough to do that.
"Has WOTC Gotten Lazy?"
Yes, since July 15, 2014
🤣
I can't find any info on what happens if your ship reaches 0 HP. Do you die? Do you float out into the Astral/Wildspace? Does the ship fall apart or is it just unusable? What happens to its gravity plane/air bubble? I can make this up, but it'd be nice to have some suggestions.
the new spelljammer was totally phoned in.
I totally agree
I saw a book on Twitter from dragoncrown games that has really cool ship rules and I'm gonna be using that, but it sucks wizards didn't make any effort. I saw another discussion about how they are offloading the work of actual game rules and developing stuff to people on DM guild and drive through RPG so they don't have to spend on really developing content.
I’ll check that out based on your recommendation!
I'm a amateur astronomer and super sci-fi fan that finds it hard to get into DnD. When I heard about this new addition, I was super excited.
Hearing just the lack of rules in making a star system alone took me out though.
Bro. I feel you. Just play Traveller or some other scifi RPG, would be my suggestion. You can really tell Traveller was made by scifi fans, amazingly detailed. I know D&D is most people's go to system and therefore easier to get on the table, but some things D&D just does not do properly.
The sad thing is original 2e was more than competent in that respect. It actualy had tables and shit to help you generate planets and systems.
Grab the 2e content, scrap the whole astral sea content (it's lazy) in favor of the old phlogiston/ Crystal sphere system
Then use the 2e ship to ship combat system and you will have a much better game
The original boxed set for AD&D 2 had combat rules. Why didn't they just recycle them?
Exactly!
They recycled the ships !
I said it before in a seperate channel post area, but I feel like they were definitely 100% lazy for making ships and the combat in the book. Reason why is because NONE OF THE SHIPS HAVE ABILITY SCORE STATS! I am not expecting charisma, wisdom, and Intelligence, but none for the other three when other NORMAL SHIP HAVE THESE SCORES!
0 rules about turn radius was a real head turner. We have rules for that in Saltmarsh for nautical ships. It was that hard? And the fact there isn't a character sheet for the ship to track hp of the hull and crew members or anything just feels sad and like a missed opportunity. Either we wait for someone to make one online to print out, or you write it on a piece of paper yourself. Feels bad
@@Jaedeok82 Oh no, that is the messed up part. The ships in SJ does have HP! They have HP, damage threshold, maps for locations on the ship, and actions for different parts of the ship for cannons and that. But that is all! Like, they literally half asked making it a character sheet!
@@Jaedeok82 The Saltmarsh turn radius is ridiculous, though. 90 degrees per move action, could be 270 degrees in a round. At least in space, the spelljammer can turn the ship in 3D much easier than a naval ship can turn.
@@jdsmith112363 Yeah. I foubd a honebrew supplement where smaller ships like the Damselfly, Wasp, and Shrike can do 180. Bombard only 45 to offset the advantage of that giant cannon a bit. Other Frigates and larger had 90. That seemed reasonable. Trying to maneuver an entire ship that large isnt easy and they should be a little wieldy. Most of those ships have a movement speed somewhere around walking speed so they arent really packing a ton of maneuverability
From what I can figure, they kept ship patterns, ship terminology, and races from the original Spelljammer material, and turfed everything else. No more crystal spheres, no more godless phlogiston, no more defined cosmology, and no explanation why it all went away. Haven't really gotten into the Spelljamming rules yet, but it sounds like WotC just shrugged and said "Let them homebrew it." The set is pretty much a setting monster manual with some races and vague ship mechanics tacked on, and if you want to play one of the major setting races, go buy another book.
Watch and laugh as scorpion ships not on the same axis as other ships(or other ships with melee weapons and small hp pools) use their melee weapon, thereby touching another ship with more hp causing their own gravity to be changed, dumping their own crew into wildspace.
I thought it was going to be light on content but I didnt realize it would be barebones
Ship-to-Ship Combat; Um, yes there are. It's called closing within range of your ship's weapons, loading the weapon, aiming at the target and firing the weapon. The ships have AC and hit points listed. Just use the normal combat systems where your PC is the ship. Each individual who is manning a weapon uses their own number of attacks but are limited to the weapon's firing rate. Note: you can also the rules for siege weapons since this is what ship weapons are. In all, you have to use the major rule for DnD. Rule One - the rules are just guidelines to guide the DM in controlling the game. Rule Two - the DM is always correct. Rule Three - any issues with rules one or two refer to rule two.
You have to use the DMG and PHB in addition to the Spelljammer rules.
The ship combat rules you are looking for are in the saltmarsh book.
Most groups who maximize their characters will be largely unstoppable by level 12-14. If you want a tougher fight, send in multiple monsters of high cr.
There is no need for rules when building wildspace. It's just your homebrew world. Done.
I don't know how long you've played d&d, so that could be the issue for your frustrations. If there were rules for every little thing, it would be a simulation, not a role playing game.
Yep, it's just odd WoTC doesn't say GoSM has the rules!
An honest review - in this day and age? Wow. Thank you, man.
😇😇
I'm a little surprised, because one of your last videos said that all you need to track is distance from the other ship. You don't bother tracking facing or position in space, and you assume the ship can rotate to bring all its weapons to bear. That's pretty much what the WotC book says! I was actually thinking I would have to import the 2e facing and maneuverability rules and you actually convinced me it wasn't necessary!
I'm just confused why they would give us weapons if we're not supposed to use them lol
The whole astral sea replacing the phlogiston is bonkers
Hey, could you in your homebrew rules implement the facing/maneuverability rules?
The ships are also kinda strange. the ships' weapons are so weak compared to their massive health pools, it takes forever to take down a galleon (8 rounds). also why are these cool space-ships just chucking rocks at one-another? give me a mage-cannon, a lightning shooter and other magictech stuff! its literally the highest fantasy ever, fantasy sci-fi space combat! WHY ROCKS?!
I'll see what I can do ;)
It used to be rocks and arrows because anything flammable would ignite the phlogiston. But since they removed that, WHY ROCKS? you're right.
I kinda get that you're building a player to play dungeons and dragons, so there is some wisdom in pushing the players towards actually using their class stuff in combat, having npc's fire the ship weapons when they close in range. But they totally could have thrown some items (a boarding plank?) or made the gravity less strange. Big ship? just ram a smaller one on a different axis and watch as all their crew fall off.
Also with all ships simply having the same max speed, how do you chase them down?
all the ships are close in cost too, so theres no incentive to try to get something better.
Its literally just a book that tells you that you can have players board magic boats to visit other realms, we didnt need WOTC to tell us this.
Actually I'm reading through it now.. like 1/4 of the book is ships.. I would rather the "DM decides" part would be the ship type and layout.. then not put them in the book and instead use those pages to have actual content rules etc
They're just reprints of 2e ships too lol
Any thoughts on filling in some of these blanks with Traveller stuff? Not that me or my crew ever intend on switching to 5e, but just as a thought exercise. Probably wouldn't be too hard to slot some of those systems in if someone's looking for more harder Sci Fi out of their game.
As far as the astral sea stuff goes, I'd say that you need a level of specificity, similar to what you need for the scrying spell in order to get the mental crazy taxi arrow, thankfully it also gives the direction and thus shortest distance, not the safest path
Came to this later.
What's the rule for that?
Ask the DM
How do I fix this?
Ask the DM.
Where is the development on this product?
Ask the DM.
Thanks Wotc for.... giving the dm more work
Tally ho, to my ADAD spell jammer box set. From the DMs guild.
Pages 74 to 79 from Concordance of Arcane Space. In the original spell jammer box has a table for random solar system generation.
Seriously this is why I have gone Pathfinder 2E and Starfinder. D&D is D&D in brand only. I got sick of half-assed books and having to make up my own rules, so I looked in the Pathfinder 2E and Starfinder. It's a bit of an investment, but its worth it. If you got great players, they will play whatever you run. It's worth looking into Paizo, as Archives of Nethys is free with all the mechanics and gives you enough information on the system. Otherwise, for rules light I prefer ICRPG's Fantasy and Warpshell sci-fi system.
I play in a Starfinder campaign. Rules are definitely more fleshed out.
I think they do this on purpose. If they are intentionally vague in their books they know people will create supplemental material and sell it on DMs guild and WOTC gets a cut of those profits as well. WOTC is a big greedy corporation and making a good game is not their priority because people buy up D&D stuff just because it’s D&D stuff.
Wow $80
I’ve seen it on Amazon for half that
Yes WotC is lazy
Yeah but I couldn't wait, I needed it day 1 for a first look
Luckily the indie community has supplements for everything WoTC lacks. Not to be all high and mighty but I’ve never bought a single overpriced official D&D book. I can’t justify $50 when everything I want (OSR player) is like a $5 pdf online. I’m sorry you paid $80 - that really does suck. I’d be pissed! WoTC kinda ruining MTG now too. Thanks for letting us all know.
I’ve thought that for awhile now.
I’m still planning on getting this set and looking forward to the setting.
The ship to ship combat is nonexistent from my understanding.
Good video
Non existent whatsoever
Yeah, when you posted the video about getting your copy I kind of figured you were going to be disappointed. The books provide neither lore nor mechanics. Well I guess they gave a small amount of lore to the rock, but that's about it.
Honestly had the books been like $20 I might have not been as critical, but they DEFINITELY didn't provide $50+ worth of content.
I'm sad :(
@@gameon_ct sorry bro. It really does suck. I guess all we can do is shrug and move on. Maybe avoid buying content prior to release as well.
I still find the money value to be good, the adventure is nice. But i would have spared no expense on a real, complete rules set
Personally, I was just disappointed in the lack of detail on piloting. Why does it require a spell caster if there is no casting or exchange? Can the pilot attack through their perception through the ship using the "A creature you can see" spells? In the spell for creating the chair they give the comment that it requires concentration, but that wasn't spelled out in the How Spelljamming Works? I had to piece together an assumption of how I will be the pilot for my party and I started from a point of "It's tingly and I don't know if I can do anything or not." Even a new spell of Empower Ship or something would have made sense. Action, Concentration. Need to do something fancy? Need to upcast.
The whole rules set seems cobbled together and lazy :(
@@gameon_ct Even a simple: For one Spell Slot you gain the following effects on the ship mutiplied by spell level. Increased speed, shield, spell fueled weapons so that the crew can just aim and fire... I mean they are maintaining concentration Give them something to do.
Visible frustration
oof. of course they'll come out with how ships work in another $60 book in a month...
The issue with ship combat is that virtually every system out there is built on the bones of naval battle systems, which are in turn designed for one player controlling one ship, which leaves the rest of the party with nothing or extremely limited actions. It's very hard to make a system that will give the other players a set of options as robust as the captain's. While I agree WotC has gotten super -lazy under the guise of "DM freedom," this is one of the few scenarios where I can't blame them. Your options are basically "Make a complete mini-game" or "encourage players to get to the place where they have the most options."
Some rules regarding creative boarding tactics and a few maneuvers would have been really nice. That or some unique ship attributes.
Yeah I get what you're saying
Wildjammer. What you want is Wildjammer. They gave bridge roles to all crew members that level alongside your character so there's progression, and they give you abilities and responsibilities on the ship. The helmsman is moving the ship (duh), but the Bosun is the one rigging the sails and determining your ship's turn radius and speed. The Captain is declaring what actions the ship takes, the gunner is shooting, and if you have any fighters on board there's a fighter pilot role as well. They also varied the ship to ship combat weapons by a lot, and gave suggestions for ship modifications much the same way that Ghosts of Saltmarsh did. It introduces spells appropriate to the setting, there's 3 new subclasses, and support for class options for every class now that they're spacefaring. I could go on and on. Go check it out, it's a free download (Dude's dropbox is getting crushed so hard the last 2 days it got flagged, so he had to put up a new one. If it's down, it's because of high volume)
@@Jaedeok82 the website was down today probably because everyone was flocking to it haha
@@gameon_ct And from a pure cutthroat about how the industry works, if you have limited word/page count, the "how to build a planetary system" is a tough thing to fit in. As the 2ed book showed us, actually providing real guidance on that ends up eating an entire section of a book. You can't really half-bake that: you either go all in or near nothing.
That said, Planet Building should be a web extra on whatever platform they want to use. If corporate said they only get X pages, I can understand that, but the players _should_ get that information and help.
@@drewwendell Traveller did it pretty well and that was in the core rules haha
I with ya!
I don’t understand Spelljammer travel and the astral sea now.
I’m confused how the cosmology works.
Is the astral sea no longer accessible by traversing the great wheel/planar travel? The way they changed it, it appears you can only access via spelljammer ships then exit realmspace into the astral sea and traverse it to other realm space or other points within the astral.
If that’s not the case, if you can still access the astral via normal planar travel, then there are 2 ways to get to the astral, planar travel and spelljammer travel. Am I getting that right?
The astral is now how you travel from one prime material to another.
Can a Spelljammer ship leave the astral sea into the great wheel of any of the realmspace prime material planes??
I was under the impression that each plane had its own wildspace sphere but I'm kinda just using a Mashup of lore between 2e, the 3e unofficial remake and some of how I understand the 5e cosmology to work
It's not a enjoyable experience when I spent the money for what was given. It feels like Wizbro just slogged it together with no thought at all as to what made the classic setting so rich. Makes me wonder what will happen to other classic settings after this.
I'm not at all excited for Planescape
Yep 100%. I just watched their six and a half minute ad for One World (6e ??) and all it said was they’re going to dumb down the game even more and they’re copying all the popular competitors’ virtual tabletop/gaming apps. WotC is trash.
If you are travelling 100 million miles in 24 hours, is the spell jammer able to rest or are they gaining exaustion? Would you need more than one to take shifts? So many questions. And I am just a player...
Would each need to leave an attunement slot open?
Also, for the gaming circles that I am in, I can tell when someone legitimately loves something and they're passion is showing through their frustration. I'm feeling for this dude, even if I can't fully grasp where the devs messed up.
First off, I recommend watching this: ua-cam.com/video/1b15zaC6Nss/v-deo.html
Secondly, I feel like you’re getting frustrated because you’re expecting a whole new system of play, and not really integrating the various things they’re giving us into 5e as a whole. 5e, as a general rule, doesn’t like to repeat itself unnecessarily. If an already existing system would work fine for something new with only a few tweaks, they’re only going to give you the tweaks, with maybe a reference to the original system if you’re lucky.
A few counterpoints in response to some of your complaints:
1)Shipboard Weapons: These are for initial volleys from a distance or on the approach. The tip about using your own abilities and weapons is for after the ships have gotten closer, because they’re just faster to use than a giant weapon that takes either a bunch of people a single turn each or one person a bunch of turns to fire it once. The sheer size of the weapons require such numbers, and they’re most useful when the other ship is gonna take a while getting to you. After a certain point, yes, bows and spells are just gonna be faster at delivering consistent damage. And by the time melee is viable, someone’s getting boarded. Don’t forget about the ship’s damage threshold! Some ships need to take high damage numbers before their HP is even affected, so you might still need to use the big weapons if your regular stuff isn’t gonna do squat to their ship. Save your personal damage dealers for their crew.
2)Side Initiative: This is actually a really good method for two or more groups(ships) fighting at a distance. It boils down to each ship rolling a d20, highest goes first, then second highest, etc. As each ship takes its turn, everyone on board takes their turn, in no particular order. The crew decides amongst themselves who goes when, but everybody only goes once.
-Personally, I’m gonna recommend rolling initiative amongst the crew to see who goes first. Either that, or the Captain gives orders that everyone else follows.
3)”Up to the DM”: Most of the things that say this actually make sense, when you consider that 5e has long bowed to the DM’s whims over any stated rules. It’s much the same as any normal encounter, the DM decides where things are in the world, so it’s largely up to them as far as the starting encounter distance is concerned.
4)Crew: Do you really need rules for crew members? They’re NPCs under the DM’s control. Either hire someone to do a job on the ship your party doesn’t want to cover themselves, or assign people that come with the ship to those parts.
5)Thought Travel: You make the mistake of assuming this is something the person Spelljamming is doing, but it’s not. Everyone basically has a Harry Potter style “Point Me” spell, or a Jack Sparrow style Heart’s Desire compass, while in the Astral Sea. It shows the direction only. You don’t know distance, or dangers, or anything else. This also doesn’t work within wildspace.
-You also ask what the rest of your party is supposed to do while someone is flying the ship. That’s up to them to decide, right? Just like on any other ship? If they have a job, they can do something related to that. Maybe they just want to relax with a good spellbook?
6)Custom Systems: There aren’t any rules here for a reason. Any crazy ideas you come up with are all perfectly possible. This is the multiverse: there are no rules to hold you back.
You want a planet the plasmoids came from? It can be a supermassive giant gelatinous cube. Wow! The Thri-kreen have built an ant farm around their sun that’s basically a Dyson sphere. Huh, that’s weird, the various construct races have turned their world into something resembling a Lego world, made entirely of small interconnected blocks.
Basically, the sky’s the limit.
I’ve been getting the impression lately that what you want, isn’t something D&D can provide anymore. You’re looking for an intricate rule set where everything is clearly defined and laid out explicitly, like in a video game. What you’re getting instead is a game designed around a free flowing system that largely leaves things up to the players and the DM, geared towards collaborative storytelling before anything else. I hope you end up finding what you need.
I appreciate your input, even if I disagree I can understand your viewpoints. Even if they copy and pasted the crew and ship combat rules from Ghosts of Saltmarsh I'd be a bit happier.
OG Spelljammer and Wildjammer provide better ship combat rules, but this gives me an excuse to make up my own 😇
@@gameon_ct Have fun with it!
Sorry fanboy, but we didnt needa whole book where WOTC is just telling us we can have magical ships allow realm to realm travel. and its up to us to decide everything else.
Lazy, terrible book :P
Personally, I like a rules light system. But, I understand your point of view as well. Being a busy adult usually doesn't allow much time for prep, so havening something from WoTC would have been nice.
When it comes to ship combat, I really haven't found a good system for it. Starfinder ship combat is really boring IMO, and makes encounters take too long. The ship rules in GoS are also lacking. Honestly, ship to ship combat in a TTRPG is just not that fun IMO.
I'm using a lot of the Wild jammer stuff after I read through this and got disappointed
That is disappointing…glad I wasn’t too excited about Spelljammer.
:(
I skipped that series of books. I wasn't really intrigued with the weird ships in space aspect. Apparently wizards of the coast wasn't either hence the lack of rules for them. Wow. They really screwed the pooch on this one. Sorry Bud.
These "rules" made me sad
Everything woke turns to shit.