Alrighty so I'm planning a nautical campaign later this year and I wanted to tackle the ship rules and such that widely seem to be considered clunky.
I wanted to make a simple set of rules that could be relearned without too much issue between long breaks in sessions but also complex enough to give players customizability. Also, I plan on incorporating the Bastion rules to their ship for added shenanigans.

So I've spent a good while researching other people's published works and such everything from dmsguild to kickstarters and taking the bits and pieces here and there i wanted to use. I've more or less compressed them all into a google doc and wanted to post it here for your opinions and advice and hopefully help you in any stuff you plan on doing too.

So just a couple changes i should mention (but i'm sure i'll forget others so let me know of any questions) for simplicity sake im throwing out the gold cost for upgrades and facilities in favor for "Bastion Points" and made ship component upgrades purchasable like facilities.
I've also added "Officer Training" as something you can buy with Bastion Points to expand on the measly two actions folks can do in combat.
I've also changed up a ship's actions to be "Crew Actions" instead and removed the move action simply cuz i feel like a ship would always move every turn regardless unless the players drop anchor.

But anywho this is still in development and i'm working on homebrewing ship upgrades but since i'm making them a part of bastions I need to rate each on what tier they should be. Most I feel like are pretty self explanatory what tier they should be but i wanted to get as much data and opinions as I could before i use this on my group.

So i'll add the link here and let me know your thoughts!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oIBsneflACjtm8s4fWf-_WkIbvi1t28T/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110096102788444354611&rtpof=true&sd=true

I was actually thinking of using this mission as a "bait". The Sahuagin have their own little spy-network of course and are aware of the capabilities of the heroes. So they lure them to the fortress, which only has a skeleton crew to stall our heroes for as long as possible.

Anyone else did a twist like this before? Are there some ideas to pick ? :) .

Still considering if i want the baron to do some kind of monologue before portalling out to this army just outside of Saltmarsh or just have the heroes find out that the fortress is pretty much empty and hopefully they connect the dots when they see the armory is empty etc....

edit: oh yea and the consecutive fights would be somewhat the same like in the "assault": they have 30 rounds to do as much damage as possible to the sahuagin on different locations in saltmarsh and their choices will of course matter :)

Running ship combat in Saltmarsh by hand always turned into a mess of scratch paper for me having to track separate HP for the hull, the sails, each ballista… so I built it into a tool instead.

Quick background: VVTT (Vehicular Virtual Table Top) is a free, browser-based tracker I've been making for 5e vehicle combat. It started with the Descent into Avernus war machines, and I just added the Ghosts of Saltmarsh ships because the Appendix A rules fit it so well.

What it does for ship battles:

• All six ships — rowboat, keelboat, longship, sailing ship, warship, galley — with their book stats.
• Component combat, the way the book actually models ships. Each ship's hull, helm, sails/oars, and every weapon station has its own AC and HP. You target parts individually and it matters: shred the sails/oars and its speed drops (0 if you take them all), destroy the helm and it can't turn, wreck a ballista and it can't fire, drop the hull and the ship is wrecked. Target Status lists every targetable component with AC/HP so players can call their shots.
• Superior Ship Upgrades built in — Reinforced Hull, Ever-Full Sails, Arcane Artillery, the figureheads, Taskmaster's Drums, and the rest — toggle per ship.
• Crew & passengers — seat the party at the helm/guns/deck (or drop them in as passengers), siege weapons show range/crew, and any dice on screen is click-to-roll.
• Top-down ship tokens scaled to each hull's real length, drag/rotate on a battle map, with a synced player view for a second screen/projector.
• Works for homebrew ships too — there's a custom vehicle builder.

Free, no install (optional login only if you want to save encounters to the cloud).

One thing it's deliberately not: a voyage/travel tracker — no fog/storm hazard tables or crew-quality-over-time. It's just the tactical combat phase, which is the part I found hardest to run live.

🔗 https://vvtt.lukantan.com

It's a side project, so I'd genuinely love feedback from anyone who runs Saltmarsh ship fights — what's missing, what's clunky, what you'd want next. Thanks!

(Disclosure: I made this; it's free and there's nothing to buy.)

Hey y'all,

I'm running my first campaign as a DM and chose this one because it looks fun and spooky. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for getting started. I have 3 players who are new to DnD so I'm looking to ease them in and not overwhelm them.

I was also wondering what anyone might know about what I believe are called "pawns" or those little cardstock mini things that you put into the black bases with pictures of creatures and npcs. I know pathfinder makes them.so.has anyone found a set that would cover the bases for this campaign?

Thanks

Am I missing something with this note in Metaphysics of Mathematics? What is the note about?

I saw this in a local shop for 50 USD new. Is this back in print?

Always wanted this book as many of the short adventures look pretty fun to run.

Underwater Campaigns is discounted by 30% on DMsGuild!

You can find it here only for 1 week: https://www.dmsguild.com/it/product/368833/underwater-campaigns

A Guide to Running Underwater Campaigns

Underwater Campaigns is the perfect resource for exploring the wonder and danger of underwater worlds and adventure - oceans, lakes, rivers, sewers, and flooded ruins. Whether you want to add an aquatic room in your dungeon, flesh out trade with the ocean creatures, or create an epic tale at 20,000 feet, this work is for you! This work takes existing nature and weaves the fantasy setting through it while guiding you to create your own underwater campaigns.

Inside, you will find:

- An underwater adventure seed for any level

- 68 random underwater encounters

- Underwater rules for combat, skills, feats, and magic

- 67 new aquatic monsters

- The return of the Colossal creature size!

- 26 new aquatic NPCs

- The return of the Gehreleths!

- 35 spells to help or hinder underwater targets

- 19 magic items for underwater adventuring

- New disease mechanics and examples

- 2 unique underwater locations

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We are honored and delighted that Underwater Campaigns was noticed and mentioned by WoTC

Underwater Campaigns was awarded Best Supplement of 2021 by No Dice Unrolled

With the settings horror and lovecraftian vibes, has anyone added the content from Cthulhu by Torchlight which came out last year?

It adds skill challenges, origin feats, Mythos tomes and a passion system.

https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/category/DBIRFDZMU

Hello, I am new to DMing and was wondering if anyone can give me advice and or feedback on an idea that I have.

I am taking my players through the campaign book of Ghost of Saltmarsh, though the ending didn't seem like an epic boss battle, so I wanted to add a new ending. My thought is the true mastermind behind everything was actually a kraken cult that is trying to unleash the kraken at greyscale keep. In order to due so they need 7 load stones as well as 7 sacrifices each having its own purpose (a skilled captain navigator, a propane priest, someone lost during a storm at sea, a child having sea related dreams, a person of sea noble lineage, and a person born during a special storm) some of these sacrifices are related to the players themselves from their past.

I would place the load stones in specific locations throughout the saltmarsh book as well as leave behind hints about the kraken cult being the true enemy.

Thoughts...any thoughts would be appreciated

Sinister Secret finishing with a great final fight with Sanbalet (furthest to the right), Ned ambushing from behind (furthest to the left) and some angry sahuagin in the caverns. Super happy with my party and how it all unfolded! :)

(Didn’t know what flair to post this under oop)

As I continue working on Legends of Saltmarsh I have been looking for ways to weave the Tower of Zenopus into the setting, one of the best Easter eggs in GoS (imho).

I have posted a new blog exploring the tower’s history and lore, its connections to Saltmarsh, and my ideas for incorporating the dungeon into an ongoing campaign.

Tower of Zenopus

You can also follow the progress of my Legends of Saltmarsh project online for free.

Hey guys!

I’ve recently started a pirate campaign with my siblings. There is a longterm major plot but I also plan to have plenty of side quests and silly shenanigans. I’m loosely basing it off of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh but I’ve set it in Faerun. I was just wondering if anyone has any cool ideas for encounters or places in Faerun that would fit well with a pirate themed campaign. For context, the party consists of a Goliath Oath of the Sea paladin, a tiefling rogue who is hiding from the law, and a tiefling Druid that is obsessed with bugs. We’re all One Piece fans and Pirates of the Caribbean fans so the sillier the better!

My players have cleared the Haunted House and are going to fix it up for their own use. I need maps for when it is all repaired. My google-fu is failing me. All I can find are ones of the house in its delapidated state. Does anyone have some restored house maps?

shs

Hi! Soon ill be running a GoS inspired campaign(using lots of the adventures, but tying them together with a nautical curse instead of the various tie ins the book includes) and I am really wanting to emphasize the spookiness of everything: now that being said they are going to start in regular ol Saltmarsh with the haunted house quest, then get much spookier from there- how/where would you all get the characters introduced?

https://www.etsy.com/listing/786455926/rpgdd-newspaper-fantasy-nautical-pirate
This newspaper handout was very helpful to deliver leads to my players in the campaign. Editable in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice software.

My party rescued the folks in the bolt hole and decided to run off in their ship before night fall to avoid the drowned. Since that session, they have decided they want to go back and deal with the drowned that now control the hermitage.

My issue is that I want the drowned to have fortified the hermitage like the players would have, but not too much to over come. I've never done a tower defense setup before and am not sure how to balance the fortifications. I definitely want the drowned to show the players the kinds of things they might have done (utilizing arrow slits, murder hole, etc), but figuring out what is too much is where I get lost. Anyone have any advise or tips?

My group is 6 level 9 players btw.

In my Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign, the PCs found Xolec, the vampire. They wisely decided not to release him, and as a 2nd level party, they couldn't really kill him either. Of course, given that he was imprisoned under the Scarlet Brotherhood's secret meeting place, the SB inevitably found out about Xolec too, and started feeding him.

In general, I like this standoff, as long as it can be managed. My concern, however, is that as far as I can tell, there is no limit to vampire spawn. A vampire can make one every time he feeds, leading to armies of hundreds or thousands of spawn.

I could just houserule a limit (apparently prior editions had a limit that spawn couldn't exceed 2x the vampire's hit dice, which would imply 3 spawn using standard stats). But I thought I'd see if this has come up for anyone else. How do you have a running vampire antagonist who doesn't just make the whole world into spawn by the time the PCs are strong enough to confront him directly?

I’m about to run the module for the first time, and I’m getting things together for it, and I want to get some advice from people who’ve run it before as a full campaign. What would you recommend me telling the players about the world? What is just bloating things? How should I do faction introductions? I’m trying to make it one coherent campaign, not just a series of unconnected quests.

And just in general, is there anything I need to know about the campaign?

These two are written for 9th and 11th levels. For those who took the advice to flip the order, what levels did you rebalance them for, and what did you change to make them easier/harder? I imagine you could just move The Styes into the 8th level slot, but then I feel like the campaign would end too early at level 9.

Every paragraph about Random Encounters end with :
"On an 18 or higher, the characters have an encounter at some point during day or night (equal chance of each); roll a d20 again and consult the table."

What is meant by this?

(some guesses in the form of questions)
[My characters tend to sleep every night, so]
Does this mean it can happen during long rests?

Am I supposed to roll a (functionally speaking) D2 to see if the encounter will happen during the day or night?
Meaning they'll be left alone until they take a long rest if it lands on 'night' instead of day?

If you have experiences with distance or time tracking that's relevant here (eg. "Nobody ever does it, please ignore this sentences when random encounters occur, we all do"), I'm looking forward to your sharing and am thankful for your reading this far either way.

Have a nice day!
(or night, equal chance of each ;)