I need help making a ship :D

[brislove]

Here's the situation.

There is a veritable armada of orc pirates, we have made a few "standard" warships, but the PCs need an awesome Flagship.

Here's what we've got so far. We found an overrun by spiders mithril mine, and cleared it out, so we're reinforcing the entire ship with mithril (I have max ranks in smithing, so I'm making it work).

We have enchanted it up with resist cold and fire. As well as just a simple +1 on the siege engines and armor. I made a few Fan tokens in case the winds are working against us.

Ship is built, and we have ~25k left to spend, I have craft wondrous and arms/armor. so we can get some discounts. I'm new to ship combat, and not entirely sure what other things would be useful, Adamantine ram? (assuming I can find the adamantium) Sundering? (no idea how or if that would do anything)

I'm not really up on the ship combat rules, and the srd is kind of ... lacking. What other good tricks can players pull off?

[altpersona]

did you make it so it can fly? flying ships are better than non-flying.

[brislove]

expressly not possible in the current world sadly. I tried!

[altpersona]

drat 

[Karlton]

Do you have access to arcane magic? Covering the thing in permanent Walls of Force is always a good option. Force does not burn, and it beats any ramming device for sure.

[Wrex]

Cover it in walls of force, or build it out of Riverine. However, it sounds like your DM is the type to throw the book at you if you try that.


Now, my personal favorite is a Zombified Soarwhale, just because flying zombie whale is too good too pass up, but you probably won;t be allowed to do that. You might want to check out Stormwrack and the A&E guide, they have a few prebuilt craft you could use. Honestly though, why fight them on top of the water? Summon a few Fiendish Octopi off a summon monster list, and let your mini devil krakens sink them from below. Fireball explicitly starts fires, so a wand of that should cover all your naval gunnery needs.

[sirpercival]

Can you guys bind elementals?  Because you can make a self-powered ship by binding a water elemental to it.  Though that's likely to be over your heads...

[kitep]

The SpC lists 2 spells worth looking into:

Hardening - gives portions of the ship greater hardness.  +1 / 2 caster levels

Submerge Ship - turns your ship into a submarine, for hours on end!

I think there's a spell somewhere that permanently/instantaneously makes things fireproof, but I can't remember what it is or that I'm not even imagining it.

As for ship-to-ship combat - I tried it once, but it went slow, like 4 rounds to fire and reload to fire again, and then didn't do any impressive damage.  Sticking to spells/arrows seemed much better.

Good luck!

[kitep]

A Lyre of Building (DMG) negates any attack against inanimate objects within 300' for 30 minutes.  Makes your ship indestructable.  Also helps with making repairs/upgrades/coating in mithril/etc.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well... I'm working on my handbook for flying ships, and there are ways to get ships to fly.  Even with only the PHB... the handbook is still a mishmash of a work in progress, though!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14zilT4WGOyHM0AfpG4-GmD2FkgDg1HZ9HC1cTleQHds/edit

Ask if each and every method of getting a ship aloft is, you know. shot down...

[The_Laughing_Man]

I think Stormwrack has good maritime rules for ships, combat included.

[brislove]

Lyre of building seems awesome, I'll have too look into making that actually function. Wand of fireball is worth infinite happiness.

I'll have to try to get spell compendium in, it's technically a pathfinder game, but i'll see about getting them approved.

wall of force is out of reach atm, (lvl 9, and no full casters). Magus and and Inquisitor are the only casters we're running with at the moment.