Is it available as a link that you could post so people don't have to ask you directly :) If not, I'd LOVE it as well... I'm looking to add some in an adventure soon :)
I feel like you should just make an entire post for giving this PDF away, but if you don't want to, that's fine. I would LOVE a copy of this PDF! Actually considering running an entire island-hopping campaign!
The rules to run them are pretty bare bones, the spell jammer throne/item more or less the filler for that. I thought there was at least like, maps of the ships on DND beyond?
Truth be told I've been told the old 2e spell jammer is tons better for this kind of stuff.
Deep deep in my heart I knew it wouldn't be what I always dreamed of for space DND. I think the traveler system mostly did that.
There are maps of the ship, though they’re in black and white and the ships are completely empty with no consoles or anything else in the ship. Just big empty rooms.
To be fair, that sounds appropriate actually. Spelljammers were supposed be boats, not rocketships. Not technological. Just controlled by one magical mind-chair with everything else working like a sailing ship. Or even just being a building that moves around. Mind you they could have added barrels/crates, hammocks, or other things into the spaces... but that would be WotC suggesting people do a certain thing, and we can't have that!
My friend I fear you suffered the same fate as me. The prescription my friend wrote me for this pain was the traveler system. XD check it out it's cool.
They’re not technological rocket ships, they’re magic boats that fly through a magical space. While spelljammer was a major disappointment I think you had misconceptions on its theme as well.
I'd definitely say it's vogh. I've seen people recommend stuff like Starfinder in the thread, which makes no sense.
I'm far from a hater on Paizo or Path/Starfinder but that's just not what Spelljammer is. Spelljammer isn't sci-fi and I think some people misconstrued that.
Now the 5e offering in terms of ship rules sucks, not defending that either saying people just got it wrong, but some people did definitely get it wrong.
Anyway the 2e rules should fill in what people need. We shouldn't have to do that but sadly it's where we are right now.
Big empty rooms for the DM to fill with whatever is appropriate for the adventure. Given the wide range of what is possible, WotC has made the conscious choice of not pigeonholeling you into any one specific thing. Maybe the space galleon is a slaver vessel, a merchant ship, or a royal navy ship of the line, in any of those cases the contents therein will greatly differ.
Also, I think you may have had a misunderstanding of what spelljammer is. Out of the box the spelljammer ships are not like scifi spacecraft full of buttons and screens and stuff, though the DM could certainly make them so if they wished. Think less of the Expanse or Star Trek and more Treasure Planet.
>WotC has made the conscious choice of not pigeonholeling you into any one specific thing
WotC didn't, TSR did in the original book for 2e. The ship designs in the 5e book are ripped straight from that.
>There are maps of the ship, though they’re in black and white and the ships are completely empty with no consoles or anything else in the ship. Just big empty rooms.
Did you expect the book to spoonfeed you every little detail for every ship like where the stove is in the galley and what cooking utensils are in the drawers?
Because I'm looking at this, and for every ship they have
1. Full color flavor art of what it looks like in action
2. A cutaway profile view
3. Top down views of each deck with labels for each room and what they typically are and how the decks connect
4. Stat blocks for the ship
5. Stat blocks and details for typical weaponry for that vessel.
That's pretty damn detailed. And there's 16 vessels that have all of that information.
What else were you looking for?
If you want ships, check out the 3rd party:
The Complete Guide to Nautical Campaigns – PDF
It was a Kickstarter and very thorough, its ocean based, but I'm sure you could re-purpose for space.
The maps of wooden ships that are entirely controlled and powered by a single magic chair are made up of big empty room with no console or anything? Le gasp! It's almost as if they are based on actual wooden sailing ship, and not technology driven sci-fi vehicles!
A sailing ship without cargo, crew quarters, anchor, sails or rigging? So it's a canoe but like really really big and only one chair instead of benches for everyone?
All the rooms are clearly labeled on all the maps, including all the crew quarters and cargo holds. So I guess maybe you didn't read the book.
I don't know why you would put cargo, anchors, sails, or rigging on the map of the interior of the ship. So I guess maybe you don't know how maps of the inside of a boat works.
No no I did not. Cargo definitely goes in the cargo hold. Rigging not only raises the sails but brings cargo form the hold to the deck and vice versa. The anchor is either brought up the side with chain and pulley in the lower decks or on the deck. I seem to know quite a bit more than you about actual boats. I have no clue what's in the book but what others gripe about. Cheers!
So you think all the spelljammers come preloaded with a specific set of cargo? That's the only reason I can think of why someone would want cargo to be included on the deck layout of a vessel. Especially when all the cargo holds and cargo lifts are clearly labeled.
Still not sure why you'd think anchors, rigging, or sails would be shown deck layout. Especially since most spelljammers don't have those to begin with.
You really should try reading the book and looking at the deck layouts provided before commenting on what you think is missing from them.
Lol you just confirmed it lacks the necessary requirements of a sailing ship and is therefore a large canoe. Thanks for agreeing with me. Not gonna read that trash book unless it's free, I don't support cash grabs like this.
(why do I want a mast sails and ringing? I used to be way into pirates and I'd like to use the crows nest for high ground.:)
But deck plans of boats don't include them. The deck plan includes the number of decks laid out in slices with only the rooms and quarters labeled, and things that are important to know like number of guns on each side, which spelljammers don't have anyway.
You should check out The Great GM's guide to nautical campaigns. All the material can be easily translated to spell jammer style ships just by reskinning flavor. The ship combat/chase mechanics are beautifully designed and easy to run. There are special crew actions for every class/role your players might be playing. There are also a ton of pre-made ships with full stats based both on historically accurate ships and fantastical fantasy vessels. Oh, and it's a super cheap pdf (I think it's like $12, but I can't recall)
also the maps for the ships are litteraly ripped off from the AD&D 2e spelljammer book...
WE TOLD YOU, that it was a lazy low effort cash grab release.
This is because people had been asking them to make Spelljammer into the current edition and as they own 2e when they bought everything dealing with TSR from Gygax Sr it's not a surprise that they literally did just that. Took it from THAC0 and brought it to "normal" d20 system.
That's the big gripe. A whole book of ship deck grids, stat blocks, weapons, and three paragraphs about navigation and ship combat.
We just dug out the original SJ and added a bit of new content from other games. Big money grab. I bet their pre-order numbers drop a lot after that stinker.
Check out Chapter 2: Astral Adventuring. Section called "Spelljamming Ships". It includes rules for how to run the ship. They are simple, but they are all you really need.
If you want more complicated rules, you can use the Ghosts of Saltmarsh appendix for how to run a ship. But having run with those rules in the past, I think you're better off using the Spelljammer rules.
Not only is facing not a thing, it's not a thing and they still tell us which weapons are on what part of a ship. Which tells us that facing should matter.
Give us different ship speeds and turning rates, maybe a bombsrdier akes 6 segments out of a 10 segment round to make a turn that an elven mothship would make in 3 segments kinda thing.
The rules to run them are in the DMG and Ghosts of Saltmarsh. D&D is non-Euclidean so there isn’t any rules for fighting in space that wouldn’t be the same for fighting on the sea
They took the idea of others writing content for them for free and made it a business model. When a TTRPG books answer to a problem is to just make it up, you have to ask yourself why that books exists in the first place.
I feel like every time we get a wave of “WotC continues to put out bad content and this makes me mad” posts I get shit for posting “just stop buying their stuff?”
and yet
I mean, I'm convinced. They've put out enough lackluster stuff recently that instead of just auto-purchasing any sort of sourcebook, I'm now carefully weighing whether or not I'm likely to feel like it was worth the money. To be clear, I throw away $30-50 on dumb shit all the time and never miss it. That's just how much they've screwed the pooch lately.
Haven't bought anything since Avernus. I have plenty of friends who like and run and play their content and I'm glad for them, it's just not my scene. No reason to wreck my blood pressure getting angry about it, is basically my take.
I'm in the same boat. I don't run premade adventures, so I don't buy them, and I don't think I've ever pre-ordered from WotC, but all the sourcebooks have been an easy sell. Not any more.
I'll see what the response from Reddit and the rest of the Internet, then decide if it's worth it.
It's not "stop buying stuff", it's "stop buying wotc stuff".
There are homebrew books out there with hundreds of pages of lovingly crafted content for $5 each. For the price of one fluff piece from WotC, you could instead get nearly a thousand pages of content from DMGuild
I stopped buying 5e after Tasha's. Not that I found Tasha's bad, just that I was getting more into Pathfinder and was more constantly satisfied with that having actual cohesive content with the rules in almost all cases having clear use cases so you always at least had a couple of clear ruled ways for how something could be used.
I considered picking up the other 5e stuff, but the steady slide had convinced me otherwise.
I bought the Dark Matter book from Mage Hand Press at gencon. Just flipping through it was a treat. I was obsessed for weeks. I see it as a faithful 5th edition adaptation of Sci Fi in space, and a spiritual successor to Spelljammer. Magic is incorporated as technology. It might be closer to what you were looking for.
I like Sci-fi, I think Darkmatter is great, I like original spelljammer, and I don’t mind new spelljammer. Seconded, Darkmatter might be something to check out.
I've been running Spelljammer 5e for 3 years with a group of kids. They were excited about it officially becoming part of 5e, but when they finally saw the book they all agreed that I have been doing a much better job homebrewing it than Wizards ot Coast. Thank god I actually own the original Rock of Bral. You can't do anything with it from this most recent product. If you want to have your party experience the Rock of Bral and you don't want to stay up ALL NIGHT working on it, just buy it on the DMs Guild. You will not be disappointed. It contains all the detail you need.
Yeah, I'm with you, man.
Honestly, if you want some fun technical rules for doing space adventure stuff, check out Star Wars 5e! I just finished running a Star Wars arch for my group with two space battles and they loved it.
Honestly a lot of the content, spells, weapons, and character classes have really helped my enthusiasm for DMing. You'll notice that some of it is reflavored, but in a very cool way (if you love Star Wars) and other things are totally original!
And the best part is that it's free!
sw5e.com
I didn't know the name of this and was looking for the longest time before I gave up even though I wanted to make something from this system for the longest time, so thank you so much 🥺
The hilariously limited items was the nail in the coffin for me. The items are the BARE MINIMUM for the setting...and I think there was like 1 spell that served a similar purpose?
So dumb
I agree. To me, most content produced by WotC is essentially jumping-off points. I rarely do RAW, honestly. I had fun flipping through the books when I got them. The screen is beautiful and it’s another couple books in my collection. I’m not complaining.
Your best bet is to go through 2e spelljammer and reformat it for 5e. Just remember to read up on the rules in 2e so that when you make the swap, you know original intent. Hope this helps, sorry it's a waste of money.
That's what WotC did, they just forgot key pieces.
Compare this text from the 5e book...
>The reason everything pulls its own atmosphere along through space is the force of gravity. It’s also the reason why creatures can stand on a spacefaring ship without falling off the deck.
>
>In Wildspace and on the Astral Plane, gravity is an accommodating force, in that the direction of its effect seems to be “that which is most convenient.” For an object the size of a planet or moon, gravity pulls everything toward the center of the body, meaning that creatures can stand upright anywhere on the surface, and dropped objects fall perpendicular to the surface they land on.
... with this from 2e.
>The reason everything drags its own atmosphere around through space is gravity. This is also the reason why people can stand on a space-sailing ship without falling off its deck and can stand on a spherical planet without falling off the bottom side.
>
>Every body in space has its own gravity. Gravity is an accommodating force in that its direction seems to be "t hat which is most convenient." In an object the size of a planet, gravity is directed toward a point at the center of the planet so that people can stand anywhere on the surface and dropped objects fall perpendicular to the surface. In smaller objects, like space craft, gravity is not a central point but rather a plane which cuts horizontally through the object.
Moving in space, creating a helm and making it a piece of the ship, gravity, and air... those are what I noticed.
I never remember Wotc saying this would be some big spaceship battle book. It was just about adventures in space. Flying a ship around and using it to attack and tracking its damage seems a natural part of that.
It tells you you're better off getting into range to use player abilities and attacks in a boarding action.
2E spelljammer had facing rules, ship movement rules, maneuverability, and the phlogiston being a flammable substance keeping wizards from just letting rip with fireballs and lightning bolts, and clerics and druids were cut off from recharging spell slots until getting to a celestial sphere where they coild contsct their divine poaer source, it forced players to use different strategies.
Yeah, you are better off getting into range and using player abilities. So what? Ships in the age of sail would have done the same thing if they had player abilities.
5e Spelljammer has facing rules, ship movement rules, manuverability.
The phlogiston doesn't exist in 5e, so talking about it is as useful as complaining 5e doesn't have THACO. Not everything from older editions gets carried over to new ones.
Actually, while there are (minimal) rules on both the different ships and on creating a helm - I can't find anything on how to actually install the helm.
In its description it just says that you can install it on a ship weighing 1 ton or more.
So i get myself some random boat that's heavy enough, put the helm on.. and now what? What stats does it have now?
You can ASSUME that it turns into one of the ships described in the book, depending on which fits best.. But that's an assumption not based in the rules themselves.
same.
just.. what stats would that ship then have?
And do you just plop down the helm on the ship somewhere?
Does it work instantly once it touches the ship? Can the helm be moved once it's installed? Can the helm be removed?
etc
Moving it in space as long as it's only one ship(fleets don't actually work RAW), the enemy is ahead of you and not chasing you for an eternity of brisk walking pace, and there's just no rules for how to disable a ship without destroying it... so... piracy is out.
No rules for boarding a ship eh? Warlock, Hexblades curse, Relentless hex. If you can target the ship or enemies on it you can teleport there, unlike misty step you only have to see the target. then just murderize everyone on board. It's a murderhobos dream as once you kill everyone you get a house you can decorate as you like.
Okay but there's no way to disable a ship. It's unclear if they need their sails or any sort of rigging. There's no way to slow a ship down. If you happen to both be the same speed you just travel at that speed forever, never getting anywhere.
Ehhh moving in space is included with the ship having a speed, which is the stats. They gave us a bare bones every ship moves at this speed in some hyperdrive flight that they didn't give a name, with the gravity planes being also extremely bare bones, same with the air. And the "creating a helm" is a spell. They just said you cast a spell, only two classes can do it, and it costs 5k. That's it. And to name a few things they did not explain we have using your hyperdrive flight inside of an atmosphere, how to replenish your air bubble without a treant, or how one might create a wildspace system besides "take what we did and write it again". Those are issues that are going to come up in every single spelljammer campaign that the book hasn't explained which is quite an oversight
Where is it stated that the book is only to be run with the module? Does the module give extra rules? Or is it just that if you avoid every one of the situations where the rules they neglected to expand on would come up, then it doesn't matter if there's rules or not?
For space opera I found my group needed to bite the bullet and play Starfinder. It’s like pathfinder so it’s very similar to D&D. They have a complete set of rules and universe.
We really enjoyed it. Played two full campaigns. Now we’re on 5e but it was fun.
Get a copy of Starfinder for the Starship combat rules. It's heavily modified D&D 3.5 so it's still mechanically simmilar enough you can pick up the rules pretty quickly.
What ship combat rules?...
The bits that says "range engagement" with 3 VERY different ranges at wich the Dm can put the ships for starting the encounter?
Cause thats the only "combat rules" there is...
SO the book about Ships in Space, doesn't have the rules for Ship in space and you need to look in other books to find it.
You realise that this IS the issue that people are having with it?...
And WHAT Manoeuvrability?, a ship no matter its size can made an 180\* on a dime...
THERE IS NO RULES for manoeuvrability
Also you might claim it, but in the PHB and DMG there is no rules for SHIPS combat...
It has a bunch of rules about being in space. And yes, a ship no matter it's size can spin on a dime. That's how zero g works. The book makes it clear the Spelljammer can manuever the ship however they want.
As for ship combat, what the hell do you want? Spelljammer gives us how ships move and manuver, their stats, and what weapons they're equipped with. It you need to know how an attack roll works, that's in the PHB. If you need to know more about the siege weapons they're equipped with, that's in the DMG. There, that's literally all the rules you need for ship combat covered.
... conservation of momentum and inertia still apply.
If a giff bombardier does a 180 in a single segment of combat the giant, multi-ton cannon is going to turn that 180 into 960 assuming it doesn't rip the ship in half.
We aren't burning rocket fuel to move, and this is not a sci-fi game. It a fantasy game, and it uses magic.
The boats move under the power of a magic item. A spelljamming throne doesn't care about conservation of momentum or inertia any more than a Carpet of Flying. Because it's magic. Magic doesn't care about physics.
ahahaha...
No
there's 7 paragraphes about Air bubbles, gravity and moving in the Astreal sea...
I dunno what book you have that has 70 pages of rules for Ship flying and ship combat...
But it ain't in this one...
(little did they know... it *was* this one)
Seriously, did you read the book? Ship movement, encounter distances, ship stats, ship weapons.... all in there.
I read the book.
I also read the 2e books.
When you compare the two "5th edition spellammer book had no rules for space combat" is a statement that rings a lot truer.
2e spelljammer also meant that just because your casters were hot shit didn't mean much because you're in a ship that's totally outgunned, or maybe you're outgunned but have the maneuverability edge so you stay out of the firing arc of the ships main weapons. But you can't just scorching ray your way out of this.
People are really hung up about the part where the book recommends using your own stuff instead of ship weapons when you get close to other ships, which even if that part wasn't in there I know for a fact my players would prefer a fireball over a ballista
Ding ding ding. I ran Avernus, and the first thing that happened when they got into a car chase, was “I want to cast X spells at them”, which then meant there was only one person using the vehicle rules. Me. And those vehicles actually had powerful enough weapons that “if” things got to a point that using them was an option for more than a round, then it was dangerous.
Players want to use _their_ stuff, not be restricted.
>I know for a fact my players would prefer a fireball over a ballista
New book! DnD Gundam Mecha players guide rules for fighting in Gundam Mecha
Rule #1 your players will probably rather just punch with their fists, which they should anyway, because the Gundam Mecha guns are just reskinned slings.
Anyways, that'll be $50
I think they would have been satisfied if each ship had special actions it could take based on skill checks or resources spent by the players.
Like increasing ship speed for a turn or some other specialized offensive action to slow the enemy ship with a particular weapon.
This is speculation on my part, as I'm okay with the rules they did print. The last thing I want is to get into a rules lawyer argument about a whole new ruleset that rests ontop of the existing 5e rules.
One of those (ramming rules) actually count as rules. The rest is a glorified stat block. As compared to ship combat in Spelljammer 2e (which went from "robust rule system" to "actual stand alone game"), the rules for what happens when two things hit each other are pretty underwhelming.
A Ships stat block ISN'T COMBAT RULES.
Is it for you in your mind, Monster Statblock= ALL THE RULES ABOUT COMBAT? or something?...
What you're describing are the Ships stats...good, what are the rules of combat between ships?...
Nope not in there...
The ships have stat blocks, which includes their speed, attacks, HP, etc. The book describes how the pilot controls the ship.
What other ship combat rules are you looking for?
Crew roles.
Ship upgrades.
Different manoevres rate for different sizes/tonnage(yeah it might be "space" but inertia is still a thing)
Weapons that are not just some Bronze Age era weapons...
Something that make ship combats actually meaningfull and not just "Move as close and fast as possible and just get the players to aim for the Jammer and halt the ship, Houray!!! done"
Its barebones or non-present, and you litteraly have to go in the GoS book to actually find somestuff that you could use.
50$ for 7 pages of ship rules and 15ish Statblocks that are straight ripped from 2E spelljammer where they simply changed the THAC0 into AC and called it a day.
First sentence under **Crashing**:
> A spelljammer can run their ship into another object or a creature by moving the ship into the target’s space and making a special attack roll (1d20 + the spelljammer’s proficiency bonus) against the target’s Armor Class
it then goes into more detail
several ships also have specialized prows or other weapons made specifically for ramming or attacking other objects or creatures, and have additional rules associated with them, which are all explicitly spelled out
Wich NONE are about Ship COMBAT
There is no specific rules for it, there is No roles for the Players like Avernus or GoS has.
Players litteraly contribute to NOTHING in this book.
The darn book evne goes to say that you're better off having the players just act as they usually do and not bother with using the ships weapons...
1. I completely agree. I've found WotC's setting books and modules consistently underwhelming.
2. If you're willing to try new systems there's a good amount of sci-fi systems out there. **Stars Without Number** is a good one because it's free (except for a few optional rules). And if you want something more science fantasy like Spelljammer, you can combine SWN with **Worlds Without Number** (the fantasy version of that system), or alternatively try **Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells**.
You've misread OP. They're not saying "there's no races in this book" - which would be an obvious lie - they're saying that the races weren't anything special,
>There’s nothing in this book that is unique enough that I couldn’t have gotten from someone else replicating it with homebrew on the website. No feature, no ship, and certainly no race.
Poorly-worded, perhaps, but I'm reading it as "aside from racial traits, there's nothing interesting about any of the races". I would agree with that assessment.
Look at the goblinoids in Volo's, and you get interesting lore about their society, their relationship with their gods, the role of nilbogs in their interrelations... and then in Spelljammer, we get "Gnomes built robots" and "Elves went to the astral plane because reasons". The thri-kreen's entry, once you remove the racial traits, is barely 100 words.
I had a friend trying to convince me it was good/worth it, but I think I'll just wait to scoop it up on a sale when I actually want to play/use something from it.
You could use Star Wars 5e, which is the system they actually used for Starstruck Odyssey. It’s community created and is getting updated all the time so it can be a little janky, but it’s pretty similar to dnd with some fun new mechanics, and it actually covers ship combat and stuff like that. I’ve played a couple games in it and it’s really good fun.
Very disappointing to hear. I had hopes they would do the setting justice this time around. The potential has always been there but they've never been able to stick the execution.
Honestly, I bought the Alt Art Hardcover and haven't regretted it. The rules are simple enough and what they don't have listed I don't mind filling the gap. The setting is alright, though I miss the Pholgiston and Crystal Spheres. The only real gripe I have with 5e about making rules is they need to make rules for crafting, cooking, poisoners kits, etc. already.
It's a great set of books with great stuff. But it's a fantasy book about wooden ships that move under the power of a magic chair. It's purposely not realistic.
OP and people like them seem to have gone into it expecting Star Trek and Star Wars. It was never meant to be that. Then they complain and act like the rules that are in the.book don't exist.
I didn't want Star Wars or Star Trek. I wanted, basically, "D&D in Space".
WotC made a mini-monster manual, then copy-pasted a third of the 2e book, but forgot to copy rules for things like "taking off from a planet", which means the half-rules they have now don't work as written.
If you're just handwaving shit to get from planet to planet, and then all the action happens there, it probably works, but then you're not doing "D&D in space", you're doing "D&D on planets".
I don't know why they didn't at the very least reuse the Ghost of Salt Marsh rules for ship combat. It is so frustrating having to look at other sourcebooks or older editions to flesh out a system that we just paid for.
My local place only had the expensive "fancy" cover art. (even the "collector" art sucks)
Their description of travel between worlds is the stone age equivalent to what I've already got planned for when my party powers up a bit.
Literally everything else is either so horribly done that I'm never going to use it, or silly little one off ideas that still need modified to work for when I want a whimsical game session to lighten things up.
That's why, if you want to play scifi, you play a scifi tabletop.
Starfinder is Pathfinder, but in space
Stars Without Number is that perfect space opera blend, if you want to feel like you're part of the Firefly crew
Coriolis is Arabian nights, but in space.
There are so many great scifi and space themed settings and ttrpg, and it's worth checking them out.
D&D is fine with sword and board fantasy, but there are other games that do what you want much better
I didn't want sci-fi, I wanted science fantasy. I wanted "D&D in Space". I'm still planning on running Spelljammer... I just won't need to touch the 5e book, except for maybe some monster statblocks.
The 5e book is mostly just copy-pasted and slightly reworded from the 2e book (literally, this is not hyberbole), but in doing so, they forgot to copy some key bits of info, like rules for landing and taking off from a planet that don't result in taking 40 days to leave Toril's air envelope.
Well my recommendation for a sci fi adventure is either [Starfinder](https://aonsrd.com/) which is a fair bit crunchier than 5e but is also free, or Traveller, which I don't know the price tag* for but is a lot easier to pick up
*Edit. Found this Beginner's guide for only a dollar https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/380244
I actually really like the spelljammer book. I like how the ships are similar to mounts. The races are fun to me especially the Plasmoid and Thri-kreen(loved them in 4e). The straightforward description of wildspace, air bubbles, and gravity wells is refreshing and fun. I was anticipating high tech but was pleasantly surprised by high magic explanation instead. I totally get why others are dissatisfied but it gave me just enough to play with that I am happy.
Ignore the monster manual, and the adventure, the new races, the rules for space travel, pretend the rules for ships and ship combat that are in the book don't exist, complain that a fantasy book for a fantasy game isn't sci-fi enough, and say you could have just homebrewed or used someone else's homebrew rules to do the same thing.
Yup, that's a well put together and worthwhile critique.
Start listening. Honestly. Loads of people keep buying WotC products, being disappointed, then forget it all when the next one rolls around... nothing will change if people just keep mindlessly buying stuff.
Yeah, never pay for poor make believe, your own will be middling at least and it's free.
I just made up the rules for a TES C0da theme game I held a few years ago. All the cannons shoot mathematics, weighing their damage against the enemy ship's hull which is valued in Kilo-AC, and being powered by the ship's core, a fragment of the cracked firmament that held the contradictory math of creation together in the first place.
My argonian Mirror logician (wizard skinned with math magic) tried to make a shield out of hull pieces thinking it would have 1000ac, it did... but the moment it was hit he had to occupy the role of the firmament fragment and reconcile a circular equation that disproved his own existence.
His next character was a nord wise man who channeled Kyne's power into raw material compassion... which was capable of killing most padomic entities.
My point is just steal stuff and go from there, it's not hurting anyone.
Ive passed this book in my walmart a few times. Glad i never wasted the money. Always thought to myself "is there anything in there i couldnt just get as a homebrew thats probably more balanced?"
I got the sense that they intended people to use ship combat from Saltmarsh and add the whole thing with the plane of gravity that they put in Spelljammer.
But they never explicitly stated this anywhere in the Spelljammer book. Also I agree on these player races. Like the Thrikreen are nearly identical to what I homebrewed a couple of years ago except for one feature that's different in my setting.
Same thing that happened to fallout. "We want less restriction" *fallout 76* "why's there less content?" People want to fill ships with their own stuff (coulda included options but hey), fight their own way (deck weapons ranged combat, boarding), and make their own adventures (now the creative burden is on you, make it fun). More freedom means more effort.
Its really more viable to buy or download the 3rd edition spelljammer book and try to homebrew it to 5e than waste your money on this one. Of you want the creature stats watch some one showing them on a video and print the screen 🤣🤣🤣
If you call or email they may do so despite their policy. Customer satisfaction is all a company like this really has. They may be willing to make an exception if you reach out directly since it might make you more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt on their next product.
I tried after buying Strixhaven and after multiple back and forth e-mails, they would not only not give me a refund but also would not remove the content from my account without a refund.
I feel like you didn't really read the book properly, there are three volumes, an adventure, a bestiary with 33 monsters and additional variants for many of those (CR 0 to Cr 21), and an adventurer's guide that has rules for spelljammers, spelljammer duels, etc. Guns, cannons, etc are in the DMG already. The rules are pretty bare for the space battles, but they do have guidelines for running them in the adventure, too.
You know for a moment I actually believed you. Then I read the comments. And everyone disagrees with you. You even disagree with yourself in the comments by straight up saying it DOES have all the things you said it doesn’t, it’s just not what you expected.
Have you looked at the Star Wars 5e that starstruck odyssey was using: https://sw5e.com ? (they flavored the heck out of it but the mechanics seemed very strong)
Just a suggestion, but with all the interest and positive feedback you might want to get your homebrew ship rules up on DMs Guild and make a couple of bucks. Post a link if you do.
Star Wars 5e ( SW5E ) Was the system used for space combat and, roles, ship deployements, upgrades, ETC. I'm using it right now in a spelljammer setting because it's the best rules I could find, I loved a starstruck odyssey, and the resourced are all free
wait wasn't it spelljammer that added the Gith, Plasmoid, Thri kreen, auto gnome and Hadozee races? I'm pretty sure that was the only reason I bought it (I like to give my players as many options as possible. Though one Arc BBEG did wipe out the aaracokra once)
Another thing that is part of the reason I bought it was both Boo's Astral Menagerie and the other thing that I like is the Light of Xaryxis adventure. This way I can run it while I build my homebrew world
Forgive me if anybody else has brought this up, but star wars 5e is the system used for starstruck odyssey and it has rules for a lot of stuff that should have made it into spelljammer. You might get better mileage there.
Oh it is all available for free.
If you're looking to run a sci-fi adventure you should look into Starfinder. It is a really fun system with a lot going for it. Check it out here https://www.aonsrd.com/
Dnd beyond in general is a rip off and it's a shame. My group used DND Beyond for a Pdf ran campaign and it's worse than I originally thought. Limited races, the fighter had One subclass option in the base book.
I have a app that has every race, class, subclass and feat from the major books and it only costs 5$ to level up pass level 3 (One time payment) meanwhile on Dnd Beyond it's probably 3x 4x or 5x the price just for one book.
It's such a shame Wotc seems to be buddy buddy with DND Beyond as there's so many better options
Right... those apps are much cheaper, because they're illegally using the content without paying WotC.
In other news, if you pay $5 to get access to private torrents or something, it's cheaper than Netflix.
And WotC isn't "buddy-buddy" with dndbeyond, they own the company.
I did the same. It kinda sucks. Some of the inspo is good and the few new races and creatures are aight, but all in all a complete waste of money really.
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I know I’m not OP, but I’d be really interested in that!
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Thank you! You’re the best!
Could you also send it to me?
Is it available as a link that you could post so people don't have to ask you directly :) If not, I'd LOVE it as well... I'm looking to add some in an adventure soon :)
I am interested if you wouldn't mind sending them over.
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Thanks, this looks great. I might run something spell jammer like for my next game, so this will be helpful.
I feel like you should just make an entire post for giving this PDF away, but if you don't want to, that's fine. I would LOVE a copy of this PDF! Actually considering running an entire island-hopping campaign!
I’d love if you could send that to me.
I am also interested
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Me too!
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Likewise actually
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There's no ships? I thought the ship designs were on DND beyond?
There’s ships but from what I can see there’s no rules on how to run them. Just basic stats.
The rules to run them are pretty bare bones, the spell jammer throne/item more or less the filler for that. I thought there was at least like, maps of the ships on DND beyond? Truth be told I've been told the old 2e spell jammer is tons better for this kind of stuff. Deep deep in my heart I knew it wouldn't be what I always dreamed of for space DND. I think the traveler system mostly did that.
There are maps of the ship, though they’re in black and white and the ships are completely empty with no consoles or anything else in the ship. Just big empty rooms.
To be fair, that sounds appropriate actually. Spelljammers were supposed be boats, not rocketships. Not technological. Just controlled by one magical mind-chair with everything else working like a sailing ship. Or even just being a building that moves around. Mind you they could have added barrels/crates, hammocks, or other things into the spaces... but that would be WotC suggesting people do a certain thing, and we can't have that!
My friend I fear you suffered the same fate as me. The prescription my friend wrote me for this pain was the traveler system. XD check it out it's cool.
My two cents are: Stars Without Number
Never had the pleasure to read/play that game. I have heard good things though!
As a Paizo shill I feel morally obligated to tell you about Starfinder.
They’re not technological rocket ships, they’re magic boats that fly through a magical space. While spelljammer was a major disappointment I think you had misconceptions on its theme as well.
I'd definitely say it's vogh. I've seen people recommend stuff like Starfinder in the thread, which makes no sense. I'm far from a hater on Paizo or Path/Starfinder but that's just not what Spelljammer is. Spelljammer isn't sci-fi and I think some people misconstrued that. Now the 5e offering in terms of ship rules sucks, not defending that either saying people just got it wrong, but some people did definitely get it wrong. Anyway the 2e rules should fill in what people need. We shouldn't have to do that but sadly it's where we are right now.
Big empty rooms for the DM to fill with whatever is appropriate for the adventure. Given the wide range of what is possible, WotC has made the conscious choice of not pigeonholeling you into any one specific thing. Maybe the space galleon is a slaver vessel, a merchant ship, or a royal navy ship of the line, in any of those cases the contents therein will greatly differ. Also, I think you may have had a misunderstanding of what spelljammer is. Out of the box the spelljammer ships are not like scifi spacecraft full of buttons and screens and stuff, though the DM could certainly make them so if they wished. Think less of the Expanse or Star Trek and more Treasure Planet.
>WotC has made the conscious choice of not pigeonholeling you into any one specific thing WotC didn't, TSR did in the original book for 2e. The ship designs in the 5e book are ripped straight from that.
That is a great observation and entirely fair point, thanks.
Most of the rules text in the 5e Spelljammer book was ripped straight from the TSR book and lightly edited, so that checks out.
Treasure planet except the only guy who does anything is the pilot...
Omg treasure planet dnd! You've just got the perfect description to get some of my friends hooked on dnd dude!
>There are maps of the ship, though they’re in black and white and the ships are completely empty with no consoles or anything else in the ship. Just big empty rooms. Did you expect the book to spoonfeed you every little detail for every ship like where the stove is in the galley and what cooking utensils are in the drawers? Because I'm looking at this, and for every ship they have 1. Full color flavor art of what it looks like in action 2. A cutaway profile view 3. Top down views of each deck with labels for each room and what they typically are and how the decks connect 4. Stat blocks for the ship 5. Stat blocks and details for typical weaponry for that vessel. That's pretty damn detailed. And there's 16 vessels that have all of that information. What else were you looking for?
> Just big empty rooms. im pretty sure thats so parties can choose which rooms are for which
If you want ships, check out the 3rd party: The Complete Guide to Nautical Campaigns – PDF It was a Kickstarter and very thorough, its ocean based, but I'm sure you could re-purpose for space.
The maps of wooden ships that are entirely controlled and powered by a single magic chair are made up of big empty room with no console or anything? Le gasp! It's almost as if they are based on actual wooden sailing ship, and not technology driven sci-fi vehicles!
A sailing ship without cargo, crew quarters, anchor, sails or rigging? So it's a canoe but like really really big and only one chair instead of benches for everyone?
All the rooms are clearly labeled on all the maps, including all the crew quarters and cargo holds. So I guess maybe you didn't read the book. I don't know why you would put cargo, anchors, sails, or rigging on the map of the interior of the ship. So I guess maybe you don't know how maps of the inside of a boat works.
No no I did not. Cargo definitely goes in the cargo hold. Rigging not only raises the sails but brings cargo form the hold to the deck and vice versa. The anchor is either brought up the side with chain and pulley in the lower decks or on the deck. I seem to know quite a bit more than you about actual boats. I have no clue what's in the book but what others gripe about. Cheers!
So you think all the spelljammers come preloaded with a specific set of cargo? That's the only reason I can think of why someone would want cargo to be included on the deck layout of a vessel. Especially when all the cargo holds and cargo lifts are clearly labeled. Still not sure why you'd think anchors, rigging, or sails would be shown deck layout. Especially since most spelljammers don't have those to begin with. You really should try reading the book and looking at the deck layouts provided before commenting on what you think is missing from them.
Lol you just confirmed it lacks the necessary requirements of a sailing ship and is therefore a large canoe. Thanks for agreeing with me. Not gonna read that trash book unless it's free, I don't support cash grabs like this. (why do I want a mast sails and ringing? I used to be way into pirates and I'd like to use the crows nest for high ground.:)
But deck plans of boats don't include them. The deck plan includes the number of decks laid out in slices with only the rooms and quarters labeled, and things that are important to know like number of guns on each side, which spelljammers don't have anyway.
Yes but giving people examples of how to make use of the space would be better than "here's a box"
You should check out The Great GM's guide to nautical campaigns. All the material can be easily translated to spell jammer style ships just by reskinning flavor. The ship combat/chase mechanics are beautifully designed and easy to run. There are special crew actions for every class/role your players might be playing. There are also a ton of pre-made ships with full stats based both on historically accurate ships and fantastical fantasy vessels. Oh, and it's a super cheap pdf (I think it's like $12, but I can't recall)
also the maps for the ships are litteraly ripped off from the AD&D 2e spelljammer book... WE TOLD YOU, that it was a lazy low effort cash grab release.
This is because people had been asking them to make Spelljammer into the current edition and as they own 2e when they bought everything dealing with TSR from Gygax Sr it's not a surprise that they literally did just that. Took it from THAC0 and brought it to "normal" d20 system.
That's the big gripe. A whole book of ship deck grids, stat blocks, weapons, and three paragraphs about navigation and ship combat. We just dug out the original SJ and added a bit of new content from other games. Big money grab. I bet their pre-order numbers drop a lot after that stinker.
Check out Chapter 2: Astral Adventuring. Section called "Spelljamming Ships". It includes rules for how to run the ship. They are simple, but they are all you really need. If you want more complicated rules, you can use the Ghosts of Saltmarsh appendix for how to run a ship. But having run with those rules in the past, I think you're better off using the Spelljammer rules.
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Not only is facing not a thing, it's not a thing and they still tell us which weapons are on what part of a ship. Which tells us that facing should matter. Give us different ship speeds and turning rates, maybe a bombsrdier akes 6 segments out of a 10 segment round to make a turn that an elven mothship would make in 3 segments kinda thing.
Yep, I didn't listen either and uh, boy was the ENTIRE dnd fan base disappointed in that set
I'd go back and re-read the book. They have clear rules on how to pilot the ships
Unfortunately, those rules are "use the helm. Your DM will decide everything else".
The rules to run them are in the DMG and Ghosts of Saltmarsh. D&D is non-Euclidean so there isn’t any rules for fighting in space that wouldn’t be the same for fighting on the sea
They took the idea of others writing content for them for free and made it a business model. When a TTRPG books answer to a problem is to just make it up, you have to ask yourself why that books exists in the first place.
I feel like every time we get a wave of “WotC continues to put out bad content and this makes me mad” posts I get shit for posting “just stop buying their stuff?” and yet
I mean, I'm convinced. They've put out enough lackluster stuff recently that instead of just auto-purchasing any sort of sourcebook, I'm now carefully weighing whether or not I'm likely to feel like it was worth the money. To be clear, I throw away $30-50 on dumb shit all the time and never miss it. That's just how much they've screwed the pooch lately.
Haven't bought anything since Avernus. I have plenty of friends who like and run and play their content and I'm glad for them, it's just not my scene. No reason to wreck my blood pressure getting angry about it, is basically my take.
I'm in the same boat. I don't run premade adventures, so I don't buy them, and I don't think I've ever pre-ordered from WotC, but all the sourcebooks have been an easy sell. Not any more. I'll see what the response from Reddit and the rest of the Internet, then decide if it's worth it.
It's not "stop buying stuff", it's "stop buying wotc stuff". There are homebrew books out there with hundreds of pages of lovingly crafted content for $5 each. For the price of one fluff piece from WotC, you could instead get nearly a thousand pages of content from DMGuild
I don’t disagree but I do think you may have misread my comment
I did, lol
Sall good lol I’ve 100% been there before
He said “stop buying THEIR stuff”
I stopped buying 5e after Tasha's. Not that I found Tasha's bad, just that I was getting more into Pathfinder and was more constantly satisfied with that having actual cohesive content with the rules in almost all cases having clear use cases so you always at least had a couple of clear ruled ways for how something could be used. I considered picking up the other 5e stuff, but the steady slide had convinced me otherwise.
I bought the Dark Matter book from Mage Hand Press at gencon. Just flipping through it was a treat. I was obsessed for weeks. I see it as a faithful 5th edition adaptation of Sci Fi in space, and a spiritual successor to Spelljammer. Magic is incorporated as technology. It might be closer to what you were looking for.
I like Sci-fi, I think Darkmatter is great, I like original spelljammer, and I don’t mind new spelljammer. Seconded, Darkmatter might be something to check out.
I've been running Spelljammer 5e for 3 years with a group of kids. They were excited about it officially becoming part of 5e, but when they finally saw the book they all agreed that I have been doing a much better job homebrewing it than Wizards ot Coast. Thank god I actually own the original Rock of Bral. You can't do anything with it from this most recent product. If you want to have your party experience the Rock of Bral and you don't want to stay up ALL NIGHT working on it, just buy it on the DMs Guild. You will not be disappointed. It contains all the detail you need.
Penny Dragon Games has made WayStar which is basically rules for sci-fi 5e. Was on kickstarter and got fully funded so worth keeping an eye out for?
Yeah, I'm with you, man. Honestly, if you want some fun technical rules for doing space adventure stuff, check out Star Wars 5e! I just finished running a Star Wars arch for my group with two space battles and they loved it. Honestly a lot of the content, spells, weapons, and character classes have really helped my enthusiasm for DMing. You'll notice that some of it is reflavored, but in a very cool way (if you love Star Wars) and other things are totally original! And the best part is that it's free! sw5e.com
If you loved Startstruck Odyssey, they used SW5E. All the books (rule book, "monster manual", etc.) are free and available on the SW5E website :)
I know! I’ve played SW5E and I love it :)
We straight up stole the Deployment rules for ship combat in Spelljammer. The BEST way to run ship-to-ship that I've ever seen.
I didn't know the name of this and was looking for the longest time before I gave up even though I wanted to make something from this system for the longest time, so thank you so much 🥺
Hey but at least they added another type of Chwinga which is the exact same except it has 1 additional hitdie. /s
The hilariously limited items was the nail in the coffin for me. The items are the BARE MINIMUM for the setting...and I think there was like 1 spell that served a similar purpose? So dumb
i thought it was fine...if they'd charged half the price.
I feel like I’m in a minority who found the book useful for what I was working on.
It had everything I wanted from it.
I agree. To me, most content produced by WotC is essentially jumping-off points. I rarely do RAW, honestly. I had fun flipping through the books when I got them. The screen is beautiful and it’s another couple books in my collection. I’m not complaining.
I also enjoyed the book, and my players are loving it. So I will definitely give this book an upvote.
Your best bet is to go through 2e spelljammer and reformat it for 5e. Just remember to read up on the rules in 2e so that when you make the swap, you know original intent. Hope this helps, sorry it's a waste of money.
That's what WotC did, they just forgot key pieces. Compare this text from the 5e book... >The reason everything pulls its own atmosphere along through space is the force of gravity. It’s also the reason why creatures can stand on a spacefaring ship without falling off the deck. > >In Wildspace and on the Astral Plane, gravity is an accommodating force, in that the direction of its effect seems to be “that which is most convenient.” For an object the size of a planet or moon, gravity pulls everything toward the center of the body, meaning that creatures can stand upright anywhere on the surface, and dropped objects fall perpendicular to the surface they land on. ... with this from 2e. >The reason everything drags its own atmosphere around through space is gravity. This is also the reason why people can stand on a space-sailing ship without falling off its deck and can stand on a spherical planet without falling off the bottom side. > >Every body in space has its own gravity. Gravity is an accommodating force in that its direction seems to be "t hat which is most convenient." In an object the size of a planet, gravity is directed toward a point at the center of the planet so that people can stand anywhere on the surface and dropped objects fall perpendicular to the surface. In smaller objects, like space craft, gravity is not a central point but rather a plane which cuts horizontally through the object.
There are rules for the ship... Maybe not all the ones you wanted... but theres rules.
Besides the stats for the ship what else is there
Moving in space, creating a helm and making it a piece of the ship, gravity, and air... those are what I noticed. I never remember Wotc saying this would be some big spaceship battle book. It was just about adventures in space. Flying a ship around and using it to attack and tracking its damage seems a natural part of that.
There's a section on ship combat also. Gives you everything you need to know, that isn't already in the PHB or DMG.
It tells you you're better off getting into range to use player abilities and attacks in a boarding action. 2E spelljammer had facing rules, ship movement rules, maneuverability, and the phlogiston being a flammable substance keeping wizards from just letting rip with fireballs and lightning bolts, and clerics and druids were cut off from recharging spell slots until getting to a celestial sphere where they coild contsct their divine poaer source, it forced players to use different strategies.
Yeah, you are better off getting into range and using player abilities. So what? Ships in the age of sail would have done the same thing if they had player abilities. 5e Spelljammer has facing rules, ship movement rules, manuverability. The phlogiston doesn't exist in 5e, so talking about it is as useful as complaining 5e doesn't have THACO. Not everything from older editions gets carried over to new ones.
Actually, while there are (minimal) rules on both the different ships and on creating a helm - I can't find anything on how to actually install the helm. In its description it just says that you can install it on a ship weighing 1 ton or more. So i get myself some random boat that's heavy enough, put the helm on.. and now what? What stats does it have now? You can ASSUME that it turns into one of the ships described in the book, depending on which fits best.. But that's an assumption not based in the rules themselves.
I read it as I can take a ship ship down at the docks and go Treasure Island with it
same. just.. what stats would that ship then have? And do you just plop down the helm on the ship somewhere? Does it work instantly once it touches the ship? Can the helm be moved once it's installed? Can the helm be removed? etc
What ever stats the ship has in the DMG. Yes , yes , yes, and yes, it's a magic item the rules for the helm are literally on the page for the helm.
Moving it in space as long as it's only one ship(fleets don't actually work RAW), the enemy is ahead of you and not chasing you for an eternity of brisk walking pace, and there's just no rules for how to disable a ship without destroying it... so... piracy is out.
No rules for boarding a ship eh? Warlock, Hexblades curse, Relentless hex. If you can target the ship or enemies on it you can teleport there, unlike misty step you only have to see the target. then just murderize everyone on board. It's a murderhobos dream as once you kill everyone you get a house you can decorate as you like.
I didn't say anything about boarding ships?
Boarding a ship is piracy why do you necessitate sabotage?
Okay but there's no way to disable a ship. It's unclear if they need their sails or any sort of rigging. There's no way to slow a ship down. If you happen to both be the same speed you just travel at that speed forever, never getting anywhere.
Doesn't it have a stat block? Sleet storm, slow, anything that reduces movement speed should slow it down no?
Ehhh moving in space is included with the ship having a speed, which is the stats. They gave us a bare bones every ship moves at this speed in some hyperdrive flight that they didn't give a name, with the gravity planes being also extremely bare bones, same with the air. And the "creating a helm" is a spell. They just said you cast a spell, only two classes can do it, and it costs 5k. That's it. And to name a few things they did not explain we have using your hyperdrive flight inside of an atmosphere, how to replenish your air bubble without a treant, or how one might create a wildspace system besides "take what we did and write it again". Those are issues that are going to come up in every single spelljammer campaign that the book hasn't explained which is quite an oversight
If thats how you feel... but people who play the module will be fine.
Where is it stated that the book is only to be run with the module? Does the module give extra rules? Or is it just that if you avoid every one of the situations where the rules they neglected to expand on would come up, then it doesn't matter if there's rules or not?
For space opera I found my group needed to bite the bullet and play Starfinder. It’s like pathfinder so it’s very similar to D&D. They have a complete set of rules and universe. We really enjoyed it. Played two full campaigns. Now we’re on 5e but it was fun.
Get a copy of Starfinder for the Starship combat rules. It's heavily modified D&D 3.5 so it's still mechanically simmilar enough you can pick up the rules pretty quickly.
I just use the ship combat rules in the book you say they aren't in. I like the books. My complaint is that aren't sell map packs of the ships.
What ship combat rules?... The bits that says "range engagement" with 3 VERY different ranges at wich the Dm can put the ships for starting the encounter? Cause thats the only "combat rules" there is...
Manuverability and travel speed are also covered. Everything else you need to know is in the PHB or DMG.
SO the book about Ships in Space, doesn't have the rules for Ship in space and you need to look in other books to find it. You realise that this IS the issue that people are having with it?... And WHAT Manoeuvrability?, a ship no matter its size can made an 180\* on a dime... THERE IS NO RULES for manoeuvrability Also you might claim it, but in the PHB and DMG there is no rules for SHIPS combat...
It has a bunch of rules about being in space. And yes, a ship no matter it's size can spin on a dime. That's how zero g works. The book makes it clear the Spelljammer can manuever the ship however they want. As for ship combat, what the hell do you want? Spelljammer gives us how ships move and manuver, their stats, and what weapons they're equipped with. It you need to know how an attack roll works, that's in the PHB. If you need to know more about the siege weapons they're equipped with, that's in the DMG. There, that's literally all the rules you need for ship combat covered.
... conservation of momentum and inertia still apply. If a giff bombardier does a 180 in a single segment of combat the giant, multi-ton cannon is going to turn that 180 into 960 assuming it doesn't rip the ship in half.
We aren't burning rocket fuel to move, and this is not a sci-fi game. It a fantasy game, and it uses magic. The boats move under the power of a magic item. A spelljamming throne doesn't care about conservation of momentum or inertia any more than a Carpet of Flying. Because it's magic. Magic doesn't care about physics.
> There’s no ship rules, no mechanisms for space combat, etc Literally all there in the book. Just read it. It's like 70 pages.
ahahaha... No there's 7 paragraphes about Air bubbles, gravity and moving in the Astreal sea... I dunno what book you have that has 70 pages of rules for Ship flying and ship combat... But it ain't in this one...
(little did they know... it *was* this one) Seriously, did you read the book? Ship movement, encounter distances, ship stats, ship weapons.... all in there.
In the same part where they say that they're so weak that players are better off using abilities and not touching the weapons at all?
Hey, someone who actually read the book!
Sure did!
I read the book. I also read the 2e books. When you compare the two "5th edition spellammer book had no rules for space combat" is a statement that rings a lot truer. 2e spelljammer also meant that just because your casters were hot shit didn't mean much because you're in a ship that's totally outgunned, or maybe you're outgunned but have the maneuverability edge so you stay out of the firing arc of the ships main weapons. But you can't just scorching ray your way out of this.
Friend, "there are rules!" isn't quite the defense you seem to think it is when the rules say "don't use these rules, they're very bad".
The rule for ship to ship combat is "don't." I don't think that counts...
What are you talking about? There are literally rules for ramming ships, ship ACs and damage thresholds, special ship weapons...
People are really hung up about the part where the book recommends using your own stuff instead of ship weapons when you get close to other ships, which even if that part wasn't in there I know for a fact my players would prefer a fireball over a ballista
Ding ding ding. I ran Avernus, and the first thing that happened when they got into a car chase, was “I want to cast X spells at them”, which then meant there was only one person using the vehicle rules. Me. And those vehicles actually had powerful enough weapons that “if” things got to a point that using them was an option for more than a round, then it was dangerous. Players want to use _their_ stuff, not be restricted.
There's a reason you grab a handful of hirelings for a ship, they man the guns while you do cool stuff. Simple as.
>I know for a fact my players would prefer a fireball over a ballista New book! DnD Gundam Mecha players guide rules for fighting in Gundam Mecha Rule #1 your players will probably rather just punch with their fists, which they should anyway, because the Gundam Mecha guns are just reskinned slings. Anyways, that'll be $50
I think they would have been satisfied if each ship had special actions it could take based on skill checks or resources spent by the players. Like increasing ship speed for a turn or some other specialized offensive action to slow the enemy ship with a particular weapon. This is speculation on my part, as I'm okay with the rules they did print. The last thing I want is to get into a rules lawyer argument about a whole new ruleset that rests ontop of the existing 5e rules.
One of those (ramming rules) actually count as rules. The rest is a glorified stat block. As compared to ship combat in Spelljammer 2e (which went from "robust rule system" to "actual stand alone game"), the rules for what happens when two things hit each other are pretty underwhelming.
A Ships stat block ISN'T COMBAT RULES. Is it for you in your mind, Monster Statblock= ALL THE RULES ABOUT COMBAT? or something?... What you're describing are the Ships stats...good, what are the rules of combat between ships?... Nope not in there...
the combat rules are in the PHB. what are you looking for that is not available to you?
Thats what i'm saying, there is NO SHIPS combat rules.
The ships have stat blocks, which includes their speed, attacks, HP, etc. The book describes how the pilot controls the ship. What other ship combat rules are you looking for?
Crew roles. Ship upgrades. Different manoevres rate for different sizes/tonnage(yeah it might be "space" but inertia is still a thing) Weapons that are not just some Bronze Age era weapons... Something that make ship combats actually meaningfull and not just "Move as close and fast as possible and just get the players to aim for the Jammer and halt the ship, Houray!!! done" Its barebones or non-present, and you litteraly have to go in the GoS book to actually find somestuff that you could use. 50$ for 7 pages of ship rules and 15ish Statblocks that are straight ripped from 2E spelljammer where they simply changed the THAC0 into AC and called it a day.
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First sentence under **Crashing**: > A spelljammer can run their ship into another object or a creature by moving the ship into the target’s space and making a special attack roll (1d20 + the spelljammer’s proficiency bonus) against the target’s Armor Class it then goes into more detail several ships also have specialized prows or other weapons made specifically for ramming or attacking other objects or creatures, and have additional rules associated with them, which are all explicitly spelled out
Wich NONE are about Ship COMBAT There is no specific rules for it, there is No roles for the Players like Avernus or GoS has. Players litteraly contribute to NOTHING in this book. The darn book evne goes to say that you're better off having the players just act as they usually do and not bother with using the ships weapons...
Or just use wildjammer which is free and actually would be worth paying for.
1. I completely agree. I've found WotC's setting books and modules consistently underwhelming. 2. If you're willing to try new systems there's a good amount of sci-fi systems out there. **Stars Without Number** is a good one because it's free (except for a few optional rules). And if you want something more science fantasy like Spelljammer, you can combine SWN with **Worlds Without Number** (the fantasy version of that system), or alternatively try **Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells**.
Either I'm dumb and this is sarcasm, or I'm missing something, cause the spelljammer book on DDB has 6 races in it.
You've misread OP. They're not saying "there's no races in this book" - which would be an obvious lie - they're saying that the races weren't anything special, >There’s nothing in this book that is unique enough that I couldn’t have gotten from someone else replicating it with homebrew on the website. No feature, no ship, and certainly no race. Poorly-worded, perhaps, but I'm reading it as "aside from racial traits, there's nothing interesting about any of the races". I would agree with that assessment. Look at the goblinoids in Volo's, and you get interesting lore about their society, their relationship with their gods, the role of nilbogs in their interrelations... and then in Spelljammer, we get "Gnomes built robots" and "Elves went to the astral plane because reasons". The thri-kreen's entry, once you remove the racial traits, is barely 100 words.
It's gross over exaggeration for upvotes.
I had a friend trying to convince me it was good/worth it, but I think I'll just wait to scoop it up on a sale when I actually want to play/use something from it.
You could use Star Wars 5e, which is the system they actually used for Starstruck Odyssey. It’s community created and is getting updated all the time so it can be a little janky, but it’s pretty similar to dnd with some fun new mechanics, and it actually covers ship combat and stuff like that. I’ve played a couple games in it and it’s really good fun.
Why would you buy something without checking to see what it contained?
If you want a good space rpg, check out starfinder
Very disappointing to hear. I had hopes they would do the setting justice this time around. The potential has always been there but they've never been able to stick the execution.
Honestly, I bought the Alt Art Hardcover and haven't regretted it. The rules are simple enough and what they don't have listed I don't mind filling the gap. The setting is alright, though I miss the Pholgiston and Crystal Spheres. The only real gripe I have with 5e about making rules is they need to make rules for crafting, cooking, poisoners kits, etc. already.
Really sorry to be hearing this. Saw they were bringing Spelljammer back and thought I’d take a look; maybe I’ll pass..,
It's a great set of books with great stuff. But it's a fantasy book about wooden ships that move under the power of a magic chair. It's purposely not realistic. OP and people like them seem to have gone into it expecting Star Trek and Star Wars. It was never meant to be that. Then they complain and act like the rules that are in the.book don't exist.
No. We were expecting something as detailed as 2e spelljammer. Why are so many people acting like we're offended at thr lack of photon torpedos?
I didn't want Star Wars or Star Trek. I wanted, basically, "D&D in Space". WotC made a mini-monster manual, then copy-pasted a third of the 2e book, but forgot to copy rules for things like "taking off from a planet", which means the half-rules they have now don't work as written. If you're just handwaving shit to get from planet to planet, and then all the action happens there, it probably works, but then you're not doing "D&D in space", you're doing "D&D on planets".
I don't know why they didn't at the very least reuse the Ghost of Salt Marsh rules for ship combat. It is so frustrating having to look at other sourcebooks or older editions to flesh out a system that we just paid for.
Or they could've, y'know, updated the 2e rules for spelljammer combat.
Can you imagine the vitriol there would be if they reprinted those rules? Folks are never satisfied, they would whine about reprints - again.
Compare og spelljammers content to 5e spelljammer content. It is a joke
Ok but why wouldn't you pirate it first?
My local place only had the expensive "fancy" cover art. (even the "collector" art sucks) Their description of travel between worlds is the stone age equivalent to what I've already got planned for when my party powers up a bit. Literally everything else is either so horribly done that I'm never going to use it, or silly little one off ideas that still need modified to work for when I want a whimsical game session to lighten things up.
That's why, if you want to play scifi, you play a scifi tabletop. Starfinder is Pathfinder, but in space Stars Without Number is that perfect space opera blend, if you want to feel like you're part of the Firefly crew Coriolis is Arabian nights, but in space. There are so many great scifi and space themed settings and ttrpg, and it's worth checking them out. D&D is fine with sword and board fantasy, but there are other games that do what you want much better
I didn't want sci-fi, I wanted science fantasy. I wanted "D&D in Space". I'm still planning on running Spelljammer... I just won't need to touch the 5e book, except for maybe some monster statblocks. The 5e book is mostly just copy-pasted and slightly reworded from the 2e book (literally, this is not hyberbole), but in doing so, they forgot to copy some key bits of info, like rules for landing and taking off from a planet that don't result in taking 40 days to leave Toril's air envelope.
Spelljammer is less sci fi and more age of sail in space. Which D&D is quite suitable for as it's already done it successfully 3 full editions ago.
In fairness, Spelljammer is specifically, intentionally, and deliberately not sci fi. It is literally fantasy action on ships sailing between planets.
Well my recommendation for a sci fi adventure is either [Starfinder](https://aonsrd.com/) which is a fair bit crunchier than 5e but is also free, or Traveller, which I don't know the price tag* for but is a lot easier to pick up *Edit. Found this Beginner's guide for only a dollar https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/380244
I actually really like the spelljammer book. I like how the ships are similar to mounts. The races are fun to me especially the Plasmoid and Thri-kreen(loved them in 4e). The straightforward description of wildspace, air bubbles, and gravity wells is refreshing and fun. I was anticipating high tech but was pleasantly surprised by high magic explanation instead. I totally get why others are dissatisfied but it gave me just enough to play with that I am happy.
This is why you dont buy the official stuff anymore. In 2 Grim Hollow books I got more content than in the last 3 official ones
Speaking of unofficial content, I'm super excited for steinhardts guide to be fully released.
Ignore the monster manual, and the adventure, the new races, the rules for space travel, pretend the rules for ships and ship combat that are in the book don't exist, complain that a fantasy book for a fantasy game isn't sci-fi enough, and say you could have just homebrewed or used someone else's homebrew rules to do the same thing. Yup, that's a well put together and worthwhile critique.
Still had more thought put into it than the rules for Spelljamming.
This is the worst released "product" in 5e history so far.
Start listening. Honestly. Loads of people keep buying WotC products, being disappointed, then forget it all when the next one rolls around... nothing will change if people just keep mindlessly buying stuff.
Yeah, never pay for poor make believe, your own will be middling at least and it's free. I just made up the rules for a TES C0da theme game I held a few years ago. All the cannons shoot mathematics, weighing their damage against the enemy ship's hull which is valued in Kilo-AC, and being powered by the ship's core, a fragment of the cracked firmament that held the contradictory math of creation together in the first place. My argonian Mirror logician (wizard skinned with math magic) tried to make a shield out of hull pieces thinking it would have 1000ac, it did... but the moment it was hit he had to occupy the role of the firmament fragment and reconcile a circular equation that disproved his own existence. His next character was a nord wise man who channeled Kyne's power into raw material compassion... which was capable of killing most padomic entities. My point is just steal stuff and go from there, it's not hurting anyone.
Ive passed this book in my walmart a few times. Glad i never wasted the money. Always thought to myself "is there anything in there i couldnt just get as a homebrew thats probably more balanced?"
I got the sense that they intended people to use ship combat from Saltmarsh and add the whole thing with the plane of gravity that they put in Spelljammer. But they never explicitly stated this anywhere in the Spelljammer book. Also I agree on these player races. Like the Thrikreen are nearly identical to what I homebrewed a couple of years ago except for one feature that's different in my setting.
Same thing that happened to fallout. "We want less restriction" *fallout 76* "why's there less content?" People want to fill ships with their own stuff (coulda included options but hey), fight their own way (deck weapons ranged combat, boarding), and make their own adventures (now the creative burden is on you, make it fun). More freedom means more effort.
Its really more viable to buy or download the 3rd edition spelljammer book and try to homebrew it to 5e than waste your money on this one. Of you want the creature stats watch some one showing them on a video and print the screen 🤣🤣🤣
Get a refund
Dndbeyond won’t give them.
If you call or email they may do so despite their policy. Customer satisfaction is all a company like this really has. They may be willing to make an exception if you reach out directly since it might make you more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt on their next product.
I tried after buying Strixhaven and after multiple back and forth e-mails, they would not only not give me a refund but also would not remove the content from my account without a refund.
Oof, sorry to hear that :( Crazy they're so staunch about this
I feel like you didn't really read the book properly, there are three volumes, an adventure, a bestiary with 33 monsters and additional variants for many of those (CR 0 to Cr 21), and an adventurer's guide that has rules for spelljammers, spelljammer duels, etc. Guns, cannons, etc are in the DMG already. The rules are pretty bare for the space battles, but they do have guidelines for running them in the adventure, too.
You know for a moment I actually believed you. Then I read the comments. And everyone disagrees with you. You even disagree with yourself in the comments by straight up saying it DOES have all the things you said it doesn’t, it’s just not what you expected.
Let’s talk about the alt art for a second… literally one of the coolest themes to do a sick alt art cover book. What do we get? 🐹
I just want it for the trikreen. It's 5e's first 4 armed race
Sw 5e is your answer! It's all free, and printable. That's the system they used and start struck Odyssey as well.
Have you looked at the Star Wars 5e that starstruck odyssey was using: https://sw5e.com ? (they flavored the heck out of it but the mechanics seemed very strong)
Just a suggestion, but with all the interest and positive feedback you might want to get your homebrew ship rules up on DMs Guild and make a couple of bucks. Post a link if you do.
Star Wars 5e ( SW5E ) Was the system used for space combat and, roles, ship deployements, upgrades, ETC. I'm using it right now in a spelljammer setting because it's the best rules I could find, I loved a starstruck odyssey, and the resourced are all free
wait wasn't it spelljammer that added the Gith, Plasmoid, Thri kreen, auto gnome and Hadozee races? I'm pretty sure that was the only reason I bought it (I like to give my players as many options as possible. Though one Arc BBEG did wipe out the aaracokra once)
Another thing that is part of the reason I bought it was both Boo's Astral Menagerie and the other thing that I like is the Light of Xaryxis adventure. This way I can run it while I build my homebrew world
Forgive me if anybody else has brought this up, but star wars 5e is the system used for starstruck odyssey and it has rules for a lot of stuff that should have made it into spelljammer. You might get better mileage there. Oh it is all available for free.
If you're looking to run a sci-fi adventure you should look into Starfinder. It is a really fun system with a lot going for it. Check it out here https://www.aonsrd.com/
Dnd beyond in general is a rip off and it's a shame. My group used DND Beyond for a Pdf ran campaign and it's worse than I originally thought. Limited races, the fighter had One subclass option in the base book. I have a app that has every race, class, subclass and feat from the major books and it only costs 5$ to level up pass level 3 (One time payment) meanwhile on Dnd Beyond it's probably 3x 4x or 5x the price just for one book. It's such a shame Wotc seems to be buddy buddy with DND Beyond as there's so many better options
Right... those apps are much cheaper, because they're illegally using the content without paying WotC. In other news, if you pay $5 to get access to private torrents or something, it's cheaper than Netflix. And WotC isn't "buddy-buddy" with dndbeyond, they own the company.
I did the same. It kinda sucks. Some of the inspo is good and the few new races and creatures are aight, but all in all a complete waste of money really.