5E Dungeons & Dragons Is Replete With Spelljammer

References

Captain
N’ghathrod, art by Eric Belisle
Discussion took off on Twitter after the recent post, What a 5E Spelljammer Campaign Setting Might
Look Like, leading to a conversation on the many references already present in 5E. Look at all these
appearances! (And, thank you to the contributors)
Vault of the Dracolich:  Way back in this D&D next adventure, we added the ruins of an elven
Spelljammer, though we didn’t label it as such. The AD&D sourcebook Cult of the Dragon  mentioned
the dracolich Dretchroyaster having a crashed elven Spelljammer, so we added it to honor the old
material and give his lair a sense of greater mystery.
Volo’s Guides to Monsters provides stats for Neogi (Spelljammer evil species). “the neogi designed and
built sleek vessels, some capable of traversing the planes, to carry them to their new frontiers. Some
neogi groups still create and use such vehicles, which have a distinct spidery aspect.”
(@Dan_Dillon_1)
Volo’s Guide to Monsters  has a Mind Flayers section discussing nautiloids. “Mind flayers employ
bizarre flying ships called nautiloids. Able to move through the Astral Plane, nautiloids can also
transport mind flayers between the various worlds of the Material Plane.” And, “The most notable
feature of a nautiloid is its ability to move directly from one world to another in the Material Plane.
Normally, travelers must venture to Sigil, a city in the Outer Planes, and find a doorway leading to
the specific world they seek. But mind flayers can use nautiloids to move between worlds without
going through Sigil. By this means, they have been able to spread themselves out into almost every
corner of the multiverse. Nowadays, a nautiloid is an incredibly rare sight. A colony in possession of
one takes great care to keep it hidden, taking to the sky only out of necessity. Word of a nautiloid
seen soaring through the air travels quickly in almost every world and is likely to attract the attention
of vengeful githyanki and githzerai. A gith hunting party counts a nautiloid as the greatest prize it can
claim, above even an elder brain.” It also says that the illithids “have lost the secret of manufacturing
nautiloids,” which is interesting!
Mordenkainen’s Tomb of Foes  has a section on the githyanki that mentions their ship helms and gith
planar ships. “During the great war between the mind flayers and the gith, one of the githyanki’s
greatest achievements was their discovery of the magic that mind flayers used to produce and propel
the flying vessels that the illithids used to travel between worlds. Now, the githyanki scour the worlds
of the Material Plane in their versions of those craft.” And, “each githyanki ship is powered by a
helm, a magical device in the form of a throne-like chair that converts psychic energy into motive
force.” Size and speed information is provided for an Astral Skiff, Astral Brig, and Planar Raider.
(@ThemyscirKnight)
Mordenkainen’s  also details the hippopotamus-like Giff, a species originating in the Spelljammer
game. “These spacefaring mercenaries are renowned for their martial training and their love of
explosives.” (@ThePaxNormana)
In Volo’s Wake is an adventure featuring the ruins of a nautiloid in Adventure 5, “The Tentacled Maws
of Evil.” The ship is unlikely to ever be able to fly again. The helm is described as integrated with an
elder brain. (@darjr)
Storm King’s Thunder  has a subtle Spelljammer connection. The ship that looks like a giant squid is
depicted in a manner that closely resembles a squidship. However, the ship isn’t supposed to fall into
player hands and no helm is described. (@GarrettKP)

From Storm
King’s Thunder
 A Spelljammer squidship

Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage has several Spelljammer connections.  SPOILERS Begin!!!

Level 16 allows travel to Stardock, an asteroid in the Tears of Selune orbiting Toril. While there are
many allusions to spelljamming, and Stardock clearly sees periodic space travel, none happens
during the adventure. It does further capture the mind flayer vs gith wars and how the battles also
take place in space.

Level 19 has a Spelljamming vessel. The Scavenger is a nautiloid and has a mind flayer pilot who lived
on the planet of Glyth in Realmspace.

Level 23 has a hidden chamber (area 20) with a Spelljamming Helm, “a gilded wooden throne with a
cushioned seat and backrest covered in black velvet sewn with silver stars.” The helm is a legendary
wondrous item and is given statistics. “When placed aboard a vessel weighing between 1 and 100
tons, the helm generates an envelope of fresh air around the ship while it is in the void of space (but
not underwater). This envelope extends out from the edges of the hull in all directions for a distance
equal in length to the vessel’s beam, so that creatures aboard and near the ship can breathe normally
in space. The temperature within the air envelope is 70 degrees Fahrenheit. When placed aboard a
vessel weighing between 1 and 100 tons, the helm generates an artificial gravity field while the ship is
in the void of space, so that creatures can walk on the ship’s decks as they normally would. Creatures
and objects that fall overboard bob in a gravity plane that extends out from the main deck for a
distance equal in length to the vessel’s beam.” Very interestingly, the helm does require being a
spellcaster and on water your speed in miles per hour is equal to your highest-level unexpended spell
slot. When in air or space, the speed is ten times that. The helmsperson can also steer clumsily and
can see as if they were standing upon the vessel on a location of their choice. While attuned, you
cannot expend spell slots. If these were to be the basis for 5E Spelljammers, it would surely hurt play
the same way the old AD&D rules hurt spellcasters. For example, if you are boarded you can’t use
spells to help the party. Or, if you come across a derelict ship and want to investigate, you can’t use
spells and then continue piloting. (@jamesjhaeck and others) 

 (END Dungeon of the Mad Mage SPOILERS)

DDEP08-02 Stardock Under Siege is a season 8 Adventurers League Epic adventure tied to Dungeon of
the Mad Mage. The players prevent an attack on Stardock, including fighting on the deck of a
Spelljammer. It also features gith and illithid.
DDEP09-02 Hellfire Requiem features Emirikol the Chaotic (originally from art in the AD&D DMG)
and he has a vessel known as Demonwing that is capable of flight and plane shifting. It isn’t called a
Spelljammer, but it likely is. It is said Emirikol may also have the eye of Vecna  and at least one orb of
dragonkind, and doesn’t sound like something we will deal with in a future adventure?
What a 5E Spelljammer Campaign Setting Might Look
Like

The upcoming Baldur’s Gate III video game released its AWESOME trailer on February 27th, coinciding
with presentations and demos at the PAX East convention.

I don’t want to spoil the trailer too much… go ahead and watch it!

As you saw, the trailer focuses on a mind flayer aboard a flying vessel known as a nautiloid. The
nautiloid is a Spelljammer vessel, and that has a lot of fans excited, again, about a possible
Spelljammer campaign setting.

When could it release? What might a Spelljammer setting look like these days? Which old elements
should be brought into 5E, and which should be left behind? What might an adventure look like?
Let’s take a quick and dreamy look!
 Githyanki riding red dragons,
attacking a nautiloid – hey, who stole my campaign notes?

Why Release It
That scene in the trailer is the perfect answer. Riding red dragons to attack a mind flayer ship?
Taking a bite out of the hull to have the dragon breathe inside? Awesome!

As @jason_wilson said on Twitter, “I remember one encounter I ran in which a Neogi’s umber hulk
slaves smashed through a Spelljammer’s hull to get at the party.” YES! That’s the stuff of
Spelljammer!

Spelljammer games were full of awesome 3-D swashbuckling. Boarding parties, siege weapons, all
kinds of cool stuff. Plus, crazy species and worlds! A Spelljammer crew could look like a Star Wars
cantina, and the foes just as varied and interesting.

The ability to visit different worlds meant a DM could keep the game supremely interesting. Think of
Star Trek. Each episode could take the heroes to a new and wondrous world… which can be
populated by absolutely anything on a DM’s shelf. Take the trickster gods in Tomb of Annihilation  and
give them each a world rotating around a star. Create a world of metal with warforged inhabitants
using your Eberron rules. Take your favorite Undermountain level and make it a planet. The
opportunities are endless, allowing to mine all the products you already own.
Ships are an excellent and fun gold sink, allowing characters to do things with gold. Spelljammers
can be tricked out with all kinds of cool features. Just like an Acquisitions Inc franchise, a Spelljammer
can come with you, allowing you to detail an awesome base and take it along on adventures.
Nerdarchy has a great take on why Spelljammer is awesome.
 The cover of one of the Spelljammer boxed set books. Art by Jim
Holloway.

Timing
I’ve talked about why WotC releases very few settings (see “Why Dark Sun was 4E’s Most Successful
Setting, Part 1”).

Spelljammer, like Dark Sun and Planescape, is a strange setting. It’s full of wacky concepts that are
great for shaking fans out of normalcy. When you have run a few straightforward campaigns, you
start to want something a bit different. That’s where a campaign like Spelljammer really shines.

5E has been out since August, 2014. While the official adventures have had some neat twists, they
haven’t been that gonzo. This year or the next could be perfect for a campaign like Spelljammer,
Planescape, or Dark Sun. It could even be reasonable to see these campaigns released every other
year, with more normal adventures/settings in between. Normalcy followed by spice.

Maybe the trailer is a small hint that we could see something this year, but I suspect next year is
more likely for one of these settings. Of course, there is no assurance WotC will ever give us
Spelljammer. The biggest impediment really is for WotC to have the right vision for the product so it
isn’t a niche that appeals just to older players. The Baldur’s Gate trailer goes a long way to achieving
that!

“Spelljammer: confirmed!” has become an old joke on official streams. It seems closer than ever to
being true.
 Cover art by Jeff Easley for The Legend of
Spelljammer

Format
In “Why Dark Sun Was 4E’s Most Successful Setting, Part 2,” I talked about how Dark Sun was well
supported through just two official books… because a number of supplements and adventures were
provided through online magazines and organized play. This allowed just two main products to
provide a deep experience. A similar approach could work for Spelljammer.

AD&D’s Spelljammer had way too many products. Three boxed sets! More than 20 adventures and
supplements! A video game! Multiple novels! We won’t see that again.

5E’s Spelljammer would likely see a hardback adventure that also includes rules. It could perhaps be
accompanied by a separate auxiliary book, the way 4E’s Dark Sun had a campaign guide and a
monster book. I could see an adventure and a sourcebook, but the sourcebook would have to be
compelling. More like a Xanathar’s Guide, useful to any campaign but also helping a Spelljammer
campaign be more complete. For example, a sourcebook on vehicles and mass combat, with rules
useful for any campaign.
The adventure would likely have a strong central plot around a main threat, while taking characters
on a tour of different fantastic locations. The old Spelljammer adventure, Under the Dark Fist, is a
good model of that, with a slow reveal that becomes a fun major adventure.

A great question is how to address ships. The old boxed sets contained really cool cards for each type
of Spelljammer, providing art and deck plans. Star maps and even fold-up paper ship minis rounded
out the experience. Ships mattered because the setting provided rules for ship-to-ship combat. The
rules weren’t great, but they were still very fun.

However, we have seen digital releases for adventures, such as free handout files and digital maps
through Dragon+ or on the adventure’s product page. And WizKids has made a large galleon loosely
tied to Saltmarsh and a smaller airship directly tied to Eberron. WotC created miniatures for ships
back when they made minis for the Star Wars SAGA RPG. It could happen, even without a boxed set.

The Eberron skycoach and soarsleds, by WizKids

The recent Eberron Oracle of War campaign has been amazing. It solidly demonstrates how a relatively

short arc of adventures can bolster a setting. The lore is expanded, DMs get an easily accessible set of
adventures, and conventions and stores get exciting content. A Spelljammer arc of organized play
adventures and events would be amazing! Can you imagine a huge ship battle across tables? That
would be EPIC!
 From the
Spelljammer DM Screen

Spelljammer was written in 1989. The rules are fairly dated. Let’s look at the elements 5E has to
address.

Crystal Spheres
D&D took some early real-world celestial concepts and ran with them, so as to allow the different
campaign worlds to remain connected but separate. The planets in a given campaign setting were
encased in a crystal sphere. Its outer shell had stars inscribed and even moving upon it, explaining
why we saw stars. All of Oerth’s planets and moons were in one crystal sphere, while all of Krynn’s
planets and other bodies were in a different crystal sphere. Realmspace, Krynnspace, etc.

The crystal spheres sort of float within a rainbow-colored phlogiston. Special means could allow a
spelljamming vessel to pass through a crystal sphere’s shell, so it could navigate rivers in the
phlogiston to reach another sphere.

Back in AD&D, each material plane (such as Oerth, or the Realms) was separate from the others. You
needed planar travel to access them. The rules in Spelljammer were sufficient to still keep the worlds
fairly separate, both for the logic of the campaign worlds (keeping them distinct and separate) and
the sanity of DMs.

5E is a bit different. It allows even teleportation to take someone from one material plane to another.
This could make it worth revisiting how Spelljammer vessels work. It could be worth removing the
crystal sphere concept, or even ignoring it altogether. I am inclined to prefer ignoring it. Simply don’t
talk about crystal spheres or the phlogiston, and let DMs bring in those elements if desired. Focus on
flying through the void in a given setting, and talk about how to get to other settings in a new way.
This takes us to the helm.
Powering the Helm
Spelljammers are ships, and in AD&D they have a helm. The helm is almost always a powerful magic
item (often throne-like) upon which a caster sits (there is also a version like a crown). Upon sitting
on the helm, the caster lost all spell use until they rested, and they gave the vessel a speed based on
their caster level and the power of the helm. This whole system was dissatisfying.

(In case you are wondering, Spelljammers generate a bubble of air and a gravity plane – typically
aligned with the main deck of the ship. Look, it can take a while to warm up to these concepts. I
promise it was a ton of fun! I’m totally not going to talk about any vessels powered by giant space
hamsters. Oops!)

Spelljammer hasn’t really come back since those days. Many adventures have made mention of
Spelljammers, but without actual rules. We see plenty of talk in Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage,
including a portal to an asteroid!
4E books, such as The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea, have limited rules. Ships such as an astral
clipper require a pilot to stand at the helm and a crew to help, but that’s it. In the astral sea, any
travel takes a random number of days. The very last page of 4E’s Manual of the Planes  provides a
Spelljammer vehicle stat block, and again simply says the pilot must sit at a spelljammer helm. It
functions like any other ship, though it does say “This vehicle is equipped with a spelljamming helm,
which is the navigation focus for the Plane Shift ritual.” Page 20 of the same book doesn’t add much
more, saying the helm permits plane shifting. This is similar to the Planar Dromond, a vessel that has
a runekeel allowing magical transportation from one sea to another sea on another world or plane.

I think that’s a far better model for 5E. There could be variant helms requiring empowering with
magic or maybe even variant rules to boost a Spelljammer with magic (imagine the equivalent of
juicing a vehicle with nitrous oxide). The core helm works better as a planar device.

Indeed, in the Baldur’s Gate III trailer we see the Spelljammer nautiloid basically use planar travel.
(To activate it, the mind flayer captain pretty much uses the concepts for bonding with a mount from
the movie Avatar! Ha-ha!)
 “Hey, Avatar stole from D&D,
it’s only fair!“

Making Spelljammer travel a form of planar travel is far easier to deal with. There is probably some
limit (perhaps dealing with the accuracy limits of teleportation and similar spells), which means
ships still have to travel at normal flying speed to explore asteroids or fly around a planet. You can
travel across worlds but still have a reason to explore. And your caster keeps their spell slots!

The nautiloid ship card, from the Spelljammer boxed set

Ship-To-Ship Combat
One of the coolest parts of Spelljammer was the idea of your ship meeting and fighting another ship
in space. Spelljammers have siege weapons and defenses. You might ram a vessel, fire ballistae, or
move in quickly and board for crew-to-crew combat. The rules need updating, but the core concepts
are worth preserving.

I wonder if WotC couldn’t work with WizKids or another partner to create a separate ship-to-ship
skirmish game that can stand on its own, but also be used in the RPG. If you saw the Attack Wing
game, it could be the foundation of this. Attack Wing let you use creatures like dragons, swooping
around and using attacks against each other. A fast version of that game could be awesome on its
own, and be a vibrant part of the D&D rules as well. And, I mean… cool Spelljammer miniatures!!
Take my money!!

If I were WotC, I would also want to look at streaming and convention play. Ship-to-ship battles
could be really exciting for both types of play. Visually engaging, with big stakes and fun outcomes.

What Do You Think?

Do you think Spelljammer will be released in the next two years? What would you change about the
old AD&D rules? How excited are you for an all-Giff boarding party? Let us know in the comments.

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