D&D: Here’s Every Rule on the ‘Spelljammer’ DM Screen
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space comes with a DM screen. And in the promo artwork, it turns out, you can glimpse a ton of new rules.
When Spelljammer: Adventures in Space splashed onto the scene at D&D Direct it did so with aplomb. Aplomb and a marketing image that showed off a sliver of the included DM Screen.
And from this blurry image of text that if you zoom way in you can kind of make out, the internet has unearthed every rule you can see. From Ship Quirks to Random Encounters, here’s every rule on the Spelljammer DM screen.
Every Rule Visible on the Spelljammer DM Screen
Right away you can see a few big headers. There’s Ship Encounters, Ship-Ship Starting Distance, Shipboard Tasks, Ship Quirks, Ship Cargo, and of course, Crashing. That last one is probably the most important one. And sure, if you zoom way in, everything gets hard to read. But, thanks to the dedicated sleuths of Reddit, and in particular, u/MegamanJB, the rules have been deciphered. Here’s what we know so far, category by category.
Ship Encounters
This is a d100 table that you can roll to find random Spelljamming ship encounters. It starts with a d100 Ship Encounter, as well as a new wrinkle: the attitude roll. This includes rolls like 1d10 + 2, or 1d12. Presumably this will correspond to an attitude chart to determine whether these ships are friendly, neutral, or hostile.
d100 – Ship Encounter – Attitude Roll
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Bombard Leviathan – captained by someone who is a giff warlord and giff shipmates
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Scorpion ship Claws of H… – A goblinoid ship captained by a hobgoblin and crewed by 1 bugbear (first mate) 8 hobgoblins and 2 hobgoblin priests
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Shrike ship F… – captained by Yaj, a githyanki xenomancer (new monster, most likely) and crewed by 11 githyanki buccaneers (also new monster).
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Space Galleon (Beholder) – captained by a beholder and crewed by 1 spectator (first mate), 3 cult fanatics and 16 cultists
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Space Galleon (Air Elemental) – captained Myttan the Mighty, a djinni, and crewed by 1 invisible stalker (first mate) as well as an aarakocra
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And that’s about it for the ships. But you can see the incredible variety on display even in this tiny sliver of content.
Ship to Ship Starting Distance
This is pretty straightforward. For starters, the rule section is all visible and very clear in the picture:
At the start of an engagement, decide how far a ship is from its enemies. Three possibilities are provided in the table below. The greater the distance, the less time creatures have to find weapons and make other preparations.
Distance – Notes
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250 ft – Long range for ballistae, mangonels, shortbows, longbows, light crossbows, and heavy crossbows.
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500 ft – Long range for longbows and mangonels, too far for ballistae and crossbows.
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1000 ft – Beyond the range of most ranged weapons.
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Crashing
This is also visible and pretty simple. Presumably there’s more, cut off by the DM Screen. But here’s what we know:
When a spelljamming ship crashes into a creature or object that would presumably damage it, both the ship and the creature or object struck take bludgeoning damage based on the size of the struck object, as shown in the table below.
Size of Creature or Object Struck – Bludgeoning Damage
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Large – 4d10
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Huge – 8d10
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Gargantuan – 16d10
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Gargantuan Rams will be fun.
Shipboard Tasks
The Shipboard Tasks has a list of things that your characters can get up to. But mostly this seems to be a list of things a captain will tell a crewmember to do. This feels like a DMs aid so that they don’t have to figure out what their Spelljammer Captain’s orders are.
During the uneventful part of a voyage, the captain of a spelljamming ship can put crew members to work in several ways. If a character is looking for a job to do, or if a captain wants to keep a character busy, roll on the Shipboard Tasks table to determine what needs to be done. The time it takes to complete a task is at least 1 hour and certain tasks might take longer at your discretion.
d12 – Task
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1 – Scrape barnacles off the hull.
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2 – Scrub pots and dishes in the galley.
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3 – Chop vegetables in the galley.
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4 – Swab the deck or sweep the cargo hold.
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5 – Update the ship’s navigational charts which require cartographer’s tools.
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6 – Repair the captain’s favorite pair of boots which requires cobbler’s tools (a mending spell also does the trick).
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Ship Cargo
To randomly determine what in the cargo hold of a spelljamming ship roll 1d8 times on the Cheap Cargo table and 1d4 – 1 times on the Expensive Cargo table. A duplicate result indicates that a ship has more of the same cargo.
If a cargo container is locked, at least one crew member (typically the captain) has the key to it. A character can try to unlock a container using thievery tools doing so with a successful DC 20 dexterity check.
There are rules for Cheap and Expensive cargos as well.
Final Thoughts
All in all, these rules are very similar to the ship rules in Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Mythic Odysseys of Theros. Which is pretty fitting. Considering that Spelljamming is just sailing in space. Perhaps we’ll see some more rules for dealing with attacks from above and/or below. But otherwise, this looks like a fun time.
Happy Adventuring!
