The characters aren't the only sailors traveling the high seas. Each new vessel they encounter presents an opportunity for adventure. The following rules can be used to generate other ships met on the open seas.
#### Ship Type
The type of ship the characters meet determines the vessel's statistics, along with how many creatures and how much cargo it can carry.
##### Ship Type
| d100 | Ship |
|:-----:|--------------|
| 01–09 | Rowboat |
| 10–25 | Keelboat |
| 26–38 | Longship |
| 39–60 | Sailing ship |
| 61–79 | Galley |
| 80–00 | Warship |
#### Ship Name
Every ship has a name, which you can create yourself or randomly generate using the Ship Names table. Roll on the table—once for an adjective and once for a noun—to create a ship name.
##### Ship Names
| d20 | Adjective | Noun |
|:---:|--------------|-----------|
| 1 | Beautiful | Adventure |
| 2 | Bilious | Barnacle |
| 3 | Bold | Brawler |
| 4 | Cold | Devil |
| 5 | Dandy | Dragon |
| 6 | Dawn | Gem |
| 7 | Drunken | Flower |
| 8 | Fiery | Jester |
| 9 | Furious | Kraken |
| 10 | Grinning | Leviathan |
| 11 | Intrepid | Mermaid |
| 12 | Jolly | Prince |
| 13 | Misty | Princess |
| 14 | Rambunctious | Revenge |
| 15 | Red | Saber |
| 16 | Royal | Shark |
| 17 | Salty | Tide |
| 18 | Sinful | Treasure |
| 19 | Twilight | Victory |
| 20 | Zealous | Wanderer |
#### Crew
Unless you decide otherwise, each ship encountered on the sea has its full crew and enough food and water to sustain that crew and any passengers for the duration of the ship's journey. You can generate a crew using the suggestions in the "*Ship Purpose*" section below or by using the suggested crew for a ship's type.
***Crew Member Names.*** Should you need to quickly generate the name of a member of a ship's crew, the following table makes it easy to produce a two-part name that could apply to any member of a crew, regardless of gender or race.
##### Crew Member Name
| d20 | First Half | Second Half |
|:---:|------------|-------------|
| 1 | Salty | Beard |
| 2 | Ol' | Eye |
| 3 | Silver | Copper |
| 4 | Golden | Fish |
| 5 | Black | Whale |
| 6 | Blue | Dog |
| 7 | Silky | Cur |
| 8 | Heartless | Fingers |
| 9 | Drizzly | Patches |
| 10 | Thirsty | Hook |
| 11 | Rum | Salt |
| 12 | Gloomy | Rat |
| 13 | Handsome | Charm |
| 14 | Wee | Beast |
| 15 | Clever | Devil |
| 16 | Ugly | Liar |
| 17 | Pretty | Angel |
| 18 | Lost | Blood |
| 19 | Mad | Maps |
| 20 | Poor | Mast |
#### Ship Purpose
Every ship has a reason for its voyages, which can be rolled or chosen on the Ship Purpose table. Each purpose is described after the table.
##### Ship Purpose
| d100 | Purpose |
|:-----:|-----------|
| 01–17 | Cargo |
| 18–34 | Passenger |
| 35–51 | Fishing |
| 52–68 | Military |
| 69–85 | Piracy |
| 86–95 | Mercenary |
| 96–00 | Ghost |
***Cargo.*** Cargo ships haul mercantile goods, emergency relief supplies, traveling carnivals, and any other materials that need to move across the seas. Let the ship's alignment, racial makeup, and disposition guide what a ship might carry as cargo.
Most crew members and officers on cargo ships are **commoners**. Vessels with valuable cargo may carry 2d10 **guards** with a **veteran** guard captain. Cargo ships that transport livestock may have **goats**, **camels**, **draft horses**, **mules**, and other beasts, in addition to their crews and passengers.
***Passenger.*** Passenger ships carry travelers. Such vessels are chartered for journeys or pleasure cruises or carry refugees, religious missionaries, or some other peaceful group traveling to an important destination.
Most crew members and officers on passenger ships are **commoners**. Vessels carrying important people may carry 2d10 **guards** with a **veteran** guard captain. The passengers on a passenger ship generally consist of **commoners** and **nobles**, though many creatures have the need to travel by ship.
***Fishing.*** Fishing ships include commercial vessels that catch fish and crustaceans to sell at market, whaling boats, and trophy hunters stalking sharks, giant octopuses, and other sea monsters. Any vessel that hunts sea life for profit, survival, or sport has this purpose.
Most crew members and officers on commercial fishing ships are **commoners**, but whaling vessels and sport hunters often have **scouts** among their ranks.
***Military.*** Military vessels carry soldiers to war and are equipped for battle on the sea. These vessels hunt pirates, defend and invade territory, carry important government cargo, escort officials, transport prisoners, and do anything else their commanders require.
Most crew members on military ships are **guards** or **scouts**. Officers are **veterans**. Many military ships carry extra **guards** as passengers for invasion, boarding, and operating siege weapons. A military ship may also carry 1d4 **bandits** or **guards** as prisoners.
***Piracy.*** Pirates smuggle contraband goods and rob other ships, seaside towns, and outposts. They engage in criminal operations, but not all are evil. Many have an ethical code. Some serve governments as privateers, harming only these masters' adversaries, while others rob only the corrupt and give their ill-gotten gains to the needy.
Most crew members on pirate ships are **bandits**. Officers are **bandit captains** and could include a **pirate captain** (see *appendix C*) and a **pirate bosun** (see *appendix C*). Many pirate ships carry extra **bandits** and at least one **pirate deck wizard** (see *appendix C*) as passengers.
***Mercenary.*** Mercenary crews travel the world in search of adventure and pay. They explore uncharted territories, fight wars, slay monsters, transport special cargo or people, and undertake any quest for the right cost.
Mercenary ships have crews and passengers similar to military ships.
***Ghost.*** Ghost ships are incorporeal vessels that carry undead crews. The crews often died in a grisly manner and have unfinished business that keeps them tethered to the Material Plane. They sometimes serve necromancers, but more often these crews are beholden to no master.
A ghost ship has the same statistics as a normal ship of its ship type with the following changes:
- The ship has resistance to the following damage types: acid, fire, lightning, and thunder, as well as bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks.
- The ship is immune to cold, necrotic, poison, and psychic damage.
- The ship can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. It takes 5 (1d10) force damage if it ends its turn inside an object.
Crew members and officers on good and neutral ghost ships are **ghosts**. On evil ghost ships, the crew members are 90 percent **skeletons** and **zombies** (even mix of each), 10 percent are **specters**, and the officers are **wraiths**.
#### Attitude and Race
Each ship's crew and passengers have an attitude that guides how they interact with the characters. Friendly ships seek to trade or share news, neutral ones attack if they feel threatened and otherwise try to avoid contact, and hostile ones seek to attack and seize the characters' ship.
First, roll or choose an attitude on the Ship Attitude table, then roll on the appropriate table to determine the nature of the crew. The race chosen or rolled need not be the only one found on the ship, and you might use a table multiple times to make a ship's crew and passengers more diverse. Feel free to substitute suggested statistics for other statistics if you feel they make more sense with the ship's race (for example, substituting the **bandit** statistics with **orc** statistics on a pirate ship crewed by orcs).
##### Ship Attitude
| d6 | Attitude |
|:---:|----------|
| 1–2 | Friendly |
| 3–4 | Neutral |
| 5–6 | Hostile |
##### Friendly Ship
| d100 | Race |
|:-----:|------------|
| 01–05 | Dragonborn |
| 06–10 | Dwarves |
| 11–30 | Elves |
| 31–40 | Gnomes |
| 41–50 | Tieflings |
| 51–60 | Halflings |
| 61–00 | Humans |
##### Neutral Ship
| d100 | Race |
|:-----:|------------|
| 01–05 | Dragonborn |
| 06–10 | Dwarves |
| 11–30 | Lizardfolk |
| 31–40 | Hobgoblins |
| 41–50 | Orcs |
| 51–60 | Halflings |
| 61–00 | Humans |
##### Hostile Ship
| d100 | Race |
|:-----:|--------------|
| 01–05 | Frost giants |
| 06–10 | Kobolds |
| 11–30 | Orcs |
| 31–40 | Hobgoblins |
| 41–50 | Undead |
| 51–60 | Gnolls |
| 61–00 | Humans |
***Ship Disposition.*** Each ship has a disposition that determines events happening aboard the ship when the characters encounter it. Choose or roll for a ship's disposition on the Ship Disposition table. Each disposition is described after the table. If you roll no special disposition, the ship is under no unusual stress and reacts based on its attitude.
##### Ship Disposition
| d10 | Disposition |
|:----:|------------------------|
| 1 | Diseased |
| 2 | Emergency |
| 3 | Help with purpose |
| 4 | Mutiny |
| 5 | Trading |
| 6–10 | No special disposition |
***Diseased.*** Roll percentile dice. The result reveals the percentage of the ship's crew and passengers infected with a disease of your choice from "*Sample Diseases*" in chapter 8, "*Running the Game*," of the *Dungeon Master's Guide*. This ship approaches the characters, begging for or demanding help with the infection.
Ghost ships can't be diseased; if you get this result for a ghost ship, ignore it and roll again.
***Emergency.*** A ship experiencing an emergency is suffering some sort of crisis. The crew and passengers beg or demand the characters' help in getting out of the situation. Choose or roll for an emergency on the Ship Emergency table to determine the vessel's crisis.
##### Ship Emergency
| d4 | Emergency |
|:---:|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 1 | The ship's crew is lost. |
| 2 | The ship is damaged and can't be steered as it drifts with the current. |
| 3 | The ship is stuck on a sandbar. |
| 4 | The ship is sinking. |
***Help with Purpose.*** Ship crews looking for help with their purpose approach the characters asking for direct aid in a task. For instance, mercenaries ask for help mapping an unexplored area while a cargo ship's crew asks the characters to serve as guards. Most crews offer compensation in return for the characters' services, though some might threaten or beg for charity to get help.
***Mutiny.*** The crew of ships ready to mutiny are unhappy with the leadership of their officers and plan to overthrow them. The officers approach the characters, asking for or demanding help quelling the uprising, or the crew approaches, requesting aid with their uprising or attempting to trick the characters into killing the officers.
***Trading.*** Ship crews and passengers looking to trade offer their cargo or services to the characters in exchange for deeds, items, or coin. Use the ship's purpose to guide what they have to trade. For instance, commercial fishermen might offer a crate of valuable crabs in exchange for the head of a shark that keeps consuming their catches, while pirates might offer stolen potions in exchange for gems or gold. Most of the people offering trades are willing to haggle. If the characters refuse to trade, evil-aligned crews and passengers might attack to get what they want.