Conquer the Maelstrom
Sometimes an adventure takes an aquatic turn. You might find yourself exploring an ancient city lost beneath the waves, navigating an underground river plagued by monsters, plotting a course to some stormwracked isle, or battling pirates on the high seas. Well, fear not, brave adventurer. Here is your guide to overcoming such perils!
This supplement examines marine environments, from flooded dungeons and subterranean seas to mystical islands and the gloomy deep. It provides rules for adapting to, navigating through, and surviving hazardous seaborne, underwater, and stormwracked conditions. This book also includes new character options (races, spells, psionic powers, feats, and prestige classes), magic items and monsters associated with seas and storms, adventure sites, and a narrative ship-to-ship combat system.
To use this supplement, a Dungeon Master also needs the Player’s Handbook™, Dungeon Master’s Guide™, and Monster Manual™. A player needs only the Player’s Handbook.
Product History
Stormwrack (2005), by Richard Baker, Joseph D. Carriker Jr., and Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, is the third and final environmental sourcebook for D&D 3.5e. It was published in August 2005.
Concluding the Environment Sourcebooks. Environmental sourcebooks for roleplaying games date back to at least the famous Gamelords series for Traveller created by the Keith brothers (1983-1984). Though D&D had plenty of adventures set in deserts, jungles, swamps, and seas over the years, neither TSR nor Wizards produced any general sourcebooks for these environs until the mid '00s, when they were looking for new books series for 3.5e. The environment sourcebook series began with the arctic-based Frostburn (2004) and continued with the desert-based Sandstorm (2005). The sea-based Stormwrack (2005) was the third and last.
Like the previous books in the series, Stormwrack features lots of crunchy rules, including options for player races, classes, skills, feats, and spells, plus stats for monsters and details for adventure locales. It differed from the previous books in the series by increasing the amount of player info, including many more races, and by spotlighting some non-core classes such as the scout, spirit shaman, swashbuckler, and warmage.
Yet More Nautical Adventuring. Though D&D hadn't precisely included ocean environment books in the past, many adventures and sourcebooks featured nautical adventuring over the years. That began with the D&D Expert Set (1981) and X1: "The Isle of Dread" (1981). Many more water adventures followed.
AD&D second edition (1989) published a series of nautical sourcebooks, most of them concentrating on rules for ships and sailing. They included FOR3: Pirates of the Fallen Stars (1992), Naval Battle Rules: The Seas of Cerilia (1996), and DMGR9: Of Ships and the Sea (1997).
D&D 3e (2000) players found the rules for ships in Arms and Equipment Guide (2003). Stormwrack (2005) then expanded on those rules, detailed a score more ships, and offered an alternative "Narrative Naval Combat" rule set.
Resurrected Races. Stormwrack detailed the most races of any environment book, including aquatic elves, aventi, darfellan, hadozee, seacliff dwarves, shoal halflings, and wavecrest gnomes. Two of these races were of particular historic note.
Aquatic elves dated all the way back to OD&D Supplement II: Blackmoor (1975). Thereafter they appeared in various creatures tomes from the AD&D Monster Manual (1977) onward. They really came to the forefront in the Dragonlance setting, where "sea elves" (including both Dimernesti and Dargonesti) make a major appearance in DL12: "Dragons of Faith" (1986). After that, aquatic elves reappeared from time to time in major roles in books like PHBR8: The Complete Book of Elves (1992) and FOR5: Elves of Evermeet (1994), but they were only given serious consideration as a PC race in D&D 3e (2000).
Hazodee (or deck apes) originated in the Spelljammer setting where they appeared in MC7: "Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix" (1990), then became a PC class in CGR1: The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook (1992). This was their first sighting in a decade.
Expanding the Outer Planes!? Though Stormwrack is mostly about terrestrial waters, it includes a fun page or so detailing the waters of several planar locations, including the elemental plane of water, the 88th layer of the Abyss, the second layer of Arborea, the fourth layer of Elysium, the fifth layer of Carceri, the fifth layer of the Nine Hells, and the first of the Seven Heavens.
About the Creators. By 2005, Baker had been writing for TSR for over a decade; he'd continue to do so into the early days of D&D 4e (2008). Carriker had been writing for d20 since 2001, but this would be his only publication for Wizards of the Coast proper. Finally, Wilkes was a very experienced editor who had been working with Wizards since 1995, and who'd started to do some design work with Savage Species (2003). This was her second contribution to the Environment Sourcebook series, following work on Sandstorm (2005).
About the Product Historian
The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.
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