I don't generally like pirate and sea-themed content. Whether it's TV, movies, or games, it's just never been interesting to me. Two of the outliers have been Pirate Borg, a truly fantastic TTRPG all the way around, and Our Flag Means Death, one of the most unique and heartfelt shows I've watched in years.
Now, I can add Songs of the Spellbound Sea, a massively successful Kickstarter title, to that list, too. It's a sea-themed book with a fleshed-out setting, new rules for naval combat, as well as interesting and unique classes and species. The creative team behind Spellbound Sea has really gone above and beyond in making their book an all-in-one supplement that has a little of everything for everyone.
That's hard to do. Much less succeed at. Which they do.
Be sure to download the Kickstarter sample PDF, too, btw, to try before you buy. And buy, you should. Let me tell you why.
First Off, The Art
It's great. There are so many original, human-made illustrations in this book that I'd be remiss if I didn't call them out immediately. From the cover, all the way through to the 336th page, the art is a standout feature of the book.
In fact, Ben Somers of somanyrobots, the writer and designer for the book, gave me a review copy of Songs of the Spellbound Sea after seeing how much I loved the art in the 2024 Monster Manual.
It was a good call because I am pretty smitten by the pictures on nearly every page. They really go above and beyond to make the numerous classes and subclasses stand out and let players know what the gameplay is going to be like.
So Many Classes and Subclasses
The table of contents has a page and a half of nothing but new classes, their subclasses, and then dozens of subclasses and optional rules for the official WotC classes. Just look at this!
I'm a sucker for third-party classes, as I feel the ones that we've had for the past 10 years with DnD 5e have gotten just a little stale. I'd love for a new class to be officially introduced. Especially a necromancer.
(Sidebar: At Gen Con last year, during a press event, when asked why the lackluster School of Necromancy for Wizards didn't get a rework and if there were going to be a playable one soon, Jeremy Crawford answered by deflecting and saying something along the lines of “You can still play the 2014 one.” :eyeroll:)
Until then, there are people like Ben Somers and his team who create astounding ones like the Troubador, the Swashbuckler, and the Bloodrager.
Like I said above, doesn't the art just let you know exactly what you're going to be playing when you select Bloodrager? I just love it.
Anyhoo, each of the new classes comes with around a dozen subclasses each. That's nuts. My concern about that is, as cool as they are, it's hard to playtest and balance that number of options. I know they have playtested the heck out of all their options, though. The list of playtesters in the credits is almost as long as the list of creators.
Some of my favorite inclusions are the tinkerer subclass for Swashbuckler, the Ghost Ship patron for Warlocks, and the Warfisher for Bloodragers.
Seriously. There's a Discipline of the Warfisher, where you use a net to pin down your enemy and stab them with a trident or harpoon. (Or other piercing weapon, but if you're a warfisher not using a trident or harpoon, are you really even trying?)
Species, Ahoy!
I knew I would love the entire book when I saw there was a humanoid axolotl species called the Atxayotl. If there's one thing I think that DnD 5e can't get enough of, it's freaking adorable races who can smash face. And the atxayotl can do just that.
There are also crabkin, which have maybe my favorite piece of art in the whole book. Check the post's featured image for that. You'll have to get the whole book to see it in its two-page-spread glory.
In addition to that, there's the ever-popular minotaur species, and a lineage for you to choose if you want your character to have drowned and returned from the sea to finish whatever business they might have had when they were living. You can choose from multiple means of returning, and you can even get rubbery eldritch tentacles to slap enemies around with.
Can't go wrong with that.
There are also selkie and serpentkin (called Serpent's Children, which I think is much cooler) species, and a ruin-touched lineage that just exudes bad luck and disaster.
Personally, I'm always looking for new species and ancestries to add to TTRPGs because I feel like they're one of the simplest to work in without worrying about throwing off encounter balance, so seeing these being so straightforward is a definite plus.
Backgrounds and Feats
I find that backgrounds are the least interesting part of 5e in general, and the same goes for feats. As great as feats were in 3.0 and 3.5, and even 4e, it's not something that's terribly impactful to most of the DnD 5e campaigns I've run.
Songs of the Spellbound Sea has plenty of both, however, and a lot of the feats are tied to the species themselves. Each of the new entries gets a couple of feats, and there are some uniquely flavored ones anyone can pick up, like Cannoneer, Quick Draw, Focused Elementalist, and my favorite, Chaotic Caster, which is a more-fun version of Wild Magic. If my DM allows it, I'm probably going to take that one when I'm a player again.
Atxayotl Coming Soon To a Campaign Near Me
As I write this, I'm in the middle of a Pathfinder campaign and a Starfinder one. But I showed my players the Songs of the Spellbound Sea PDF Ben sent, and one of them was immediately taken with the atxayotl and will 100% be playing as one in our next 5e campaign.
Heck, in our last 5e campaign, she used an axolotl miniature to represent her diminutive dragonborn. So I couldn't not introduce her to this one.
The species options in Songs of the Spellbound Sea definitely have my stamp of approval, if you couldn't tell.
Nautical Combat and Exploration is Here
Based on Limithron's naval combat in Pirate Borg, Songs of the Spellbound Sea has an expansive section on sailing, fighting, and just being at-sea in general.
You get random encounter tables, full rules for blasting both monsters with your ship and other enemy boats, and even stat blocks for ships that put the whole of Ghosts of Saltmarsh to shame. If you're looking for 5e On The Sea, get Songs of the Spellbound Sea over anything else.
Well, at least over anything else I've read.
You get costs for ships, weather and how it affects you on the water, and crew roles and actions the players can take during combat and otherwise. You aren't stuck with what you can buy or find, either, as there's a whole section on Ship Upgrades that let you make any vessel yours, and they include magical options as well as mundane.
Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to test these options for myself, but they read really strongly, and I may be taking them into my own Starfinder game and incorporating them as space combat rules.
They're a lot simpler than the SF1e ship combat, but more tactical than what was included in Starfinder Enhanced. We'll see, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.
There's a Whole Setting, Too!
There's a whole setting with gazetteer-style entries, complete with maps, scenic art, and adventure seeds.
There's the overview of the Spellbound Sea itself, and then four other whole locales:
- The Curse-Scarred Isles
- The Vulknar Jungles
- The Sailors' Graveyard
- Storm's Eye Citadel
Within each one, there are seeds, ideas, and ways for you to send your players to their watery graves. I mean…to have them explore for fun and frolic!
I keep looking at the area of Storm's Eye Citadel and thinking of all the cool adventures I could set there. That, and the Vulknar Jungles. I feel like that place just screams for random encounters and skill-check chase scenes.
In a lot of ways, the setting section feels like the setting section from Pirate Borg core book in the best way. It gives you all the information you need about these really cool places, some art that lets you really get a grasp on and feel for them, and then gives you free rein to do what you want.
Other Cool Stuff: Items, Spells and Monsters
The book also has an armory full of magic items, a spellbook with some really fun options for casters to grab, and a slew of monsters to smash the PCs.
I'm listing these all together because there's just too much in this to go into an absurd amount of detail and keep the review in anything near a reasonable length.
Suffice it to say that I'm incredibly impressed by the breadth of spells out there. Some come from the estimable KibblesTasty, one of the most popular, prolific, and playtested 5e community creators, as well as original for the book here.
Same goes for the monsters, like the Ooze Titan pictured above, or the Waveskimmer, a hellish manta-ray that looks like it could eat an armada before its hunger is sated.
The monsters are separated out by location, too, which is one of my favorite details in any bestiary. I hate seeing a cool monster, want to include it in my area, and then realize it's got abilities or lore that make me have to adapt it instead of just dropping it in.
Oh, and there are dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs. You get leviathans and a freaking undead whale that I want to use in a game so badly. Like the nautical rules above, it may just become an undead space whale instead.
Putting It All Together
In the end, this is one of the most solid third-party books I've read since I reviewed Tavern Tales. From the massive number of player options to the beautiful art on nearly every one of the 300+ pages, there's nothing in Songs of the Spellbound Sea not to like.
It's very, very good.
The PDF is bookmarked and linked throughout, making navigation a breeze. I generally prefer physical books for my TTRPGs, and one of the reasons is that it's terribly annoying to navigate PDF versions on the fly. As I read and reviewed this one, I found myself not frustrated because I clicked through to where I needed to go easily.
I literally can't say that's happened to a single other PDF I've ever used. It's obvious a lot of care went into this book, and the linking is just a further indication of that.
If I have one single nitpick about the entire book, and believe me, I realize this is a nitpick: there's no full adventure or sidequest. While there are adventure seeds, it would have been cool to see a short jaunt that could introduce some of the NPCs from the bestiary or one of the setting areas to players. Even if it were just Mini-Dungeon Tome-style with only a handful of pages, if that.
But hey, there are over 300 pages of awesome stuff in here, and that's a legit nitpick that doesn't even weigh in on my overall take on the book. It has everything else I could ask for in a supplement, and I don't think it's even necessary. It's still a five-star book in my mind.
Songs of the Spellbound Sea is available for pre-order now and will be launching in full in August of this year. I keep eyeing that hardcover and dice set, myself, actually. This would be a perfect addition to my shelf IRL as well as my digital one. And it would be for yours, too.
You can check out Ben's other work and a ton of freebies at somanyrobots.com
Rating: 5 out of 5
Art in this post was done by Roberto Andréas, Žana Arnautović, David Kovačič, Bora Haxhirai, Olga Jaworska, Duong Thanh Lam, Alifka Hammam Nugroho, David Roque, Danilo E. Valdez Jr.
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