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I only ask because an expedition to Farshore during the hurricane season, might put my players off going.

The Medusa is meant to have two eyes, but all the snakes in her hair also have eyes so I swapped her out for some other creature less likely to cause confusion.

Assuming a Greyhawk calender what time of year is the adventure taking place in, probably most importantly when do they set sail from Sasserine?

Also what part of the world is the adventure original planed to be in Tropical, Temperate?

Combination of printed maps created in Dundjinni and a battlemat drawn on with wipe clean markers. D&D miniatures and/or coins with numbers on for tokens.

I've printed a map of the Blue Nixie and photocopied the Sea Wyvern and pasted both on foam board, great for ship to ship combats.

Manure Castle.

I was considering having the Sea Wyvern adrift outside the reef with Savage Pirates aboard, the PC's would arrive via the Blue Nixie, and the adventure would start as a boarding action.

The players would take a row boat to investigate the caves, navigating the reef. While the PCs investigate the caves, some of the crew of the Blue Nixie repaired the Sea Wyvern and got a skeleton crew on board. They could then sail back to Sasserine in time for the bullywug bit.

It's really an excuse to use the floor plans I did of the Blue Nixie again. :)

I generally go with the theory that Good NPCs are enjoying the afterlife so have no reason to return. Especially if Farshore saved and established, which would be there main unfinished business to return for.

Otherwise what's the point of putting it in a room with a hidden secret door. It had a relatively high DC for a reason.

It did? I couldn't find the DC for the Secret Door written anywhere, either in P4's description or P5's.

Sometimes, parties who ARE being thorough will miss it just because the rogue rolled poorly and nobody else has a decent spot check at level 2-ish.

Or they don't have a reason to search and don't have an elf in the party. Look at the map of the Lotus Dragon's guild hall.

If the party enter via D9, rather than the taxidermist's then there is no way they will discover the secret doors since they are 5 ft up so won't be discovered on a normal search of the room at floor level.

I'm also curious as to why they are only five feet up, since the water rises to 8ft above the roof which is 20ft above the floor so a door only 5ft above the floor is going to be submerged under water, but that's a separate matter.

Assuming they get out of D9, after all a rogue is daft enough to fire shoot through the illusionary wall giving away it's nature, they are then in a circular pathway going connecting several round rooms. None of these rooms is a dead end, so there is no reason to search for a secret door anywhere, without searching everywhere. Again no DC is given for the doors leading off the circular rooms in D10, but then without an elf in the party or spending an eternity taking 20 on ever 5ft square in the path they are never going to get anywhere.

You shouldn't just hand them treasure.

I would argue that throwing a first level party against 9 CR 1 monster and another CR 3 monster is far from handing them the treasure.

If someone in the party points out that they're behind the DMG "schedule" for it, that would be a good time to tell them to do a better job of looking, because it's certainly there to be had.

Or they resort to adventures in accounting, and try and loot everything of any conceivable value off a corpse. Personally I'd prefer to hand them the treasure than have them penny pinch collecting rapiers and hand-crossbows for resale.

Heck my group keep collecting and selling all the hand-crossbows and rapiers, at one point they asked if they could unscrew the silver light fittings in Rowyn's room.

Certainly if they try to pawn a lot of the Vanderboren treasure, they'll need to look for shady fences and dealers, for honest shopkeepers will recognize anything obviously stolen (such as anything that bears the Vanderboren family crest).

Just how much of the treasure in D33 are the players meant to keep if any? It's all listed as stolen, but only one chest appears to be obviously so with the Vanderboren crest on the bags. Are the players

a) meant to realise the other 5,450gp worth of stuff is also stolen goods.
b) Turn it over to the watch?
c) Get any reward if they do?
e) Get arrested if they get caught trying to sell it?

Oh come on don't tell me the creative folks down at Paizo haven't got backgrounds for them? I would have thought they were based on playtest characters or something.

As for a punching dagger it doesn't look like that on the cover of 143 more a blade attached to a gauntlet to keep the hand free for spell casting.

I was wondering what are the names, stats and stories behind the characters we see regularly appearing in the Savage Tide art work, they look an interesting bunch.

And what's the weapon the female wizard is using?

After two sessions the party have just returned from Parrot Island, they think they might be some what responsible for the death of the Harbour Master, because of their actions with the Blue Nixie.

I personally find that so far Savage Tide seems to have a much stronger story, plotline call it what you will, than the earlier Adventure Paths. Certainly from the players perspective. AoW the players are pretty much in the dark and the early adventures seem hardly connected at all. With Savage Tide I'm seeing a strong link between adventures and plenty of recurring NPCs both as allies and villains. Then you've got the whole option of joining the Lotus Dragons and playing the campaign from a completely different angle.

Completely agree, two of my characters are female nobles so I had them grow up with Lavinia and Vanthus. They went to the same Academy and were also involved in the prank that got her sent there. They attended the funeral of her parents.

Another was an orphan raised by a friendly middle-aged madam from one of the Shadowshore brothels and I intend the prostitute to travel to Farshore to seek a new life and maybe a husband. Be "interesting" for a character to have his mother coming along for the ride.

I know that the adventure assumes that only the 4 NPCs survive, but what if we want to keep more?

It does? I've not read that far myself as my players are one on the first adventure. I've already planned some additional NPCs that are likely to travel with them and actually imagined HTBM like LOST with several survivors that are there but off camera most of the time. With the PC's being the main characters, leading a rag-tag bunch of survivors through the jungle, then I've got more NPCs to kill off along the route to impress the danger of the Isle of Dread.

Besides I like giving players more responsibility that just their own hides to look after.

If I did have say 12 NPC's surviving on top of the ones required, what sort of problems is that likely to throw up?

Still 1st level party
Under Parrot Island, the players open the double doors to the left as they exit the corridor with the shaft they entered by. The "light" (on the Swashbuckler's buckle - Knack for Magic Feat) shines into the room, like a torch beam (restricted by the fact he's back in the corridor). Initiative is rolled as the Shifter Barbarian, spots a zombie at the edge of his low-light vision and charges in. Swiftly followed by the fighter. The warmage follows after to get into a position to cast his spells. The Cleric delays and Finally the Swashbuckler gets to go and enters the room the light spreading out to cover the rest of the room.

It's at this point they can see the other two zombies that were hidden by the shadow of the doorway. The cleric cast a spell that gives light but can also be used as an attack. Now it's the zombies initiative and these two step out of the gloom to grab the Warmage and the Swashbuckler, biting down hard on each of them. Next round the fighters are still tied up with the zombie at the far end, the Swashbuckler manages to break free but the warmage goes down, the cleric expecting the zombie to back off the warmage now his spark of life is fading (just unconscious at this point) backs off to try and draw the one fighting the swashbuckler away.

The zombie however fails his will check and continues to chew on the unconscious warmage (taking him to -7) thankfully in the knick of time the fighter and barbarian are able to finish off the zombie and come to the warmage's aid. The Cleric is able to heal him up with a CLW and a wand of vigor. The vigor is still healing him up when other party members go to investigate the body in the water....

They added a few more light sources to the party and have been much more careful about charging into darkened rooms since then.

Check out PHB2 and see how you feel about retraining the class feature.

Actually that becomes really useful for rangers. You might want to take Favoured Enemy (outsiders) at first level so you can dump the bonus +2 into it every time you level, making it +4 at 5th etc. But then you aren't that likely to meet outsiders at low levels. So now you pick humans at 1st level then when you are about to level up to 10th or 15th you retrain your 1st level favoured enemy to outsiders and it gets the maximum bonus.

Although having checked Table 8-2 you can only retrain combat style and animal companion choices. Shame it would have been a nice idea.

At 1st level we have
Human Cleric
Human Fighter
Human Warmage
Human Swashbuckler
Truedive Shifter Barbarian

The Sea Urchin Venom seems a little harsh to me, there is a reasonable chance that a fair number of the party can quickly end up sitting out the encounter. It's not far off a save or die effect, since once you are nauseated you can't do anything other than defend and running away isn't even an option.

I know the DC is reasonably low (DC11), but if they fail it the character might as well not be there, it's not like they can do anything useful, and at such a low level they have nothing to remove the effect. If enough of the party fail their save then you could easily be looking at a TPK as the remaining villains gang up on the ones that passed it.

You need 16 lb of weight to give you firm footing on the bottom, so Mithral shirt is only 10 lb, so it isn't even enough to overcome your natural buoyancy by D&D rules, bit silly but so are most of the underwater combat and swimming rules in D&D. Best not to analyse to much.

In the Journey to Blood Bay it states the following...

a) Rowing to Kraken's Cove takes 2 days if they row in shifts

b) Rowing will take 5 days if they only row 8 hours a day.

c) Sailing takes only 16 hours and that the fishman could be paid to wait.

d) Walking overland (walking only 8 hours a day) takes 5 days.

It also says that Vanthus struck only a few hours before they arrived, therefore Drevoraz Kabran, didn't leave until sometime after that heading overland to Sasserine. No in a best case scenario the Bullywugs he recruits were on a direct path to Sasserine and they didn't need to pack and were all ready and willing to head off from the village as soon as he contacted them. So he didn't waste a moment negotiating or waiting for Bullywug warriors to return from a hunt.

Assuming the PC's don't take too long exploring Karken's Cove; if the PC's use option a) 2 days or c) 16 hours to get back to Sasserine, how come they arrive later than Drevoraz who is going to take 5 days to get back?

Starting this Sunday.

Human Warmage - intends to stay it for 20 level
Human Swashbuckler - later going wizard and eventually Eldrich Knight.
Human Fighter - unclear his long term plans.
Human Cleric - Domains Storm/Travel going Stormlord at later levels.
Shifter (Truedive) Barbarian - later going Ranger and then Reachrunner.

I did a Dundjinni Map

Me too although I modified it a bit by putting all the masts to the lowest deck (makes more structural sense) and so I lengthened the lowest deck a bit.

I know how it looks like, but will we ever see an illustration of the Crimson Fleets flag?

To save me routing through the various issues of Dungeon what does it look like?

I've let the Cleric in my group have allegiance to all the sea deities and pick two domains associated with the sea. He's gone for Storm and Travel.

Hunh, I thought the shimalo'koa was pretty badassed, maybe it got changed a bit. 1d8 damage for a light weapon with a 19-20 threat range.

Hey, we can't all be spiked chains can we. ;-)

Going from a longsword, and making it light so it can be finessed and a pair used effectively with two-weapon fighting seems worth the exotic feat to me.

Looking at similar exotic weapons the Elven Thinblade is 1d8 and 18-20 threat range, it can be finessed but isn't light.

Elven Lightblade is 1d6 and 18-20 threat range and is light, going up a damage dice from the lightblade for the drop of a threat range seems fair.

They probably couldn't sell much of the cargo they bring to Farshore, first wave colonists are usually pretty poor, having usually spent the little money they have on passage and supplies to set up their homestead. What they are likely to get instead is goods the colonists have acquired to trade.

What trade goods Farshore has available I'm not sure here's some ideas: Hides and skins are likely (dinosaur hides might get a good price), exotic plants/fruits, hardwoods, ancient Olman artifacts, fish (although Sasserine probably has an adequate supply of these already), rare birds and exotic animals that Sasserine has a good market for.

A good side quest might involve hiring some colonists as guides and trappers so you can hunt exotic and/or dangerous animals for the market and arena in Sasserine, in return the colonist would get tools and equipment to help them establish their town.

I would not have thought that a metal ore would be that useful, as they would probably lack a foundry at Farshore or even someone with the skills to smelt metal.

You'd think (especially in such magic heavy places as Eberron) that every bank loan of over a 1,000gp would also have an Augury surcharge

Nice idea but Augury only sees into the immediate future (about half an hour) not long enough for the duration of most loans.

More on topic, a new colony is likely going to need fashioned steel goods (tools, household goods, lamps, etc.), and other things it can't produce itself yet. Seed for crops that aren't found on the colony but enjoyed by the colonists. Grown Crops that aren't likely to perish on the voyage and can't be grown locally due to climate. Livestock, chickens, pigs, goats, could be more trouble but would be welcomed.

Hmm what commodities can I remember from playing Patrician III...

Barrels of honey, whale oil (Sasserine is a whaling community so you should get it cheap there, Farshore probably won't have a whaling fleet), pottery, wine, olives, beer, leather...

They need to consider what they can find in Farshore that they can't get on the mainland (particularly in Sasserine), hardwood perhaps although Sasserine is near a jungle, this I'm having a harder job of thinking of unless Farshore has a diamond mine I don't know about.

You end up with two choices: Make them better to have than existing missile weapons; or restrict them to such an extent that no-one wants them.

Surely there is a third option to balance them against existing ranged weapons, so that some people consider taking them but not everyone does.

After all there is room for shortbows, longbows, crossbows, repeating crossbows, slings, etc.

The balancing factor for firearms seems to be loading times, verses higher damage. So they won't suit an archer that wants to make use of a full attack, but might suit someone that wants a good single attack.

Off-hand Shot

Prerequisites: Dex 15+, Point Blank Shot, Two-Weapon Fighting
Benefit: When fighting with a melee weapon in your primary hand and a loaded hand-crossbow, light crossbow, or pistol firearm in your off-hand, you can fire the crossbow or pistol as part of a full attack action without drawing an attack of opportunity. Both the primary weapon and off-hand weapon are at a -2 penalty, in addition to any other penalties for firing with one hand, non-proficiency, etc. You are also considered to be firing into combat.

I already allow two weapon fighting to be used with range weapons, so that feat in itself isn't something I would use, but it is a handy guide to allowing a single shot combined with a charge.

are overwritten by the savage code, which is to stay relitively stationary and kill anything that gets too close to you.

Ah that would make a difference, that and them turning on each other once other food sources are gone. That wasn't really made that clear from the Bullywug Gambit adventure, but it would help localise and limit the spread of the disease.

I originally had this question as well, but I wrote it off as those that had started incubating the disease, yet died before it went full effect.

I was considering altering the save effect so if you failed by 10 the Savage Tide leads to a failed transformation and death, and a deformed corpse.

I'd worry more about keeping the weapons balanced then making them truely historically authentic.

To a degree, but I'd like to keep them as one shot weapons at the start of combat then into melee. So as you swing across to the enemies deck you fire your pistol, then attack with the cutlass.

I want the damage balanced so that it is comparable to just charging in. But the reload times high enough that it isn't worth reloading during combat. That's the sort of balance I'm looking for.

Then I'm considering adding a feat that lets you fire a one handed ranged weapon as part of a charge, so you get pistol and melee damage.

From the Bullywug Gambit I've noticed a couple of issues with the Shadow Pearl and the "Savage" template.

First is a minor issue.

In the Bullywug gambit several areas have descriptions of deformed corpses supposedly deformed by the Savage Tide, yet when creatures take on the Savage Template they get the Death Throes (Su) ability, which means when they die they disolve into puddles of acidic goo leaving nothing but a skeleton and their gear. Hence no deformed corpse.

Second is a more major issue. The Savage Tide will probably effect about 2/3rds of the creatures in a 1 mile radius, including all animals (proved by the encounter with the Savage monkeys). In a one mile radius of the Karken Cove just how many animals, including birds, fish, lizards, snakes, are there? Thankfully it doesn't effect vermin or there would be countless savage rats.

Now each one of these creatures can transfer the savage plague with a bite. They can bite even as they die so the sparrow gets eaten by the sparrow hawk but not before it turns it stands a very good change of it turning it savage. It seems to me that it is quickly going to lead to a savage plague that will spread across the globe.

Isn't just the activation of one pearl miles from civilization a problem enough considering the easy of which the template is transferred and the number of possible carriers?

Historically, trained troops could reload a flintlock musket in about 12-18 seconds (I forget if that was with breech- or muzzle-loading muskets, though): 2-3 full rounds.

Not sure where you are getting that information from but during the Napolionic Wars, the British Army were proud of the fact they managed two shots per minute which would be 30 seconds loading time or 5 rounds, so without rigorous military training you should be looking at nearly double that (at the time the British Army was the only military training with live ammo).

Skull and Bones has load times of 10 to 12 rounds which can be brought down with a firearms training feat (each time you get the feat it reduces it by one round, to a minimum of one). I am going with Skull and Bones, but the Firearms training will half the load times (but can only be bought once). This seems a reasonable compromise.

From experience IK becomes a problem when you introduce multibarrel weapons which are in one of the expansion books. This means you generally don´t need to worry about reloading during combat. Also as you can empty multiple barrels at once you can do rediculas damage.

And what rules are you guys using for your black powder weapons. Does making them an exotic proficiency make sense to anyone?

Not to me I intend to use the firearms rules from Skull and Bones, where some firearms are simple weapons other martial and only weird ones are exotic.

They can actually swim pretty well, and even then they can't drown. Not nearly as much of a threat as to the dwarf in half plate.

Oh yeah, because while they might be twice as dense as a normal human it sees to have no effect on their buoyancy, that makes sense... :(

And a dwarf in half plate deserves everything he gets for wearing armour at sea.

I was worried more about the black pudding tripple damage thing mentioned in Takasi's post.

If I was warforged I'd me more worried about falling overboard when the ships in deep ocean waters.

please count me in for statblocks, unit7@hotmail.com

I'd hate to be the Englishman on the very left of THAT front line :)

"Alright, here they come, now I'm supposed to stab the guy to the right of the one charging me, and my buddy here to my left.....omgwtfbbq!

Yeah and it's a testament to drill and discipline that it actually worked very effectively.

I'm allowing firearms in my campaign as well but the problem I came across was that 1st level characters can't afford to own and opperate a gun (per DMG rules) and when they get up a level they don't want to waste a feat on an exotic weapon proficiency.

Make them simple weapons then, after all they replaced longbows because it was easier to train someone to use them.

Ultimately firearms shouldn't be balanced with longbows and crossbows. They should be better. But what does better mean. More damage? Attack bonus for better penetration? Higher range?

Actually longbows were considered better than early firearms because they were more accurate over a greater range, fired faster and were just as likely to kill a man (even one in armour). It's just it was a lot easier to train a man to use a musket than it was to use a longbow.

I like the idea of firearms in the STAP but fear that either the rules will balance/nerf them so no one takes them or will make them so cool, that's all it ever used.

That's why the need to be balanced.

Best way to balance firearms in my opinion is to give them long load times and slightly increased damage and critical. They certainly shouldn't be able to do iterative attacks if you want to reflect the genre. They were very much a fire and forget weapon.

I picked up Corsair's on PDF (assuming it's the same one), not really had much of a chance to look at it yet, but I'll try and make the effort now. I also already have Skull & Bones so I'll try and give a fair comparison.

Although from memory Corsair is a more focused version of the rules in Skull & Bones, you lose all the new classes magic and the like and gain a bit on the ships information. If you have Skull & Bones it probably isn't worth getting, I'll try and figure out exactly what you get later.

Same issue here I'm currently playing Age of Worms but hope to run Savage Tide for my group, give the other DM a rest and a chance to be a player. There is a forum for Age of Worms and Shackled City stuff, this isn't it.

What annoys me is that arcane caster levels do play to the strengths of a Mindflayer...

Jason Said - "For a class level to be associated it needs to play to the strengths of the creature. Since Mind Flayers have not spellcaster levels, additional levels do not directly add to their ability."

A Mindflayer isn't a spell caster, but it's primary attack (MindBlast) is effectively a spell, it's a spell like ability that it can use at range. It's tactics suit sitting away from melee and attacking at range, spell casting plays directly to that strength.

While say both Fighter and Socerer/Wizard level both increase it's SR. To make good use of the Fighter levels the Mindflayer would need to close to melee, meaning the increases SR would not be as useful since it opens itself to powerful melee attacks. Hence that wouldn't be associated.

But Arcane casting not only plays to the Mindflayers tactics of sitting back (and up with levitate) but also fills gaps where it's Mind Blast is lacking....

Mind Blast is a Will Save, so Clerics, Wizards and Paladin's are probably going to be okay, that is until the Sorcerer Mindflayer stuns most of the party, and is then free to concentrate his lightening bolts and Scorching Rays on the few none stunned characters.

Also it's not like the Doppleganger where it can only use one of the classes abilities at the time. The Mindblast directly stacks with arcane casting, you mindblast and it's effect last for several rounds, during which time you are free to use your arcane spells that require Reflex saves against those folks that have decent Will Saves.

A Mindflayer with access to 3rd level spells isn't just going to Mindblast every turn. It will make good use of it's class abilities like this one does in the adventure, using Resist Energy, Mirror Image and other defensive spells so even when you use stuff that avoids SR it is immune.

Doesn't play to it's strengths who are you kidding?

The CR of the Mindflayer should have been 15, but then perhaps have the XP award reduced because it was forshadowed.

I like it. more please..

I have posted more of it at [url]http://www.nutkinland.com/blog/48[/url] which is my Blog. Darthloser is the GM for the campaign, I play Gimgrim. Deree keeps the diary. Unfortunately my entries only start at start of the third adventure. I could probably dig out his complete diary todate (which would be nearly 30 pages now I imagine), and post that there if people are interested.

I couldn't understand why it would try to quench the light source when it doesn't work against magical light sources (or a Sunrod) and a none magical light source wouldn't work since the party is likely to be facing the creature while underwater, in the flooded rooms.

Our DM had the whole room flooded with no air gap, although having the water 5ft deep wouldn't haved helped the dwarf and halfing in our party. It was really unclear as to how deep the water was looking at the adventure after the fact. The only clue that it might not be full height is the fact the elemental tries to quench the light source.

I'll add our group, although we nearly lost the scout in the first encounter, and used nearly 100% of resources on the encounter (IE: All cleric and all wizards spells, and most of peoples hit points). I think we only survived by resting after each encounter. Encounter One, rest two days to heal. Trap, rest two days to heal, swarm rest two days to heal, club together to afford 2 bottles of Alchemist's fire. Took us two weeks (or more) in game time to explore the place, more than half of that was me memorising cures and fixing the party up.

You know it would be nice for a 1st level adventure to have at least on EL 1 event in it, instead of starting with EL 4 and going up. Still the next adventure seems to follow the same lead with an early EL 8+ encounter for a 3rd level party.

Dwarven Cleric
Human Scout
Elven Wizard
Halfling Rogue
Human Monk
Human Paladin