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Well again, as I said, I only had 3 issues of the AP when we did character creation, so it's not something I could really have forseen. And we'll work around it.
I thought it was really, really great. I'm looking forward to running it, and sort of regretting the fact that I'm still on Sea Wyvern's Wake. :) Well done JJ and the whole Dungeon crew. Of course the only issue is that you'll have to outdo yourself for the big finale. The table is nicely set for it though. The BIG finale. *sniff*. After that, the magazine is dead. Long live Pathfinder. :)
I would highly recommend the bronze dragon shaman option. We have one in our party, and he has arguably been our MVP, saving countless PC deaths with his healing aura. His particular build is a human (Chultan - we're playing in the Realms) with one level of Barbarian, and the rest Dragon Shaman straight through so far. I think he's going for Dragon Disciple PrC at some point. Another particular quirk on this character is that he's taken the Vow of Poverty from the Book of Exalted Deeds. He gives all his wealth to his bronze dragon patron. It's a pretty nasty combo. Basically I picture Shaquille O'Neal with some Draconic traits and NO bling. Anyway, as the party's DM, I can say that he's been a VERY valuable PC in our party, and we run a big one (8PCs).
I think you can continue to have good roleplay in high level games, if the people running them are good. It's also key to have the PC's build themselves up naturally from low level to high level in terms of roleplaying. If the character was "always" high level, the players have more trouble remembering that they were not always such superheroes. I also think the Abyss will carry itself over just fine here. In my previous message, I pointed out that the key is to have a good story on top of the setting to bring the setting to life. I think we have that here, so to me it won't be much harder to run the feeling of dread and terror in the Abyss like there was in Kraken's Cove. You just have to have a little bit of flair for colorful descriptions. But having said all that, if you don't like running high level campaigns, don't let any of us talk you into it. I think the cutoff I described in my first post to this topic (end campaign after dealing with Vanthus at Farshore) would still be a really solid, satisfying campaign for all involved.
Some of the best RPG campaigns I've ever played in have been planescape campaigns back in 2nd ed AD&D. One of my friends loves the system. The thing is there's a trick to Planescape campaigns, and it takes a good DM to pull it off. The setting is so vast and so varied that it's easy to fall into the trap of letting the setting BE the story. What the DM has to do is remember that the setting needs to be just that, the setting, the backdrop, and nothing more. You need a compelling story ON TOP OF the setting, or else the setting seems false, flimsy and superficial. I don't think I could do it. I'll probably never ever run a planes-hopping adventure like that because I know I wouldn't do it justice.
I think he broke one of the cardinal rules of RPG's, by splitting up the party. The rest of the group had to be bored senseless sitting around the table waiting on this all day recon thing to work itself out, yeah? In my game, he would have been subtly warned before leaving the group, and had he ignored those subtle warnings, mercilessly killed by vine horrors after leaving. A 10 minute in-game recon is one thing, somewhat like the rogue looking ahead to play up his sneakiness and trap sensing, and that sort of thing is OK in limited quantity. This was much more than that, and is NOT OK, both from a metagame standpoint, and from general sensibility. The guy spent the WHOLE DAY scouting, and then spent the night away from the group as well. Essentially the barbarian was attempting to face the entire sargasso alone, and that won't work.
Well, I'm not doing this, but I would think that a good stopping point might be the arrival of the party at Farshore, and the successful defense of that city from the Pirate attack. You could really play up the voyage, and turn THAT into the focus of your campaign, and play down the demons and shadow pearls and such. They get to save Farshore, and most importantly, kill Vanthus, which is a great arch-enemy for the early part of the campaign. That makes a good closure point. Lavinia is vindicated, her parent's memory and life's work restored, Vanthus is vanquished, Farshore becomes a nice colony that earns a ton of profit for Lavinia and the PC's, the Pirate threat is defeated, and so on. I should think that to be a solid campaign, and if you played up the sea voyage and upgraded all the challenges after that, you could have it wrap up anywhere from 10th-12th level, which might be satisfying if that's what your're looking for. Just a thought. We're playing all the way through, most of my party has their character's progression planned through Lvl20 and would be MOST disappointed to not get there (even if it ends up being another PC that lives that long) :)
Hehehe got carried away with my story, and forgot to give my advice on yours. What you have is good, but I worry about making the characters start out with a battle they are assumed to be unable to win. But that's a minor quibble, I think a nice big pirate ship boarding event would be a great way to start the campaign. :) Also, the tie-in making it the Blue Nixie is also clever. Again, I have a minor quibble with that though, that might be nothing and then might not. I had my PC's start on "The Ravaged Pride" (name stolen from Paizo), which was an old, soggy, rusty, creaky, beat up pinnace that had definitely seen better days. When they "commandeered" the Sea Wyvern from Kraken's Cove, they felt like they had really hit the jackpot! The Nixie, being a superior ship to the Wyvern, might give the opposite impression. Everything is relative. :)
That would be me whose idea you are stealing, and if I didn't want it to be used by others, I wouldn't have posted it. So enjoy. :) I also had an encounter on the first night, but as I didn't know enough at that time about future adventure stuff, there was not MUCH of an ominous tie-in (see below). It was a band of Sahuagin, with the assistance of a large shark who bit a hole in the bottom of the ship for some of the sahuagin to enter through. Much like your idea, one of my main goals was to damage the boat so the PC's had to limp back to Sasserine, and so their captain would retire from his little merchant run, thereby leaving the PC's in search of new employment. The tie-in I DID make was that the Sahuagin were hired by the Rundeen, unbeknownst to the PC's (We play in the Realms, and I subbed in the Rundeen for the Scarlet Brotherhood as per Conversion notes). The Rundeen had allowed the captain of the "Ravaged Pride" (The PC's ship) to travel their route between Sasserine and the city whose name I have since forgotten, since it was a small, private vessel. They did so, however, on the condition that he never traffic arms or magic items, only standard trade goods like hemp, rope, rum, etc etc. Well, on the last run, he smuggled a few arms aboard ship as a favor to a friend in desperate need, unbeknownst to all but one of the PC's (the mercantile quartermaster type) and the Rundeen somehow got word of it. The Sahuagin were hired by the Rundeen to both damage the ship and attack the crew, which they did, and they were chosen so that the connection wouldn't be obvious. The captain, and old dwarf called Captain Argus, rightly guessed that he was being warned, and thus decided now would be a good time to sell off his ship and retire in Sasserine. It worked well for me because it provided a good reason to have the PC's all together and know each other, (I HATE the cliche'd "your characters are all sitting at an inn" schtick) it gave them all a need for employment at just the right time, and it set the tone for the campaign. I promised the boys a seafaring campaign, it wouldn't have been any fun to spend the first month on land without ANY sea adventure.
Thomas Austin makes the key point here really. Your problem isn't really the use of teleport, per se, it's the wide availability of specific magic items. Just say "No, the merchant doesn't have a +3 greatsword of flaming burst, nor does he have a +2 chain shirt of calling for sale either. He could special order one, but it would take 2 weeks and double standard cost". Obviously, you don't want to overdo the limitations, because people should be able to get SOMETHING useful with their hard-earned gold, but honestly, a fair amount of that is totally believable anyway. Do you really think Sasserine has one of every conceivable magic item for sale? Obviously, they're likely to have many of the basics, and clearly stuff that applies to water or sailing and such more than most other places (You should be able to find a potion of breathe water pretty easily), but if somebody is looking for something specific, and you don't want them to have it, don't let them have it. Or, as I said above, make them pay more and wait longer, which they are often unlikely to do. If you do that, then teleport won't be an issue, particularly considering all it's limitations and other issues. It's even more dangerous in this AP, who wants to accidentally show up 3 miles out to sea, and have to swim all the way back to port with all that gear and loot they were about to sell/trade?
DMFTodd, sounds like you're skimping on your prep time. Just because you're running a module doesn't mean you don't need a few hours before each game, to read things over and make some notes. As it is, what's done is done. I'd start your next gaming session by mentioning to your intrepid adventurers that they got off SUPER easy last week because you weren't reading the template correctly, and that they won't get off so lucky again. If they've not made it all the way though the cove, I'd throw them another Savage Deionychus, and this time do it right. Pounce and all. Make them take him to -10 then acid splash. They'll know fear then. :) Then just smile and say "that's how EVERY encounter should have been last week". We've been playing weekly since January, and so far the only PC death I've caused has been at Kraken's Cove. We have a Dragon Shaman with a healing aura that has saved so many lives it's not funny. Otherwise there'd be a lot more. In the cove, though, we lost a water genasi to a savage creature with the acid splash. He caught him in that maze near the end, and 2 savage pirates surprised him and critted with their scimitars, dropping him to -9 and immediately unconscious. The next round, he stabilized to -8 due to the healing aura, but then the barbarian charged one of the pirates to protect his comrade, and immediately dealt about 25 hp to him, killing him immediately. Unfortunately, the resulting acid splash hit the helpless genasi, who took 4 more points of acid damage and promptly died. It was a sad case where trying to save a friend had the exact opposite result. But then, what should he have done, not attacked?
Our characters began the campaign as sailors aboard the pinnace "Ravaged Pride", under the command of a dwarf named Captain Argus. (Yes, I shamelessly stole the name from the wooden ship model here on Paizo, which I use in the game, but the players don't need to know that.) :) At any rate, the night we started the campaign was fated to be the last voyage of the Ravaged Pride. She was attacked two days out of Sasserine by a squad of Sahuagin. They convinced a giant shark to bite a big hole in the bottom of the boat that they entered through, as well as assaulting the deck simultaneously. The attack was fended off, and the boat was able to stay afloat long enough to limp into Sasserine, but thereafter, Captain Argus sold the boat to "It Still Floats" and retired in Sasserine. This, conveniently enough, left our heroes unemployed with severance pay in Sasserine just as Kora Whistlegap was approaching them to offer them a job for Lavinia Vanderboren.
If 2 of the 5 said it was too much, and none of the other 3 actively disagreed with them, then it was probably too much. There's more to setting up encounters than just working out CR's and making sure you don't TPK the party, and so on. As Keith said, that's a lot of dice rolling. 3.5 hours straight of nothing but combat gets a little old. And the bottom line is if your players aren't enjoying themselves, the game is a failure.
If you think your PC's are a little behind on their level progression, due to not getting enough XP, you could always throw in a few side quests, instead of just trying to find ways to buff the baddies in the AP. Our party has been (nominally at least) playing in Sea Wyvern's Wake for over a month, and they're only about 3 weeks into the voyage. :)
At 20th level what is the number of followers you get? What is the population of Farshore? I think a significant portion the Farshore population would be followers so why wouldn't Lavinia go too? Or one could have their own Olman tribe by then. Or a tribe of phanatons, that should make the Maw an interesting trip O:) Leadership feat is more complicated than just your level. It involves Charisma bonuses, and other modifiers based on roleplay and character history. Level does put a cap on it though, if you have really high mods.
I thought I'd follow up a really long post with another one... :) This is the word doc. I gave to each of my players when the game started. I think something like this is always a very useful way to lay down basic ground rules so the guys know what to expect, especially if you have some newbs in the group. Some of it I touched on in the previous post, but I think you still will benefit from it. If not, sorry for spamming. :) Avast, you sea dogs, and welcome to the Savage Tide Campaign! Before we weigh anchor and make way into uncharted seas, here be some things ye should know about the campaign. First of all, I cannot make any guarantees about bein’ able to maintain this ‘ere pirate voice throughout the entire campaign, but I will try anyway. For the rest of this note, though, I’ll stick to proper King’s English, so you don’t all throttle me next time you see me. The Campaign will take much of its material from the “Savage Tide” series in Dungeon Magazine, so unless you want to spoil some of the story, it’s best you keep your nose out of Dungeon for a while. I will throw in a lot of my own ideas that I’ve been developing over the past few months, but Savage Tide will help a lot in setting the backdrop and keeping the story moving between my mostly unconnected ideas, so you’ve been warned. I am converting the adventure path as written in Dungeon to the Forgotten Realms for lots of reasons, but primarily because I own a lot of Realms source material that I don’t wish to go to waste. Character Creation:
As such, you may create a character from anywhere in the Forgotten Realms, but given the nature of the campaign, it would make sense for your character to hail from a region with a seafaring culture, or at the very least, some coastal areas where ships are known to pass. If you are from a faraway land in the Realms, such as Mulhorand or the Moonsea area, you will want to include in your character creation some reason why you’d be in the South. Naturally, the life of a sailor is one of travel, so such a story should not be terribly difficult. I accept and appreciate written character concepts and backstories detailing the life of your character up to level 2, but it is not required. If, on the other hand, you would like to be from Sasserine itself, that would be fine, and in fact very easy to write into the story. I will be providing each such player with a “Savage Tide Player’s Guide” outlining the city and its many districts. A player who hails from this city will automatically know all (or at least the vast majority – if you have to roll I will let you know) of the information within it as “Area Knowledge – Sasserine”, while the rest of you will need to take that as a skill if you want to succeed on such a check. Area Knowledge – Sasserine will also allow a synergy bonus to Gather Information checks made within the city as well. As mentioned, characters will begin play at 2nd level. Allowable source material for character creation, in terms of feats, spells known, races, and so on include all Forgotten Realms sources, as well as all core D&D material produced by WotC, with the exception of psionics, please; it doesn’t mesh with my notion of magic. A special warning when going through Realms stuff: a lot of it, notably the basic campaign setting book, was written under 3.0 rules, and lots of the feats/spells/prestige classes were re-written for 3.5 in later supplements. Make sure you’re using the 3.5-based stuff, if you have questions ask. I might also specifically point you in the direction of the “Stormwrack” supplement, specifically created for seafaring adventures. It has some races that may interest people looking to play something which ordinarily would not be a very useful race. Having said that, I would recommend AGAINST creating a truly aquatic character, in other words one which can not function well outside of water, at least at first. We will be spending significant time in this campaign at sea, but we will also be spending significant time, in stretches of months at a time, on land as well, although always coastal I think (no promises there though). In those cases, obviously, an all-aquatic creature will have difficulty being involved in these adventures. If you are dead-set on playing an all-aquatic creature, discuss it with me, and we’ll work out something. You’ll probably need to create two characters, one for land time and one for sea-time. However, I will need to penalize this extra flexibility in some way, so expect to have your two characters each be a level behind the rest of the party, or some similar negative assignment on my part. I’m not trying to punish you, but again as I said, it wouldn’t be fair to the players who are putting all their effort into one character to let others have two equally powerful characters, giving them the advantage of “customizing” themselves to the environment. Again, if you have issues with this, discuss it with me and I’m sure we’ll work something out. Back on topic. Character creation will involve rolling your stats as follows: roll 4D6, reroll 1’s, take 3 best. Repeat 7 times, take 6 best and distribute as you wish. Yes, this will make powerful characters, with an average stat above 13. Trust me, you will need it. This adventure path is not for the feint of heart, and I will not pull punches on player deaths. It cheapens the story to do so, in my opinion, because then the victories mean less. A note on alignment: The overall theme of the campaign is fighting evil for a noble cause, but that certainly does not mean that everyone should be LG, or even G. Neutral and even Evil alignments are accepted, but be forewarned that this is not a campaign where all the players are evil, bloodthirsty pirates. Obviously, as DM I only have some control over player’s actions, and I will not “forbid” players from doing evil acts. But that’s not the expectation of the game as a whole. May your character lie, steal, cheat, and so on? Absolutely. May he/she openly kill innocent villagers or sailors and not expect repercussions? Unlikely. Also, there will be times when an opponent will be beyond your skill to kill directly; in such cases it will be necessary to confront them in other ways. Subtle warnings of such will be given if necessary in such cases. A few other minor points on character creation: There are some unique challenges and opportunities to be had with a Seafaring game. That’s honestly one of my primary motivations for choosing this as the setting. It’s always great to be able to really branch out and look at some of the “standard” gaming preconceptions, and have to start from scratch with them. But at the same time, there are some specific challenges I want to warn you about before you make your characters, as well. For one thing, some prestige classes have specific pre-requisites that are impossible to fulfill when your character is at sea for three months. You aren’t going to be initiated into any guilds or clubs or secret orders during that time (most likely). As such, if you are the type that plans your character’s level progression out from the beginning, this is important to keep in mind. Likewise, new equipment is tough to come by at sea as well. It doesn’t matter how many gp you have, if nobody on your boat has a +3 flaming long sword they want to sell you, you aren’t going to be able to buy one. Now, item creation feats and such are an answer, and honestly, I expect that they will be a bit more useful in this campaign for that very reason. Just don’t forget to stow those raw materials on board before you set sail… I’ll let your own minds think of other general guidelines to consider when making your characters, just remember that heavy armor is no longer a good thing when your 3rd level fighter goes overboard. I don’t care if he DOES have 5 ranks in swim. And feather fall slowly takes you straight down, whether your “ground” is a moving target or not… There are also some special rules for fighting on ships, and underwater combat, and so on. I will produce a separate handout for those. For the purposes of character creation, just know that there are lots of reasons to take Balance, Climb, Jump, and Tumble. And no character should think they can safely tube their Dex stat. Game Information:
The official “quorum” for the game will be 4 players. If quorum is not reached by 6:30, those who do show up will find alternate entertainment for the evening. There may also be evenings where some other circumstance prevents me from running the game, but I am still here and available, and again in those cases we will find alternate entertainment. That might be board games, cards, or whatever. Under no circumstances are people required to stick around if they do not wish to participate on such nights, and a small XP bonus will be awarded to people who make the trip out here and do not get to play D&D. We will play on a (really freakin’ huge!) mat with miniatures, including a really neat 4-layer miniature ship I purchased recently. Players are not required to provide their own miniatures for their characters, although of course that is encouraged. I have plenty of figs for general use, and all are welcome to them for the purposes of representing themselves. The only other thing I ask of the players is that they understand my limitations. I will not make the “correct” in-game rules judgment every time. I don’t know every feat and every spell, and there may be times when I screw something up, or make a call that does not make sense in game. What I ask is that you hold all disagreements until the end of the session, even if it caused your player’s death. If it caused the party some serious problem, like a player death, then I will fix it. I just don’t want the game session breaking down into a rules argument. If I screw up, please wait until the end to point it out to me, and I will make it right if it was a problem. Game Mechanics:
More specifics, including notes on underwater combat, underwater skill modifiers, and so on, will be forthcoming. Recommended Reading:
In short, having a sea-based campaign presents a lot of challenges. It’s a chance to try something different, which, again, is the whole point. Try a different race, class, spell, or prestige class than you ordinarily would. If you’re thinking of playing a Halfling, consider the “Shoal Halfling” from Stormwrack, which exchanges some of the halfling’s racial sneakiness and +1 with slings and thrown weapons for having both gills and lungs. If you want to play a Cleric, perhaps a cleric of a Sea God with an Ocean domain? Everyone will appreciate a cleric who can call wind on a calm day on the open sea. Also, remember that fire spells do not work underwater…
Lots of really good Q's.... lets go through them: >>Where in the path are you up to now?<< My party started in mid January, playing one night a week for about 3 hours at a time, and we are partway through the 3rd issue, Sea Wyvern's Wake. I am playing up the sea-faring aspect of this campaign more than the source material does, and I think that a 3 month sea voyage deserves a LOT more than 1 article's worth of material, so I'm slowing this part down a lot, and throwing in a lot of my own stuff. We are using Stormwrack to great effect, and I highly recommend you pick that up. It's not essential, but it will help you a lot in adding to the nautical aspect of the game. I'd also suggest you find the thread in here for nautical terminology, and make copies of it for your players if you have the means. At the very least, I would recommend you spend some time on it learning a little of the lingo. It makes it all more authentic. This is a unique campaign, most campaigns don't deal with ships and pirates and such. Why not play that up and take advantage of that? >>How’s it all been going (story/combats) etc any pitfalls to avoid? Anything you’d change or urge a rusty DM (such as myself) to watch out for?<< So far so good for us. I think it would be wise for you to be willing to retain some flexibility with the storyline though. Remember that the source material is only a skeleton. Feel free to adjust bits here and there for your party or your particular situation. As for the rusty DM concern, I hadn't run a game for about 5 years before this one, so I was a bit rusty as well to say the least. I think this was the perfect way to get back into the groove. The AP provides a steady plotline and structure to build around. And these boards are a great resource. Have a look at "Mando"'s encounter sheets, he'll email them to you if you ask to be on his list. They are a great resource for keeping all the npcs and monsters straight. I'd also keep a notebook and take notes as you go. As a DM, you'll invariably come to places where you have to make up names and stuff on the fly because you didn't prepare for it, and the module doesn't have anything. "What's the name of the inn in Fort Blackwell?" ummmmmmm..... right.... It's called the "Hoarse Hippocampus" Write that down. >>Have the alignment/class and race choices made by the players during character generation affected the campaign a lot IYO?<< I think they ALWAYS do. I told my players ahead of time what kind of campaign it was going to be. I told them they'd spend significant time on ships and on water. I told them that skills like "Use Rope, Prof:Sailor, and Knowledge:Geography" would be a lot more useful than normal. I told them they would do well to learn how combat works differently in water (DMG p 96 iirc, you might want to familiarize yourself with that too). I told them that the penalties for falling overboard in heavy metal armor would be severe. So, the characters were made with that in mind, just as I hoped. Don't think of it as limitations (I can't play my heavily armored paladin on a barded warhorse?!), think of it as a chance to try something that you normally wouldn't. Ever thought it would be fun to play an aquatic elf? Here's your chance (although you will still need to have some workarounds for that, especially early on). The Stormwrack races, such as Aventi, are a really neat option for something you can't normally do. My party has 2 of them. We also have a Water Genasi (we play in the Forgotten Realms). Ever want to try out the Dread Pirate or Legendary Captain prestige class? Normally those get glossed over in the books as irrelevant because their stuff is only good on a ship. Well, now you're on a ship! >>What do you think of the advancement rate of the player characters?<< I started my PC's at 2nd level and had an intro adventure to get them to Sasserine together on the first night. But since there were 8, the XP were divided more than usual, and they were right back on track by midway through Bullywug. I only increased the CR's a little here and there. In general, I think the adventure is PLENTY deadly as is. All I had to do is play the enemies smart, and have them show up in bigger numbers at a time (instead of seeing 3 rogues in the LD base, they found 5 or 6 at a time, and the rogues were always ready for them, and so on). They found 5 or 6 zombie pirates at a time in the Parrot Island dungeon at once, and in the climatic final battle with them, the huecuva was with 5 or them. Too bad the cleric did super well on his turn check and turned all the zombies, even that turned out to be too easy, but hey, that's the way rolls go sometimes. :) In short, the advancement is ok. You sound like you'll have 6, so you should be fine just leaving the encounters as is in most cases, you'll still have plenty of tense moments. I'd have WAY more than my current 1 entry into the Obits thread if not for the fact that we have a Dragon Shaman with a healing aura that automatically stabilizes people when they drop below 0hp. The one we did lose was knocked by sneak attacks to -9 by zombie pirates, then stabilized. Unfortunately, before he could stand up, one of his fellow PC's killed a zombie standing over him, and he took 4 damage from the acid splash. OOPS. Trying to save the guy... >>I have picked up three new players and have three old experienced gamers –what’s your view on new/inexperienced players and Savage Tide? (Death trap/tons of fun/both?)<< Both, no question. :) Tell them up front that character death is a VERY real possibility, because it is. Tell them that you're not going to go out of their way to kill them, but at the same time, it's no fun if you always bail them out and pull punches either. Even the new guys should grasp that. Tell them to always have a backup PC made. Usually you'll see that the experienced guys will do what they can to help out the rookies, and also lead by example, so the new guys will be seasoned vets in no time. >>My players all have a back-up character (or four in one paranoid players case) and I have informed them it’s going to be a toughy. Good idea?<< 4 is too much, then you get the problem where the guy almost WANTS his PC to die because he's itching to try out that neat druid he worked up last week. Plus then he spends a half hour deciding which to give you as the replacement and nobody can really move on until he does. But one is definitely a good idea. >>How do you feel mixed alignment parties will fare in the ST?<< Ours is fine. Mixed alignment builds for more roleplay possibilities honestly. It's always fun to watch the LG guy and he CN guy argue over whether it's OK to throw the unconscious and bleeding pirate overboard where he'd likely be eaten by the circling sharks. Here's an excerpt of what I told all my players before the game started regarding alignment, I felt it fit in here as well: A note on alignment: The overall theme of the campaign is fighting evil for a noble cause, but that certainly does not mean that everyone should be LG, or even G. Neutral and even Evil alignments are accepted, but be forewarned that this is not a campaign where all the players are evil, bloodthirsty pirates. Obviously, as DM I only have some control over player’s actions, and I will not “forbid” players from doing evil acts. But that’s not the expectation of the game as a whole. May your character lie, steal, cheat, and so on? Absolutely. May he/she openly kill innocent villagers or sailors and not expect repercussions? Unlikely. Also, there will be times when an opponent will be beyond your skill to kill directly; in such cases it will be necessary to confront them in other ways. Subtle warnings of such will be given if necessary in such cases. >>Do you use miniatures in the path? What is you're opinion of them? Do they add or take away from the game/roleplaying?<< We love them. My opinion is that it adds clarity to the game, especially during combat situations. There will be long stretches when you don't need them at all, but then there are other times when having the figs prevents a lot of unnecessary q's about placement. "Can I still see the ogre from here?" Just look at the mat, it should be obvious. "How many orcs can I hit with the fireball?" Q's like that become obvious with figs and a mat. I have a big 5'x10' gaming table in my basement, and we have a Chessex Mondomat on it (available from Paizo). I love it. But I understand the arguments against the figs too, to each their own. I also recommend getting a pack or two of those cardboard ships from that collectible game. "Pirates of the Main" I think it's called. They are great if you plan on doing much work with naval combat, just remember they're at a much different scale of course. So maybe when you're doing that, each square is 25' instead of 5', for instance. Wow, long post...sorry. Hope you find it useful.
I'm glad my party's not like that Darren. My party is lvl6 mostly, and not all of them even have magic weapons yet. I've left the treasure mostly the same throughout the adventure, and my party has 8PCs, so it's about the same gear, and only slightly more loot, spread over twice as many people as planned by the adventure. To counter, though, one of the PC's has some sweet mercantile feats and abilities, and they've made some side deals and such. For example, they sold some glass to a randomly encountered patrol of locathah for 10x market value, because locathah don't have much access to glass, and all kinds of access to pearls, which the PC's were happy to take as payment. :)
I have an iPod speaker system in my basement where we game, and I have made a "Savage Tide Mix" playlist for use in the game. It contains the soundtracks for the first two "Pirates of the Carribean" flicks, "Master and Commander", "Last Samurai", "Jurassic Park", and a Yo-Yo Ma plays Bach on cello 2 disk set, as well as a few other selected classical music clips. The Last Samurai soundtrack would seem, at first glance, to be out of place, but it flows with the rest of it surprisingly well.
Thanks for the ideas, they are pretty useful to introduce Prophyry house, but I still lack the motivation. I mean they might know it is a bordel but why go there? I assume you mean BESIDES the obvious reason? :) Neutral or not, I don't know too many people who need extra reasons to motivate them for nookie.
Back on topic, high end breakings of the Awaken spell aside, I would think that a single awakened dino would be able to get lesser unawakened dinos of the same species to follow him with the general herd mentality. Beyond that, getting that dino to do what you want, in GENERAL TERMS, should be manageable with some diplomacy and/or handle animal checks. I'd probably make it a diplomacy check, and let handle animal provide a synergy bonus, or some such. In turn, his control over the rest of the herd will be imperfect as well, though, so having the whole herd act with him will be a haphazard affair, to say the least; this will be particularly true if he leads them into obvious danger. Expect lots of collateral damage. But it should definitely be FUN to watch. :)
In our campaign, Gut Tugger was convinced to join the party. He felt betrayed when Rowyn tried to down the potion and leave him for dead. It didn't work, and she died anyway (provoked attacks of opportunity), and the PC's basically made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Now he's a hireling aboard the Wyvern, for a gp a day.
What you're saying is true, Black Bard, to a point...on the other hand, for a guy to get that good at grappling, they have to spend a SIGNIFICANT amount of time training for it. A D&D character can MOSTLY be a cleric, but with a feat or two, he's also a grappling master. But on the other hand, it's a heroic game and these are heroic characters. And most importantly, it's a game, not a life simulation...it's not going to be perfectly accurate, and to be honest, we probably wouldn't like it to be.
Yeah, Diamondback is a bad@$$ too. I tried REAL hard to allow her to escape but she got tangled up with our cleric who specializes in grapple attacks. Her escape artist allowed her to escape every time, but she also took damage every time, and the escape artist took her whole move action so she couldn't really escape. She just seemed way too cool to be a one-off encounter, fire and forget kind of villainess. But alas, my party is pretty tough.
My party more or less ignored the guild hall entirely, but did indeed claim the LD hideout as their own after clearing out the inhabitants. They even kept the ixits under their employ (and gave them a raise) to guard the water entrance. I figure Nemien still runs the Guildhall but nothing else, the PC's gave him no reason to do otherwise. As for the Sea Wyvern expedition, I'm just using Roywn's mother in her place. I figured she'd want revenge after what the PC's did to her daughter (yes my party was able to kill her before she escaped as well, and even managed to convince Gut Tugger to join them) I'm just using Rowyn's stats for Heldrath. The printed material says that Heldrath gives up on the PC's after the ambush fails with the stiltwalkers: I say different. :)
That's absolutely awesome Peruhain. Thanks for the well-written exposition. I think I will just go ahead and print that... The cool thing is that it will be quite some time before we get to this event, since I'm extending the sea voyage portion of the adventure significantly. Thanks again to all who contributed, and anyone who posts further. It's all welcome!
Peruhain, good post, I do agree with most of what you've said. I will dispute the max bonus you've worked up though... We have a party of 8 PC's, all of which have a substantial Prof(Sailor) score. Not all of them are maxxed on it, but they all have at least a little. If they are on deck working to sail the ship, they can roll to assist the main Prof(Sailor) check, each giving a +2 to the roll. Of course, a few will usually fail, but that's almost always, in our party, +10 or so right out of the bag. Then there's the fact that a caravel gives a +4 to all such rolls due to it's size and seaworthiness. That's all before the captain even makes his roll, with his 8 ranks (currently, he's still only Lvl5), and good INT score. By the time the party is at 8th level, I'll essentially need to have throw DC 40 Sailor rolls to scare them. The rest of what you're saying makes plenty of sense, however, and kind of negates the point of what I'm getting at above. Thanks for the contribution. :)
We have 8. They are (going from memory here... Running in Forgotten Realms Chultan (human) Barbarian1/Dragon Shaman5
They also have Gut Tugger travelling with them, they convinced him to join them after they killed Rowyn. They have just set out on Sea Wyvern's Wake, and have not yet reached the 1st stopoff. They did have a vicious encounter with a Wereshark and some Sahuagin though. Vicious. Weresharks are definitely tough for their CR. What are we doing to compensate for the larger party? Not that much honestly. In most cases, I'm just throwing a few more bad guys into each encounter. For example, there were 2 rhagodessae in the hold of the Blue Nixie. In the Lotus Dragon Guildhall, I didn't add many new thieves, but I had the party encounter more at a time, and I put them in places where the party would be at a disadvantage. Gave the thieves cover and that sort of thing. Haven't increased the treasure much AT ALL...like 10% above what's stated money wise, and only a few more magic items.
I like those suggestions, but would also add that there should be a synergy bonus from Profession (Sailor), due to the fact that old salts get used to it and would not tend to get seasick. Really anybody with several ranks in it shouldn't even have to test anymore. It would apply to landlubbers only - DM discretion.
>>Getting too caught up in the details of who's doing what might be cool for a novel or movie, but it more likely than not does not make for very interesting D&D gaming. It's probably best to keep the non-encounter sections of the journey in the background as much as possible, is what I'm getting at. << See, to me the story isn't as beleivable if people don't know their roles aboard ship. They're on this ship for 3 months, the PC's should have some idea what's going on during most of those 3 months. I understand clearly that a certain healthy level of abstraction is necessary to keep the story going and not get bogged down in details, but overdoing it kills the suspension of disbelief. Not trying to argue as such, just presenting an alternate viewpoint. :)
Hey whatsup? Do you know of any miniature resembling Vanthus in Tides of Dread? I'd love to get one just for playing Vanthus. Thanks! I saw a good recommendation for the "Mephisto, Arch Devil" fig by Reaper, #2729 in their set. You might have a look at that. I guess it's a little big scalewise, but otherwise it looks pretty much dead on, wings and all.
Well, I really think you should have...I mean after all, how silly would you have to be to try to run a major nautical campaign without the source book for nautical campaigns? (Hope I didn't step on some toes there, but honestly!) I would have made Stormwrack more or less a prerequisite for this, or at the very least said (if you don't have Stormwrack, you'll need to concoct your own rules for X,Y, and Z from scratch). But hey that's just me. :)
Yeah, it's just not something that ever really made sense in our party. Some campaigns will play up those afilliations more, and others won't. Ours is one that hasn't, and I don't think that's caused us any real problems or lessened our enjoyment of the AP. As Jaatu said, our group is really diverse. We have a guy from Shou, a guy from Mulhorand, an elf from Sasserine (who may have a possible affiliation potential, but I'm not pushing it on him), 2 Aventi, a Water Genasi, a Human Swashbuckler who would maybe fit one, but is unlikely to pursue it, and Jaatu who, as he said, doesn't really fit the mold of any of them either.
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