cthulhudarren's page

I really enjoyed the story too. Your pulp influences might be showing a bit much, but I prefer this type of adventure tale to "save the world" stories.

I hope you write the novel of Nex!

Is this campaign taking a long break?

cthulhudarren wrote:

Still awesome as always, Moonbeam!

Thank you very much :)

As far as the dungeon magazines are concerned, there's quite a ways to go in the campaign. I guess your DM isn't gonna have you go through all that.

Still awesome as always, Moonbeam!

effective immediately.

Thanks a lot.

Yeah, I knew that's what you were hoping for, but this is what I had on hand. Maybe next time we run a kingdom turn (which might be tomorrow night) I'll keep track of the math. Honestly, though, a lot of the bonuses are precalculated by spreadsheet so I'd have to disentangle the spreadsheet to lay out all of the bonuses... I mean, if you want to see ALL the math.

The plain and simple is that I am plain and simple; I honestly need my hand held for the first time, step by step. I can understand the basic BP cost of each thing, but all the check DCs with all the modifiers, the steps in order, and things like size capacity of each hex are unknown... how many city blocks (the smallest unit of building measurement, correct?) fit into a hex?

Thanks,

This doesn't necessarily break everything down by phase, but it does give a capsule of each month. This covers the first 13 months of the kingdom's existence and might give a useful overview.

<snip>

Kuthona 4709

Summary: In celebration of their defeat of the Stag Lord, the PCs proclaimed their new domain and established their first city on the site of Oleg's Trading Post, dubbing it the city of Northgate. Irina was crowned as ruler and immediately starts ordering everyone around!
Claimed: B6
Buildings Constructed: Caster's Tower, House, free Stable
Major Events: None

<snip>

Thanks a bunch Jason. I would, however, love to see "the maths" included for a more all inclusive example.

Maybe I'm just a big dummy, but what I'd REALLY like to see is a detailed example of this whole building process. Let's say, three complete turns with all the phases.

As written I can't follow the entire process from beginning to end.

Help me Paizo!

My PCs were newly 13th level vs the big T, but for that fight there were only three of them (!) - the best 3, mind you.

And yeah, for swallow, if a swallowed PC can inflict say 40 hp of damage by themselves in one round, they should get spewed out - I forgot to include that bit, because over time the 4e swallow rules have been changed quite a bit. If you include that bit too, it should be fair but still fun (when I ran it, I used the original rules which only allowed basic attacks, with the only way to get out being killing the monster, and that wasn't much fun!)

Where can I find the updated swallow rules? I have MM2 and didn't see anything there.

So I've been running this in 4e for about 3 sessions now. All I can say is, combats take long... I even bumped monsters down in HP by 25% and damage up by 1/2 per level.

For instance, last Sat night I ran the encounter where the PCs first get to Farshore and fight off the attack.

4 PCs at 9th level and 1 low level companion character.

I basically had

1) 1 short skill challenge to rescue person from burning building
2) heal check for bleeding man
3) combat with 1 level 4 artillery pirate
4) church rescue 4 level 4 artillery pirates and 1 level 9 soldier pirate 1st mate
5) 6 level 4 artillery pirates and one level 10 solider leader captain.

It ended up being an appropriate challenge, no PCs dropped, 3 were bloodied multiple times...

Including redoing maps and looking up rules, this took us from 8PM to 1AM. I can't believe it's taking us this long. I'm only averaging 1 combat a night. The only things we could do faster are experience (all of us are new to 4E) and some folks weren't rolling dice fast enough. For example, some players with powers doing multiple weapon damage are rolling them one at a time instead of all at once.

Even so I'm going to be forced to level up the characters much faster than XP would indicate. Still, no complaints. but I'd love some more stat'ed up things, like the infamous 11, or Korpu (I'm switching the main baddies to Fomorians/Cyclopses), or Phanatons.

stuart haffenden wrote:

Which map should the PC have? Is there one as page 14 without the DM info but with the hexes for the PC to decide which area to explore?

The PCs should start with a completely blank hex map. We give a blank hex map out in the free Kingmaker Player's Guide.

We'll be releasing a poster-sized map of the Stolen Land regions that will have the hexes but no tags, but we're several months away from that product's release still.

If I could nitpick Paizo for one thing, I am repeatedly disappointed in the area maps. Not in the quality as art, but in the sense that it always seems to take me time to figure out how they fit together and how to use them.

Everything else in Pathfinder is effortless, but the maps are constantly something I have to try and figure out. I would like some kind of "using the maps" section with more instruction on how to use all these maps and how they fit together as a whole. In this specific case it's from the issue #31 and the players guide. I had to read all the comments to figure this out. I don't think having the gm/players wait for later issues/products is a good solution either. I'd hate to think of losing out on content, but I also hate not understanding how the maps are supposed to work and be used in the adventure.

I don't think it should be so hard to figure out what in my mind is a very important part of an adventure. I love maps. Please improve this, Paizo!

It's still as awesome as always, Moonbeam! Keep the updates coming. Are you up to date with your posts?

For a t-rex, I used a couple of different approaches...

The first one, when the PC's were new to the Island, was a "young t-rex", where I just took the Fang Titan Drake and took it down to level 14. I then added four terror birds (scytheclaw drakes). The setup was: the t-rex was chasing a bird, with three more waiting to ambush it, but of course the PC's get in the way and look like the easiest meals on offer... That encounter was fine, but not overly tough.

The next one, Temauhti-Tecuani, I made into a solo (level 16).
My PC's chewed him up and spit him out relatively easily, although I did manage to swallow one for a...

Interesting. What level and how many pcs did you have when they fought Temauhti? By my calculations my pcs should be about 11-12th when this battle happens, and I doubt I'll have more than 4 players at the most. I'd think a 16level solo would eat their 7sses.

For the swallow, is it possible for a character that is swallowed to escape in his own? It doesn't sound like it from your description.

Thanks for the idea with the damage dice too!

For Vile Rigidity, I used Sewer Fever (DMG2, pg 206), a level 13 disease, spread with a claw or bite attack.

With the Farshore defense, I played it out in a combo of role-play and "hand waving" (quick DM decisions, based on all the work they did before, and my desire to make it interesting yet ultimately result in the PC's confronting Vanthus), rather than make it a skill challenge, with combats that focused on the PC's where appropriate. Pretty much as written under 3.5, really.

That's great, Hastur! Thanks.

I plan on running each little upgrade to Farshore as both a minor skill challenge and VP per the adventure as written. I'm starting to get the hang of things using the monster builder. Now if they had a similar tool for traps, diseases, etc.

Did anyone else stat up the infamous 11? I was wondering what levels to use to make it both tough yet beatable to the right level party. The Fang Titan Drake is a good model for T-Rex but the level seems too high (16) for adventurers who'd be able 11-12th level.

What level for the aspect of Zotzilaha and from what did you base it?

Right now I'm also planning on houseruling all monsters to have 75% HP and add +1/2 per level damage to their attacks.

I'm also curious about how you worked with Vile Rigidity, and if you used the infamous seven(is that what they're called).

Do any of you folks have more skill challenges worked out? Like for Farshore defenses or saving the town? It's hard to know where to start for those.

The skill challenge for Emraag is excellent, BTW!

cthulhudarren wrote:

Thanks again, man! I have more more questions for you. Since I'm picking up in 4E right in the middle of HtBM, basically right in the middle of the underground passage/complex, what do you think I should do as magic items that the characters possess right from the conversion?

Personally I would just let them convert over appropriately levelled characters with magic items of their choice as they would have via a character of that level and call it good... Your drastically changing the system so just handwaive anything mechanical that has came before and just go for the spirit of the matter.

I can't help you on the rest,,,

Knowing my players, they'd all pick the most broken, cheesiest items. I have to lean on the errata I suppose.

The key is to have a vague plan on what you want to acheive, then focus only on the current adventure as far as converting it goes. You'll learn what works and what doesn't as you go anong, so long-term planning of details is likely a bad idea. Good luck, and let me know if I can help with any more detail.

Thanks again, man! I have more more questions for you. Since I'm picking up in 4E right in the middle of HtBM, basically right in the middle of the underground passage/complex, what do you think I should do as magic items that the characters possess right from the conversion?

I think I'm going to have the spell plague happen right now, right in the middle of the dungeon, perhaps even connected to the AP. The PCs would be level 9. First battle will be against the pc Cleric's two undead minions (an Oni mage and one of the mummys from HtBM), they will become free and attack the party as ~9th level encounter. I may invent some kind of ritual scroll that will let the PC create ONE undead zombie brute of his level-3 or something, but I don't want more than that to deal with.

I'm also having trouble thinking of ways to convert traps/puzzles. I had stolen something from someone on here where the door in the complex would only open if you cast a spell of a different school on each statue, but I can't figure out how to convert it.

Hey, I've got all the outlines that Stewart and others posted. These are good working outlines.

How are you creating/stat'ing out NPCs, such as Lavinia and Urol?

Replacing Kopru's with Fomorians/cyclopses seems like a good idea. There is only one mini for fomorians though, from Giants of Legend? They're not too cheap. Any other good mini's for those? What would be good for the behemoths?

Also, more guidance for all the skill challenges would be great. DMmaple the one you wrote for Emraag is great. How'd you come up with it?

What is the general rule for creating these encounters, as far as what level monsters are good for party level X? I'm having trouble finding the guidelines in the 4E DMG.

Thanks,

Hi all,
I see that several of you have converted at least part of this AP to 4E. Due to the fact that I lost half my players due to the complexity of 3.5, I now want to see if I can pick this campaign up, turning it to 4E. This would lure those players back. I can have some sort of spell-plague happen and such, but I'm pretty new at 4E, though I have a bunch of the books (core, PHB2).

DMmaple had plotted out some of the adventures, which is a good guideline. Is that as detailed as anyone got? Anyone plotted out HTbM, and Tides of Dread?

My PCs were in the middle of HTbM, and would probably be skipping the Olangru and the temple until after they reach Farshore. They already did up to and including the gargoyles. I think it'd be a relief to make the pc's redo as 4E characters, as they were a bit overpowered to my taste.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,

cthulhudarren wrote:

My only gripe is that the P lodge grounds map is missing all the "T"s.

Originally, the map of the grounds had like 2 dozen "T"s scattered all over the place, but for various reasons we decided not to handle it that way. Feel free to place the traps wherever you want... but I suspect a better solution would be to have the PCs stumble across one or two or three and by that point dealing with the traps will either get too frustrating or too easy.

I can understand that. I just wish they would have stated these guidelines in the adventure. I didn't know how many or few was designed for the challenge.

My only gripe is that the P lodge grounds map is missing all the "T"s.

I'm interested in how things worked/are working out for your group.

Thanks. My group is currently still on the north side of the Island. I was able to avoid the issue of crew pay by having Lavinia pay for all the crew, yet leaving the PCs in charge as employers. As far as cargo, that was abstracted as well with a %100 profit motive. They bought 10K-20K of cargo (which I had them pick specific goods and shop for via roleplaying) and essentially guaranteed that they'll double their investment when they get to Farshore.

There have been difficulties, they took over both pirate ships that attacked them and now have three ships (not counting the Nixie).

I knew I did not want to totally railroad the plot by forcing a wreck and overland walk to Farshore, but they ended up beaching every ship since they did not roll well. I had to engineer something to get them onto land for a while, so I borrowed Moonbeam's (Belessa's journal) DM's solution. A group of the Nixie's crew ( and some of Lavinia's personal wealth to sweeten the deal) were captured by Gargoyles and flown to a mountaintop lair. I also copied the more intricate Lavinia scenario, and my pcs will descend into the olman pyramid to have some dark mountain pass encounters that way.

My pcs will certainly from there simply wait to fix all the ships then sail to Farshore, where I'll have the first attack underway.

All working out well, if I may say so myself. I do, however, find it harder and harder to manage everything as all my PCs are powergamers and are very good tacticians.

The NPCs have all been quite lucky, with the exception of Congrad. None are confirmed dead. The pc cleric cast "Aboleth's Curse" on him and then set him free on Renkru. Urol ("Earl") is a constant companion and sometimes wise, sometimes foolish, sometimes helpful, often annoying. He lives and now owns a Terrorbird egg. Avner was as obnoxious as I could make him. They loved to hate him. He was whipped within an inch of his life of Renkru (only lesser vigor saved him) and he would have been killed for shooting that Albatross if Lavinia not agreed to take him on board her ship. He is one of the Gargoyle captives and I expect him to live to be a pain in the ass in Farshore, where I have to invent more deviltry for him to get mixed up in. Very least he will complain to uncle and have a stink raised.

Oh, and one permanent character death, and two more avoided by having "hero points". One player getting a hero point for heroism saving Conrad with surgery and then spending the hero point the same session to avoid death in Tamoachan.

cthulhudarren wrote:

What else would others suggest to make convincing Koprus?

I recommend using WoW Slitherblades (they're effectively already on large bases), but here is what someone else has done (i.e. Half-Illithid Lizardfolk torso mounted on modeling clay)

That is pretty cool, but IMO the Slitherblades aren't any more accurate looking than the salamanders (which are large) with a repaint. I know I have at least one Half-Illithid Lizardfolk figure, I'll take it out and see how the two would mate together into one figure.

To me it looks like a blatant recast of the blood golem of Hextor.

I have some of the large salamander minis...
Salamander Firetail
Noble Salamander

And want to turn them into Koprus. In the minimum, I'd spray paint them green (ideas for exact colors/brands?). What else would other suggest to make convincing Koprus?

Using Orlangru doesn't make much sense - how would the PCs manage to track down his lair from the shipwreck?

You could always destroy the ships rather than leaving them repairable, but that's a bit heavy-handed.

Perhaps the Nixie has crashed by the gargoyle cliffs? Lavinia gets word to the party that they are in trouble and need help. Repairing the ship might take too long so the PCs head off on foot to help the Nixie?

I guess Olangru could just be gently nudging the gargoyles into action.

Right now I have the Nixie wrecked two miles down-shore of the PCs' ships (which are only damaged and grounded, not destroyed). I can have the Nixie as damaged as I like, but I need to ensure the PCs take the bait.

As of now, until I can think of something better, I'll have the crew unloading the cargo onto the beach and then have some valuable cargo and most of the crew kidnapped by the gargoyles, which would make the ship unsailable until they recover some crew. I'll have the Jade Ravens off scouting for a secure campsite, so they will be available to protect those left behind. Lavinia won't be kidnapped as I don't want to repeat this event.

Still, I can see the PCs just wanting to tow the Nixie, leaving the crew to their fates. Having Lavinia promise a reward for the return of her cargo is about the only other thing I can think of that has a chance of success.

Any other ideas, or see holes in my plan?

I'm prepared for my pcs not doing fogmire until later. I have something prepared similar to how it transpired in Belessa's campaign that is perfect for the campaign. I want my PCs to chase the gargoyles to their clifftop lair, and meanwhile encountering Lithira and her city pyramid (which my pcs have seen in visions and will want to explore).

At the end of the last session (Sat), we left the PCs all wrecked on the IoD. More specifically, beached and the storm continues. It's not morning yet. I fear what metagaming will occur before daybreak, even though all the PCs should be exhausted.

The PCs have 3 ships (yes any pirates attacking them ended up taken over) + the Blue Nixie. Dang druids and their woodworking skills! But ALL hit masher reef and all needed to be beached.

The Nixie did get separated and arrived about a day ahead of them and wrecked on the beach only about 2 miles away. I KNOW my players will fix up their boats and not walk the IoD, so I'm thinking of progressing ala Belessa's Journal campaign did. I'd have gargoyles kidnap some NPCs from Lavinia's ship, but besides Lavinia herself there are no strong ties to encourage the PCs to go rescue them. Since they'll need to rescue Lavinia later, I didn't want to repeat this.

My thought right now was to have the Nixie's pilot and navigator and perhaps some of Lavinia's personal loot stolen? The loot seems the strongest tie, because if all the ships stay together I can see the PCs not worrying about a lost captain and navigator.

It also seems now that pretty much all the NPCs are alive. I almost got Avner killed when he shot the albatross, but instead ended up in Lavinia's brig in order to save his life. Perhaps I'll have him kidnapped as well.

Anyone have any other ideas to encourage the PCs to chase the gargoyles (and the plot)?

Thanks

Basic rules for animate states 2x, but with desecrate it says 4x. Does that mean you can control all 4X? It sounds like it from the spell description:
"you can control only 4 HD worth of undead creatures per caster level"

And how many HD of an undead in a single creature can a cleric control, isn't there an upper limit for this? so an eight level cleric can control a 32HD zombie?, for example?

If you have two clerics who can control undead, the rules say something about an opposed charisma check to control them.

If one of the clerics created the undead, does she have any type of advantage for currently being in control of the undead?

How often can the clerics attempt to gain control over each other's undead, every round?

This whole mechanic seems a bit odd to me, a creator of undead is always at risk of his undead being taken from him.

Has anyone had this happen in game? How did it work out? Am I misunderstanding something here?

Thanks in advance,

Belessa, Belessa,
wherefore art thou? Tis been two fortnights.

Right now I think the best way is to

1) make all the rolls in secret
2) NO rerolls.
3) encourage one roll and aid another, BUT there has to be a limit to how many people can aid another on this check.

I'm assuming that each person, regardless of his roll (success or failure) will be equally passionate about their results.

If the PCs are sailing on a boat; 3 have the necessary skills (knowledge geography) and professions sailor, can each of them make separate navigation checks, compare them against each other, then if they don't agree, re-do the skill check until they all agree? So they can almost never get lost!

I say that is BS, but is it by-the-book rules?

Nice! How did it go? Were the PC's spooked? Did they manage to kill the assassin without any of them getting killed?

It went fairly well, with the doppleganger playing Liamae (I'm playing her exactly like you've described, a bit of a drunk and very forward. But in this case she's into dwarves). She retired to a private room alone with him (dwarven warblade 5), danced (hiding the castings) and failed on TWO 'Hold Persons' in a row. The doppleganger was blocked in the room, and attempted to grapple and mimic the dwarf to get the others in the doorway to attack the real deal. To no avail, as he could answer questions the doppleganger couldn't. The doppleganger (who I played statted up exactly like Rowyn in the SWW) got some good shots in but even after telling the other PCs to turn the dwarf in for bounty, it was no avail. Dead doppleganger. I tried as hard as I could and used every strategy I could think of!

Ah, nice. Yes, Pathfinder clerics have a lot more potential for healing with the channel energy. We're still using the regular 3.5 rules. Although, in Belessa's case, she would be channeling negative energy I guess, so it wouldn't make such a big difference. I doubt she would use it very often. ;)

You could always take a feat to allow one to do both positive and negative energy. Still the negative energy burst is just too powerful, as it is a great nuke for low level enemies, like pirates. The cleric essentially solo'ed a whole pirate ship encounter by swimming to the pirate ship on an animated dead crocodile and doing a bunch of negative energy bursts.

I am trying to take quite a bit from your journal to my game, especially the handling of the initial landing on the IoD.

BTW, I have the gargoyle kidnapping well set up, as Three of my pcs are in relations with NPCs; Lavinia, Liamae, and Brissa. I'll probably have the Blue Nixie wreck and have 2 of the three (sparing Lavinia) kidnapped, sending the PCs on a rescue mission and meeting up with the Aranea on the pyramid (which one of my PCs has seen in a vision) and leading to the aeyries of the gargoyles.

Yes, this thread has a lot of awesome ideas. I have more things that would greatly assist if anyone had some info or thoughts on these. I'd love to see something that would let me determine such as this:

Did anyone come up with random damage to the ship for
1) hitting the reef

hull,mast snapping,hull breach etc

2) damage from waves in a storm?
same as above and more (loose cargo)?

How many tons of supplies does it take to repair each kind of damage?

I'd also want to somehow limit how many aid another's you can do for a sailing or navigation check. What rationale's do you have for these?

Also, my characters are wanting to NOT go along the coast and just take the short, direct routes. What are the navigation DCs for navigating in open water? and why couldn't multiple navigator's each make a check using their sextant? I'm thinking I should be rolling these in secret to make the characters wary or their "successful" navigation.

Thanks!

Thanks for the update, it seemed like it's been a long time between updates! Your journal has helped me a lot in planning for my PCs, who are halfway to Fort BlackWell. I had replaced the dead Rowyn with a doppleganger assassin/bounty hunter as one of my pc's is a wanted man(dwarf). It worked out perfectly. I'm also using pathfinder beta rules for some things )like turning undead, and though our cleric PC promised to stay out of the limelight and just heal, he's starting to rule the day.

I have already found it. It is in the Farshore backdrop and is said to lie on Temute.

That's the village that disappeared after bringing home the statue? I'll probably use that somewhere too.

Paizo needs someone to create real minis for all the critters they are creating. Who agrees?

I'd love to know (and see) what minis you used for the Infamous Seven.

It looks like you're doing excellently, Luna. I hope to do as well.

Right now in my campaign, the characters were still 4th level so they're doing a short adventure comprised of about 1/2 or the Paizo module River of Darkness. Basically the party is trying to break the siege at a Taskerhill lumber company outpost because they won't pay back Lavinia unless this outpost is back online. The characters sh7t the bed when the first ambush happened, the Girillon hit and rended the party tank and the rangers critted the healer. Essentially the party started calling for surrender before cooler heads prevailed. I was amused. I am disappointed that I did not ramp up the atmosphere as much as I would have wanted to. I had a few too many barley pops to blame for that.

Anyway, SWW is coming up immediately following, and I've borrowed some of Moonbeam's NPCs (Belessa's campaign journal)and found pictures in PDFs, printed them out, and am displaying them when speaking in those characters. I figure that should help immersion. They also have the female kobold cook who is a source of humor, as is one of the PCs who had the savage phanaton call him his new nickname "meatbag". I'm also trying to get the PCs romantically interested in NPCs and am moderately successful so far. I will borrow your albatross incident, but so far I'm planning on making it due to Avner's boredom that he shoots one with a crossbow. Then the crew will freak out and mayhem ensue.

My PCs have so much thought invested in the ship that I wouldn't wreck them unless they fail the skill checks (did you create some kind of list of all the skill checks?). Otherwise I'm planning on having the Blue Nixie wrecked and some NPCs kidnapped by gargoyle tribes (again ala Belessa's campaign). I think that should get the PCs unto the island. I don't think any circumstance would stop the players from staying with the ship, so I'll try to echo what happened in Belessa's campaign.

Anyone who'd like a copy of my stat files for later adventures (.doc format, incomplete in places, and heavily modified in other places...) post your requests here.

I have Lightless Depths available now, City of Broken Idols probably in a week or two.

darren dot buettner22 at gmail

Thank you!

BenS wrote:

KnightErrantJR wrote:

I am so getting voted off the message boards for this, but I've never been a huge Otus fan.

Honestly, the appeal nowadays is nostalgia. So many parts of 1st edition had his very distinctive artwork that it brings back good memories seeing it or newer pieces (like in some 3.x Dungeon Crawl Classics covers).

Amen, let's face it, while EO is definitely synonymous with early D&D art, it's due to nostalgia and not for his artistry that we like him =)

Actually I rather like his artistry and style. Most D&D artists aren't exactly Leonardo when it comes to artistry (or especially - anatomy).

Erol Otus without hesitation.

What I'd like to see more detail on is game economics. I know the DMG2 has rules for running a business, but I'm interested in more coherent concrete rules for shipping, trading, and the like. My PCs are always wanting to start businesses and I find the DMG2 rules to be a bit overbearing, overwhelming, and clunky.

And it would be nice to use a system of values such that for a region or setting, you could just publish modifiers to these basic values in Golarion setting books (for example).

Thanks for your consideration.

Did any of you all print out the pics of the NPCs and hold them up while talking in that character? I was thinking it might be a good idea for SWW as there are so many NPCs involved. I do need to find a bunch more for other NPCs that I have created for the crew.

Ross Byers wrote:

yoda8myhead wrote:

I hope this means we'll be seeing more new art previews in the blog in the coming weeks. I don't know as if we saw anything from PF23 and I'm fairly certain nothing's come out for PF24 and the upcoming modules/companions/chronicles.

The covers of both PF#23 and #24 have been in the blog.

Covers schmovers. I remember back when you had a normal tag after your name like the rest of us, before your fancy Paizo title. Back in those days, you understood the difference between cover and interior art, Ross. Where have those days gone?

Hey, I'm a software developer too. Anyway, I was gonna say that I liked Crystal's pen and ink drawings especially. I love that medium.

I don't know who Crystal "Immora" Frasier is, but I really like her style.

I'm going to be using Tammerauts fate in place of the 2nd fort landing,

Question for everyone who used/is using Tammeraut's Fate, it looks like a decent part of the plot dynamics is that the players are stuck on the island. Obviously this isn't going to happen with the Sea Wyvern. What changes if any did you make to account for this and keep the drama factor high? I already figured to change the first scene to a drowning at sea that they discover.

Thanks,

If the players insist on trying to squeeze the ship economics for money, make them pay risk wages at five to ten times normal rate.

Good idea!

Anyway, good luck with giving them hell on the trip. I take it that you've already looked at the ending and made your own decision as to how to handle it? There have been a couple of good threads on this board about the final storm, etc.

I've already decided to wreck the Blue Nixie, and merely do a good bit of damage to the Sea Wyvern. From there, I was going to do something similar to how Belessa's journal has it happen (PCs' must rescue crew from gargoyles and make repairs on their ship, and also move the dark mountain pass encounters to a pyramid where Spider Queen Aranea lives)

I'm really excitedly planning on turning the annoying a&+##!$ knob on Avner all the way to "11"!