I'm thinking about running Savage tide again with 4e rules also. I have a couple of survivors from my previous game (which died around "Tides of Dread"), so I'm going to heavily rewrite bits so it doesn't seem repetitive.
I'm using Stewart Perkins's adventure outlines since they are excellent, organized, and well-thought out.
I'm hesitant in making fights too hard in this edition, however, since I don't know how a difference in Encounter Levels would change the dynamic. I've read on EnWorld that "solos" turn the fights into long slogs. Has anyone who has run conversions avoided "solos"? What about "elites"?
Spoiler:
The first fight with Sollar Vark appears to require the following:
Level 2 Encounter
8 Human Rabble
2 Human Bandits
1 Human Berserker (Vark)
or
Level 3 Encounter
8 Human Rabble
2 Human bandit
1 Human Bandit elite with Fighter template (Vark)
However:
Spoiler:
The rhagodessa seems harder to make work.
I can see a Deathjump Spider elite with a Savage Berserker template, but that only makes it a half of a Level 2 Encounter.
Maybe two of them?
Lastly:
Spoiler:
Since 4th Ed needs to have larger maps for all the moving and jumping around, the hull of the Blue Nixie seems too small. Perhaps have two ships lashed together side by side?
Of course, since I'm rewriting the adventure, perhaps I'll move the fight to somewhere else.
Everyone found Urol to be extremely annoying, especially when he started to show how unhelpful he was. However, in one particular fight he held off a monster (for one round until he dropped) for just enough time for a PC to pull of a cool stunt, so that endeared him to most of the party.
The aforementioned cleric failed a Fort save with the Green Man drink at Fort Blackwell, and found himself naked in a barrel the next day. All throughout the day, NPCs would snicker and drop Amelia's name, and the player picked up the hint and started giving Amelia "special treatment" from then on. That was fun.
I tried to make connections with the other NPCs, but no one took the bait.
Their job is to, uh, do their job. Their the trouble shooters here - thats what Lavina pays them for. We she has trouble and she wants them to shoot it. If the PCs are all tied up emotionally with Lavina this should run well.
It may (or may not) surprise DMs to find that some players don't like doing their jobs (and will do their best to derail their jobs), even when they want their characters to get paid for doing their jobs.
I'm on board with the other posters that you really have to play up the background of your characters to connect with either Lavinia, or perhaps the Affiliations of Sasserine. It is the NPCs that can help steer a plot away from mindless wandering, which players (or at least my players) are famous for.
I've been trying to push my players through "Tides of Dread", but the game has been feeling the strain ever since a TPK in "Here There Be Monsters". Only one player and I feel really into the campaign world. One guy doesn't give a @#$%, and the others are too casual to feel one way or another.
It's a little disappointing. I was hoping to finish off with the big pirate attack but why slog through something no one wants to play? :-(
I feel that the Adventure Paths are for dedicated "expert" players, who want a challenge and like investing time into a full 1-20 level campaign. Casual players will feel frustrated, and min/maxers will not care about the plot.
One of these days I'd like to pick the game up again, perhaps bring new players.
The cleric in my game is involved with Amella, even when she got reincarnated as a half-orc.
It's interesting how different groups take or not take to different NPCs. I DMed Amella as stoic, saying little, and getting the job done. Considering that no one in the party choose Prof (sailor) or even Know (geography), there was no one to contradict her. (The ranger kept rolling 1s on his Know (geo), for example.)
Whenever she made a decision regarding the ship, I framed it as her professional opinion, like a contractor in charge of someone else's project.
And again, no one blamed her for the shipwreck (though some players saw it as a railroad), especially since no one, again, had the skills to help her stop a hurricane.
I my game, Dark Mountain Pass was a challenge. The fighter lost nearly all his equipment in the black pudding fight. The player with the mage wasn't there at the time, so the chop-up-the-pudding and fireball it tactic wasn't available.
Unfortunately, the fighter went through the chop-up-the-pudding part of the combo anyway, so there were five or six mini-puddings all hitting him and dissolving his equipment. Is the fault of the encounter or the player? I don't know...
The rest of the encounters went OK. Challenging but not deadly.
However, my game pretty much went TPK with the gargoyles. For whatever reason, every character thought that it would be an easy fight (perhaps because of the earlier encounter with the flight of gargoyles) and did nothing to buff or support each other.
When the gargoyle king knocked down the fighter, then the mage, then the druid, the cleric cast Invis on himself to recover the bodies and Raise Dead them.
After that, it was going downhill. Two characters with -1 level (the druid was at negative hp instead of dead) and a lot of equipment lost, the Temple of Demogorgon proved to be incredibly dangerous. I'm sure the Olangru and Golem fight would have wiped them out.
By this time we ending up during the holidays, so hadn't played in two months. Because everyone was demoralized, confused as to the plot, and so beat up, I decided to hand-wave the end of the Temple and start Tides of Dread with a 9th level party.
4) My last warning is that there is a good chance that the characters will have access to Scry and Teleport type spells, and with Lavinia there, there is a possibility that the group will think to Scry on Vanthus, Teleport, and assassinate him before the pirate attack. It's a leap of logic for them to think that Vanthus will be involved in this attack, since they will not have heard from him since Bullywug Gambit, but players have a tendency to make assumptions based on false or no data, so beware.
Jade Ravens:
Now, for the semi-revived question about the Jade Ravens, I plan on having the players tell me if they want to Ravens to do anything specific, otherwise, they will be leading the townsfolk against the more mundane pirate attacks. Since they will be "down in the trenches," they won't be able to notice or participate against the specific encounters.
If I end up being ambitious, I also am thinking about having a blown up Farshore map, and little tags to represent "mobs" of townsfolk and pirates, and having minis to denote where the Ravens and PCs are at any given time.
Lastly, I don't plan on killing off the Ravens because their involvement at this time is all story-based. The PCs will have earned VPs and they will be the "generals" in the fight, taking out the big bads and all.
However, the Ravens will also be good as a last ditch deus ex machina in case my party splits up (which they will), and get individually pwned (which they will), so the Ravens can show up and pour a healing potion down their throats, and thus make them seem important and essential to the party.
It's either going to be a great headache or the best session ever. (Or both.)
Characters: Geth, Psion 9
Location: Shrine of Zotzilaha (spelling?)
Adventure: Tides of Dread
Catalyst: Breath weapon from Aspect
Afraid of entering the steam-filled shrine, the PCs watched as fire bats streamed from the shaft of the volcano.
The psion used his Dimension Door ability to bring the cleric, who had the idol hidden in his backpack, to the shrine.
Unfortunately, the Aspect, angered at the intrusion and the theft of the idol, came next in the initiative order, breathed on the party. The psion took both the regular damage and the CON damage, killing him on the spot.
Next on the initiative order was the cleric, who produced the idol, thus halting the Aspect's attack.
(I find it funny 'cause the cleric could have walked over to the alcove as a move action. I don't know why the psion player thought it was necessary to dim door the cleric 20 feet away. Was he showing off? Did he not realize that he only have 30-something hit points?)
Anyway, Zotzilaha was pleased by the return of the idol, and the "sacrifice" of the psion, that he "converted" one of the treasures into the Raise Dead price for the cleric.
"ToD" is a tricky adventure. There are a lot of snags and my group has ran into all of them. I'd like to spell them out so future DMs can be aware of the problems.
1) The adventure assumes that the players will take leadership roles.
- If the DM has done things right, the players will look to Lavinia as a role model but won't be overly dependent on her for decisions. There is a delicate balance here not to make her the decision maker for the PCs, but the decision maker for Farshore, otherwise she looks wimpy and indecisive. - Make sure that she asks the PCs for advice and acts as a central information point. She can tell them the status of Farshore and can function as a fifth-party member when making Farshore-related decisions. In other words, she throws in her input, but agrees with the party leader or agrees with the majority PC vote.
2) The adventure assumes the players will want to defend Farshore.
- Even if they play Good-aligned characters, there is a danger of meta-gaming. My group, at first, thought the pirates were push-overs, based on the attack by Skipknot Pete. They then concluded that Farshore didn't really need any extra help; give them a few masterwork weapons and they'll be fine. "Bye, we're going to explore the Isle of Dread! See you in a few months!"
- When they learned of the attack from both Lefty and Speak with Dead with the pirate bodies, they meta-gamed the opposite; ie. if the attack is going to be one or more CR 9 encounters, Farshore's going to be sacked. So, my PCs were planning on evacuating all of Farshore and dumping them on one of the Olman islands. When Lavinia and the townsfolk declared that they won't run from invaders (based on Sasserine's history), my PCs thought they were all insane or foolish, thus lessening their affinity for the town.
3) The adventure assumes that they will want to fortify Farshore.
- For a brief moment after they learned that the citizens of Farshore wouldn't back from a fight, my PCs felt that THEY were the only hope for the outpost, and thought that it would be a waste of time fortifying. Why bother recruiting a bunch of low-level Olmans or bolstering their militia if the PCs carry so much firepower they could take out a ship at a time?
- It's only because they found that they had two months of nothing to do, did they realize that they might as well recruit and fortify.
So, for those of you DMs who have run "Tides of Dread" or will run it soon, did you expand anything about the wandering monks from the Scarlet Brotherhood?
Did you add it to the list to Victory Point quests?
My players have taken this red herring and decided to make it a priority, and I'd like some help brainstorming some sort of quest or set of quests around it.
Of course, this assumes that they can find more of them (they left the bodies behind and several days of rain has probably obscured them) or their outpost.
7. The PCs come to a music hall, but there are no instruments, merely sheets of living skin (some with hair) stretched across bone and ivory frames. Succubi or the like tenderly stroke the skins, and tonal sighs and moans echo in chaotic symphony.
I've run the troglodyte subplot and the 8th Olman subplot and it feels pretty subpar to me. The point, of course, is that they are extras, background details to flesh out the island and such.
That's fine, but players have a tendency to latch onto random things and giving them incredible significance.
For example, the trog adventure sounded like a typical dungeon crawl, which for my players, evidently screamed massive treasure haul. It wasn't until the middle of the battle that I realized they didn't know what trogs were. They were throwing massive spells thinking they were a major encounter.
As for the 8th Olman tribe, the ape idol "clue" made them think it has something to do with the bat idol. You know, an idol = an idol. So when they found "cultural artifacts," they immediately felt they had wasted their time.
I would have left them out, except the players couldn't make up their mind what to do. The fact that both of these "adventures" are on the island of Tamute was perhaps the only reason they choose to do anything.
I face a similar problem last session. The guy who usually plays the wizard-type characters keeps changing characters, but also is the one who holds onto the "magical-but-unknown" items.
Unfortunately, this usually means that vital items get "lost" in the shuffle of paperwork.
I knew that my group would get to Tanaroa, realize that they needed a bat idol, then waste time traveling back, or, worse yet, they'll arrive, be confused because no one rememebers the bat idol, and completely miss out on this aspect of the adventure.
So I had to cheat and mention to him about the bat idol, and has "borrowed" back from his old character.
Well, the main problems this OP has is that there isn't anything so far that has grabbed the attention of his players.
I don't know how far you've gotten in the campaign, but you're up to a lot of rewriting:
1) If you haven't gone through "Bullywug Gambit," then you can have Rowyn hire them to find and kill Vanthus at Kraken's Cove.
They don't find him, so Rowyn can say they failed (make sure she has a lot of bodyguards ready). They can, if they care, offer the info on the attack on Lavinia's mansion to get the payment, so Rowyn can then hire her to help the invasion and loot the mansion.
2) From there, they can get hired by Rowyn's mom to assassinate someone on the Sea Wyvern or Blue Nixie in the "Sea Wyvern's Wake" and to mess up the situation on Farshore (for the Kellani family interests). You can rewrite things in Farshore to have the Kellani family have agents there. I'd have Avner be a patsy for the Kellani's and have the PCs be hired to make sure he becomes the governor of Farshore and usurp his uncle.
3) Hopefully, when they get to the Isle of Dread, the exploration aspect might interest him.
The Scarlett Brotherhood, Meravenchi family, Kellani family, and even agents of Malcanthet could make interesting political factions and allow the PCs multiple groups to negotiate jobs with.
4) All this will take a lot of rewriting and you'll have to redesign encounters and the adventures with two things in mind, a) they only want to kill things and b) they want money.
For those who say this AP is a heroic campaign, the Savage Tide does have a small sidebar that explains the characters can join Rowyn and the Lotus Dragons and "be evil." This, of course, takes a little more preparation on the DMs part.
However, the OP even mentioned that his party isn't likely to join the Lotus Dragons (any details on why not?), which makes the whole thing even more difficult.
The only thing I can think of is to get them to join the Scarlet Brotherhood and have them be the backing to the trip to Farshore.
Wow. It's been years since I've cracked open my Planescape stuff. I really miss it. Somehow playing a 3e Planescape campaign really didn't feel right.
Spoiler:
Anyway, you could even use "Here There Be Monsters" as a template to get the PCs to Farshore. You'd probably have to excise some of the dungeons and such, but I've always felt that it should be harder to get from one place to another in the planes. Taking a portal right to Farshore would seem a bit too easy for the Ciphers not to easily reinforce their colony.
Are you intending to continue on past the Lightless Depths with Scuttlecove and the Abyss? I can easily see that adding onto the adventure, with the pearls being an abyssal weapon to corrupt the good planes.
By the way, did your players follow all the campaign setting rules for Planescape, such as clerics losing a spellcasting level per plane separated?
Well, like I said, in my experience. My players started losing track of the extra names, since I had basically a list of all of the 22-23 crewmembers.
They had interrogated a bunch of crewmembers after the first poisoning, but names were getting lost and all.
My group games more casually, so too many NPCs often get them confused.
In "Here There Be Monsters," the x number of NPCs mentioned in adventure is pretty much the right amount. Even then, people kept forgetting that Tavey wasn't a full fighter, but a young boy.
In my experience, it's really hard to manage so many NPCs. After a while, even players will start to talk about "Sailor #4" which will dehumanize them a little.
With four NPCs, it's just enough for everyone to remember names, but plenty enough to show a range of reactions to events and PC actions.
The main problem I had with substituting side treks is that each adventure has a specific gain-2-levels-for-the-next structure and I felt I had to constantly remove some encounters to allow the side treks.
I circumvented the issue with the map on Sea Wyvern's Wake by giving the PCs the map and saying "This is the route that Lavinia and Amelia planned. Does anyone want to mess with it?"
There is no reason why that map cannot be given the players as it is the shortest route to the Isle.
For Here There Be Monsters, I had Urol tell them his route down. Some of them wanted to go deeper inland, until they heard rumors of a deathly plateau.
My PCs didn't want to "waste" their skill points on Knowledge: Geography or Profession: Sailor, so they shouldn't (and didn't) complain that they didn't get to lead the expedition.
My real question is to players and DMs: If the DM kept asking the PCs every game day where they wanted to go, would that make them feel less railroaded?
Personally, I see no in-game reason why the PCs would want to veer off course.
What I don't get is why he confuses this kind of railroading with how the things get handled in Paizo adventures.
Between 2000 to 2005 I submitted articles and adventures to Dragon and Dungeon. I even got an adventure published in Dungeon and 2 articles in Dragon. (<------ shameless plug)
I haven't submitted adventures since '05 partly for personal reasons, but because they're hard to write!
I totally get why writers and editors write adventures the way they do. You have only so much space and if the choice is between scrapping an adventure or cutting some parts out, I'd choose the cut.
Those cuts may include advice about how to get PCs back on track, or side adventures, but if it doesn't serve the main plot then out it SHOULD go.
I'm in a screenwriting workshop and there is the same utility of space going on in a movie script.
Maybe I'm biased, but each part of the Adventure Path has to advance the plot, be linked to the previous and next installment, get the PCs two more levels, AND be within a certain word count.
If I was given that assignment my head would explode. Although, if I was given that assignment I'd be doing a dance of joy cause I'd be getting paid to write.
When I was running "There is No Honor" I was trying to give players a whole bunch of options.
I gave the Seeker guy a side quest to find some lost pirate loot. I had the Zelkerune Horn's guys an arena quest. (I borrowed the adventure from "Pandemonium in the Veins" from Dungeon #I-can't-remember, which was a total disaster. Not only was the adventure very silly, but my players thought it was a waste of time.)
What's funny from a "railroad" point of view, my players didn't want to waste time on side treks and wanted to pursue the "main plot."
With my near-sighted eye, there seems to be two completely different points Haldefast is trying to make:
1) STAP is railroady.
2) The dungeons aren't dungeons.
Whereas I still don't understand what he means with #1, having not been provided some specific examples, he has given examples with #2, specifically with the encounters in "Tides of Dread."
And I suppose I can see where he's coming from. For him, a dungeon is a huge multi-room adventure-in-of-itself.
From me, in a dungeon-designing, article writing point of view, a multi-room adventure-in-of-itself requires its own separate adventure-in-of-itself.
Spoiler:
From my limited perspective, to make Haldefast and his group happy, each encounter/main event (ie. the Temple of Jaguar, the t-rex, the volcano) in "Tides of Dread" would require its own separate issue. If Paizo had more time, the STAP could easily have double the amount of issues. I wouldn't have minded myself cause I like more material. :-)
However, if you turn each encounter into its own 4-or-5 session adventure, you are also diluting the "theme" or point of "Tides of Dread," which is the bolstering the defenses of Farshore. The pirate attack is the "main bad guy at the end of the dungeon" whereas all these mini-encounters are the non-main bad guy of the dungeon.
It's a matter of adventure pacing and I see no problem with it. My group probably won't see a problem with it because they like feeling like they've accomplished something each session.
We're near the end of the Temple of Demogorgon from "Here There Be Monsters" and it has been a long difficult slog.
Now for #1, I really don't understand his point of view. I can only react to the term "railroady" which, of course, means something different to each person/DM/player.
We are addressing #1 without any real argument/counter-argument when he is discussing #2.
My only supposition, esp. since the OP has decided to retire from this thread is that he sees a dungeon as the form of ultimate freedom (ie. not railroady) and that wilderness adventures are merely a means to get to the dungeons.
If I suppose this, then it makes sense that he thinks that the STAP has been railroady. I see the wilderness adventures as one big dungeon, with encounters in areas instead of rooms and the whole Isle of Dread as the "dungeon," so to speak. It appears that Haldefast sees the encounters on the Isle to be either wastes of time or "single-room dungeons."
But again, since he has only used "Tides of Dread" as an example, and none of the other adventures in his argument, I can only speculate.
If it needs to be said, I personally enjoy the STAP, and while I might see some validity in the OP's rants, it's only his personal opinion. Running it has been difficult for various other reasons, but I enjoy the ST as a set of adventures and as a story.
Actually, I think some alternate modules/adventures for all parts of the Savage Tide would not only be illuminating, but fun!
There was a thread, for example, about the Dungeon of Rust and Fire.
I had some basic encounters drawn up for if the PCs decide to take a raft and canoe down the side of the Isle in Here There Be Monsters. I had a few maps of underwater temples from a Dungeon magazine scanned and copies (although I can't remember which one right now).
I even balanced the CRs and XP to match if they managed to skip Demogorgon's Temple.
Something like that would be good for all of the modules of the Adventure Path.
There is No Honor: It's pretty scripted, but logical. PCs get the attention of the Lotus Dragons. They strike. The PCs strike back.
Bullywug Gambit: I suppose if the PCs choose not to chase after Vanthus, then the adventure might seem railroady. But then if you choose not to go after Vanthus and Kraken's Cove, then there is no reason to run Bullywug Gambit. Perhaps there should be a paragraph in the adventure that says "If the PCs don't wish to go to Kraken's Cove in search of Lavinia's brother, then don't run this adventure." But I figure this is self-evident.
Oh, perhaps the OP suffers from what other people have suffered, that an NPC employer tells them to do something in exchange for pay. Then perhaps those PCs should refuse to work for said employer. This would mean that there could be another employer that could hire the PCs to travel to Farshore in Sea Wyvern's Wake. Although this might also appear railroady (see Sea Wyvern's Wake below).
Another part of the "railroad" might have been the festival, and the PCs being forced to go through it. Although when I ran the adventure, my PCs avoided it by going into Sasserine late a night, so I ignored all that. I guess the OP would need a paragraph in the adventure that says "If the PCs avoid the festival, don't run this part of the adventure." But I figure this is self-evident.
Lastly, there is the concept of the seige on the Vanderboren Manor. There is a chance that the PCs might get there earlier than scripted, to which the advenuture COULD have a sentence that says "If the PCs get here earlier than the bullywugs, then the bullywugs sneak in from the basement." Although, there is a sentence that says that the bullywugs get in through the basement.
Note that for simplicity sake, I ran the seige as is, even though my players arrived earlier than the script. I'm a bad DM, evidently for doing this, as suggested by some posters on this board. What's funny is that my players never realized that I goofed. They don't even realize that I railroaded them! Bad me!
Sea Wyvern's Wake: I suppose that this adventure does seem railroady. First off, Lavinia assumes that the PCs would be interested in sailing down to the Isle of Dread in their new ship (assuming that they got the Sea Wyvern. In fact, is it railroady that the adventure tries to give them a free 10,000 gp ship? I guess technically it is, so allow, nay, encourage your players to abandon a 10K gp treasure!)
There should be a sentence that says "If the PCs don't wish to sail down to Farshore, then do not run The Sea Wyvern's Wake." But I figure this is self-evident.
This has an added problem. If the PCs turn down Lavinia, and you try to use another employer to get them to the Isle, canny players will realize that you are railroading them.
So basically, if the PCs at the start of Sea Wyvern's Wake says "No, we're selling the ship" then don't run the Savage Tide. I'm sure the Age of Worms or even the Shackled City Adventure Paths had moments in which the PCs could say "no" and the game would stop.
In this case, you probably shouldn't be using adventures at all.
But let's say the PCs decide to go on the trip. It still seems railroady becayse the players are given the single, quickest route to the Isle of Dread. The adventure should have a paragraph that says "If the PCs wish to wander off and waste time taking a long route, then you as the DM should pad the adventure with more encounters." But I figure this is self-evident.
I might agree that there wasn't much detail in some of the encounters. My players wanted to explore Fort Blackwell because of the lizardfolk attack. I had some lizardfolk stats ready for when they venture too far into the jungle and would be beset with an mini-army. They only took a half-a-day to explore, however, and I decided I didn't want to waste real time with a massive encounter with CR 1 lizardfolk.
My players didn't even realize that I railroaded them! Bad me!
The only part, I suppose that is really railroady is the hurricane and crash at the end. My players did complain a little about this. However, all of them took exactly 1 Rank in Profession: Sailor, so I didn't really feel that they had the proper skills to help out. I did let them roll, but really, what is a DC of a hurricane? Easy to beat?
Perhaps the hurricane should really be a % chance of occurring instead of scripted. But then, how would the players know that it wasn't scripted? I'd be rolling dice behind the screen and they wouldn't know what it was for.
I think the real complaint is that the players don't think that the hurricane was a level-appropriate Challenge. I mean, what DM would throw a hurricane at his PCs if they weren't able to defeat it. In other words, DMs shouldn't use weather as plot or challenge devices until they get, at least Control Weather.
Here There Be Monsters: Aha! Here I might agree with the railroadiness. Here they are, stuck on a giant island, and they are told by NPCs that here is a shortcut to Farshore. Of course the PCs shouldn't listen to any of the NPCs and try to find the shortest way to Farshore.
There was a sentence that said that you could use Tides of Dread to flesh out extra encounters, but that's only a sentence, and doesn't help DMs that don't have Tides of Dread.
I felt that the random encounter section should have been in Here There Be Monsters instead of Tides of Dread.
There was another paragraph that said that you could take a raft or canoe down the shore to Farshore, and listed some random encounters.
How if the OP is saying that there should be encounters for every bit of square inch of the Isle of Dread in Here There Be Monsters, then I disagree, because you'd need twice or three-times as many pages to fill out that info. of course, that twice and three-times is Here There Be Monsters, Tides of Dread, the Lightless Depths, and City of Broken Idols.
Now, I suppose that having the pirate attack when the PCs arrive does break verisimilitude. It is unfortunately, dramatic and being a fictional story, needs drama. As a budding screenwriter myself, I can see that having a relatively easy priate attack not only leads to the rest of the adventure, but gives a good hook and timeclock for the PCs to do what they need to do.
But then, I guess some groups like it better when the beginning of an adventure is "You wake up in the morning. There is nothing to do. What do you do?"
I've tried to edit out some of the inappropriate sarcasm in this post, but I fear some got in.
This is my advice to all DMs of the Savage Tide. Wait until you get all of the adventure issues. Then you have pretty much enough information to run a campaign.
Read each adventure carefully. Note areas where PCs might wander off or might ask odd questions. Have an answer ready for each one. And don't be afraid of railroading. Railroading is not bad in of itself. Railroading where PCs feel like they are railroaded is bad.
That's my 2 copper.
I keep editting this thing 'cause there were a couple points I forgot to make. I think I'm done now.
Since my party is motivated by party loyalty and then greed, I worked very hard to make Rowyn seem like a part of the group and give them bling for their deeds. As long as I dangle money and power they will do what they need to. Oh, and they hate Vanthus so he becomes a motivator as well.
For those DMs who went the Rowyn route, did you do anything to change the tone of the Adventure Path? Or did you pretty much do a cut-n-paste from Lavinia's name to Rowyn's?
For example, when my party made a token attempt to work for Rowyn, I tried to push the idea that she wanted power and that the PCs were her minions. This wasn't to punish the players, but I felt that if you made a deal with a mob boss for power and money, you should know that the boss is the boss. But I felt I overplayed this aspect a bit. I wasn't satisfied with how it went in my game.
I was wondering how your PCs react to Lavinia paying them monthly. Do they find it to be not enough? Do they seem to forget that she is an employer, and asking them to do actual work is part of the contract?
Why did they accept in the first place?
Other quesitons follow in the spoiler tag:
Spoiler:
Lavinia was supposed to up their pay after "Bullywug Gambit." Did they earn that pay increase?
Since you've already started them on "Sea Wyvern's Wake" it's too late to change the contract.
One poster (I forgot who) suggested that if they were still unwilling to help Lavinia out for the sake of "adventuring," the Meravinchi's could hire them and their boat for more money, but on the stipulation that Avner be in charge. After a while, the PCs will, if not respect Lavinia, at least will realize that they had something of a good thing.
Another question I have is did they listen to Rowyn's offer? If they did, why didn't they take it?
In other words, what motivates your players? What gets them to do anything in your games?
I think players don't like being under the "employ" of someone, because that means this NPC calls the shots. But players don't seem to realize that mechanically, it means that the characters are getting paid to adventure.
Spoiler:
The two problems I had was in "There Is No Honor" when the PCs find themselves the target of the Lotus Dragons. There really isn't a reason for them to explore the thieves guild, other than basic curiosity. I was afraid that they would demand more money from Lavinia or take up Rowyn with her offer.
In this case, having a character be part of the Dawn Council would help, since it would be motivation to stop the Lotus Dragons.
Luckily, their hatred for Vanthus propelled them to seek out Rowyn on their own.
The second problem I had was with "Sea Wyvern's Wake." If the PCs own the boat, what incentive did they have to go on Lavinia's expedition?
The reasoning is that Lavinia provides them with a crew and a purpose. Besides, they get to keep all the treasure they find.
If the PCs want to keep the boat, they'd have to hire a crew and most players wouldn't want to deal with that hassle.
On the other hand, my group was thinking of selling the ship...
Luckily, they decided to join Lavinia's expedition.
One of the problems with an NPC patron is that the players resent him/her if they keep asking them to do the dirty work, but then if the NPC starts being too competent, he/she outshines the players.
It creates this weird dynamic. Imagine in real life if you mouthed off to your employer every time they ask you to do something.
Honestly, I think that players tend to see their characters as the main, and this most important, protagonists, and NPCs as inconvenient obstacles to them being the main protagonists.
I ran this one last week and I was not paying attention to how frustrating this puzzle was. My players sat around for three hours trying to figure this out and it was "my bad" that I didn't just let them "solve it" immediately.
There are four problems with this puzzle.
1) It punishes you for failure. Specifically, you will get to a sequence where you have to light both candles. If you screw up the sequence, they explode. This disincentivizes the players never to light both candles.
2) It punishes you for success. Specifically, you have touch a mirror, but it forces a Will save, which some people see as a failure, ie. if I have to make a Will save, I must have done something wrong.
3) It is a trial-and-error puzzle. Which is OK it of itself, but coupled with points 1 & 2 make it very frustrating. If the players keep trial-and-erroring, they will be beat up and damaged far more than a typical CR 7 encounter. This is so important that I consider two problems.
DMs should be very aware of the difficulty of this puzzle and plan accordingly.
I get the impression that they are such a loose organization that all types tend to go to it. Some use their connections to pillage while other use them to explore.
I'm sure that they are there for the DM to extrapolate whatever he/she wants with them.
For me it's not about punishing the players, but versimilitude.
These guys have just stormed your hideout. Even if you don't know that the tank has left, will you wait until your attackers are full strength, or plan a better assault to take back your territory?
My players, after their first assault, had to retreat. They knew that pushing forward would be suicide, but they also knew that the Lotus Dragons would probably be waiting for them when they returned. They took the lesser of two evils; ie. all of them pulled out to refuel and restock.
At least they didn't return into the lair the same way.
Otherwise, the Lotus Dragons are just sitting around, doing nothing, like the following:
LD 1: "I heard some yelling, screaming, and dying down by the bedroom."
LD 2: "Someone's probably having a good time."
LD 1: "Yeah, but the voices were saying, 'I'm dying. I'm not having a good time. Our secret hideout is being attacked.' Doesn't that mean we should go investigate?"
LD 2: "Nah, the PCs...I mean the attackers are supposed to win against us."
LD 1: "Oh. OK. But what about that tough barbarian failing his Move Silently. He looked like he was running away. That either means the attackers have left or they've split up their attack group."
LD 2: "Geez, for crying out loud. The room description says that we're on alert. Not that we want to attack anyone or defend our territory. It only means that we get to hold our weapons as we stand here staring at the wall."
LD 1: "This job sucks. I thought we're supposed to be thieves and cutthroats in our secret lair."
LD 2: "You should have seen the weird things in my youth. I've had a PC...I mean attacker drop his weapons, pull down his pants and moon me in the middle of combat. Evidently he made his Charisma check so I couldn't attack him. The DM...I mean the mob boss told me that it was so creative I wasn't allowed to backstab him."
LD 1: "What's a backstab?"
LD 2: "It's a sneak attack, except harder. Didn't anyone teach you anything in thief school."
LD 1: "It's rogue school nowadays."
LD 2: "Shut up and start starring at the wall. I'm sure that barbarian is full healed and ready to hack us in two."
On a design point of view, I can see why there are "harsh" penalties for failing a Diplomacy roll. This little side trek is for chatty characters to shine. If you make the roll too easy, the Diplomacy PC would feel like he wasted his extra points.
And the failure would make the election more dramatic.
I've been running it as by the "book" as possible. Because we started "There is No Honor" at 2nd level, I've had to increase the CRs, which pretty means I'd have to +1 CR everything from then on.
At Sea Wyvern's Wake, I decided to condense some parts and eliminate some encounters in order to bring down their XP levels so that at "Here There Be Monsters" they'd be exactly at the right levels.
They they got a near TPK and now are one level lower than normal. Doh!
I really haven't used much out of Stormwrack because none of the players were interested in "weakening" their characters by taking Profession (sailor) or Knowledge (geography), so I skimmed over any sailing-heavy stuff.
(On a side note, the group's ranger has a Rank in Knowledge (geography) and whenever I said Urol was plotting a course, he wanted to roll to see if he could beat him. The ranger would always roll an natural "1."
I would let the party go whatever way they want. If they are clever, they can sneak through the Taxidermist's. They'll get a few rounds before the Lotus Dragons get wind of the attack, and that's fine.
The adventure allows for both possibilities so make sure you have the right notes and let the dice fall where they may.
My favorite is also "The Sea Wyvern's Wake." (We're near the end of "Here There Be Monsters.")
There is an incredible amount of variety in SWW and I think it was the most fun we've had, with the party cleric ending up naked in a water barrel after one drink at Fort Blackwell, the fighter almost paste against the flotsom ooze, catching Avner spying on the skinny dippers just before the hydra appeared, and the party ranger attacking anything and everything Urol wanted to examine at Tamaochan.
A close second is "There Is No Honor" if only for the harrowing seige against the Lotus Dragons.
I get the impression that oozes just eat everything they can, and don't care if it's living or dead. So feigning death is like lying down in front of a moving Mack truck in hopes that the driver will not see you and stop.
But this encounter was potentially a TPK for my group. One cohort bit it and he two fighters almost died. Luckily they had a full power druid throwing everything she had at the ooze and killed it as the main tank was at -8 or something.
One unmentioned reason for there not to be a section in the adventure about recruiting an army of goodness and light from one of the PC's patron deities is because that's a really easy task, and there's no point in spending magazine words on what amounts to an automatic success.
I have always found two problems with players going to the multiplanar "Source" of good and light for help:
1) In-game reason: Logically, there has to be a story-reason why the "Source" of good and light hasn't found a solution for their war against evil already. There might feel like too much of a coincidence that the PCs have found the answers for the Source's problems, and makes the Source look incompetent.
Some DMs have the Source be preoccupied with other problems to stop the PCs' problems. Other DMs use the "this is a test for the side of Good. The PCs must find their own solutions."
2) Meta-game reason: I've noticed that some players get lazy when they think they can hand over their problems over to the Source of good and light. "Oh well, we've done our job. You go smite evil now."
It's akin to NPCs in the game. Some players whine that these NPCs keep asking them for help or are unable to solve their own problems, whereas those NPCs that are powerful enough to solve their own problems won't need the PCs.
At this high of level, players should realize that THEY are a Source of good and light and having them ask another Source for help is like Gilgamesh or Beowulf wandering around the countryside looking for a Hercules or Guan Di for assistance for their problems.
We are in the middle of "Here There Be Monsters," but are stuck right before the Temple of Demogorgon.
My party essentially suffered from a TPK with the barbarian gargoyle king.
I ruled that two PCs escaped, one of which was a druid with Reincarnate.
Unfortunately, this means they are way underpowered for the Temple, so it looks like there will be a two-session delay as they undergo some Side Treks.
If you go RAW from the SRD, you can use this sentence from the Diplomacy skill description:
"Use the table below to determine the effectiveness of Diplomacy checks (or Charisma checks) made to influence the attitude of a nonplayer character, or wild empathy checks made to influence the attitude of an animal or magical beast."
So Diplomacy for people/NPCs and wild empathy for animals or magical beasts.
I was dumbfounded when he said he had 46 as a 10th level mage. Seems he is not really that unusual in terms of hps for a mage either. High in fact.
I was shocked. a measly 46 hps? I pretty much told him point blank at that point to make a back up character.
With only 1d4 hps per level, that would be high. Perhaps with a +2 Con, he could have a max 60 hps, which is still 2 lucky (made their save) dragon breaths from unconscious.
Even if he took two levels of fighter, that would make it 72 hps, which is 2 partially lucky (made only one save) dragon breaths from unconscious.
And two wizard levels is a loss of a spell level. My player's wizard took a level in rogue, and was missing a necessary fireball for many an encounter in Sea Wyvern's Wake.
So I don't know if a pure wizard is a suboptimal choice. It's the problem of being a wizard. Soft and squishy unless you plan your spells and encounters very carefully.
But on topic, my party lives or dies with Wands of Cure Light Wounds. There is always at least two Wands in the party at any given time, and a wand burns out at least once per module.
PC: Dirk, human ranger (7th)
Adventure: Here There Be Monsters
Location of Death: ancient Olman cliff highway
Catalyst: Quotocta's Wrath
PC: Seth, halfling wizard (7th)
Adventure: Here There Be Monsters
Location of Death: ancient Olman cliff highway
Catalyst: Quotocta's Wrath
NPC: Tavey
Adventure: Here There Be Monsters
Location of Death: ancient Olman cliff highway
Catalyst: Quotocta's Wrath
NPC: Amelia
Adventure: Here There Be Monsters
Location of Death: ancient Olman cliff highway
Catalyst: Quotocta's Wrath
NPC: Urol
Adventure: Here There Be Monsters
Location of Death: ancient Olman cliff highway
Catalyst: Quotocta's Wrath
After the party bedded down for the night, Quotocta, the barbarian gargoyle king and his brood decended upon the resting party in the near-dead of night, despite the suprise, they did not manage to harm the party significantly, except for Quotocta, who roughed up the party cleric, Eztli.
In the subsequent rounds that followed, the gargoyles, aided by an unnaturally high number of critical hits, managed to keep the ranger away from the main fight, while Quotocta managed to slowly fell each PC and NPC one by one.
Even Tavey was forced to melee to save his mentor, the cleric, only to be smacked down by the barbarian king's claw.
Avner and Thunderstike's whereabouts are unknown, as they ran into the darkness in pure terror.
The cleric managed to turn himself invisible and pulled Lia, the druid, unconscious form away from the battle to hide.
Minutes later, the duo snuck down the cliffs to retrieve the bodies of their companions as the callous gargoyles tossed them over the edge to insure their deaths.
Several days and several reincarnations later, Amelia (and her lover, Eztli) are dismayed to find her now a half-orc, and everyone is annoyed that Urol came back as a gnome.
If you read the description of both Wild Empathy ability of the druid and the Diplomacy skill description, it notes emphatically that you use Wild Empathy to influence animals (and beasts) and Diplomacy with NPCs.
It does not mention anything about specific communication ability.
In other words, changing into a terror bird or perhaps casting Speak with Animals doesn't affect attempts to influence them, it is still a Wild Empathy check.
Being able to talk terror bird merely allows the player to ask questions and get really simple Int 2 answers.
So Wild Empathy.
I might give a circumstance bonus for being able to speak Terror Bird, but really, it's a Int 2 animal. No amount of fancy words via a high skill of Diplomacy will affect an Int 2 animal.
