PF suggestions for fine-tuning SWW?


Savage Tide Adventure Path


I'm going to be running Sea Wyvern's Wake in a month or so, and started reading through the adventure in more detail to get a good grasp of what's to go on there. One minor detail I noticed, though, is that with the advent of unlimited cantrips/orizons in Pathfinder a single cleric or druid eclipses the need to stop for fresh water at various towns and forts. Unlimited create water, after all, means that any divine caster can top of the ships' stores within a minute.

As many of the events seem to hinge upon stopping at the mouths of freshwater rivers to replenish stores, what alternative reason for stopping might work? "Running out of food" doesn't seem feasible -- why would the expedition have set forth without rations enough to feed the crew and passengers for the full four-month journey?

Any ideas? I could, I suppose, bypass both the flotsam ooze and river-hydra encounters, but that'll put the PCs a bit behind the XP curve for the adventure path. Moreover, it lessens the feeling of "limited resources, away from civilization" as well.


Maybe a nature/sea deity cursed the region with the inability to use that orison within the area. Anyone getting a certain distance away from the coast (or into the fresh water of a river) would still be able to cast the Create Water orison. You might even be able to tie it in with the origin of Scuttlecove (the Ur-Priests and why they turned away from the divine).


This actually came up (my players are almost done with SWW, about 1 session left.) Regarding the cantrips. The water resupply were less critical yes, but having a divine caster is basically a fallback. No ship captain is going to put all his eggs in one basket when it comes to a 4 month sea voyage. What if something happens to said Caster? he gets sick and dies, is killed by pirates, he is eaten by a sea monster...suddenly every single other person on the ship has just been sentenced to death as well. The same can be said when the PC's get Create Food and Water. It's a great fallback, to deal with unexpected events, but you don't want the cleric permanently down two 3rd level spells every single day of the trip. Nor do you want the crew to starve on the off chance something happens to said cleric.

Technically, i also used one minor house rule regarding the unlimited cantrips. in short, when you cast teh same cantrip again, the previous castings would fade away/disappear. This meant any Caster could have 1 light spell up at any time, but it could be all the time. It also meant that a caster could create water and constantly have water to drink, but he wouldn't be able to chaincast it and fill up 42,000 barrels of it.


You can just rule that Lavinia (and Amella, if she is captain) just wants to give everybody the chance to stretch their legs for a while. A ship with almost 30 people on it is still small and gets dirty, etc. Fresh fruit (from the jungle) is another good reason (in order to prevent scurvy) and perhaps even fresh meat (Skald might like to go hunting). That way you do not have to take away the cantrips from your players.


Good reasoning. No crew would want to stay on hardtack and salted pork forever -- and especially not in the earlier part of the voyage, what with having potential ports of call to resupply in and jungles to hunt about in. Better to save the preserved rations for the latter portion of the voyage, once the ships break away from the mainland and head south towards the Isle.

Sure, they could fish at that point as well, but who knows what horrors lurk in the deep? *evil grin*

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