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Over in the Obituary Thread we were discussing just how deadly the latter portion of the first book Wormwood Mutiny is.
I'm playing with the Wounds & Vigor system which considerably toughens up the PC's at low levels. Without that, I'm not sure how they would have survived to this point. Even with it there was a bit of GM fudging happening behind my screen to keep them alive. I don't mind killing a character (there were 4 PC deaths in my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign) but I try not to have deaths seem arbitrary or unheroic where I can - or to have deaths which stagnate the game.
My group isn't even done with the book yet, but here are some of the experiences we've had:
They destroyed her and ran out onto the beach where - hello Giant Crabs. They survived the crabs barely, but then they really had to rest. So they climbed up into trees and made hammocks to stay the night. The other two ghouls came hunting but didn't find them. Still two of the party contracted Ghoul Fever from the botflies overnight.
They were smart enough not to go into the cornfield the next day, but ended up in the Stockade fighting off the two other Ship's Whores, getting ambushed by Vine Creepers and running panicked into the Lodge just to get grappled by a Ghast and hit with a botfly swarm. The Ghast proceeded to keep most of the group paralyzed in rotation. I fudged several killing rolls. By the time they took him down 3/4 party members were below zero (a lot of that was the swarm feeding on paralyzed characters).
They rested and employed all their healing magic just to get back to semi-functional. They decided to try to explore the wreck of the Infernus and failed perception checks. They got surprised by the Giant Moray Eel who criticaled his first bite, grabbed the druid, then beat everyone on initiative to do more insane bite damage (2d6+9 - wha!?) and get a SECOND bite due to the gnaw ability - bye bye Druid.
I'm really thinking that Riptide Cove is just gonna be a charnal house. They are talking about just going back and trying to mutiny now and give up on Sandara and Rosie because the island seems too deadly. I don't blame them.
I have to agree with sabed on this. The initial deadliness is.... well, high ?
we have finished book #1 and some of our more or less hairy experiences include
Reefclaws : Pretty deadly since being fought in the water, requiring constant swim checks, lessened damage (slash/bludgeon), concentration checks for spell casting. With a group of 5, this worked out, mainly due to supernatural abilities. E.g. our witches "Slumber" hex.
We had almost encounter on the island except for the Ankheg and Ivy - which was a blessing, since noone in the group actually had an AoE spell, torches, alchemists fire or similar means. The Botflies and mosquitoes otherwise would have been very nasty. And 3rd/4th level arcane casters do not necessarily pack AoE spells ( Burning Hands, mostly) .
The Ankheg - in and off itself - instilled massive paranoia, since hardly anyone could conceive why only a single Ankheg would roam the island... one far off the trade routes. And a single crit by the Ankheg can really ruin a 2nd to 3rd level character's day. Our fighter got hacked for 20 points, which after having been sprayed and bitten previously knocked him well below "0" HP. Luckily, noone triggered the botfly-heads...
Ivy's hut : got smoked because of the flies after spotting them. But Ivy himself is nasty, especially to small characters, and probably the characters will be absolutely surprised by him, plus suffering from the stench. Another "this can get nasty swiftly", especially if the botflies attack at the same time, as by the author's concept, with a fair percentage of the group either being incapacipated by Ivy's stench or the swarm's nausea. Add paralysis for some swift takedowns.
Moray Eel : Easily the nastiest encounter, with a viscious bite, double chewing and once again being an underwater fight which again means the predatory monster charging the group. charge ---> bite ---> grab ----> munch ---> dead since combating it means drowning even faster. Coming out of nowhere as a "random" encounter with little rlevance for the overall plot... yeah, "ouch"
Riptide Cove went easy, but only due to the fact of them sleeping almost everyone worthwhile due to lacklustre saves. And yes, the Lacedons at the bottom of the pool are neat and deadly.
Human Encounters : proved to be very easy.
Boating around the island (instead of walking over it) was probably the best idea they ever had. Second best idea was having a character with highly useful "at will" supernatural abilities.
I do wonder how a group, after fighting over and through the isle, is supposed to take out a "normal-sized" mutiny by P and S. And while I like the style and visual effects of the fights, as written they do prove murderous to groups of level 4 and less.
oh, and best regards from our local Biologist for the aquatic monster injecting poion through its exposed claws, aka Reefclaw. Aberration, but still... illogical ?
Creative Director
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oh, and best regards from our local Biologist for the aquatic monster injecting poion through its exposed claws, aka Reefclaw. Aberration, but still... illogical ?
Well... if an aberration didn't fly in the face of logic or exist apart from sanity... it'd be a magical beast. :-P
Yeah, my group hasn't reached Bonewrack yet but having read it over a few times and read some of the stories on here I'm pretty worried. My group (Rogue (pirate), Gunslinger (Pistolero), Sorceror (Anarchic), and witch(sea witch, water patron)) really aren't a high combat group (they got stomped by the pirate fistfight and the reefclaws and dire rats caused them some pretty major problems.)
Especially as the only melee character is the rogue and the the only healing is now the witch who has taken the healing hex when she hit 2nd level. Sandara has been keeping them alive between combat encounters on the Wormwood (not to mention the lashings) but I dread to think how they'll handle Bonewrack as they won't have her and the time limit means the witch will only get to CLW each party member twice and after that they'll be relying on whatever healing potions they've managed to acquire (which is likely to be 4 CMW potions assuming they do well enough when they take the mans promise)
I'm considering
a)Scattering some more healing items as loot on the island to let them 'top up' between encounters, maybe a wand somewhere the witch can use.
b)letting them take one of the helpful members of the crew with them to help in fights (or maybe even having someone other than Sandara kidnapped so she can go with them though this risks NPC overshadowing I think).
c)Similar to above but have them encounter and rescue one of the two missing npcs before Riptide (maybe they escaped and are being chased by Grindylows or the PC's spot them from the stockade with the telescope being 'taken for a walk'
d)some variation/combination of the above
Has anyone tried any of these or any other method of helping out the PC's on Bonewrack? Should I just bite the bullet and run it as written? I've always been a little squeamish about killing PCs but I'm just a little concerned as all my players are pretty new to PFinder and don't want a TPK from a swarm of flies to dampen their enthusiasm :-p.
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Some changes I'm making.
Ghouls: instead of Paralysis the Ghouls have a ghoul poison rider to their attacks.
Ghoul poison Fort Save DC 11; Frequency: 1/round for 6 rounds Damage: 1d3 Strength Damage; Cure: One save.
So if a Ghoul hits with all three attacks it forces a DC 15 fortitude save, and the poison lasts 12 rounds. Anti-toxin, delay poison or the Heal skill can all help with these saves and most importantly poison doesn't immediately leave the PC vulnerable to Coup-de-Gras at 1st level.
For the Blotfly swarms, I'm making the flies size Tiny. Yes I know that's unrealistic, but these are mutant ghoul flies. A swarm composed of tiny sized creatures can still take half weapon damage, which means martial characters are not completely negated.
Finally I'm adding the dryad and Pezack from serpents skull #1 as possible peaceful encounters, and also telling the players that The Man's Promise will be fixed in 5 days. It puts the PCs on a timer, but it's a fairly generous one.
Our party mutinied before the storm that put us on Bonewrack, so we were able to operate on our own timetable. Moreover, we rowed out to the fist, climbed up and looked around then climbed down and put in on the beach where the crabs were, bypassing the whores entirely. Our GM thought the botfly mechanic was a bit much on top of everything, so he clandestinely decided that he'd only subject us to them if we disturbed them (like the with fetish heads) which we didn't.
We were attacked by a swarm of grindylows and their queen aboard our ship the night we returned to it, which thinned out the herd a bit I suppose when we drove them off and then went to find their caves... toughest fight by far was the Queen, the Whale and a wounded Devilfish all while trying to save drowning crewmen from lacedons... that is a TOUGH fight for 3rd level characters.
FWIW, we have a pretty bad-ass group - four members including an Elven Bard, a Half-Elven Maste Summoner, a Human Lore Warden and a Half-Orc Dragon Scorerer - the latter two have a couple of levels of Barbarian each to start. I could see a larger group having a much easier time of it, but when two of us get incapacitated in some way, that's half our party!
By the way - Master Summoners rule. :)
oh, and best regards from our local Biologist for the aquatic monster injecting poion through its exposed claws, aka Reefclaw. Aberration, but still... illogical ?Well... if an aberration didn't fly in the face of logic or exist apart from sanity... it'd be a magical beast. :-P
Yeah we joked heavily about the... thoughtfulness ... of it in the Crimson Throne AP. But it sort of get's old having stuff constantly bleed poisonous stuff into the water through exposed claws. The water the reefclaw - I assume - breaths ? Nevermind the claws being "delicious" and edible...
The CR-1 Reefclaw encounter, is given the circumstances, very dangerous to player characters.
In a way my group was warned, since the entire setup for that encounter is so well over the top ("swim out to that reef with these buckets".... that raised good laughs), they instictively prepped for a fight.
A second time round, I'd raise the reef to be above water by tidal action, on some spots to provide safe spots. Nevermind it would make the whole scene easier to setup, too.
Providing some warning of the botflies on the island ( a corpse at the beach swarmed by them, perhaps ) might be fair warning too.
My group really had problems with the Swarm! They, thankfully, ran away and have levelled since first encountering it and will have another go next session.
Some groups really struggle with swarms. If you have no AoE options, you're toast.
As a DM...I love swarms!!!
My group really had problems with the Swarm! They, thankfully, ran away and have levelled since first encountering it and will have another go next session.
Some groups really struggle with swarms. If you have no AoE options, you're toast.
As a DM...I love swarms!!!
Thank God for Sorcerer's with Burning Hands.
My group really had problems with the Swarm! They, thankfully, ran away and have levelled since first encountering it and will have another go next session.
Some groups really struggle with swarms. If you have no AoE options, you're toast.
As a DM...I love swarms!!!
Just ask Baldwin the Merciful. Bloody rat swarms in Council of Thives..
We were attacked by a swarm of grindylows and their queen aboard our ship the night we returned to it, which thinned out the herd a bit I suppose when we drove them off and then went to find their caves... toughest fight by far was the Queen, the Whale and a wounded Devilfish all while trying to save drowning crewmen from lacedons... that is a TOUGH fight for 3rd level characters.
FWIW, we have a pretty bad-ass group - four members including an Elven Bard, a Half-Elven Maste Summoner, a Human Lore Warden and a Half-Orc Dragon Scorerer - the latter two have a couple of levels of Barbarian each to start. I could see a larger group having a much easier time of it, but when two of us get incapacitated in some way, that's half our party!
By the way - Master Summoners rule. :)
Mercurial...we had almost the same experience fighting the queen and the whale with the wounded Devil Fish in the mix. When I saw her drop the captives and we realized that the bodies on the bottom were lacedons I said lets get out of here and we beat feet out instead of a suicide run. We had a Half-Orc Orc Bloodline Sorc, Barbarian/Ranger, Zen Archer Monk, and a Rogue and with the water environment gimping all of us except the ranger/barbarian (who used lots of piercing weapons) we didnt see the odds as too good for us to survive. The GM said that if we hadnt made our profession sailor rolls to fix the boat we would have had to deal with the queen and a boat load (pun intended) of grindylows the next night.
If the players are especially beat up(and have a good relationship with Kroop) something to do is have Kroop come out when they come back and say he can give them an advantage by poisoning Plugg and the others.
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Wow. Last night my group went into Riptide Cove and it was nearly a TPK. They went in at low tide and got schooled on the ruthlessness of the underwater combat rules. The Grindylows kept to the pools and stayed just under the surface getting +8 to their AC from attacks coming on land. Slashing and Bludgeoning stuff is useless. Line of Sight for casters is a nightmare - especially since most of the group had no Darkvision - and the encounters in this place just stack right up on top of each other.
The worst was the Queen/Whale/Devilfish/Lacedon combo in a churning 60' deep watery death trap. Players were all crying foul especially about the Lacedons. It just seemed like insult on top of injury. "Oh. So you're already getting your butt kicked above and failed a swim check so now you're sinking without water-breathing? Here. Have some paralysis for dessert."
This brings up a good question; did Paizo do a run through to see how balanced/difficult the encounters were?
This brings up a good question; did Paizo do a run through to see how balanced/difficult the encounters were?
That's ....an interesting question, since there was the whole "Hooplah" with AP-1 going to the printers far too late (by a month ) and stuff.
As sabed said - without a continously re-usable resource, the isle is in parts very deadly. And very much depends upon individual PC rolls - mostly those against paralysis.
Two very strong predatory ambush monsters besides : the Ankheg (in combination with the swarms) and the Mooray Eel.
And then there are also the nasty stirges (CON-Damage, anyone ?) in D1 which usually attack with the characters climbing down the walls
Campaigns at low-level are deadly: Bonewrack Island... even more so.
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I agree that Bonewrack Isle is deadly, but I think it made for an awesome scene. I decided to use the Hero Points rules for this campaign (first time we've used them), and I definitely recommend it.
All of my PCs survived (narrowly), but granted they did roll SEVERAL crits with weapons that only threaten on a 20.
Vs the ghouls, they hid outside the tent and used ghost sound to lure the ghouls out. Won initiative and the Cad with the Boarding Pike of repelling crits two ghouls with a cleave, killing both. The monk then crits one with an unarmed strike, punching the third one's head off. I expected that encounter to be a bit more challenging, but the players were happy.
Let's see, the oracle and the cleric were being grappled by crabs and the Cad crits again. (And yes I verified the rolls, yes he was not using a loaded die, and yes we all know the ridiculously low percentage chance of him getting all these crits, hehe).
Vs the chokers, the cleric, cad, and oracle were all being grappled and dangling from the trees. (Oracle was at -9 hp and only has 11 con). The monk throws a dagger, killing the first choker and uses a hero point to catch the oracle safely.
Then the cad kills the other choker and he and the cleric fall down, with the cleric stabilizing the oracle when she was one HP away from death.
The cad tries to poke Arron Ivy with the boarding pike, I make him roll an attack roll, he gets a one, so he misses but the swarm comes out. A furious fight ensues with the party using a ton of alchemist fire to take it down.
They then killed Ivy from a distance and rested in his stockade.
They did a decent job in Riptide Cove (went at high tide) as they all have good swim skill (and oracle is an Undine).
The devilfish secretes his blood and nails someone, the party retreats to heal up. The devil fish pursues and the oracle hits him with murderous command. It swims into the cauldron and one-shots a grindylow (that had gone their to warn the Queen).
The party wounds the devilfish enough to where it retreats. First round of combat in the cauldron, the Cad crits AGAIN and kills the wounded Devilfish.
Jape gets eaten and the Cleric rescues Sandara while the ghouls feed on Jape.
The Queen flees after the Whale falls, but as she casts Speak with Animals before the battle and has animal empathy, I had her go and convince the Moray Eel into getting an "easy meal" on the hurt PCs on their way out, as well as having her remaining Grindylows block the exit tunnel.
The PCs chose to fight the grindylows underwater instead of staying above water to fight the stirges, then escape only to find the Queen and the Eel waiting for them.
The Queen is just nasty in open water and extremely hard to fight, so they get in Sandara's hatboat and are rowing away.
The Queen harasses them for a while and swims up 20 ft away from the oracle and hits her with the harpoon.
The Cad crits AGAIN and kills her. I was not too happy about that one, as I was going to have her Jet to safety after that round.
Anyway, it was a crit fest, and good times had by all.
And in the final battle aboard the Man's Promise, the Monk attacked Plugg, Crane-Styled his AoO. Then Scourge creeps in behind and crits the monk with an axe, dropping him into negatives. Plugg goes for the coup-de-grace which would have killed him, but the monk uses 2 hero points to cheat death.
Sorry for the long post, but I loved the second half of this adventure.
I know it's an old thread, but I wanted to add a vote to this being really rough. We're currently at 3 party wipes on this island. We haven't even gotten to the cove or the shipwreck.
I roll inconsistently, after a fashion: as a PC, I roll statistically average, maybe on the low side. As a GM, I roll high more often than not. Unfortunately for my group, I'm GMing this AP. That tendency plus the fairly consistent comments in this thread regarding the brutality of Bonewrack Isle have me consider postponing the Isle a little bit.
I think, depending on their level after taking the Man's Promise (I'm assuming they'll mutiny as soon as possible), I may sneak in the Four Dollar Dungeon, Horn of Geryon between the mutiny and Bonewrack Isle. It's a nice little sea-fairing island adventure for lvl 1. That should help boost them to lvl 3 if they aren't yet and give them an opportunity to rekit themselves somewhere before springing
That, plus Hero Points, plus max hit points, should help make Bonewrack Isle survivable while allowing me some freedom to flex the encounter's muscles guilt-free and keep it a challenge. If that still ends up a TPK, I'll be sure to post it to the Obituary thread.
The ghouls were more of a problem than the botflies for my characters. Burning hands and alchemist fire took care of them. I don't use hero points also my point buy is higher at 25. They used a lot of healing after both.
Finished the island recently.
Ghouls : no problem (or rather - only with Ghoul fever, not the paralysis), and they never went into the hut with Ivy, lucky them.
Group tends to roll high on saves, and low on skills, strangely enough.
Frogs : nasty fight especially with the quicksand. Almost lost two characters due to drowning in the stuff.
Swarms: got slightly downgraded (less bleed), and the players took extra care listening for them (and never moved at night), killed one of the swarms by using up all their alchemists fire and a series of burning (frost) hands, and fled into the surf from "the smoke monster" emanating from the field. One player was basically in the know about the deadliness and pretty focused keeping that fear foremost in the group's mind.
Stirges : highly murderous, especially since they attacked at night (the group was camped nearby), drained quite a bit of CON
Moray : never encountered
Ankheg: died violently simply due to losing initiative
Grindylows : not really a problem, endfight was mostly decided through loss of initiative and solid saves. Hostages saved
Mutiny : resolved previous to island.
Trap : Iron Grill trap in Grindylow lair almost killed the advancing fighter. Very nasty damage for second or third level PCs
Given that at least one of the players was up with the region/coast being "the Mosquito Coast" (great knowledge (local) roll ) and ooc prepared for the deadliness of the BotFly/Ghoul-mosquito swarms, they fared rather well. Then again, I may have felt lenient ,too, given that their cleric was very much off-the-wagon for the last few sessions, plus playing with very long gaps between sittings, he was basically sabotaging the whole campaign through inattentiveness.
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My pcs will be going through this soon I almost to bonewrack make it harder as they have stomped everything. I more then doubled the reef claws (5) and they just swam away with 4 hole reef claws for dinner. Maybe ill have to let the island stay as is. It will give them somthing to boast about on here Iif they sweep it to.
there was a thread last year on this board from a GM who considered it "too easy".
Lot's of hints as to conditions etc. applying (especially for underwater combat). And sticking to the swimming rules - which can get especially nasty if the group is dispersed in a cave. Or the swarms being diminuitive (basically streaking right through everything in the way, dispersing and their high follow up damage )and flying at high speeds.
Just saying^^ 8Oh wait no hints for "killing" in the obits thread...*shamefaced*)
@brvheart
"Burning Hands" taking care of the swarms ? 3D4 +50% damage a blast... we had a multi-swarm with 4x35 HP clouds involved (easy to do in the cornfield, aka the field of "buzzzzzzzz") ... how many Burning Hands does your group have access too in one day ?
The party had not gotten very far into the field when they came across the first head and it was the cleric that decided it needed a proper burial. After having enough issues with one of them they turned tail and ran out of the field. I don't recall all the details of how they dealt with it as it has been a few months, but it did take several alchemist fires along with the burning hands. Even with that the one swarm almost killed several of the party and they had to camp at the beach for the night losing precious time. I think they had to use a lot of rays of frost or similar 0 level spells. 1d3 takes awhile!
I'm toying with the idea of having my group find a partially-charged Wand of Burning Hands somewhere along the way to give them a better chance of surviving Bonewrack, along with some healing potions and alchemist's fire.
They'll probably get the vials from Grok as a parting gift, and the wand could be found on the Man's Promise.
"Why's this grubby old stick hidden behind this beam? Hey, it's magical!" ;D
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Friend downplayed the swarms deadliness (group only had a Wind oracle as healer, so neither positive channels, nor particularly strong healing power ), by reducing the "bleed" damage to bleed-1. which made them less "instant killers" (3rd level chars, with a bleed-6 or even bleed-4 on them.... ouch !!!! )
He also added a distinct hum to the swarms (Perception DC12-15 I believe, he mused about a low number so, distance would not totally eat up the chance of the PCs being forewarned) , which usually scared the players' off very effectively.
A wand of Burning Hands should be slightly higher level, otherwise a meagre 1D4 (1st level spell, 1st level caster level) might be more of an insult then a real help^^
While I probably subconsciously downplayed the swarms in how I ran them my intent in running a game is to challenge the party and occasionally bring them to the point where they think they are all going to die w/o actually taking it to the point of a TPK. I've just ran my games that way for so long it affects the way I DM sometimes. It has been close a few times, especially when the party refuses to run from a challenge that is obviously beyond them and that is when multiple characters die.
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I anticipated problems with swimming, drowning and water combat so I took an Undine with the Aquatic & Amphibious attributes. This really made the encounter with the Refclaws a lot easier (even though my Cleric is not a fighty-type cleric). We also have a merman in the party who is a fighty-type Ranger so we're well prepared for any ocean combat. Eventually with the Undine's Water/Weather domains she'll get spells that grant water breathing and control of the weather that will help even further with the troubles to come.
Regarding the low crew, you need a minimum of 10 to sail the ship, and I'd include the PCs in that number. If they don't have many friends amongst the crew, don't forget that once they defeat Plugg and Scourge, hostile pirates that are still alive would probably have a change of heart after seeing the battle go against them. Those who get wounded in the battle would probably surrender instead of fight to the death, unless they have a true vendetta against the PCs. Pirates are survivors and fickle enough to abandon old bosses to save their own skins.
In my game, Fipps Chumlett and Narwhal Tate were two of the five pirates who fought alongside Plugg and Scourge and both survived. Fipps fell to a sleep spell and surrendered upon awakening. Narwhal was in the crow's nest sniping with a crossbow and when he found everyone else dead or incapacitated, he easily surrendered and pledged his loyalty. It shouldn't be too hard to scrape together 10 people who can get the ship to Rickety Squibs.
There's definitely no story points to worry about with Bonewrack, so don't worry about skipping it if that's the way your game has gone. I'd say it would definitely still be a very dangerous place for forth-level PC's, though keep in mind that if you throw them at Bonewrack at this point, they may decide to skip it altogether, instead just focusing on fixing the ship and leaving. Obviously, you can still throw the Grindylows at them if they decide to do that, but without Plugg ordering them to go get water, there's really no necessity to go. Sandara being captured is certainly still a strong motivator, but your group may be more empathetic toward NPC's.