An Awesome session


Skull & Shackles


So my first session as a DM turned out to be pretty awesome, here is the highlight of night. This is in Skull & Shackles: The Wormwood Mutiny.

During the roughing up encounter on day 2, the barbarian decided to try and "sunder" the arm of one of the pirates who was attacking the party's alchemist. He rolls a natural 20, and the way our group handles natural 20s on anything but saves, we roll critical threat. He then rolls a natural 19... obliterating the CMD for the poor pirate. The barbarian is currently raging because he doesn't like getting sucker punched. He proceeds to literally disarm the pirate, who took lethal damage from having his arm ripped off. I wanted to help keep party members from being keelhauled, especially after the look of horror on everyone's face when Jakes is keelhauled, so I tried to give him a fort save to just fall unconcious... and rolled a natural 1... which is the only roll I never fudge, so he dies. The pirate with a dagger sees this, so he draws his dagger and misses his attack against the barbarian. The barbarian rushes him and beats him to death with the arm of the guy he just killed. Two pirates dead in a matter of seconds.. the other pirates had been subdued by the party.

Well, instead of just going upstairs, the party starts trying to figure out a way to cover up the deaths, and themselves. Since I had it taking place slightly later than the book says to (there were no witnesses to the killings) I had Sandara come looking for them... the barbarian almost killed her because he noticed her coming down the stairs and was thinking "NO WITNESSES GRRR" but was talked down by the rest of the party. She helps them corroborate their story of self defense to Scourge. The blood covered barbarian was sentenced to 8 hours in the sweat box while the murders were investigated.

After surviving the sweat box, the barbarian was pulled out and sentenced to a slow keelhaul. 12 reflex saves, at DC 20... here is the most awesome part of this... he makes 10 of the 12 saves, 5 of those were 20s, 3 19s, and 2 lower saves.. he takes 14 damage overall... coming up the other side bloody and with 1 HP left. Even Captain Harrigan is impressed with this.

During the night festivities, Grok challenges the barbarian to a game of heave, and ends up losing horribly to the barbarian. She is so impressed by this, the single handed killing of 2 pirates while unarmed, surviving a keelhaul and drinking her under the table, I immediately made her helpful to the party.

In the course of two days... the party now has two friends on board, and moved 3 other NPCs up 1 level on the helpfulness chart out of sheer awesome. Right now I'm psyching up the barbarian player about the fight with the "Owlbear."

Shadow Lodge

I have found that this AP lends itself to moments of awesome. Often the secret to creating memorable moments is not OVER THE TOP EPIC BATTLES ZOMG!! but lots of social interaction, limited resources, and the potential of serious consequences. Force hard choices. Hard choices make for great stories.


Very nice stuff! The barbarian sounds killer. We have a swashbuckler of similar audacity...albeit she's not quite as tough as your barb. :)
M


The best part of this was the player was just attempting to break the arm... but he wasn't too happy with his character up to this point (trying to get himself killed so he could roll a new one) so when he rolled and confirmed the critical, i figured i might as well play the barbarian rage up, so that it was certain that he would be keelhauled... i never expected the blessed by besmara trait would have meta game influences as well lol. He is also #1 on scourge's list of crew to kill lol now.

The best part of the story is when he told scourge, plugg, and harrigan that he didn't kill either of the pirates... they "committed suicide by attacking a berserker." in the words of his character.

I'm just hoping if he is the one to fight the "Owlbear" he doesn't end up killing him too, because i think Harrigan might just cast him overboard, or execute him on the spot.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Adventure Path / Skull & Shackles / An Awesome session All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Skull & Shackles