Hey all, I recently bought this AP to help start a new campaign but haven't read through it all yet and had a few questions.
- I'm thinking of banning teleport and maybe wind walk, justifying it as magical interference from the Eye of Abendego. I don't know my party's make up yet, but it seems like the spells cut travel out of the game and I want them to feel attached to their ship. Would this interfere with the later adventures in the path (such as assumption characters will have access to it or a villain needing it to escape)?
- One player is considering playing a ranger, what would you recommend for favored enemies in this campaign? His backstory doesn't incline him toward any particular foe, though I'm thinking humans is a safe choice.
- I've heard that the map's distances are kinda small, and it does seem like it would only take a few days to traverse across the entire shackles. Has this a been an issue for people? If so, any thoughts on what to change the scale to? I don't want to mess up a further adventure, but also want to loan around my copy of the setting book and tell them accurate distances up front.
-Finally, I know people on these boards mainly use the pathfinder rules, but I'm going to run this adventure as an intro to 5th edition. Has anyone had more luck finding a good conversion (particularly of ship combat) in their internet travels than I? Any other tips for starting the campaign? I'm definitely going to read through more of the path and these boards, just wondering about any advice.
My two cents on some of your questions:
- My players and I worked together to justify eliminating teleport in a way that I felt was pretty in-universe consistent: The deck of a moving ship is just too ambiguous to target with teleport effects beyond line of sight. It helps to justify why people are spending thousands of gold on ships instead of permanent teleport items: Because your enemies have a much harder time finding you when you're a moving target. We said that Teleport Without Error is powerful enough to overcome the limitation, but because the AP has such a low end-point, it hasn't become a serious issue (and we are only a session or two away from the finale). The few times they've felt the need to teleport to a known port, it meant that they'd have to organize a rendezvous to catch up to their ship, and hope that the ship and the teleporters actually make their rendezvous (which I felt had an appropriately nautical feel to it but adding a touch of magic).
- Humans is indeed a safe choice for a ranger's favoured enemy. Have a look in the S&S player's guide for other recommendations across all classes where a poor choice could hobble a class feature.
- We never had a significant problem with map distances. In fact, often the distances seemed a bit long. On a related note: I recommend checking out Paizo's Skull and Shackles map folio. There's an in-universe map of the Shackles in there that I don't believe is reproduced anywhere else. I mounted it on some cork board, and kept flag pins on hand throughout the game. Whenever the PCs discovered something, visited a city, or just wanted to say "neat rumour. Let's check it out if we ever get near there", they stuck a pin in the map. It has dozens of pins in it now, and the locations really mean something to the PCs. Add in a nautical protractor (like from a mathematical instruments set), and explain that the PCs' ship can travel x inches in a given day. Set the protractor x inches wide, and the players can start estimating their time travelled with a quite authentic feel.
- I'm not very familiar with 5e. I'd say take a look at the existing system, find the elements that are no longer part of the ruleset, and try to find a 5e equivalent. I'm afraid I can't be much more help, sorry.
- Just general advice: Try to give the PCs some personal story beyond wanting to be pirates. While it's true of any campaign, I found this one really lent itself well to developing personal plots because the adventures are such a healthy mix of railed and sandbox materials (honestly the best I've run or played, including Kingmaker).