I've had to reschedule a game a few weeks from now instead of a few months from now. They intend to go visit the Sun Temple colony, and a Mordant Spire ship came all the way to the Inner Sea to retrieve them. Now, I just need to figure out who and what is on that ship, while I have no experience neither in nor out of game about sea, ships, or any aquatic area. On top of that, mythic is not excluded. And I'm no good at surfing the Internet.
Their travel should take about two months if they don't lose any time, and I intend to make them lose a lot of time, so it could easily be four or even six months. As many things will happen on that ship, I would like to have descriptions for about 40 people. There will be incidents involving pirates, green dragons, lost haunted lagunas, wild intelligent varech, clandestine passengers, aboleths, and so on.
For now, the ship is based on the Cetaceal (from Inner Sea Ships) with a wavecutter's figurine, and it's intelligent. I don't know what personality it has yet. We're playing a world with a lot of magic, so I'd like some ideas about making the ship special in both mundane and magical ways, in an azlanti and gray-elfish way.
All crew is mordant spire elves. It might be divided about this unusual mission. Some might just find it weird, others might want to investigate or even be ready to eliminate the PCs, while others might strongly believe there is a reason, and they don't need to know as long as they've been ordered to.
I need to have elements for all important crew - captain, quartermaster, sailing master, boatswain, carpenter, surgeon - as well as sailors, mates, and maybe unexpected people. Anytime I can go magic about something instead of mundane, I would prefer it, be it artillery, propulsion, reparations, cooking, healing, everything. Highest levels should be around 14-15 and lowest around 5. I'd like personal plot hooks for about 20 people from the crew, and I'm ready to take on unusual classes.
Any ideas?
The ship's carpenter probably would like to have fabricate and make whole, preferably greater make whole, and a decent Int to use craft skills. Lets make her a blood arcanist (shapechanger) 12 who does the whole range of transmutation spells.
Shapechangers can get into trouble pretending to be someone/thing they're not, and being able to shapeshift for up to 12 hours a day just opens up more possibilities. She's probably hiding from several of the crew at any given time and would like help evading them, or just hanging around with people whom elves won't feel comfortable raising elf-only issues around.
Also she goes thru consumable magic items fast when nervous via the consume magic items exploit. It's a bad habit rather than staying ready for combat, mostly. It does mean that between that and the elven alternate FCB she has a lot of points in her arcane reservoir.
Why do you want some of the NPC’s to be such a level? What level is the adventuring party? Perhaps the captain and a couple others would be capable characters, but I think the rest of the crew should be fairly low level. Lower than fifth. What level is the adventuring party? Perhaps the captain and a couple others would be capable characters, but I think the rest of the crew should be fairly low level. Lower than fifth. Once they have enough magic available to them, sailing around on a ship just doesn’t seem practical anymore. Teleportation and flight would become the norm.
The ship has a dark secret. Multiple members of the crew are unwillingly permanent additions to its ranks.
One was a stow away who wandered on to the ship because he was lonely and destitute. He found his only friend in the intelligent hulls of the ship, but it tricked him, overpowering his naive mind with its magics, making him its eternal slave.
The other was a handyman hired to mend sails who had a minor alcoholism problem, at the shipyards who doesn't, but one night he showed up a little too sauced, failed a Will save against the ship's magic as he was up late rigging freshly repaired sails.
Outside of possessed crew members...
A couple Vigilante pirates whose alternate identities are crew members, but when pirates show up they help them infiltrate the ship.
The ghost of the first captain, whom the ship killed in a struggle of minds to establish command of the ship a long time ago.
Have a secret society transporting a Lich's phylactery. Or a Vampire in its coffin. And all the fun that can bring.
Have the ship's very presence attract sirens.
Sounds like you have some time to prepare, just grab a couple themes and see what you come up with as you weave those themes together.
Ciaran Barnes wrote: ...Once they have enough magic available to them, sailing around on a ship just doesn’t seem practical anymore. Teleportation and flight would become the norm. Depends how much you have to transport. A ship can carry dozens of tonnes, an animated object (like a flying longship) can carry several tonnes, people can generally carry much less. Admittedly once teleportation circles become at all common anywhere without one is a backwater.
The ship's figurehead is a beautiful woman-esque figure, but it's really a dryad variant whose tree was chopped down used to make a sizable part of the ship long ago (or maybe one of the masts). Rather than dying or moving on, she became a sea-going creature, taking a wooden form and mostly melded with the bow of the ship in typical figurehead pose. She doesn't blame the sailors for what happened, but any that don't tend to their ship's duties tend to have small misfortunes befall them (tripping over a board or getting tangled in ropes or nets at times). Her entangle summons seaweed or kelp that entangles swimming creatures and maybe small boats. She has speak with fish instead of speak with plants and probably fog cloud instead of tree shape.
She can move about the ship, just melding and reforming anywhere on it like tree stride and sometimes dallies or seduces passengers (she's found sailors to be far too suspicious and superstitious to even bother trying anymore.) She also has a swim speed and and can move independently of the boat, though she has the same restrictions on distance as a normal dryad and if the boat or sizable portions of it are destroyed she suffers the same fate as other dryads. Her presence does allow a slow mending and repair of parts of the ship's hull, though she generally restricts it to damage in out-of-the-way spots and leaves other parts, like railings or doors to be repaired by the crew.
Ciaran Barnes wrote: Why do you want some of the NPC’s to be such a level? What level is the adventuring party? It's basically the same level as the Cetaceal's NPCs, which I modeled the basics after. They're a war unit, not some merchants. The Cetaceal's lower level crew is fighter 5. On top of that, I'm making the sea dangerous enough they will love having people with more than 8 hp onboard, especially when they take on a bunch of mind flayers or wake up something deadly.
The adventuring party is one CR 7 and one CR 12. They have a ward technically CR 6, but he's really just a kid with no ability worth mentioning (except running fast).
Ciaran Barnes wrote: Once they have enough magic available to them, sailing around on a ship just doesn’t seem practical anymore. Teleportation and flight would become the norm. Indeed, but that level is still a few in game decennies away. I'm running another game when that point has long been left behind, but here teleportation is not the norm.
Ok. Sound like you have thought this out, but my next question is why are the two PCs five levels apart? That’s how we sometimes did things back in 1st and 2nd ed. and that doesn’t sound like fun to me for the lower level character’s player.
They're both level 3, however I'm calculating the CR they're. Mythic counts as half tier, so it's a +5 (to make 8, not 7, but I'm dumb), while great elemental is base 9 (plus 3 levels, so 12; I'm counting them whole because the player found good synergy, and the encounters so far haven't been too hard compared to what they should have been).
It's not my first time managing groups several levels (or equivalents) apart. There is another party where it is a true rift, with up to 10 levels apart between the most powerful and the least. We're managing with rp content, where everyone is equal, and encounters where the more powerful players play in their weaknesses while the weakest members play in their fortes. Sometimes we have surprises too (recently a duel had a character far weaker in level send to dream realm another in two rounds without taking any hit). Basically, the same fight isn't the same level for everyone. As I play at the same time the weakest and the second most powerful character (I'm not GM in it, though), I can assure it is thrilling.
As for this particular party, it is actually a sequel to our main campaign, where one of the NPCs was so loved that currently we're playing her past, so CR8 is that character and I'm GMPCing her. She's fun to play, as she fills nicely any gap in the CR12's skills and abilities. My players (the one playing CR12 and the spectators from the main campaign) seem to enjoy. That's why I had to reschedule sooner. They had me to.
All I need is a boat with people on it -)' I have everything for after their arrival, before their departure, but so far, I only have the ship (thanks Pizza Lord, you always have good ideas, and thanks VoodistMonk, though I'm not so sure it's compatible with the dryad it is indeed funny to consider and I'll probably use some ghost/undead/siren matter from there) and the carpenter (thanks avr). Still many roles to fill.
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