Papa-DRB wrote:
Without giving away the story line, does someone have such a paragraph and what classes might be best for Savage Tide AP?
I know this is more than a paragraph, but I couldn't bring myself to pick just one. I made this up and printed off copies as a handout to everyone that was playing when we started the game. There's lots in there about character creation notes. Hope you find it useful:
Avast, you sea dogs, and welcome to the Savage Tide Campaign!
Before we weigh anchor and make way into uncharted seas, here be some things ye should know about the campaign. First of all, I cannot make any guarantees about bein¡¦ able to maintain this ¡¥ere pirate voice throughout the entire campaign, but I¡¦ll give it me best, at least whiles I¡¦m speakin¡¦ in character. For the rest of this note, though, I¡¦ll stick to proper King¡¦s English, so you don¡¦t all throttle me next time you see me.
The Campaign will take much of its material from the ¡§Savage Tide¡¨ series in Dungeon Magazine, so unless you want to spoil some of the story, it¡¦s best you keep your nose out of Dungeon for a while. I will throw in a lot of my own ideas that I¡¦ve been developing over the past few months, but Savage Tide will help a lot in setting the backdrop and keeping the story moving between my mostly unconnected ideas, so you¡¦ve been warned.
I am converting the adventure path as written in Dungeon to the Forgotten Realms for lots of reasons, but primarily because I own a lot of Realms source material that I don¡¦t wish to go to waste.
Character Creation:
You will begin as 2nd level characters aboard the ¡§Ravaged Pride¡¨, a small merchant vessel that runs between the cities of Sasserine, and the city-state of Sammarash. Sasserine replaces Tashluta in official Forgotten Realms supplements as the capital of Tashalar. Both lie on the Shining Sea, in the southern areas of Faerun.
The route between the two cities runs along the coast, as such the ¡§Ravaged Pride¡¨ is never out of sight of land, making it a safe route for a small vessel such as the ones you find yourselves on.
As such, you may create a character from anywhere in the Forgotten Realms, but given the nature of the campaign, it would make sense for your character to hail from a region with a seafaring culture, or at the very least, some coastal areas where ships are known to pass. If you are from a faraway land in the Realms, such as Mulhorand or the Moonsea area, you will want to include in your character creation some reason why you¡¦d be in the South. Naturally, the life of a sailor is one of travel, so such a story should not be terribly difficult. I accept and appreciate written character concepts and back stories detailing the life of your character up to level 2, but it is not required.
If, on the other hand, you would like to be from Sasserine itself, that would be fine, and in fact very easy to write into the story, since it is a regular destination of the ¡§Ravaged Pride¡¨. I will be providing each such player with a ¡§Savage Tide Player¡¦s Guide¡¨ outlining the city and its many districts. A player who hails from this city will automatically know all (or at least the vast majority ¡V if you have to roll I will let you know) of the information within it as ¡§Area Knowledge ¡V Sasserine¡¨, while the rest of you will need to take that as a skill if you want to succeed on such a check. Area Knowledge ¡V Sasserine will also allow a synergy bonus to Gather Information checks made within the city as well. This would be useful information for creating said back story, if indeed you choose to be from Sasserine. Note that the Player¡¦s Guide references the Greyhawk pantheon, for conversion information ask me. The two most important are Kord=Talona, and Wee Jas=Savras.
As mentioned, characters will begin play at 2nd level. Allowable source material for character creation, in terms of feats, spells known, races, and so on include all Forgotten Realms sources, as well as all core D&D material produced by WotC, with the exception of psionics, please; it doesn¡¦t mesh with my notion of magic, and I don¡¦t like messing with it. A special warning when going through Realms stuff: a lot of it, notably the basic campaign setting book, was written under 3.0 rules, and lots of the feats/spells/prestige classes were re-written for 3.5 in later supplements. Make sure you¡¦re using the 3.5-based stuff, if you have questions ask. I might also specifically point you in the direction of the ¡§Stormwrack¡¨ supplement, specifically created for seafaring adventures. It has some races that may interest people looking to play something which ordinarily would not be a very useful race.
Having said that, I would recommend AGAINST creating a truly aquatic character, in other words one which can not function well outside of water, at least at first. We will be spending significant time in this campaign at sea, but we will also be spending significant time, in stretches of months at a time, on land as well, although always coastal I think (no promises there though). In those cases, obviously, an all-aquatic creature will have difficulty being involved in these adventures. If you are dead-set on playing an all-aquatic creature, discuss it with me, and we¡¦ll work out something. You¡¦ll probably need to create two characters, one for land time and one for sea-time. However, I will need to penalize this extra flexibility in some way, so expect to have your two characters each be a level behind the rest of the party, or some similar negative assignment on my part. I¡¦m not trying to punish you, but again as I said, it wouldn¡¦t be fair to the players who are putting all their effort into one character to let others have two equally powerful characters, giving them the advantage of ¡§customizing¡¨ themselves to the environment. Again, if you have issues with this, discuss it with me and I¡¦m sure we¡¦ll work something out.
Character creation will involve rolling your stats as follows: roll 4D6, reroll 1¡¦s, take 3 best. Repeat 7 times, take 6 best and distribute as you wish. Yes, this will make powerful characters, with an average stat above 13. Trust me, you will need it. This adventure path is not for the feint of heart, and I will not pull punches on player deaths. It cheapens the story to do so, in my opinion, because then the victories mean less.
A note on alignment: The overall theme of the campaign is fighting evil for a noble cause, but that certainly does not mean that everyone should be LG, or even G. Neutral and even Evil alignments are accepted, but be forewarned that this is not a campaign where all the players are evil, bloodthirsty pirates. Obviously, as DM I only have some control over player¡¦s actions, and I will not ¡§forbid¡¨ players from doing evil acts. But that¡¦s not the expectation of the game as a whole. May your character lie, steal, cheat, and so on? Absolutely. May he/she openly kill innocent villagers or sailors and not expect repercussions? Unlikely. Also, there will be times when an opponent will be beyond your skill to kill directly; in such cases it will be necessary to confront them in other ways. Subtle warnings of such will be given if necessary in such cases.
A few other minor points on character creation: There are some unique challenges and opportunities to be had with a Seafaring game. That¡¦s honestly one of my primary motivations for choosing this as the setting. It¡¦s always great to be able to really branch out and look at some of the ¡§standard¡¨ gaming preconceptions, and have to start from scratch with them. But at the same time, there are some specific challenges I want to warn you about before you make your characters, as well. For one thing, some prestige classes have specific pre-requisites that are impossible to fulfill when your character is at sea for three months. You aren¡¦t going to be initiated into any guilds or clubs or secret orders during that time (most likely). As such, if you are the type that plans your character¡¦s level progression out from the beginning, this is important to keep in mind. Likewise, new equipment is tough to come by at sea as well. It doesn¡¦t matter how many gp you have, if nobody on your boat has a +3 flaming long sword they want to sell you, you aren¡¦t going to be able to buy one. Now, item creation feats and such are an answer, and honestly, I expect that they will be a bit more useful in this campaign for that very reason. Just don¡¦t forget to stow those raw materials on board before you set sail¡K I¡¦ll let your own minds think of other general guidelines to consider when making your characters, just remember that heavy armor is no longer a good thing when your 3rd level fighter goes overboard. I don¡¦t care if he DOES have 5 ranks in swim and 18ST. Even regular clothes and leather get pretty heavy when you¡¦re trying to swim in them. And feather fall slowly takes you straight down, whether your ¡§ground¡¨ is a moving target or not¡K
There are also some special rules for fighting on ships, and underwater combat, and so on. I will produce a separate handout for those. For the purposes of character creation, just know that there are lots of reasons to take Balance, Climb, Jump, and Tumble. And no character should think they can safely tube their Dex stat.
Game Mechanics:
There are some game world ¡§physics¡¨ things I need to set out before play starts; issues that may be unique to this sort of setting that I¡¦ve put some thought into. In my fantasy world, there is no distinction between fresh water creatures, and sea water creatures. I¡¦m not saying I will, but if I want a dragon turtle in a large fresh water lake, then that¡¦s where he is. We will worry about water pressure, if your characters dive to extreme depths, but we will NOT worry about ¡§the bends¡¨ or decompression. You can¡¦t just swim down to the bottom of a deep sea trench without some kind of protection, magical or otherwise, but if you do swim that deep and survive, I will let you swim directly to the surface with no penalties. I don¡¦t want to have to pause the story for 2 days downtime while everyone sits in some de-compression chamber I have to create rules for or something. The nitrogen bubbles that occur in Earth divers at deep undersea depths magically dissipate somehow in Faerun.
More specifics, including notes on underwater combat, underwater skill modifiers, and so on, will be forthcoming. (See sources below)
Recommended Reading:
None is required, but I would recommend that if you are interested in the campaign, and have the funds to spare, that you look into picking up a copy of Stormwrack, particularly if you plan on playing one of the races, or taking one or more of the feats or spells out of it. I have a copy, but it may be getting passed around quite a bit, and of course DM always has dibs on his books. ƒº Additionally, I came across a REALLY great supplement from Legends and Lairs called the Seafarer¡¦s Handbook. It¡¦s available here: http://store.fantasyflightgames.com/ and elsewhere. It has a lot of mechanics for how skills work differently underwater, and ship-ship combat, and tons of other fun. Obviously, again, I will share mine for public use, but having more at the table is never a bad thing.
Beyond that, I am working on a list of nautical terms, and while I don¡¦t expect anyone to memorize them, I do hope all us landlubbers can at least learn port from starboard. (Port is left). My NPC¡¦s will also occasionally use them, hopefully more and more as the game goes on, but I will print the lists so you can all look it up if necessary.
In short, having a sea-based campaign presents a lot of challenges. It¡¦s a chance to try something different, which, again, is the whole point. Try a different race, class, spell, or prestige class than you ordinarily would. If you¡¦re thinking of playing a Halfling, consider the ¡§Shoal Halfling¡¨ from Stormwrack, which exchanges some of the halfling¡¦s racial sneakiness and +1 with slings and thrown weapons for having both gills and lungs. If you want to play a Cleric, perhaps a cleric of a Sea God with an Ocean domain? Everyone will appreciate a cleric who can call wind on a calm day on the open sea. Also, remember that in general, fire spells do not work underwater¡K
Most importantly, let¡¦s jump into this and have some fun!
