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If the players somehow managed to prevent the rhagodessa from trashing the cargo, and are determined to go ahead and sell it, then let them. Just emphasise that it'll still be profitable to them to return the Blue Nixie and the signet ring to Lavinia.
I printed out the Blue Nixie deckplans at miniatures scale for TinH, but it never occurred to me before this thread to compare the two maps. The difference is startling - though, as pointed out, the Sea Wyvern does have an extra deck to compensate for the smaller size.
About the only one I can think of that would be fully viable is a Druid with a Large flying animal companion mount (dire bat, glidewing, etc.) Outdoors, he gets plenty of use out of it as a mount, and indoors he can hit it with Reduce Animal to switch it to super-compact dungeon-friendly mode, and have it act independently while he uses his legs for a change.
That's why grapple is broken. You can have a bad ass with a sword lose to a wrestler evrytime. NEVER HAPPENS IN THE REAL WORLD. The dude with the knife always wins. I make grapplers hit the persons real armor class (none of this touch BS) and the armed person always gets a AoO which he adds the damage to the grapple. No need for that last part - if the defender's AoO succeeds and deals damage, the grapple attempt fails automatically.
Of course you could also just add in some challenges related to escaping the ship and rescuing additional crew, then give them bonus XP for beating those challenges. If you don't want to kill so many of the crew/passengers, you could have PCs rescue them, defend them from the T-Rex, set up a good hide out for them, then have the PCs head down the coast with Urol to contact Farshore and organize a rescue mission. Give them extra XP for this, boost them to 7th level, and then it's no problem playing hardball with them as they head down the coast. That sounds like a very good idea, thanks. I'll start planning out a few such challenges. Eric: Thanks very much for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I only have Dungeons #138 onwards. All: Thanks very much, these suggestions will help a lot in adjusting the adventure.
My players had some bad luck during Sea Wyvern's Wake, with several character deaths setting back the average party level significantly. Currently, one is sixth level and the rest are fifth, and they're well into Journey's End. With some luck, the Mother of All and the Mashers will push the rest of them up to 6th, but that still leaves them behind the curve going into HTBM. What I'd like to do is to try and tone down the early encounters in HTBM (but not too much - I really want that first scene with the tyrannosaur in there), and add some extra encounters to it, to help them get back on track by the end of the chapter. What are the big 'risk' encounters here - the ones that tend to seriously tax even appropriate-level parties, and will probably puree a lower-level group? Any suggestions for extra encounters, or ways to expand existing encounters without making them overpowering, would also be greatly appreciated.
One thing I've played up recently is that a city like Sasserine probably uses its waterways as its sewer system, garbage dump and industrial waste disposal. That means that, whilst the more open harbour area in the north, and the river inlets to the south, are relatively clean, the smaller waterways, such as those around Vanderboren Manor, are probably not a pleasant place to go swimming. One thing I thought of, but wasn't mean enough to actually do, was apply the Aquatic template to an Otyugh.
Are month-to-month subscriptions available for UK subscribers? I'd like to renew my subscription to ensure that I continue receiving Dragon and Dungeon until September, but I can only see options for subscriptions to US or Canada. Are there any options for UK subscribers?
The "hit with both pedipalps, two successful grapples, so I get *two* free bites, plus a normal bite" = that seems a bit much. After all, how can you grapple me with that second pedipalp and bite me when I am already grappled by the first one? I agree with that. The free bite attack comes after the rhagodessa successfully starts a grapple as part of its pedipalp attack, and it can't start a grapple on a creature it's already grappling.
The map of the Sea Wyvern was a poster-size handout provided free with issue #141. It can also serve as a top-down map for the Blue Nixie, as the vessels are similar in size and type. Alternatively, here's one I did for my online game, before the PDF for #139 was available. To be honest, though, the map in the book is perfectly useable at minis scale. When I ran the game on tabletop I printed it at that scale (each square 1" top-to-bottom), and it worked just fine despite the forced perspective (orienting it so it faced my players helped).
The Trophy Cave (K8) contains a set of old, but highly accurate sea charts. I just assumed these included a chart of the path out of the cove.
My impression with the rhagodessas was that they could use their Improved Grab attack upon opponents of equal size, but there's nothing in the text to support this, so feel free to assume that they're limited to using it against Small or smaller foes. Likewise the hungry zombies. As for the rhagodessa's full attack routine, once it hits with its first pedipalp and makes its free Grapple check plus bite, it is now grappling its opponent. This means that it doesn't threaten the squares around it, and can't attack anyone outside the grapple. However, it can still use its full attack routine against the creature it's grappling, gaining a second Bite attack against him. The rhagodessa can take advantage of the rule in Improved Grapple that lets it grapple without being considered grappled itself, thus tying up only one pedipalp, but to do so it must take a -20 penalty to its Grapple checks, for a total modifier of -9. It's unlikely to want to do that against anything larger than Tiny.
Given that Constitution already modifies hit points, aren't you basically just doubling up that effect, making a decent Constitution score doubly important - and thus doubly penalising races with CON penalties?
Somewhere in the DMG, the option of letting PCs take average rounded down hit points each level is discussed--you end up slightly on the low side, but you have some insurance against rolling a 1 two levels in a row. What I'm doing in conjunction with a high-powered point-buy campaign is giving players average rounded up each level. Actually, the option in the DMG gives average hitpoints overall (after 1st level). Basically, at odd levels above 1st you take average rounded up, and at even levels you take average rounded down. There's a table on page 198 showing the amounts per level for each die size. Personally, I just have PCs take average rounded up at every level, and have run the game with that rule for some time. It works well, and saves a lot of fussing at level up. I haven't generally used action points, but I think if I did, I'd like to save the flavor of those by making them usable for "action" situations only. It's not supposed to be something to munchkinize your character sheet with, it's supposed to be something that allows you to escape from difficulty by the skin of your teeth--a representation of the luck that the heroes always have. I'd agree with that. I'm running the game in Eberron, and Action Points make for a nice heroism-enhancer in dire situations. I wouldn't want them reduced to being favour-tokens.
IIRC you only make saves for the items if the character fails their save with a natural 1 (unless the item is targeted). Now I haven't DM'd a campaign for a couple of years so my rules knowledge may be a bit rusty. That's correct as a general case (i.e. if making a saving throw versus a fireball), however the Black Pudding is specifically described as affecting the character's armour and clothing. Other items are not mentioned, but there seems little reasonable way they could be excluded from the effect.
In my game, the pudding grappled the monk and held him for a few rounds, resulting in alot of DC 21 reflex saves which, even though the monk could add the magic item bonus to the saves (2 + 1/2 caster level of item), caused many of his magic items to be destroyed. The bad news is that, to the best of my knowledge, this isn't how saving throws for magic items work. You don't add the item's save bonus to the player's when an attended item needs to make a save - you use one or the other, whichever is highest.
Two more deaths in Sea Wyvern's Wake, both attributable to the Flotsam Ooze, and coincidentally the only two characters remaining who had been through Chapter One (which rather screwed up the Rowyn subplot, leading to a hasty but satisfying conclusion as she threw all her remaining might into one concerted attempt to slay Lavinina). That ooze is a nasty piece of work - the automatic grapple and free slam attack basically dooms anyone it catches unless the others can find a way to dish out lots of damage, very fast.
If it helps, in my game I made the Church of the Whirling Fury a religious offshoot of the Gatekeeper druidic sect. The Church revere the dragon Vvaraak, who first taught the Gatekeepers the mysteries of druidic magic, as a deity, and they follow a more cleric-based faith rather than the Gatekeepers' druidic path, though they share the Gatekeepers' calling to defend Eberron from unnatural and extraplanar threats. I did this partly because I don't know much about Eladrins, and felt more comfortable putting a dragon in that place.
A tricky one. If the rumours don't indicate that Penkus is being held against his will, then the LDs don't really have any reason to attack - as far as they're concerned, the guy was simply killed in an unfortunate accident, and Vanthus is no longer there to tell them differently, having departed for his meeting with the smugglers, so if he turns up miraculously alive, that's a good thing. Most likely, after a couple of days the LDs will send out a thief or two to infiltrate Vanderboren Manor (or wherever the PCs are claiming Vanthus is) and ask Penkus why he hasn't reported back. If captured alive, the thieves don't know about Vanthus's current operation, and will believe that he is either in the guildhall or out about town on guild business, due back in the guildhall at some point soon. With reasonable persuasion methods, they'll tell the PCs what they know about the guildhall, including providing a sketched map. Give the party an unmarked map of everything except the inner chambers past the training room, and they should soon get the hint that here's a dungeon for them to explore. If the rumours include a suggestion that Penkus intends to inform the authorities about the LDs' activities, then the group sent to investigate should instead be an assassination squad.
Bard seems a worrying choice for a group that small. They tend to do well in large parties, where their combat boosts affect a lot of allies, and poorly in smaller groups. A set of four characters can't really afford to have a generalist amongst them, and that party is definitely going to have a tough time in some encounters.
Don't be to sure. Using Core rules, yes. In my homebrew, I had a wizard player who used a combination of Monster Summoning I and Benign Transposition (Spell Compendium) to circumvent a Wall of Force that was supposed to come down much later in the game. And then there's warlocks. A warlock who takes flee the scene as an early pick for Lesser invocations can get his party past quite a few barriers.
Just to point out the Savage creatures, keep on fighting after they are at 0 hit points thanks to the Ferocity template feature, so you have to 'over-kill' them to stop them. So stepping back when they are at -5 isn't much help as they just come after you. Whoops, I missed that bit completely when I ran that chapter. Looks like my players got off lightly.
According to the background info on Drevoraz on page 42 of The Bullywug Gambit, the Sea Wyvern appears to have been Captain Javell's ship.
That's correct. In The Bullywug Gambit, my players soon learned the folly of 'over-killing' an opponent - i.e. taking it down from positives to -10 in one hit - and got into the habit of quickly backing off from a dropped opponent so as to be out of the blast-radius once it hit -10. My own 'fudging' rule is that I never roll stabilisation checks for bad guys unless it's important to do so, and simply assume that any creature dropped into negatives will expire shortly thereafter.
blah, blah, blah.Same for you, Mark. We don't know where in the AP airwalkr is, please don't spoil any surprise for him. If they've already experienced multiple instances of Lavinia getting into trouble, chances are they're beyond Bullywug's Gambit, since that's the first official point in the game at which any such events start happening.
Look at it this way: It would've been pretty pointless of her to hire you as bodyguards - which is part of your original job description - if she was never in any danger. The lady knows very well how precarious her situation is, which is precisely why she hired you. In my campaign, the first time the players started to truly respect Lavinia was at the hostage scene in Bullywug Gambit, when she freed herself from Drevoraz's grasp and immediately went for the nearest discarded weapon in order to join the battle.
I won't have Amella in my campaign, as one of my PCs is a captain, so I'll probably figure some other way to introduce him. I'm thinking of having him have been on the Sea Wyvern, but have perhaps been swimming quite a ways out when the savage tide hit the cove. I like your idea of having him hide in the hold when the players first find the Sea Wyvern. No need to ditch Amella just because she's not on the crew. By the book, she's still booked up for the trip to Farshore whether she sails as captain, crew or passenger.
The only true alterations I’d need to make would be to ‘Sea Wyvern’s Wake’, because a voyage to Farshore on Xen’drik would be all open see and then the coastal adventures. Not necessarily. Check out this route map I drew up some time ago. It starts from Sasserine's recommended starting placement, is exactly the same full distance as the greyhawk version, and allows room for all the mainland encounters before the route deviates from Khorvaire (I can link you to a list of suggested encounter placements if that's of interest). Your route would be just slightly longer, since it goes all the way to mainland Xen'drik, rather than stopping just off the coast, but that shouldn't be a problem.
Check out the conversion notes for Here There Be Monsters in the downloads area. You'll see that the Olmans in Eberron are replaced with a regional empire from the continent of Sarlona, which collapsed during a turbulent time in that nation's history, at around the same time that the original Savage Tide wiped out their offshore assets. To get something closer to what you need, you can just rearrange the dates a little - have the empire in Sarlona being defeated, and its last heirs and citizens forced into exile, undertaking the dangerous journey to start a new life - and a new empire - on the continent of Xen'drik. There, their empire thrived for centuries, until the Savage Tide wiped them out and left behind only a few scattered tribes. To help keep such an empire contained, and also to explain why the original Savage Tide didn't have further-reaching effects in Xen'drik, I suggest having the region you're using be cut off from the rest of the continent, by terrain features such as mountain ranges or deserts, or even by some more unnatural forces - remnants of the original cataclysm that still linger, somewhat like the Dead-Gray Mists around the Mournland.
After three sessions with no character deaths (though several close calls), three come along in one session! PCs: Kuro, halfling Monk, and Tevacc, human Cleric Adventure: The Bullywug Gambit Location: he basement, Vanderboren Manor Catalyst: Chief Lorpth of the Trub Glorp bullywugs, and his big stick Having fought their way successfully through Vanderboren Manor despite splitting the party three ways, and rescued Lavinia with no casualties, the party made their way down to the basement to rescue poor Liamae. Most of them stood back, tackling the threat posed by the rust monster with ranged weapons and spells. Only the completely non-ferrous monk, after a brief reassurance that his hands wouldn't dissolve if he used his Fist of Iron feat upon the beast, made the trudge through the mud to tackle the monster hand-to-antennae. Chief Lorpth and his attendants were slow to join the battle, but nevertheless, by the time the rust monster was slain they were already on top of the halfling monk. His allies soon joined him in battle, but by then he had already suffered one grievous blow from the Chief's club. Refusing to retreat, he pummelled futilely at the hideous frog-man once more, before the massive club dashed his brains out. The Cleric, Tevacc, arrived moments too late to provide healing to the brave monk, and though others were attacking his warriors, the chief focused his ire upon Tevacc next. The other bullywugs were soon slain, and Lorpth was seriously injured, but nevertheless, his massive club claimed a second victim, Tevacc dying only seconds before Chief Lorpth followed him to a muddy grave. PC: Skalath, human Dragon Shaman (bronze) Adventure: Sea Wyvern's Wake Location: Aboard the Sea Wyvern Catalyst: A big blue Slaad The voyage was going well so far, apart from that nasty incident with the Mephit, when poor Father Feres was stricken by a terrible illness. Having just recently lost their friendly Cleric, the party had nobody on board with sufficient medical knowledge to even attempt to remove the strange pulsing cyst growing in his stomach, and the closest help was six days away, back the way they'd come. Hoping to hail a passing ship, the party resolved to monitor his condition for the next few days until help could be obtained. The next day, it was Skalath's watch to look after the slowly deteriorating Feres, and he was greatly surprised when his illness began progressing more rapidly, the prominent symptom being Feres's body ripping asunder as a large Blue Slaad tore its way out of him. Managing to recover quickly from his surprise, Skalath ran out of the cabin and cried out for help. As he leaned against the door, he was greatly surprised when the Slaad stepped straight through the wall behind him. He held his ground, attempting to counter-attack, but it shrugged off his efforts, then laid into him with all four sets of claws, inflicting hideous wounds and leaving him barely standing. Then it bit his head off.
I'm running Savage Tide in Eberron, and we're about to reach Sea Wyvern's Wake. Going by the adventure notes, they're going to have around 20-30 tons of free cargo capacity for their own personal use. Now, I may be wrong - maybe they will indeed take along extra provisions, or armaments, or much-needed supplies for the colony - but something tells me their first instinct is going to be to stuff the hold full of whatever valuable commodities they can afford, so they can sell them somewhere between Sasserine and Farshore. And that means they're probably going to be making Knowledge checks, and asking me what sells well that can be bought in Sasserine. Since I'm basing the adventure in Eberron, their course from Sasserine in the Lhazaar Principalities will take them along the coasts of Q'barra, Valenar and Aerenal, and whilst Lavinia's schedule doesn't include stops at any major cities, I won't prevent them from making a minor detour, so they'll likely be looking for items to sell to one of those three places - or to the colonists of Farshore. As far as I can recall from what I've read of Sasserine so far, its chief exports are lumber, whale products and exotic animals. Lumber isn't likely to sell in either Q'barra or Aerenal, though it might fetch a decent price in Valenar. Exotic animals have permits and restrictions on export, making the startup costs steep for that market. Whale oil would sell well, but the Darfellan party member has been carrying out an anti-whaling sabotage campaign in his spare time, so I don't see him going along with that one. What else would make a good export? Any suggestions would be welcome.
The simplest solution: The PCs and all the survivors (initially a lot more of them than in the adventure as written) set off by folding boat for the trip round the island. Shortly into that journey, an attack by mashers or a similar hazard capsizes the folding boat, and the PCs, along with the now-reduced list of survivors, just barely manage to make it back to shore. And from there you pick up with the adventure as written.
I'm positioning the Isle of Dread near Xen'drik, as Kobold Lord suggested. Here's a link to a map of the route I proposed for Sea Wyvern's Wake in a post a few months back (the distance, quite coincidentally, works out to almost exactly that of the voyage in the adventure as written). Keith Baker's conversion notes for the first adventure suggest placing the IoD in the Dragonreach, but I have a hard time picturing a route from Sasserine's given location in the southern isles of the Lhazaar Principalities to anywhere in the Dragonreach that will include all the coastal encounters used in Sea Wyvern's Wake.
At Renkrue, the party might find an Olman druid if high enough level to Reincarnate a fallen character, though they'll likely have to pay in some form of service rather than gold.
Anyone converted the map of the Blue Nixie in Dungeon #139 to a "top down" type format? I'm going to be DMing STAP online and can't use a standard 3D type map. I made a top-down version for use in my online game. You can see it here. However, when I ran the game on tabletop, I just blew up the magazine's map to a scale where the squares were all 1" tall and printed it out over about 5 sheets of A4. The perspective actually didn't look too odd.
You said they let the thief go. Wouldn't he immediately go and alert the guild to be on watch at the entrance whose location he gave away?
I recall this question came up before, awhile ago. I've found the relevant thread in the archive: What's That in the Background? In summary, it's basically just the fantasy equivalent of a lava lamp. EDIT: Don't look at that thread. I'd completely forgotten that it included an absolutely terrible attempt at a pun from me.
Does it attack first with its bite, then with its pedipalps, then if it grapples its bite again? Potentially getting two bite attacks in one round? It attacks with the pedipalps first, then the bite, but the bite attack is separate from its free bite at a grappled opponent, so yes, it can potentially bite more than once in a round.
Huh, the romance in my game is somewhat scary. You have my sympathies. So far, the only character in my online game to have disclosed his romantic attachment is the goblin wizard, who mentioned that he sleeps with his dire bat, and when questioned more closely on that point said, and I quote, "They are intimate, but there are no unnatural acts involved." I'm glad I've been letting him dictate the dire bat's actions - that's one PC / NPC romance I'm not ready to tackle.
Did you read out the full flavour text? If so, recovering that money is part of what they were hired to do. I presume they at least managed to get the signet ring? If not, her reaction should be "get back ut there and finish the job!" If they did recover the ring, and she knows they've got the money and they show no signs of giving it up, have her act disgruntled and say "Well, you seem to have already claimed your payment." 100 pp is enough to cover the payout she offered them if it's a party of five characters, and if there are more or fewer, well, close enough. They're off to a bad start, though - maybe reduce the monthly salary she offers to 80 gp.
The #141 Web Supplement will hopefully include the deck plans, once it's available. If you can't wait that long, the Sea Wyvern is a Caravel, so you could substitute the generic Caravel deckplans from Stormwrack without too much trouble. They're available here: The Caravel is the bottom image.
I think the Player's Guide to the Savage Tide contains more than enough information to get players familiar with Sasserine. The Sasserine guide in #139 is probably information overload, and contains some information the average citizen may not know, such as the true nature of the Shrine of St. Worgul, and certain Scarlet Brotherhood connections. I think you'd be better off having your players read the Player's Guide (and preferably have reference copies at the gaming table), and use the Sasserine guide as a DM's resource, providing the information to the players in response to successful Knowledge checks.
Thanks for the suggestions, everybody. As it turned out, my players decided to return the Locate Object plan to the back burner, and have one more try at conventional questioning in Shadowshore. This time their Gather Info checks were successful, and they've just been intercepted by Shefton after questioning Panchi, so the plot is actually continuing right on course. I have a feeling they'll be swift to resurrect the plan once they finish with Parrot Island, though, and at that point I think I'll let it lead them directly to the Lotus Dragons guildhall.
One thing to bear in mind is that, like Diplomacy, the Wild Empathy check (or indeed Charm Animal) only improves the tyrannosaur's attitude toward the druid. If the druid isn't alone at the time, then anyone else there is still food as far as the dinosaur's concerned.
I'm suddenly getting a vision of an intelligent Shadow Pearl in the mode of the smart bomb from Dark Star, with Vanthus having to constantly talk it out of detonating while still on board his ship. Sorry, bit of a tangent there.
Have the party be a group of shipwreck survivors in a lifeboat, who come upon the Blue Nixie adrift just off the coast. When they board her, they find the apparent crew - Vark and his thugs - all dead and partly dismembered, the cause being the rhagodessa which got loose while they were en route to their smuggling rendezvous. It's taken residence back in the hold as its lair, and they must battle it to claim control of the ship. There are insufficient provisions aboard to make port anywhere but Sasserine, and when they arrive Lavinia quickly gets the authorities involved, managing to throw up enough legal entanglements that in the end it's easier for them to take the reward she offers and accept employment with her than to try and claim salvage rights on the ship.
As I understand it, they're mostly established organisations in Greyhawk, which is the default setting for the campaign, but if you're unfamiliar with the setting, it's fairly easy to just make stuff up. If you intend to run the campaign in either Forgotten Realms or Eberron, the conversion notes for the first couple of chapters are finally available, so you can check them out for details of where these organisations fit into those settings. You can find the downloads section here. EDIT: I forgot to mention that searching for the named organisations in Wikipedia, adding 'greyhawk' as an extra search parameter, tends to yield useful articles describing them.
There's nothing about St. Worgul anywhere else; what's been written about her in the Savage Tide adventures is what there is. As stated in the Sasserine guide in #139, there never was a St. Worgul. She is a story concocted by worshippers of Olidamarra in Sasserine so that they can create a shrine as a legitimate front to their own worship of Olidammara, allowing them to meet and worship without being persecuted.
One thing to bear in mind is that by this point in the adventure it's been ten days and 360 miles since the party have last seen the Blue Nixie. If they have access to sending they may have a rough idea of how Lavinia's fared in the intervening time, but if not, they've no reason to assume that anyone with the means and motivation to help them will be attracted to any signal they send out before less friendly creatures are.
That's a very good idea. I may just have to go with that one. Maybe even play it up as an aborted attempt to pin the blame for his parents' death upon Penkus.
Since he already cleaned out the vaults the rings is rather worthless to him now. I thought of that, but he did still have one vault to clear - the one the PCs and Lavinia find the remaining family funds in. It has been two days since then, so I guess maybe he could have made another attempt on that vault, learned that his sister was making enquiries about him, and got rid of the ring just in case - he is fairly smart, after all, so the use of locate object might just occur to him.
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