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Name of PC: Murka! Avertin
Class and Level: male half-orc Fighter 9
Adventure: Shimmerglens
Catalyst: Juju zombie ogre fighter

So Chapter 3 has not been so kind to my party! I knew that one of my team would get bored in the Shimmerglens without anything to fight so I slammed out a quick encounter - a couple ogres and one of the Kreegs, the ogres that Lamatar and Myriana managed to kill before being ambushed, transformed into juju zombies by the fen's twisted magic. Murka! the brave half-orc was chopped down by 73-hp crit and a failed Fort save against massive damage.

Lacking diamonds and having just learned that Myariana can cast reincarnation, the team returned to her to plead their case. The nymph was unconvinced...until the ranger rolled a 20 on a Perform (dance) check and reminded her, for just a moment, of the things she once loved. Murka!, now Murka'a the half-elf, lives again to fight another day.

Name of PC: Aily Everlocks AGAIN
Class and Level: female human Rogue 9
Adventure: Skull's Crossing AGAIN
Catalyst: Grazuul

Having been forced to flee from him earlier when he knocked out both the rogue and the fighter, the party figured they were prepped and ready for a second match and came busting into his lair ready to go. The cunning troll was, alas, hiding in his side room. Once the party split up to find him, it was pretty easy for him to grab Aily for some underwater shredding action. Aily was saved again by the cleric and after the wizard polymorphed the fighter into a giant octopus, the scrag had no chance.

Name of PC: Aily Everlocks
Class and Level: female human Rogue 9
Adventure: Skull's Crossing
Catalyst: Skulltaker troll

The fight was going great until she got hit with a rend attack. Luckily saved a permanent death by a nearby cleric of Sarenrae who'd just learned breath of life!

IIRC, there is a long stretch where the party only encounters haunts. Mixing in some normal combat encounters might help to keep this player interested.

Yeah, I took a look a while back, and as I recall there's something over a dozen haunts and basically no substantial encounters other than Iesha (which the party can and "should" avoid to make things easier on themselves) and the basement.

Yes, you can always thrown some ghoul encounters in there.

Ghouls creeping up from the basement, maybe the ghost or poltergeist of a former resident or servant. The Attic Whisperer seems appropriately horrible as well.

Thanks for your thoughts folks! I think I'll plan to run it pretty close to as written and just have some ooky stuff on hand behind the screen to toss out if and when attention starts to fade.

Hythlodeus wrote:

eljaspero wrote:

has anybody had this sort of "another haunt, yawn" experience there?

nope. my group loved it.

My group (of 6 players, at the time) also enjoyed Missgivings and the haunts. They work best when you approach not as encounters that deal some damage or have an effect associated with, but as a method for imparting tiny pieces of the background story to the players. Haunts are as much a storytelling device as anything.

And if you really feel your players are bored with them, you can always spice things up by adding more encounters between them, or encounter elements to them.

Lastly, since your playing with some new people this time around, the group dynamics might have changed enough to you see more enjoyment from them.

-Skeld

You certainly hit on many points here I've thought about as well - if you change the haunts to monster encounters, how do you make sure they still tell the Foxglove story?

I do hope for a different dynamic this run through - but one of the "old" players in particular can tune out pretty quickly if there's nothing to smash. I've read elsewhere about the technique of putting the haunt effects and story on a piece of paper or 3x5 card to hand to the person it affects. The rest of the party just sees the direct physical effects of what happens to them, hopefully creating more tension and creepiness.

Hi all,

I'm running a fairly large (6) group of players through RotRL and we're just in the transition from Ch. 1 to 2. Three of my players, as well as myself, played through about half of it maybe 2 years ago - no problems with spoiling or anything like that - but I recall that we really didn't dig The Misgivings. Once we figured out how haunts function, it felt, mechanically, like there was nothing to but roll for initiative, make your save or deal with the damage, then move on to the next.

It seems like many teams have enjoyed the weirdness of the manor - but has anybody had this sort of "another haunt, yawn" experience there? Has anybody rewritten any, or all, of the haunts, to something more like a traditional encounter so a PC other than a cleric has something to do?

Name of PC: Calrys
Class/Level: Half-Elf Evoker 4
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Ripnugget (restatted to Cavalier)
Story: Despite being low on resources from chopping their way through the residents of Thisteltop, the brave party chose to press on and confront the goblin in his lair. Warned of their presence, Ripnugget had already mounted his trusty gecko. As soon as the fight began, he issued a challenge to the party's wizard and charged...confirming a crit for 42 points of damage. Calrys was maybe buried at sea or possibly cremated by the priest of Sarenrae; an orphan of the Turandarock Academy, he is survived by nobody but leaves behind a broken-hearted Shayliss Vinder.

Having played D&D and Pathfinder together for many years, my party definitely knows how to minmax a team. This, however, they chose not to do. The team:

Sylph Warpriest of Cayden Cailean
Elf Wizard (water elementalist)
Ratfolk Alchemist
Halfling Bard

It's the little things that make the group so wonderfully awful. We did a point-buy, so the wizard dumped Str, Wis and Cha - she is a source of endless humor for social interactions. There is but one member of the party who even knows which end of a martial weapon is the pointy one, and her Str is 12. The bard, as lots of threads have noted before, is a natural for this adventure path - assuming, of course, he decides to max out his social skills. Which this one has not. The alchemist is actually a decent combatant, but this one is paranoid and disease-riddled, so nobody trusts or even likes him.

Yep, this one's gonna be a doozy.

Based upon my party's pathetic offensive capabilities, they chose to christen their ship the Wind's Endurance. As their captain is a follower of Cayden Cailean, their flag is something on the order of a black background with a hound holding a beer stein, standing on a white cloud.

Howdy all,

I've been poking around here and the intertubes at large but haven't found much help, so here goes:

Due to nobody's fault but my own, my PCs are probably going to Besmara's Throne in a couple of weeks. None of them are active Besmara worshippers, so they shouldn't get themselves involved in attempting The Voyage - they should just be dropping off a couple of NPCs.

That said, material on the island is fairly scant. Have any of your campaigns gone to Besmara's Throne? If so...what happened?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

Did anyone add Ship in a Bottle, Armada in a Bottle, or Shipyard in a Bottle to Kerdak Bonefist's Trophy Hall at K1?

Nice! Totally gonna steal this one.

Wormwood Mutiny, Day 4.

Name: Montague Jack, male human Druid 1
Cause: Shipmates

There is a special condition specific to this AP in "Wormwood Mutiny" that basically states when a character boards an enemy ship during shipboard combat, he's flat-footed for the first round afterwards due to climbing the gunwhals or somesuch.

If you're using Pirates of the Inner Sea, how about changing the Riddleport trait "Eager Combatant" to have this effect?

I suppose they could just get captured and can be rescued with the rest when they are strong enough to actually fight him. Might even work out better to have the two disruptful chars out of the picture for a little bit.

If you have it, I would recommend checking pp. 44-45 of Chapter 5:

I am looking at fire as she bears and that seams a better resource then stormwrack.

FaSB definitely has its merits - everybody gets to do something in a ship battle, instead of just the captain and the gunner, and it would be great for a party that has the time and money to build their own ship. The reason I'm thinking to hybridize is that FaSB presumes the use of cannons, which do considerably more damage than ballistae and catapults. They deal with this by making ships a bit tougher, but it is waaaaay too easy for me to see my party to just bombard every encounter in the book to dust from a distance. So, I'm planning to use FaSB combat rules, but with the Stormwrack ships.

I'm with tbug on this - I think you should reward your players' spite. You note that Harrigan hasn't done anything to them since the regatta: maybe it's time he took notice of their attempts to kill him. Poison their grog; attack them when they're at anchor; capture their crew and ship (to replace the one they cost him) when they're adventuring ashore, provoking a rescue mission. Make him into the villain they want him to be.

Don't forget, too, that the villains we hate most are the ones that keep getting away. If it's important to you to set up the planned confrontations with him, let them fight Harrigan - but give him ways to escape at the last moment if they pull it off. Dust of disappearance, potions of gaseous form or fly, all sorts of shenanigans could hold off his death until it makes narrative sense.

eljaspero wrote:

It strikes me that ships in Skull & Shackles move at the speed of plot - they get where they need to go whenever they need to get there.

nope, nope, nope....

Its important for a wizard to keep track of travel time, for hedge wizard and scribe scroll feat, its a money maker.

Obviously, no disagreement here. But unless you're going to model sailing ship speeds, sea conditions, crew quality, tides, wind speed and direction, and random luck, you might as well just be a DM and make some narrative-driven decisions:

Is the party getting low on potions and scrolls? Fine, the winds are light and it takes them an extra day or two to get where they're going. Are they rolling in cash and just crafting stuff to sell? Strong tail winds take them right where they need to go, and if they choose to dawdle (which they very well might), they run the risks of pirate hunters, storms, and bored crews.

I'm looking into this as well - hybridizing the Stormwrack ships and movement rules with the officer combat options from Fire as She Bears!, hoping to find a decent balance between the fast playability of 3.x and the granularity (and cannons) of FaSB.

It strikes me that ships in Skull & Shackles move at the speed of plot - they get where they need to go whenever they need to get there.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I spoke with the players. During the naval combat (which they also got whupped at), Tessa sent some ships to help. Her ships got destroyed as well. So, one of the players will actually be a captured Tessa, and the rest will be people she recruits. They are going to start out captured in Harrigan's jail.

Ooo, sounds good! Let us know how it plays out!

Hi,

There was a TPK in the Black Tower. Since everyone had seats on the pirate council, had a fleet, and all that stuff, I'm trying to figure out the best way to work the set of new PCs into the story.

Any suggestions?

Rene

Have you specifically introduced the entire Shackles Council to them? If not, it certainly seems one option would be to bring in the new party as an existing member of the Council and her crew. Note that the entire Council doesn't have to be present for it to conduct its business - maybe the replacement party was away on an extended expedition.

Alternately - since the resolution to the Path is overthrowing Bonefist, maybe that, instead of becoming Hurricane King, is the new party's goal. Maybe they've been hired by Bonefist's old enemies to take revenge, or maybe they're hired by another regional government and have to race Cheliax to seize Port Peril in its moment of weakness.

It also seems that one of the other prominent members of the Council - Tessa Fairwind or the Master of the Gales come to mind - could gather and back the new party as rivals, under their control, to Bonefist.

Since everyone seems so concerned. Here's the ship.

player spent like 2 weeks studying ship engineering or something like that

https://mavrickindigo-s-skull-shackles.obsidianportal.com/items/grand-audac ity

It may already be too late, but for what it's worth:

Making one of something that is five times as big as something else does not merely take five times as much material and time. Building a skyscraper is not just a matter of building five office buildings stacked on top of each other. The Grand Audacity is basically unprecedented in the Shackles, if not in the world - feel free to up the costs and gimp its stats, if you decide it's actually possible at all. Sure, it may be based on a historical ship, but that is a ship built at the pinnacle of the Age of Sail - which Skull & Shackles most definitely is not. Sure, the Wright brothers could have tried to build a 747 out of canvas and sticks, but their DM would have been entirely within his rights to make it cost ten billion dollars and blow up in their faces.