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I also had a number of undeveloped passenger NPC's wash up on the beach (ala "Lost") after the Sea Wyvern ran aground. This gave me a pool of bodies that could be "redshirted" Star Trek style without killing off the more interesting NPC's like Amella, Avner, Urol and Tavey, while still maintaining the suspense and horror of the journey.

Given the high PC mortality rate and extreme remoteness of the trip across the Isle of Dread I found it was somewhat difficult to plausibly introduce new PC's to the group after a player's character had fallen.
As a secondary use, this semi-anonymous group of NPC's also provided a source of new PCs. One of these undefined passengers would conveniently "rise to the occasion" after one of the PCs died. I even let the players choose names they liked for the passenger NPC's in case they needed a new character.

DM: "Ok, cross Winnie off the passenger list, she just got dragged off the cliff by the gargoyles and dropped into the sea."
Player: "Aww... she was one of mine!"


SCENE:

During the Brotherhood Blockade event, the Sea Wyvern has engaged and defeated the Scarlet Brotherhood ship Purity's Prow. All pirates have been captured or killed. Damaged during the preceding ship to ship combat, Purity's Prow lists to one side and is rapidly taking on water. It is clearly going to sink in short order.

PC Human Rogue:
"Hey I'm gong to jump onto the pirate ship and start searching it for loot before it sinks!"

DM: "Ok, no problem. You leap aboard but you can hear the rushing of water surging in belowdecks."

PC Human Rogue:
"Ok, I run downstairs and start searching for cabins."

DM: "You run downstairs to find the deck is already awash in knee deep water and rising rapidly. You see some doors along the passage way."

PC Human Rogue:
"I start opening doors and searching the rooms beyond."

DM: (makes a couple search rolls) "You don't find anything of use or value in the first couple of rooms, but the water has now risen to your chest."

PC Human Rogue:
"Screw it, I hold my breath and continue searching the rest of the ship."

At this point the DM determines that the ship has been sinking for more minutes than the d% roll that the Stormwrack rules (p. 12) say to roll for.

DM: (to the rest of the PC's aboard the Sea Wyvern) "You see Purity's Prow slip finally slip below the waves. However, you realize your companion is still aboard."

PC Druid: "I shape change into a porpoise and leap in after him!"

DM: "Ok, the ship will sink at a rate of ...( checks page 12 of Stormwrack again and reads "After a ship goes under the surface, it "falls" at a rate of 200 feet per round until it reaches the bottom") ... ah ... err.. holy crap!"

All Players: "Uh oh..."

DM: (to Human Rogue PC) "Uh, make a Fortitude save as you suddenly feel a tremendous crushing pressure on your eardrums. Oh, by the way, you're pretty sure you see a large chest in the back of one of the better appointed cabins."

PC Human Rogue: "Really?" (successfully rolls fortitude save) "Ok I head for the chest."

DM: (to Druid/porpoise) "Ok you shape change into a porpoise as soon as you hit the water. Below you can see Purity's Prow plunging rapidly into the depths. Very rapidly indeed."

PC Druid: "Ok I swim down to the ship and try to get the rogue out"

DM: "Unfortunately the ship is sinking at a fantastic rate of 200 feet per round and a porpoise can only go 80."

Players: (much cursing and disbelief)

DM: (to Rogue PC on Purity's Prow) "Make two more fortitude saves"

PC Rogue: (makes one save, fails the other)

DM: "Take 4 points of crushing pressure damage"

PC Human Rogue: "Screw the chest, I'm getting the hell out of here"

PC Halfling Rogue still on Sea Wyvern: "I grab an empty crate and leap over. Once I'm in the water I'll fill the crate turn it upside down and climb into it."

DM: "According to the hydrodynamic physics presented in Stormwrack, the crate with the halfling in it hurtles downward at 200 feet per round. It tears past the porpoise who is straining with all her might to swim downward."

PC Halfling Rogue: "Sweet!"

DM: "Start making depth pressure saves guys".

Druid and Rogues begin rolling. DM rolls 4d6.

DM: (to PC Human Rogue) "Ok take 12 points of damage as the ship slams into the bottom at 800 feet of depth"

PC Human Rogue: "Yark! With pressure damage I'm unconscious!"

The human rogue eventually dies from ongoing pressure damage and the halfling and druid recover his body The halfling survives the depth only through sheer luck and a bit of help from the porpoise.

My point with all of this, is does the ship sinking rate specified in Stormwrack seem completely unreasonable to anybody else? We're talking about wooden vessels here. Maybe somebody with more practical physics knowledge can tell me if a wooden sailing ship sinking at around 33 feet per second (200 feet / 6 seconds)is absurd or not.


If he's so insistent about it, I'd just say "Ok sure". Then, after his character walks into the plasma, gets burned to a crisp and dies everyone can laugh at him, especially you.


The best part of the Vittriss Bale encounter is its completion is not essential to move the storyline along. All the useful information has usually already been attained from Fetor Abradius's room. In fact the only incentive for the PC's to undertake this brutal encounter is to get XP for Vittriss and recover his hoard.

But its fun to use it as an opportunity to give the PC's an unholy beating, especially if they made quick work of the other denizens of Karran-Kural.

The way I ran the encounter was this:

When Vittriss becomes aware of the party coming down the corridor via the alarm spell, he casts mirror image, mage armor etc. on himself and climbs above the entranceway using spider climb. The hapless party stands on the ledge gawking at the soul pillars and the ice bridge unaware of the pending doom lurking directly above them. One of the PCs may look up at the ceiling, or if they don't have a drop of acid land on somebody's shoulder (from Vittriss ramping up for his breath weapon attack). As soon as everybody looks up, they'll see up to half of dozen nasty as hell dracoliches leering down at them. Have everybody make their Will saves vs. his Frightful Presence at this time. Since the DC is 26, a lot of them won't make the save and suddenly find themselves petrified, unable to move as he unleashes his devastating tempest breath weapon. This will knock all but the largest characters prone and even large size creatures will be checked and unable to run away against the blast. If you want to be really nasty, have Vittriss do his petrifying gaze attack to get anybody who wasn't affected by the Frightful Presence effect. After that, Vittriss will drop down and start ripping up immobilized PC's with his savage improved multiattacks.

My group barely survived the first two rounds and wasn't able to land a single blow against him before the party wizard recovered from the fear effect and teleported everybody out.


I too find the Player version maps invaluable as I use them on an LCD projector with a laptop and unveil parts of the map as the party progresses. I would much rather have an original quality map released by Paizo without the DM "layer" on it than to use my (or someone else's) Photoshop hack job. That said, if the only option is a Photoshopped scan, I'd rather not spend 3 hours cleaning it up when some other DM out there has already invested the time to do so.

My concern is that if a hard-line policy is implemented that comes down on above-board sites like therpgenius.com, its only going to push the sharing of game material underground and end up on P2P networks. As a community we should all be concerned about this since it affects the viability of future high quality products being released.

I don't believe that WotC posting their complete MM image galleries on their website has hurt their sales of Monster Manuals much. However, they've clearly defined that wizards.com is the only site that is allowed to make them available.

A possible solution is to have Paizo extend the user community section of their website to be more than just messageboards sort of like therpgenius.com. They would then maintain control of their intellectual property and have veto power over anything that's posted. I feel rather than hurting sales, having more material available for the adventure paths, particularly in the form of community contributions, would permit the AP's to take on a life of their own. The end result would be an increased interest in the series and selling more of the core product. The reason the rpggenius.com exists is because there was a customer need that wasn't being fulfilled. I'm sure people would rather come to an officially sanctioned source for their stuff. If I were Paizo, I'd be looking at this as an opportunity rather than a problem.


Interesting... why did Dungeon Assistant Editor James Sutter withdraw his post in this topic advising Ikor and Kormandor to remove the files from Ikor's site and therpggenius.com?

Is it because Dungeon has decided they're cool with this practice or they're waiting on an official decision or some other reason?

I for one am very interested in what Paizo's official stance is on user communities sharing useful digitized game material that isn't officially available.

Or is this one of those things thats like the First Rule of Fight Club.


I Photoshopped the original map to remove the lantern path (its on
http://therpgenius.com/ BTW). I gave the players a copy of that map drew an X on it and told them "You're there" and proceded to describe the lanterns path in terms of distance and direction. At each direction change the players marked an X on the map and drew a line back to the previous point of change. When they got teleported back to the beginning, they now had an exact route to retrace their steps to their last point of progress.

I wish Paizo would have released an official player handout version of the map because the one I made is kinda rough and low-res. Like you guys say, its a difficult section to run as intended without some sort of map.


I used the advice given that said have the townspeople start referring to the PC party as "the other guys". The idea behind this was to encourage them to adopt a group name rather than to be cast in the shadow of the Stormblades.

Unfortunately, they decided to officially adopt the title "The Other Guys". *sigh*


Raymond Poupadis wrote:


Yeah. But the PCs are in the middle of the desert, so they'll probably end up trying to drag Alek along. Just having the resurrect or raise dead not work would feel kind of lame.

Raise Dead is one of the few spells that I force the players to come up with the material component for. If my group decided they wanted to raise Alek my first response would be "Ok, you got your 5,000 GP worth of diamonds ready?". In my group the answer would easily be "no" but had they had the diamonds, it would really tough for them to rationalize using them on a crazy paladin rather than saving them for somebody in the party.

I also found it was a hard sell to get my party, who tends to have a mercenary attitude in general, to join a mysterious stranger for a romp on the outer planes. I had Kaurophon point out that they were 500 miles from anywhere, in the middle of the desert, and they were running low on supplies. I kinda felt like I was railroading them, but when the situation was put in perspective for them, the choice was easy.


I second the grapple rules issue. My players and I have pretty much memorized most of the frequently used rules, but a grapple check always requires a flipping to the grapple page in the PHB for consultation.
For a rule that gets used as frequently as grappling does, I think it could be more streamlined.


I once had a running gag with an aged horse named "Humphrey". One of the players, in a hurry to join up with the rest of the party who'd already left town rushed into the first horse dealer's establishment he found and demanded to buy their best riding horse. The enterprising merchant sensing an easy sale, turned to his assistant and shouted "This gentleman wants the best we have! Bring out Humphrey". The PC inspected the horse, and although maybe a little bit older than he would have liked, appeared to be a sound mount. After quickly negotiating a saddle, tack and harness into the deal, the PC paid the merchant while the assistant readied the horse. Deal completed, the PC and Humphrey raced out of town to catch up to the rest of the group.

Half a days ride later, having caught up with the party, the group continued toward their destination. A short time later, the procession was brought to a halt when Humphrey suddenly quit walking and simply stood in the road looking unhappy. The PC who had purchased the horse proudly exclaimed to the rest of the party "Aha! I bet Humphrey has an extraordinary listen skill! He must hear something." All the PC's make listen checks and much to their disgust the only sound they hear is a loud groaning and rumbling coming from Humphrey's stomach. "Ugh, I think your horse is hungry." one of the other PCs says. Greatly annoyed and somewhat embarrassed, Humphrey's owner dismounts and begins removing the bit and bridle from Humphrey's mouth. At this time he discovers that Humphrey doesn't have a tooth in his mouth (a result of an abusive previous owner). He leads Humphrey over to a patch of grass to feed, but Humphrey just stands there looking at the PCs sadly. "I don't think he can chew the grass" the halfling PC pipes up. Cursing, the PC who owns Humphrey gets back on him and the party continues on, although now, hungry, Humphrey will only move at half movement rate no matter how much "encouragement" the PC's give him.

At the next town, Humphrey's owner tries selling him, but all potential buyers are savvy enough to check the horse's mouth first. As the group is fairly low level, the PCs investment in Humphrey was the better part of his savings so he can't afford to replace him. The party later discovers that Humphrey can only eat oatmeal or gruel which becomes an inconvenience while traveling.

Later mishaps reveal that if the party hasn't stopped and prepared a hot meal of gruel or oatmeal for Humphrey at least once a day he drops to half movement and obnoxious sounds emanate from his belly (hey, he's old).
After all this inconvenience and having their location given away to enemies by the horse's digestive system on more than one occasion, Humphrey eventually gets abandoned by the roadside.

Humphrey, as any good running gag does, appears at various times throughout the party's adventures. Sometimes he's the mount of an NPC, sometimes he's stabled at an inn the group stays at, sometimes he's the source of strange sounds coming from the woods.

One day, to get me back, one of the player characters purchased Humphrey from his current owner at something like double the price the original PC bought him for. He then immediately led poor old Humphrey to a butcher shop and donated the horse to the butcher for free. He stuck around until he was sure that the butcher had "processed" Humphrey.

Humphrey had his final revenge when unknowingly the PC's were served "Humphrey meat" as they dined at the finest inn in town. The waiter, while clearing away their plates says "So, did you enjoy your meal of the finest steed? ... er.. I mean steer"

Full Name

Deadshot

Race

Human

Classes/Levels

Assassin

Gender

Male

Size

Medium

Age

old enough to know better

Special Abilities

never miss

Alignment

Neutral Great!

Location

Belle Reve

Languages

English

Occupation

see above

Strength 13
Dexterity 20
Constitution 15
Intelligence 15
Wisdom 12
Charisma 12