Timblewith's page

I'm currently wrapping up the Skulls and Shackles campaign and there's still some of the crew from the first ship around.

Rosie Cusswell is the third mate on their ship.

Sandara serves as ship "medic" and as an adviser in all matters Besmara since none of the pc's are knowing about the whims of Besmara but they all try to give some homage.

Cogward is around as lead rigger, but hasn't really gone up in the world.

Conchobar captains the PC's second ship and handles the waters around Tidewater Rock with Owlbear as his personal bodyguard.

Ambrose Koop is still the cook on the main ship.

All of the other crew members were convinced to join thanks to a particularly impressive max damage crit from a longbow that ended the final encounter of book 1 before it could start followed by some diplomacy and intimidate rolls but they were all lost at around book 3 or 4 after an impressive accident occurred, they almost actually lost everyone on their ship thanks to it.

But the shining star of the original crew is Fipps. This poor bastards been dragged along by them from the very beginning almost. The pc's were so effective with their rolls in the first bullying combat that even though none of them were trained in unarmed fighting they were able to knock unconcious 3 of the 4 bullies in a round and then intimidate Fipps in to backing off. As they went up the stairs the one at the end looked at him and asked "Are you coming or not? You'll get lashes if you don't." and so Fipps scurried up behind them very confused. Later, thanks to the commiseration that the pc's showed to him when master scourge and mister plug decided to punish him for not carrying out his job of beating them senseless well enough he started following them around like a lost puppy.

Of course this kind of falls in line with the entire lot of their plans throughout this entire path. They've managed to bribe, intimidate, and charm almost every feasibly swayed npc to their side and on to one of their ships and even some of the more non feasible ones. They convinced a damn Manticore to join them since they'd give him corpses and he would have to do almost nothing to get them other than look scary. Not to mention the half dozen or so enemies who are willing to jump ship for a good deal.

So....I have a question regarding the interactions of Baleful Polymorph and Reincarnation. I'm running the Skulls & Shackles adventure path and one of my pcs got baleful polymorphed in to a hagfish. During the course of the next couple hours, and the hilarious hagfish roleplaying, they attempted to use her for other puzzles and traps before finally deciding to kill her and reincarnate her rather than pay the exorbitant amount of money a remove enchant spell would cost to maybe cure her. So she's agreed to the reincarnation but what happens to the equipment that fused in to her body from the baleful polymorph...does it all go poof?

This is important not only for combat purposes since it was a knife master rogue...but she was also a pirate lord and had the mark of office so if that's dissapeared as well there's an interesting power issue that they're going to have to address. I can make a ruling myself but I'd rather see if there's any hard rules on the effects of a dead baleful polymorphed character first.

Carrion Crown and Skulls and Shackles are the two hardest from my experience running them.

Carrion Crown is the only AP i've had a tpk on (Ghost killed the mage, no one was a cleric, and they may have not had any means of dealing with the problems after that).

But the prize for deadliest module definitly goes to Skulls and Shackles at the moment. So far there have been 7 character deaths and we're only at the begining of the Isle of Eyes. The list of deaths is pretty entertaining though.

- Human Barbarian survives shipwreck only to get eaten by the whale trying to save Fipps, an npc that they managed to turn to their side through a combination of intimidation and saving his life...3 times by this point

- Gnome Sorcerer gets dragged off the ghost ship by the ghost captain and drowns before the rest of the party can rescue her or break the bell

- Half-Orc Druid gets torn to shreds in one round by the four armed sahuagin boss where the cursed throne was located.

- Goblin Witch Necromancerthingy eaten by the monster that protects the aboleth near the sunken ship they were trying to salvage.

- Human Bloodrager killed session after creation, when the party storms the herbalist hut during the day, by all of the guards.

- Halfling Rogue killed in boss fight between the alchemist who's running the chellish spy network and her pet and the rest of the party. (Almost was a tpk but the alchemist was stopped one round before the two bleeding out members of the party would have bit it. This is also the only character to be successfully revived because the other party members went and sold enough stuff to revive her)

- Human arcanist(Formerly alchemist) murdered being greedy by the Great Mother (Trapper) in the cyclopes lair. When the monster crits for 77 points of damage and instagrabs the caster....they're kind of out of luck. Later revived by the genie in the well with her one wish for the year....without any of his spellbooks. Since as an arcanist he carried all of his books with him, and had never made any copies. So now retired and still effectivly dead.

This is....2 sessions in to book 4 at the moment. My party has already decided to ignore the fort, not look around the rest of the island, and leave setting up a base camp to the crew near the cyclopses docks. They also want to go back to the actual fort the cyclopses hold out in, and clear them all out tomorrow...after they've found the murdered corpses of their friends. I'm expecting a lot of people to die, especially since it'll be a boss fight, and one of my players always dies on boss fights or pre-boss fights (She made the barbarian, gnome sorcerer, goblin witch, and the bloodrager).

While there have been plenty of fun ones at the mid and high levels in some of my games, the one I enjoyed the most was recently in the Wrath of the Righteous ap. We had just recently started the game, and i was new to the group, having been brought in by a friend to fill up an open spot and bring a new outlook to the table. Since it had been a while since i had gotten to play, and I never get to play casters, I decided to play an abjuration wizard with a compulsion to be heroic (The group uses an old Central Casting book for character backstory quirks, you get to decide how they are applied but you have to put them in somehow)

So for the first situation, we're making our way out of the caverns we've been trapped in for a while, slogging our way through room after room of his altered encounters for our increased acl thanks to party size, when we come across a large iron door with a bar in front of it and an ornate lock. We check it over, I detect magic, and it is set up to automatically trigger a summons upon opening or interacting with the door. In the meantime, our meathead barbarian and our dwarf ranger are making a racket removing the bar and trying to batter down the lock, with our paladin exhorting them to do so because he can sense a great evil presence on the other side. So right before they trigger the summons, i tell them to knock it off for a second. Our paladin, being the reasonable chap that he is, asks me for a reason to delay charging through the door to slay the evil beast on the other side that has been approaching the door this entire time.

I look at him, and say "Look, the entire time we've been down here all we've encountered from the people guarding this place are inexperienced lackies and their bullied native henchmen. Even the demons that are here to support them are insignificant compared to those that attacked the city up above, because the people down here aren't a threat. So the thing behind the door logically shouldn't be too much stronger, or it would be up above slaughtering all of the civilians and our friends."

Paladin "Ok....but why shouldn't we open the door"

Me "Simple, if you remember the training we went through we were taught a lot of basic information on demons and devils. They tend to have certain abilities to summon things and cast arcane magic. Following me so far?"

Paladin "Yeah..."

Me "So if a weak demon with arcane spells summons up a few friends behind that door, it'll be a challenge for us fighting it now that its been able to magically protect itself, and bring in a few friends to help out. BUT, if we put that lovely bar back on the door, go back down the corridor a bit, and have something to eat and drink before we open the door all of their abjuration magics durations should have ended, and the extra demons should be returned to their native plane and won't bother us further. It will allow us to conserve our resources, and give us time to prepare for finally leaving this damnable cavern."

Paladin "Put the bar back on the door"

The look on the GMs face was priceless, it turned out that there was a second summon i didn't catch that was the big bad behind the door, but as a summon it only stayed for 20 minutes with how he planned out the dungeon. So an hour later there was no demon to slay and we could proceed safely on, escorting our wounded npcs back to the hellscape that was the city.