I ran the Black Magga encounter in my last game session and it was quite fun! The PCs were able to drive the creature back to the Claybottom Lake!
But this would mean that the creature now lives in the Claybottom lake...
Having such a creature in that lake would be quite a dangerous for the fishermen of TurtleBack ferry...!
No followup about this is provided in the Adventure Path... and I am quite sure my smart players will have this on their minds...
Any ideas on how I should handle this?
Your input is welcomed!!
TOS
You could have the beast attack a few small, unmarked fishing communities along the banks of the lake, then have the Mayor of Turtleback Ferry put a bounty on the creatures head to incentivise the party into going after it.
You could bring in a rival adventuring party who are also out for the reward, but are hopelessly outmatched without the party to back them up.
It could start making its way along the river, towards Magnimar and the sea, disrupting river trade along the way. The mayor of Magnimar could ask the party to defeat the monster before it reaches the city, or does too much damage to the river trade.
Just a few suggestions. My party killed Black Magga outright when I ran RotRL, so I never had to think about any of this until now. :D
@mikeawmids THANKS for the ideas!!!
TOS
In the Hook Mountain Massacre thread there are some more ideas. Many people think the way the AP handles this encounter is inadequate. But unfortunately I've not seen any satisfying answers to the question yet, so I have the same problem as you do...
Black Magga would be way too strong for my players, so I plan on having her rest and recover on the bottom of the lake for a while before I draw my players back to it somehow at a later point in the adventure.
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I moved the fight into the church so the PCs could kill it by collapsing the building on it.
If I was going to bring it back in to the story after it got away, I'd have it show up early in book 5, and have it attack Sandpoint as the PCs are leaving the shrine, having been drawn there by the Runewell/Lamashtu.
Doesn't Black Magga turn up again in Return of the Runelords as some flavour of undead horror?
There are a few biggish threats throughout the AP that are likely too strong for the party the first time they are encountered that would make a good endcap or victory lap for certin character concepts. Malfeshnakor and the Bunnyip would both be good targets for a pc with the monster hunter campaign trait. Any good Paladins or Clerics may want to go back and clense the Foxglove manor. Any wizard or archeologist type characters may want to go back and study Thassilonian technology like the skulls crossing at greater depth at which point Black magga can show up again.
Both time that I've run that section of RotR, I've had the party encounter BM on Skull's Crossing (simultaneously with the ogres). Her encounter timer ticked down, then she retreated back into the Storval Deep.
That meant that she was safely distant from any towns/villages. It also meant that both groups knew where she was to be found for whenever they chooe to go after her (presumably post-AP).
In some ways this change just underlined the need to stop the ogres from wrecking Skull's Crossing. Not only would the dam burst cause incredible destruction (in one group one player looked up dam breaks on the internet, in the other group an engineer player started estimating), but it would also bring an ancient, powerful monster into contact with civilization.