So the PCs start this adventure ship-wrecked. What if they call for help rather than starting a cross-country trek? Lavinia is ahead of them and assumed to be at Farshore, right? Why not try to get help?
What happens if the PCs just light a big signal fire and wait?
What does Lavinia tell them if contacted by a Sending? Message? etc.?
And a PC that could fly would really short circuit this adventure.
So the PCs start this adventure ship-wrecked. What if they call for help rather than starting a cross-country trek? Lavinia is ahead of them and assumed to be at Farshore, right? Why not try to get help?
What happens if the PCs just light a big signal fire and wait?
What does Lavinia tell them if contacted by a Sending? Message? etc.?
And a PC that could fly would really short circuit this adventure.
They can try...but we won't let them skip their way through the adventure that easy...RIGHT! Our group would torture our DM miserbly with side tracking all his well thought out plans and encounters, so he had to imrovise. If the Pc's light a fire make sure It's noticed...by a tribe of very hungry lizard folk? Maybe the Pc's contact someone who they believe Is Lavinia? Let the Pc's fly all they want...right into the talons of some starving Pterodactlys? Be creative It's not all written In stone, let the players try to deviate from the course and just come up with counter plans to bring them all back on track.
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be it as it my general tactic when stranded (very effective when using an illusionist w/ silent image...giant floating neon signs attract a lot of attention), there are acouple of problems here
1: the party doesn't know just how far away farshore is. making spells difficult or unreliable
2: dinosaurs. lots of em. like the big one that came out of the bush right at the start.
3: flying dino's + single flying character = bad news for him
now, with so many low-touch-ac, high-hp, low-int monsters, i am so very very glad that none of my players are being sorcerers with ray of stupidity from Spell Compendium.
every dino encounter (especially the 1st one) goes the same.
things go...
dino goes, bites someone...
sorc. goes, casts ray of stupidity, does 1d4+1 int dmg, dino falls over.
eat dino.
repeat.
that, someone REALLY good at crafting (like an artificer with fabricate scrolls?) or a psion-shaper with some creation spells can really make this a lot easier.
of course, if you can wild empathy that t-rex right off the boat (hm, 7th lvl druid w/ max ranks in diplo and charm animal/speak w/ animal prepared...the party might have a new friend after all...especially if they feed it right)
looking forward to it!
-the hamster
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of course, if you can wild empathy that t-rex right off the boat (hm, 7th lvl druid w/ max ranks in diplo and charm animal/speak w/ animal prepared...the party might have a new friend after all...especially if they feed it right)-the hamster
and then a bigger Trex comes out and eats the new found friend...
Director of Games
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I thought of this too when writing this adventure, and while I came up with some solutions, I do not think any of them made it into the text.
Here is the simplest. Lavinia's ship was damaged as well, leaving her ill able to send a rescue mission. In the amount of time it would take her to repair a ship or comandeer another and sail to find them, they very well might make the journey on foot.
As for sending up a sign.. well, there is really no one around to see it.
Just my thoughts.. I am sure there are holes in those ideas as well, but they are viable starts.
Jason Bulmahn
Author of Here There Be Monsters
1: the party doesn't know just how far away farshore is. making spells difficult or unreliable.
I don't understand this. Why WOULDN'T they know how far away it is. They have charts, they have stars, and anyone with decent ranks in knowledge geography could make a connection between a chart and the coast line. And that is WITHOUT spells.
Not sure about your PC's but my PC's are there to BE HEROES, and heroes don't wait around to be rescued... they DO THE RESCUING. So hopefully I wont have to worry about this delima. I'm pretty sure my PC's will galantly trek off into the jungle in search of Farshore.
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.
The Isle of Dread is known to be a hostile and dangerous area. Nobody with ranks of adventurer is stupid enough to light a big signal fire in such an area. Hate to be blunt, but that's the gist of it.
Even I, a normal joe, would stop and think and decide hoofing it is better than camping on an exposed beach surrounded by things who only know me as "foreign food", waiting for help that very likely wont come, when I know safety is just a long walk to the south. I'd spend a few days preparing for the definitely not-so-fun journey, but anyone who tried to stop me I'd give a kick in the nards and tell them to just tie themselves up over the signal fire, since they like to make it so easy for the hungry natives.
Regarding distance, while the adventure assumes that Urol (and anyone else with Knowledge Geography) knows generally where they are and where to go to get to Farshore, that knowledge is a long way from precise. One, the charts are most likely still on the ship; if the PCs retreive them specifically, then that helps. Two, the charts are nautical charts. They aren't designed to aid overland travel. Three, even with the charts, all that can be determined is distance and direction, and even that is fudgy at best. While the PCs through Urol know where they are and where to go, they don't have precise enough measurements to calculate an elaborate scheme involving the limited resources they have, unless they are really creative.
As for communication, if PCs even do establish communication with Lavina, which is possible via sending or animal messenger (assuming liberal use of speak with animal and a DM willing to "let it have a chance"), the fact that currents demand that Lavina go around the west side of the Isle pretty much sets it in stone that rescue isnt going to happen. All things considered, Lavina isn't ahead of the PCs, not by much, and with a damaged boat, she can't fight the wind to sail back up the east side of the Isle. Its not a matter of willingness, its a matter of ability, much like repairing the Sea Wyvern after the crash. It can be done, just not with the resources had at that moment in time. If the PCs honestly want to wait for Lavina to repair the Blue Nixie and come save them, let them do it.
20 days. Even if it only takes Lavina 5 days to get around the other side of the Isle, 10 days to repair the boat and unload the cargo, and another 5 days to fight the winds back up to the crash point, thats 20 days worth of encounters, with no inn to rest at, no temple to buy more potions at, no general store to buy new weapons and armor at. And unless the PCs get creative with disposal of corpses, the beach is gonna get crowded, and become even more of an attractor. I can just see this titanic mound of monsters corpses, with large and huge monstrous crabs picking bits off while t-rexes try to scare away the terror birds that are scavenging from the jungle side, with the PCs in a makeshift fort made out of dinosaur bones on the top.
Kinda cool in its own right, and if thats what the PCs want to have by not making the journey, then thats what could happen. Dont forget about the NPCs as well; Urol knows better than to stay put, Meravanchi wants the situation to be better than it currently is and will whine until it changes, Tavey and Amelia will probably go with what the PCs decide, until someone dies as a direct result of it.
And best of all, the adventure path was really kind of nice: it din't even begin to be as nasty as it could of... why?
Besides Olangru, there aren't any night-time encounters....
I was thinking wouldn’t Olamgru start hounding them on the beach… I do not think the PC will stay on the beach if one of there NPC friends or a PC get kidnapped.
I was thinking wouldn’t Olamgru start hounding them on the beach… I do not think the PC will stay on the beach if one of there NPC friends or a PC get kidnapped.
In other words, it could work out a lot like the second group of survivors on Lost.