I'm just getting ready to start Tides of Dread. I was wondering if anyone out there has gotten farther than this, and if so, how did the game go? I've made some major changes to ToD, so I'm curious as to how it went being run by the book?
Aside from that, I'm also curious as to which parts of the game your PC's had the most trouble with?
I am interested in the answers as well-I have typed up my house rules and let everyone read some articles and the players guide. The only significant house rule is the district feats as a bonus for a decent back story. The current campaign has two or three more gaming nights before we actually begin ST, so I am in the same place as you.
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I am interested in the answers as well-I have typed up my house rules and let everyone read some articles and the players guide. The only significant house rule is the district feats as a bonus for a decent back story. The current campaign has two or three more gaming nights before we actually begin ST, so I am in the same place as you.
Just started the Bullywug Gambit (part 2) of the adventure path. The characters are right in the middle of dealing with the mutated creatures in Kraken's Cove.
My players didn't have any real trouble with the first part, There is No Honor, although getting all my PCs to do any real research is always a chore (Half of them are more into the tactical combat aspect of the game, and the other half likes to role play. Pretty good balance, overall, but if there's no combat for a length of time, you can see the bored looks and I have to change tactics a bit to keep it fun for everyone).
It's been real interesting because one of the PCs came up with a backstory that he's the illegitimate son of the Harbormaster, Keltar Islaran. When he came back to Sasserine at the end of TINH and found out what happened to his father before he could meet him, it got personal for him...
We've also got a pair of twin Dwarven brothers (I know, this isn't likely, but it was a cool idea, so I went with it) who are gladiators in the arena of the Champion's District. Their reputation precedes them, and they're local celebrities. After all, how many Dwarven twins are there? They've even got a half-orc groupie following around...
I think the most difficult part for the party was dealing with the perils of Parrot Island. The Huecuva nearly killed them. Other than that, no worries. The code for opening the family vault concerned me, but they figured it out in no time.
One thing to be prepared for if you're DMing the path: You may have to boost Rowyn a bit. We have a 7 person gaming group, and by the time they leveled up and reached her in TINH, she wasn't much of a challenge for them as written. I made her a Rogue 4/Bard 3 and it was more of a challenge. She barely escaped with her life to torment them in the future!
I'd love to know how other DMs/Players are doing on this path. Post some of your more interesting situations.
Our group just finished up Tides of Dread.
The preparations of the party was so effective that I didn't need to total up victory points - we played out the Crimson Fleet invasion completely (it was not my intention to do so but the players were so into the prep work and commanding the defence, I went with it).
End result - 2 capsized pirate ships, 3 pirate ships afire. 80% of the pirate forces were dead before they hit the beaches and the remaining 20% died try to fight clear of the beach obstacles.
Players had great fun with this adventure. Also, the party druid was by far, the MVP for this adventure.
We are currently finishing up Here there Be Monsters, and the group is having a great time so far!
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The only significant house rule is the district feats as a bonus for a decent back story.
Hey, cool, I did that, too. About half my players were totally into the back story thing, for the others, it was like pulling teeth to get them to describe their characters without directly quoting their character sheets; this tactic seemed to encourage them a bit.
I've been running ST off and on to give our AoW DM the occasional break, so my players are just now about to venture to Parrot Island. The vault guardian gave my group a bit more trouble than one might expect, since we had a couple rapier-wielders who were doing, at best, 1-2 points of damage to the thing, which has HP a-plenty. The arena-fighter rolled up some uber stats, tho, and he carried the fight with his greatsword. While the rest of the group dealt with that encounter, the cowardly rogue sneaked off to examine the "combination lock," and with the bard's help after the battle, he figured it out in record time.
It wasn't a deadly encounter (the fighter went down, but that caused the construct to no longer perceive him as a threat), but if you're just starting the path, and your group buys in to the swashbuckler feel to the exclusion of any heavy weapons, you might want to tweak the cobra a little, as DR 5/adamantine can seriously stymie a character whose max damage output is 6.
I'm super-excited about some of the later adventures, especially Tides of Dread (it's got something for everyone!), but obviously our group has a bit longer to wait.
We just battled the flotsom ooze and will be heading on to Tomochan. I was a bit worried that the sea journey would be too dull, but so far the group is actually enjoying it a lot. I'm worried about running out of "interesting" side events to happen during the trip. So far they almost got into a battle with 6 wyverns, and had to restrain the Gnome expert from steering the ship towards the miles of spiderweb covered jungle so he could "catch a specimen". The group was a bit behind on XP so they battled redcaps at the first port as well.
We just started Sunday. I thought I would NEVER get them to actually go out to the darn Blue Nixie! They kept doing all kind of research around town about Soller Vark and what happened to the original crew, etc.
Finally they rented a row boat (I had them place a 30% deposit) which the rogue decided to keep. He said he did not view it so much as a 30% deposit as he did a 70% discount!
Anyway, once they got to the ship they annihilated the thugs, Soller Vark, and the rhagodessa with no problems...and there was only four of them.
Next session there will be 5 of them and I want to see how they do against the Parrott Island undead. If they breeze through that I'm raising EL levels!
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We're still in "There is no honor", but almost done. They are heading to the Taxidermist's guildhall, so more or less all that's left is to go through the whole Lotus Dragon Guildhall and clean up.
We have a large party 7 or 8 PCs most nights, and I've increased the difficulty a bit to counter that, but so far no player deaths. They've gotten very lucky a few times, in particular they are very fortunate to have a cleric who has specialized in grapple attacks, it's saved them in a major way on two occasions. He was able to escape the Rhagodessa's grapple attacks until help could come (he went down below deck on his own), and then he was able to grapple and then pin the huecuva while the swashbuckler with the silver dagger slowly whittled him to nothing. He also rolled really well on his turn undead check on that encounter (I sent the huecuva and 9 ravenous pirate zombies at them at once - he turned 8 of the 9 zombies), so he has definitely been the party's MVPC so far. :)
Just started "Sea Wyvern's Wake". They utterly blew through the Lotus Dragon without breaking a sweat, as well as Kraken's Cove (although 2 PCs were infected with savage fever there).
My favorite bit was describing what Kraken's Cove looked like after the savage tide hit it. They were afraid to even go ashore at first.
my players are in HTBM right now, about to go into the fogmire temple. the gargoyles almost finished them off. thunderstrike died, eaten by the T-rex. i will probably end up killing one PC in the temple of demogorgon, (drew, get to rolling up a new PC if you are reading this) :)
the guys can't wait to get to farshore, so they can rest after a three month journey to get here. from sasserine to farshore has been 6 sessions now. one more to go and then it's island exploration and helping to defend against the pirates.
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Our group is in ToD right now. About half through that one I believe. We have gotten Lavinia elected Ruler of Farshore and have gotten most of the defenses shored up, including recruiting some Olmans and Phanatons. Our DM had a run of bad luck with the T-rex, Temauhti-tecuani, and didn't land a single hit on us. Funny thing, I cast Unluck on it to try to swing the fight in our favor but it made the save, afterwords our DM had the worst luck on rolls, only succeeding in resisting my spells. Currently we are about to go for a cache of weapons that the phanatons told us about, then we have barely enough time to get the Sea Wyvern before the assault according to the intel we received.
After two sessions the party have just returned from Parrot Island, they think they might be some what responsible for the death of the Harbour Master, because of their actions with the Blue Nixie.
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Finally they rented a row boat (I had them place a 30% deposit) which the rogue decided to keep. He said he did not view it so much as a 30% deposit as he did a 70% discount!....
LOL!
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we are nearing the end of Bullywug. The bulk of my group have just finished being questioned by the city guard after fighting Diamondback and her stilt walkin henchmen. The Halfling decided earlier to run ahead since she was smaller and could get through the crowd easier. Once she reached the Vanderborn home I had her captured by the BUllywugs and taken to their leader and Drevoraz. She told Drevoraz that Harliss was calling off the operation and gave him her ear ring. I thought it would be interesting to have the Bullywugs turn on Drevoraz and take both him and our halfling rogue prisoner.
I'm running her part via email before our next game. She just escaped and with the help of Drevoraz took down the two bullywugs that were placed there to guard them. Now they are torn between looking into the woman crying and sobbing behind a door along with some sort of strange insectoid clicking sound and going up stairs to rescue the other hostages. It's looking like she is going to bypass the woman behind the door. We may end up losing one of the Ravens. We shall see.
Eventually the rest of the group will arive at the Vanderborn manor completely unaware of what has happened to the rogue. We will see what happens on Sunday.
My gang should finish SWW next weekend. They still have the Mother-of-All to deal with – that should be interesting with no arcane spell caster in the party and only a low level cleric. I’ll throw a pirate ship in there first to give them a little XP. I’ve got 3 player about 500 shy of their next level. In the last session they finally flushed out their stowaway and took her down in a most gruesome fashion. My wife did some exceptional role playing – almost chocked me to death, much to the amusement of the rest of the group.
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pretty much at the start, Kora (which for some reason became a gnome in my game, ha ha, I goofed) has given the players their invitations & I also goofed on the time of the dinner, being I said tonight & not tomorrow as the note says (first time doing a play by post).
Anyways, I have my players killing time by doing some interacting with Sasserine & her environments so to speak, the druid was meditating out on one of the broken Terk's arch & has come ashore to find himself confronted with 3 drunk sailors that are makin fun of him being a druid, the fighter got into a scuffle with a couple of low level Lotus Dragons, (who I will let one escape to come back later in the first chapter) that were doing collections for "protection" from a dwarven jeweler, in turn the elven ranger will get involved as well. The warlock is in Shadowshore as well, but he's dealing with his own demons to put it one way & the theif got a taste of his own medicine with a innocent halfing girl (who was a level 5 rogue to begain with, he he) but he is scouting out the Vanderboren Manor before the dinner, he is curious of his possible future employer.
other than that everything is going pretty smoothly
RM