I’m still in the prep phase to run STAP (waiting for my players’ current M&M campaign to wrap up), and have been eyeballing each adventure to see what I would emphasize and what I would change. I thought it’d be a good idea to start a thread about things we as DMs are doing to customize the Path.
I’m eager to hear how y’all have customized the Path and the reasons why you did it.
There Is No Honor
I don’t think the Lotus Dragon lair should be played as a dungeoncrawl. Depending on how sneaky the party is (or not), I plan on allowing the entirety of the guild to descend on the group and capture them. In this event, I’m planning a set piece where the party has to fight the croc in the Crucible while Rowyn watches from the observation room. Ideally this will play out like the grand finale it should be, with the party members slaying the croc, escaping the Crucible, and confronting Rowyn. What I don’t want is a feeling of “oh, I guess that’s all of them then…” at the conclusion.
Sea Wyvern’s Wake
Amella will likely be a man in my campaign, not only do we have enough female swashbucklers with Lavinia and Harliss, but I want to have a romantic interest available for a female character too (as Lavinia will be for a male PC).
The party will get the opportunity to save settlers beyond the assumed ones. I’m sure my players will rankle at any sort of arbitrary death like this, so I want them to have the chance to be heroic (as well as suffer when they can’t be heroic enough…)
Here There Be Monsters
Allowing my PCs to rescue more of the passengers may increase the number of survivors and there could be additional food issues. They’ll just have to work that out.
Both the mountain pass and the Temple of Demogorgon use the “need two keys” schtick and it makes little sense in either. I’m ditching the key hidden in the pass’ tomb and turning the lock into a puzzle the players need to solve with the now-single key. I’m still pondering the Temple key scenario, but it just doesn’t make sense that Orlanghu would’ve let himself and his prisoner into the chambers and THEN returned the key back to the monkey room.
Tides of Dread
No changes yet. I love this adventure.
Lightless Depths
I want to see the STAP played out over a long time span, so I'm adjusting the adventure hook to not follow so directly on the heels of ToD. Instead of learning that the Crimson Fleet has an interest up north, I going to rely on the tribute to the Glutton to get the party to make the trip. By now I suspect the PCs will have made some strides in increasing Farshore's assets, but will be waiting for the arrival of the first trade ship to return from Sasserine (to refresh the total assets and let them sell their loot). When the ship never arrives, the party will learn of the Glutton and be sent to deal with him. While buying off the dragon turtle, the party can learn of the pirates' interest in the cove and move to investigate.
Last night I was reading over the write-up of Malcanthet (sp?) from Dragon. It occured to me that I really want a reason that the PCs came to the attention to the queen of Succubi. So I started thinking about the intro to TinH.
Basically the adventure says the individual PCs should have done something "heroic" to bring them to Lavinia's attention. I am thinking I would like this 'something' to be related to one or more of M's cults.
Anyway, still brewing these ideas up, but I think it might be a good direction to go in. Another thought would be to have Lavinia's major domo halfling gal be a worshiper of M and that is how and why she chooses the PCs.
Sean Mahoney
Amella will likely be a man in my campaign, not only do we have enough female swashbucklers with Lavinia and Harliss, but I want to have a romantic interest available for a female character too (as Lavinia will be for a male PC).
I wish I thought of this before I introduced her.
I'm still pondering the Temple key scenario, but it just doesn't make sense that Orlanghu would've let himself and his prisoner into the chambers and THEN returned the key back to the monkey room.
Olangru doesn't need the key, since he doesn't need to open the doors. He just uses his greater teleport spell-like ability to transport himself from one side of the doors to the other.
Olangru doesn't need the key, since he doesn't need to open the doors. He just uses his greater teleport spell-like ability to transport himself from one side of the doors to the other.
::blink blink::
That's brilliant!
I wonder why he even has a door.
Olangru doesn't need the key, since he doesn't need to open the doors. He just uses his greater teleport spell-like ability to transport himself from one side of the doors to the other.::blink blink::
That's brilliant!
I wonder why he even has a door.
In-game answer: he didn't build the place, he just moved in later. Meta-game answer: mid-level PCs (usually) don't all have the ability to transport themselves past locked doors.
The Bullywug Gambit - Had the party taken to Kraken's Cove in the Blue Nixie with Amella as 1st mate. A shaken down cruise to test repairs to mend the damage done by the thugs trying to burn the animals in the hold in the last adventure, and prepare for the voyage to Farshore. (So extra bit of for shadowing of the next adventure and tie ins with the last, makes for a better campaign imho)
Moved the Sea Wyvern to outside of the reef, and had the players first encounter with savage pirates being a ship to ship boarding action. Amella then took a skeleton crew from the Blue Nixie across to repair and claim the Sea Wyvern as salvage. While the Blue Nixie returned to Sasserine to report to Lavinia.
I thought this a better move because...
a) It gets the players more invested in the Sea Wyvern if they had to fight to capture it,
b) Ship to ship combat against pirates, can't have too much of that.
c) Depending on how long it takes to repair I could control the amount of time it takes for the players to return to Sasserine, so that Bullywug part goes as planned.
Players took row boat to beach north of Kraken's Cove and adventure carried on as written, well after the encounter with a Savage Shark (added to show just how wide spread this effect is).
Removed area K12, and the Savage Pirates there (since they were effectively in the Sea Wyvern).
I wanted to pay some attention to the more annoying NPCs and make sure they had some redeming qualities that kept them from getting knifed in their sleep.
Right off the bat, I felt a need to give the Jade Ravens a role beside being hated by the PCs (it's going to be hard as a DM to maintain a reasonable rivalry when the Ravens never actually do anything. Ever.) My first plan is to have the Ravens doing all the quest adventures in Tides of Dread (like the filcher and the troglodytes) around Farshore while the party is off on the interior. This will showcase them being effective adventurers and active defenders of the colony. My 2nd intent is to make a better first impression by making it one of the Ravens who introduces the party to Lavinia. The Ravens could be making sure that their sponsor's needs are taken care of while they're busy elsewhere. Then the rivalry has something to grow from rather than starting off that way.
My second NPC make-over is Avner who by all predictions will be left adrift or sold to the Crimson Brotherhood. I can't imagine my PCs putting up with his antics for too long, so I'm going to make an effort to hook him up with a PC as a drinking buddy. He may be an unbearable lout, but he likes to party and I bet I can find a PC who would like to party with him. Once they're chums, it should be easier for the rest of the group to put up with him.
My second NPC make-over is Avner who by all predictions will be left adrift or sold to the Crimson Brotherhood. I can't imagine my PCs putting up with his antics for too long, so I'm going to make an effort to hook him up with a PC as a drinking buddy. He may be an unbearable lout, but he likes to party and I bet I can find a PC who would like to party with him. Once they're chums, it should be easier for the rest of the group to put up with him.
I like that idea a lot. He could be almost like Dupree of "You, Me, and..." fame.
In-game answer: he didn't build the place, he just moved in later. Meta-game answer: mid-level PCs (usually) don't all have the ability to transport themselves past locked doors.
Don't be to sure. Using Core rules, yes. In my homebrew, I had a wizard player who used a combination of Monster Summoning I and Benign Transposition (Spell Compendium) to circumvent a Wall of Force that was supposed to come down much later in the game.
Don't be to sure. Using Core rules, yes. In my homebrew, I had a wizard player who used a combination of Monster Summoning I and Benign Transposition (Spell Compendium) to circumvent a Wall of Force that was supposed to come down much later in the game.
And then there's warlocks. A warlock who takes flee the scene as an early pick for Lesser invocations can get his party past quite a few barriers.
Fletch, those changes to Sea Wyvern's Wake are the exact same ones I implimented. Even as a woman myself, I felt like all the female characters in this campaign were a bit purposeful and forced. Even though all the characters in my game are male (therefore no need for a male captain love-interest) I just had trouble justifying yet another female leader with the piratey flavor I was going for in my particular campaign. Stereotyping or not, pirate-themed adventure doesn't immediately call to mind heavy matriarchal leadership roles.
And I loved the way the rescuing the passengers scene played out. I rolled for random amounts of time for each NPC to be able to survive before rescue. It was impossible to rescue all of them and the players knew this. Too much time struggling with one NPC could mean four more could drown. Of course, does that mean if you require too much effort I just swim away and leave you to your fate while I work on someone else, ignoring your screams as I glide on to the next potential victim? It was a great moral dilemma and fun to role-play. The players are still talking about it.
We are currently running Here there Be Monsters so I can't comment on modifications or things I *wished* (in hindsight) I'd changed.
I, for one, like that Avner's kinda annoying. It sets up another moral dilemma. Do PCs only show compassion and patience, heroic defense to those NPCs who are likeable? It's hard to sacrifice for such a pesky little varmint but that *is* the heroic and honorable thing to do. So I wouldn't change Avner for all the gold in ... well, okay, maybe *all* the gold. ;)
I do have a problem with the Jade Ravens for the reasons you state. They've already been introduced in my campaign, of course, but their whole concept seems broken. I know I've got to tweak their reason for being but I just haven't quite worked out the details on how to do so. Wish I had fixed them before the beginning.
Anyway, thanks for this thread as it is quite interesting!
In all adventures I optimized the npcs in combat encounters, usually by changing stats or giving a bit more hitpoints. Otherwise my experienced players would've had it too easy.
I also used the taint mechanics from Heroes of Horror. Most of the characters got depravity and corruption from Kraken's Cove as it is a severely tainted location (Will/Fort DC 25, 1d3 depravity/corruption). Getting infected by the savage fever also gave 1 point of corruption. The foggy jungle around Demogorgon's temple was also a tainted location giving corruption and failing to resist the wisdom-damaging dreams gave depravity.
The Scarlet Brotherhood became a Riedran organisation and I tried to draw some lines to Sarlona. E.g. one of the characters is from Krezent in Talenta Plains, a serpentblooded human offspring of the feathered yuan-ti who fled from Sarlona (EBCS and Secrets of Xen'drik p.68) and he joined the party to research the history of his people in the Isle of Dread. (Oh yeah, I run STAP in Eberron.)
There Is No Honor
As it is suggested in STAP conversion notes, I turned the cult of Vecna in historians' guild into a cult devoted to Sul Khatesh (one of the imprisoned rajah overlords of Lords of the Dust in Eberron, Dragon 337) and used the One and the Five affiliation from PHB2 (p.176) as a base for it. My CN Illusionist doesn't know what he's dealing with and instead of giving him the normal 'Of the mind' benefit of getting more spells, I gave him a fiendish familiar (from Fiend Folio) that looks like white tiger fur attached to his back. The cult also works as a great background plot, as Sul Khatesh wants to know more about Demogorgon's plans and learn more about the pearl. This gives the character motivation to seek more information as his quests. So far he only knows that the cult has some religious aspect but doesn't care about it and it is knows as the Keepers of Secrets. Maybe later the truth will come out and he'll have to choose if he wants to be a puppet for the Lords of the Dust and gain more power or try to fight back. So far he seems to be slowly sliding to the dark side. I don't know how this all will play out in the big plot but I hope to get some drama out of it. At least my player is greatly enjoying the cult missions and his mysterious (evil) divination and illusion spells that grant him depravity (although he doesn't know this).
I didn't change much but I should've changed the Lotus Dragon hideout as it was a classic and really boring dungeon.
The Bullywug Gambit
Added the corruption effects to Kraken's Cove.
Sea Wyvern’s Wake
I changed the No-Neck fella and his ship into a Riedran ship with sailor-monks and an Inspired shock trooper captain. The characters swiftly rammed and boarded the ship and killed them all.
Changed the animated tower shield (SIGH!) into a large firebrass shield with spearblock ability. (Secrets of Xen'drik and Complete Warrior) Added the notched spear legacy weapon beside the shield. Changed the notched spear's monstrous humanoid bane ability to sacred so it'll be more useful in the later adventures.
Here There Be Monsters
I changed the gargantuan centipedes (=creepy but boring) and mummies to tomb spiders and web mummies (from MM4). It fit the tomb setting much better and I also planned that the shaman's tomb could've worked as a magical location reward (like the touchstones etc) but didn't have the time to work that out. I also don't like the paralyzing fear of the mummies but the sticky web mummies weren't any more entertaining. The first PK almost occured as the druid cast cure serious wounds from prayer beads to the main fighter as he was infected by a tomb spider's negative energy poison. Good times.
I optimized Olangaru with some feats and gave him more interesting magic items. Also, the demonic jungle had a corrupting effect as explained before ^.
Tides of Dread
Not many changes here, but I turned the Olman zombiemasters into potent magical herb-brewing dread necromancers. Devilweed (Book of Vile Darkness p.42) worked as loco weed and I used all the drugs I could find from BoV and Lords of Darkness. The corrupted illusionist is now smoking loco weed all the time and drank juju juice (Terran Brandy p.43, gives +2 CL) in the main battle against Crimson Fleet ships.
Vanthus would've been a pushover for my players so I optimized him to rogue3/fighter4/tempest5. Now they had to flee him and reorganize and attack him again. The yuan-ti sorcerer's flesh golems were dm-polymorphed into serpentflesh golems (Serpent Kingdoms).
Changed the regeneration of fire bats to fast healing as my characters didn't have cold magic.
Changed the mithral breastplate into a serpentskin armor to make it more cool and also allow the druid a possibility to use it.
The Lightless Depths
We haven't played this yet and apart from optimizing the kopru priest of Demogorgon I think I'll only change the elder black pudding into some other, more humane man-eating ooze, like corrupture (ooze) from MM4 or arcane ooze or some other bizarre polyp from Nth dimension.
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Btw, tar pits don't really have tar but asphalt.
Right off the bat, I felt a need to give the Jade Ravens a role beside being hated by the PCs (it's going to be hard as a DM to maintain a reasonable rivalry when the Ravens never actually do anything. Ever.) My first plan is to have the Ravens doing all the quest adventures in Tides of Dread (like the filcher and the troglodytes) around Farshore while the party is off on the interior. This will showcase them being effective adventurers and active defenders of the colony. My 2nd intent is to make a better first impression by making it one of the Ravens who introduces the party to Lavinia. The Ravens could be making sure that their sponsor's needs are taken care of while they're busy elsewhere. Then the rivalry has something to grow from rather than starting off that way.
That's a good idea, and I will probably use it when I start running ST. Before starting the campaign I will probably run a couple of stand-alone adventures set in Sasserine with surroundings. The characters they create there will then appear in ST as the Jade Ravens.
Before starting the campaign I will probably run a couple of stand-alone adventures set in Sasserine with surroundings. The characters they create there will then appear in ST as the Jade Ravens.
Hahaheeheehe...That'd be awesome. You don't even have to name them, just describe them as they walk down the hall at Lavinia's manor and watch for the first player that goes "hang on..."
Before my campaign got shifted to Eberron, I was aiming the STAP at being a real inclusion of the history of D&D, not just with Isle o' Dread and Tamoachan, but I was going to replace Sasserine with Saltmarsh from the DMGII. One thing I was considering was replacing the Ravens with the iconic characters from the PHB (Regdar, Hennet, etc.) Still, that wouldn't have been as good as using previous player characters.
Some commentary in other posts made me want to update this thread with some new ideas concerning Vanthus.
Tides of Dread
I'm going to take a gamble and NOT have Vanthus (or other Crimson Pirate Captains like Capt. Whyther)be half-fiended. Mostly it's to allow a stronger feeling of "now we've got you" when the party gets to finally cross swords with Vanthus in Farshore. It's my thoughts that altering him so much from when they first saw him on Parrot Island will confuse the issue a bit. I don't want them doubting that it's Lavinia's brother or thinking that his wickedness is anything other than his own doing. Plus I think the image they've created, the batwings, scales and forked tail, seem a bit too generic to be scary any more. Capt. Whyther will probably become an ogre pirate or something equally exotic, but Vanthus will be statted up with pure character levels to allow the strongest feeling of a mano-a-mano fight. Vanthus will get his chance to be a freakish being of hate when he becomes a death knight.
While I'm changing Vanthus, I'm going to take away his Shadow Pearl. If he does get to use it, it guarantees an almost complete AP derail with the loss of Farshore and motivations for the adventures that follow. Plus, I want to reward my PCs' months of effort in building up and defending Farshore, not have it all be negated by a single act of one guy at the end of the battle.
While I'm changing Vanthus, I'm going to take away his Shadow Pearl. If he does get to use it, it guarantees an almost complete AP derail with the loss of Farshore and motivations for the adventures that follow. Plus, I want to reward my PCs' months of effort in building up and defending Farshore, not have it all be negated by a single act of one guy at the end of the battle.
I am considering this as well. I understand the PCs should have a chance to be defeated but I think having all of the previous months of hard work go down the tubes in one fell swoop is a bit much to handle. I know I wouldn't care for it at all if I were playing in the campaign. I think the other thread concerning this very subject is enough to show me I don't want that event happening and risk losing the focus for the remainder of the campaign.
Some of the plans I have for my players:
There Is No Honor
Sea Wyvern's Wake
"Here There Be Monsters": I'm toying with the idea of replacing the gargoyles with tasloi mounted on giant wasps. Because this adventure path doesn't have enough creatures from Dwellers of the Forbidden City.
(I also thought about making Emraag a pan lung dragon, but figured that was going a touch too far.)
I'm going to take a gamble and NOT have Vanthus (or other Crimson Pirate Captains like Capt. Whyther)be half-fiended.
One of my characters is hunting down a werebear that killed some of her family/friends. That were-creature is named Vanthus Vanderboren.
Some of the plans I have for my players:
Update Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan to 3.5E to replace the abbreviated version in the adventure
Is this available on-line anywhere? I found a site that had some adventures updated but not this one.
Some of the plans I have for my players:
There Is No Honor
The Scarlet Brotherhood is working to purge all non-Suel influences from Sasserine's Suel pantheon temples/shrines
That's a pretty neat sub-plot just by itself. Without any real role for the Scarlet Brotherhood in this Path (aside from the blockade in SWW), I may include this as a background element.
Sea Wyvern's Wake
Update Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan to 3.5E to replace the abbreviated version in the adventure
This is something I'd like to do too, but I don't have the original Shrine o' Tammy to update. I will have to try to find one, though, 'cause I'm sad that such an historic moment was limited to that one tunnel.
"Here There Be Monsters": I'm toying with the idea of replacing the gargoyles with tasloi mounted on giant wasps. Because this adventure path doesn't have enough creatures from Dwellers of the Forbidden City.
Help me out here, Sben. What's the connection between Dwellers and the Isle o' Dread? I'm looking forward to this Path being a nice nod to the history of D&D (with the Isle plus Tamoachan and other things I'm inserting) and if there's a connection with this other classic adventure, I'd be keen to hear it.
Fletch, shoot me an email: carlson793 at yahoo dot com
Help me out here, Sben. What's the connection between Dwellers and the Isle o' Dread? I'm looking forward to this Path being a nice nod to the history of D&D (with the Isle plus Tamoachan and other things I'm inserting) and if there's a connection with this other classic adventure, I'd be keen to hear it.
There's no particular connection. However! The following creatures were first introduced in Dwellers:
* Aboleth
* Bullywug
* Mongrelfolk (called Mongrelman at the time)
* Yuan-ti
And also:
* Dragon, pan lung
* Tasloi
* Yellow musk creeper
* Yellow musk zombie
And tasloi riding giant wasps seem to fit a tropical island better than gargoyles.
Some of the plans I have for my players:
Sea Wyvern's Wake
Update Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan to 3.5E to replace the abbreviated version in the adventure
I am also interested in this modification. Is the older version available somewhere on the web as a PDF?
A criminal could probably download Tomaoachan on a filesharing program if he wanted to break the law. Then he'd have to lie low for a few years.
I'd give you my copy but its beyond reach in a box in my attic. The only way I'd look for it was if I knew there was a bag of gold pieces stashed beside it.
Christ in a bucket!
I just lost a MONGO post...
AAAARRRRRGH!