I did. The rogue sneak attacked the captain to death and the druid summoned a fiery worm thingy (thouqua, I think?) to start burning through the ship. They both won on iniative, so the pirates were all "Arrr, booty and plunder!" and the PC's were like "Nuh uh bizzatch! Gimme yo' boat!"
Yeah. So, I had Amella, Tavey, and Urol come over to help crew the ship, saying that Lirith could handle the ship without them. And then used that ship instead of the Sea Wyvern for the rest of the adventure. It hasn't messed anything up so far but I'm only in the middle of HTBM.
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Thanks.
Yeah, it just seems that the encounter is WOEFULLY unthought out in that regards, especially when you consider that, in addition to the PCs, 4 of the NPCs on the ship WOULD fight, if only in a supporting manner (Skald, The Captain-gal, Lirith, and Avner (or he'd at least push his servants in front to fight)).
Creative Director
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I should have included a note or something in this encoutner, because its actual purpose seems to be lost on a lot of readers: This encounter is supposed to be a cakewalk and a pushover for the PCs. It's there to give them a taste of nautical combat, but it's not meant to be an edge-of-the-seat battle. Done correctly, it's super easy. PCs need those battles, now and then, otherwise the game grows exhausting and depressing; every battle feels like a 1st-level battle where the PCs are praying they won't die. They never get to feel like their characters are getting tougher if they don't have easy encounters now and then.
The core rules of D&D don't really support naval conflicts as well, and that's the main reason why there aren't more of these encounters in Savage Tide; we'd have to reprint large chunks of text from Stormwrack all the time, and that would rob content from the adventure itself. It's also why this encounter in Sea Wyvern's Wake is pretty simple; we simply didn't have room to reprint all those rules, and we weren't about to cheat and say "Go buy Stormwrack so you can run this adventure."
And finally, the Purity's Prow can indeed be taken on as an additional ship. I'd recommend having no-name NPCs from the Blue Nixie and the Sea Wyvern take it on as a crew, though; I'd certainly recommend against splitting the PCs between ships. More to the point, though, the Purity's Prow is in REALLY bad shape. Chances are pretty good that it'd sink during the first storm, if it doesn't fall apart before then. If the PCs take up this ship, I'd be sure to sprinkle in references to how the ship's always leaking, stuff breaks all the time, and how it keeps falling behind the other ships because it's in such bad condition.
But in the end, having a 3rd ship in the PCs little fleet isn't going to break any plotlines later on.
One of the Horatio Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester is all about Midshipman Hornblower's first command, as prize crew captain for a leaky French merchant ship. Should give you the flavor of what it's like to take charge of a prize of dubious seaworthiness, filled with prisoners whose help is needed but who aren't feeling very cooperative about the whole endeavor. As I recall, the affair ends badly for Hornblower, who ends up in a lifeboat and is happy to find his way ashore into prisoner of war status. Premodern naval warfare is all about taking prizes, but, as they say, caveat captor!
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The core rules of D&D don't really support naval conflicts as well, and that's the main reason why there aren't more of these encounters in Savage Tide; we'd have to reprint large chunks of text from Stormwrack all the time, and that would rob content from the adventure itself. It's also why this encounter in Sea Wyvern's Wake is pretty simple; we simply didn't have room to reprint all those rules, and we weren't about to cheat and say "Go buy Stormwrack so you can run this adventure."
Well, I really think you should have...I mean after all, how silly would you have to be to try to run a major nautical campaign without the source book for nautical campaigns? (Hope I didn't step on some toes there, but honestly!) I would have made Stormwrack more or less a prerequisite for this, or at the very least said (if you don't have Stormwrack, you'll need to concoct your own rules for X,Y, and Z from scratch).
But hey that's just me. :)
One of the Horatio Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester is all about Midshipman Hornblower's first command, as prize crew captain for a leaky French merchant ship.
I remember that one. Dude was sunk by RICE!
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Creative Director
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Well, I really think you should have...I mean after all, how silly would you have to be to try to run a major nautical campaign without the source book for nautical campaigns? (Hope I didn't step on some toes there, but honestly!) I would have made Stormwrack more or less a prerequisite for this, or at the very least said (if you don't have Stormwrack, you'll need to concoct your own rules for X,Y, and Z from scratch).
But hey that's just me. :)
Keep in mind that Savage Tide isn't really about naval conflicts, though. Most of the adventures take place on land. But even if we'd decided to go with more naval conflicts than we ultimately did, we still wouldn't require Stormwrack. Requiring non-core books to run an adventure just isn't how Dungeon rolls.
I think Dungeon made the right call here. It's pretty easy to make your own ship encounters, and there are even a few in Stormwrack that you can use straight away.
And naval combat in D&D can be kind of a pain in the tail to run unless you take some serious shortcuts. The narrative combat rules in Stormwrack are a help for resolving the pre-grapple maneuvering. Once the melee is joined I'd recommend using some sort of "Heroes of Battle" type flowchart formula to allow the PCs' actions to determine the outcome of the battle without rolling dice for any mooks not directly engaged with the PCs. If your players really dig naval combat you could probably get ahold of the old Avalon Hill wargame "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" and adapt it to provide a relatively realistic simulation of naval maneuvering instead of doing Stormwrack's "narrative combat."
We ran this battle just last night. My players commented on how nice it was to have a battle that was easier for a change.
We used the Dungeon rules with a little ad-hoc thrown in so that our seige engineer could get good use out of his skills and pepper the other boats before they engaged each other. We also used the additional pirate ship for the Blue Nixie (because I'm desperately trying to make the Jade Ravens feel like an actual adventuring group compared to the real heroes...) so the Nightshark became a dhow that boarded the BN, and Purity's prow moved to board the SW. A lot of damage resulted from the wizard's fireballs, but in the end, it fit with the fiery scenario that only nine desperate pirates and their captain boarded the SW after ramming her. The Jade Ravens sank the Nightshark, and the PCs captured the Purity's Prow. Yea for them, right?
Now, my players originally hired nearly the Wyvern's compliment to crew her, hand-picked by Amella. They've now decided- inexpicably- to let Amella captain the Prow with her hand-picked crew. I say inexplicably because the SW captain is an evil ranger and, because of Rowyn's capers, hasn't had much trouble convincing his goodly-aligned mates to go along with his plan of intimidation and persecution to divine who's to blame. So he's got more than enough un-named NPCs itching to get away from his tyranny to man a ship on their own, and they're already on it. They used to be smugglers, afterall...
The long and short, yes they have another ship. The crew's so grumpy that they aren't likely to have it for long, though. And they'll be short-handed if they keep terrorizing their crew.