After being trapped by the sargasso the party barbarian drinks a potion of water breathing, asks the wizard to cast fly on him, and then takes off on his own to scout the area. He spends the rest of the day scouting and decides to hole up for the night by himself.
At sundown the vine horrors start showing up and combat begins. This PC is optimized well and uses a spiked chain so he has reach. I think he figured he'd get AoOs on the creatures when they advanced and then finish them off with his full attack.
The barbarian delays so the vine horrors animate assassin vines who attack and grapple the barbarian immediately. The barbarian eventually escapes the grapple and defeats the creatures but only has 4 or 5 hit points remaining. He sees more vine horrors approaching so he decides to clear the vines from the bottom of the mast (thinking he'll eliminate the assassin vine threat) and then climb the mast.
I decide to let him spot a rowboat on the deck of the boat under some seaweed and vines. He takes the gift and drags the rowboat out and starts dragging it towards the nearest water area. He makes it to water and starts moving out away from the sargasso. A few vine horrors swim out to his boat but he handles them easily (grappling was giving him the issue earlier). He know sits in a rowboat in the middle of the water with 1 hit point remaining afraid to go to sleep.
Obviously he's dead meat if I choose since the vine horrors are intelligent and have a swim speed. I think the party is assuming the vine horrors can't sense you if you aren't standing on the sargasso so he thinks he may make it. If he doesn't rest I think he takes subdual damage the following morning which knocks him out cold. Plainly he's screwed without some intervention on my part.
So what does everyone think, do I let him die?
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I would say that since you gave him an escape route you should let him do so. If the PC hasn't got the message to return to the party and tries to go off on his own again you waste him. The idea of the scenario from what I understand is to instill a sense of horror in the PC's like when the aliens keep attacking the marines in the aliens movie until they decide that they need to do something to escape the situation.If that means killing a few PC's then so be it.At the very least the flying barbarian should have been able to see the difference in terrain at the heart of the Sargasso where the mother of all is located.
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I think he broke one of the cardinal rules of RPG's, by splitting up the party. The rest of the group had to be bored senseless sitting around the table waiting on this all day recon thing to work itself out, yeah?
In my game, he would have been subtly warned before leaving the group, and had he ignored those subtle warnings, mercilessly killed by vine horrors after leaving.
A 10 minute in-game recon is one thing, somewhat like the rogue looking ahead to play up his sneakiness and trap sensing, and that sort of thing is OK in limited quantity. This was much more than that, and is NOT OK, both from a metagame standpoint, and from general sensibility. The guy spent the WHOLE DAY scouting, and then spent the night away from the group as well. Essentially the barbarian was attempting to face the entire sargasso alone, and that won't work.
The point of the night time vine horrors was to instill horror... I think you've achieved this. LoL Early in the morning, I'd let the other party members find him unconscious in his rowboat, and teetering on deaths door... lesson learned. Don't split up the party for long periods of time... Now, if he does it again... Kill him without mercy. loL
The point of the night time vine horrors was to instill horror... I think you've achieved this. LoL Early in the morning, I'd let the other party members find him unconscious in his rowboat, and teetering on deaths door... lesson learned. Don't split up the party for long periods of time... Now, if he does it again... Kill him without mercy. loL
The only problem I see is he needs to make it back to the party to let them know everything he saw. Plus if you gave him an out, I think it'd be in your best interests to honour it. If you're going to have him pass out from lack of sleep, do it once he's within sight of the party, not before. Then that night if the party is still holed up on the Sea Wyvern, have vine horrors attack and everyone will think the Half-Orc lead them back to the party.
~ Bryon ~
First off, you're not killing the PC. The PC went off by himself in a strange situation, spent the night by himself, and allowed the magic that allowed him to return safely to expire. He killed himself.
He's made it to water, the rest of the party is still trapped in the Sargasso. Kind of hard to let them "meet up".
Give him his Fort saves until he passes out from the heat and then go back to the rest of the characters to see what their PCs have been up to in the meantime.
Eventually his rowboat can drift back into the Sargasso and the rest of the party can find him, dehydrated and nearly dead. Depending how pissed off the rest of the players were from being made to wait around while he was a spotlight hog, I might make him wait a good long time.
Personally I would just ignore him. Books and TV do this all the time. Let him stay the night shivering in the cold and wondering about the chances of surviving one hit point--cut to commercial--next chapter. It's a great cliffhanger.
When you return the next part is not about him. What was the rest of the party doing for the day? Spend the next session going over their actions. At some point they will get bored of waiting or worse give him up for dead. Keep a record of their time and direction. (PCs do not know where he ended up, but switch the cardinals if they try metagaming.) Chance may lead them to the same place as the rowboat/barbarian, or perhaps they hear fighting in direction x somewhere around noon & screams at dusk (build the suspense). Eventually they might (your choice) meet up again, but I would make it really close to the time the bbn's day ended. For the kicker, right before the party sees the rowboat cut back to the bbn and have him make some fort saves (exhaustion) or checks see a new slew of critters so he does not see the party's arrival.
Personally I would just ignore him. Books and TV do this all the time. Let him stay the night shivering in the cold and wondering about the chances of surviving one hit point--cut to commercial--next chapter. It's a great cliffhanger.
I agree. Turn the next session over to the rest of the party and leave him to sit bored while they all play. What would be really fun, is to not tell him what has happened. Have the party search for him and only find his weapon and an empty row boat. That should get him nervous. If he asks what happened to his character, tell him he was unconscious the last he knew.
I am definitely going to let him sweat it out a bit while I handle the rest of the party's day before going back to him. He is certainly nervous about what will happen, I think he expects to die before morning. Thats alright though, he'll have all week to sweat it out before the next session.
Thanks for all of the ideas. Don't be afraid to keep them coming though, the next session isn't until next weekend.