Bullywug Gambit & Time - Need some advice

[Morgenes]

Ok, so my players are going through Bullywug's Gambit. Due to an unfortunate set of rolls, all the (non-warforged) pc's have acquired the Savage Tide disease from the savage monkeys in the first encounter. On top of the acid damage, and walking right into the savage dionysus, they needed to rest pretty quickly.

Since there's nothing about it, and they waited out the fire, they rested on the Sea Wyvern, I figured everyone on board was dead, and so didn't have any encounters there. The problem is they then decide to hole up on the boat for 2 days before re-entering the caves.

Should I adjust the caves further on for them taking longer? Obviously the lanterns that were low on fuel, lighting the caves would be extinguished, but what about Captain Harliss Javell? Should she have survived to this point, or should I have her as another victim of the Savage Tide?

What to do? The rest of the adventure is very time sensitive, and if they keep resting it'll take them forever to get through this. Although I guess it'd explain why the Bullywugs were able to get to the Vanderboren estate before them.

Any input you guys could provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Morgenes

[DMFTodd]

Harliss is needed for a later adventure so I wouldn't have her turn Savage. I'd simply say that there were more pirates/savage creatures inside that have been attacking each other during those two days. Harliss built a better barricade, etc. That leaves the caves in the setup as described in the adventure. I'd then add more gore to the descriptions to show what has been happening while the players rested.

For my campaign, the players did the same thing - rested on the boat one night. I have them a night of uneasy rest with sounds of battle and screams coming from the caves all night.

Alternately, you could have had creatures come out of the caves looking for more food.

[Hierophantasm]

My players did the same thing. (Admittedly, I allow for a feature which lets them scale their difficulty on the fly, and they were a bit overconfident, but hey...) They rested on the Sea Wyvern, and ventured deeper into the caves after a "short" rest. (I wonder, totally off topic, whether Tavey Nesk--see SWW or HTBM, more accurately--would be on the Sea Wyvern at this juncture or not...hmm...)

I played it out as the events as they were written were the results of their waiting. It saved me some time, and made the players wonder if they had pushed on, would things have been better. Ultimately, Harliss is fairly integral in this adventure. In truth, you could have the logical conclusion of not finding Vanthus be to report a failed expedition to Lavinia, and then have them encounter the events in Sasserine. Still, the presence of the bullywugs and Drevoraz has much more significance if Drevoraz's mission comes from Harliss' mouth. She returns in TSOS, though I'm unsure how her role will play out, considering other motivating factors the PCs have to go there. Either way, Harliss is representative of the more benign NPCs the PCs will have to encounter in this AP, so I'd keep her around, if just for contrast.

There was a thread a while back about a creature called Jajirlok (a blackscale lizardfolk w/savage fever) in this section. He was cut from the slave pens in the caves as an encounter, but if you think your players would have too easy of a time with the last leg in here (yeah, Ripclaw is really tough), then pop him in there as well to drain their resources a little more.

I'd ultimately play up the intensity of this area, still. It's really horrifying, and I'm desperately looking for other areas in the AP to use the template more.

[Avemar]

I stressed urgency. Given the carnage and the sounds coming from the caves my players thought there were people inside that could still be saved from the savage pirates. Being of a benevolent bent they pressed on. In fact, the PCs, to their credit, barely slept from that point until they had cleared out Vanderboren Manor of bullywugs. Then they just collapsed from exhaustion.

Wands of cure light wounds are really useful in situations like these and my players burn through them in record fashion. Their usefulness in combat is somewhat limited but they are great between battles.

[lin_fusan]

There was some discussion in another thread about railroading if the players managed to wrap up Kraken's Cove and get back to Sasserine ahead of the bullywugs, but I've never heard accusations of railroading if players waste time at the Cove and the DM adjusting the adventure for them to get the info about the seige.

But I too was concerned about believability. How would the PCs know to rush back to Sasserine without Harliss, a note conveniently lying around?

And my group was dangerously close to resting two full days also. Is Harliss holed up in the Cove for two whole days waiting for the PCs to arrive?

I had to stress the timeline a little, but no one noticed the discrepency.

What got more strange was that the PCs, drained of spells, sailed back to Sasserine but got there about 3am. According to my timeline, they would be in the middle of the seige, but had no healing and no spell firepower.

Not only did they walk right through the front doors and were surprised that there were intruders, but the party then split up.

Almost a TPK there.