A Precarious Shrine

[Joe Outzen]

A Precarious Shrine refers to a small shrine to Murakin, the goblin sea god. Situated in the hold of a beached, but unstable, sailing vessel, the challenge of this encounter is two-fold: the loyal defenders of the shrine, led by the goblin shaman Zaweri, and the potentially dangerous shifting of the hull. Parties will have to coordinate their actions and think on their feet to handle both at once.

A Precarious Shrine is a 5th-level encounter.

Approaching the Shrine

Read or paraphrase the following as the party approaches the vessel:

Just off shore, a once-grand merchant vessel lies on its side on a small sandbar. While the aft appears partially embedded in the sand, the fore hovers unsupported over the water. The masts have broken off, and you can barely make out the words Daughter of Dusk in the Common letters on the aft. Rope ladders and bridges spread across the nearly vertical deck, creating paths between the various hatches and the ground.

Characters with ranks in Knowledge (architecture and engineering) can make a DC 15 check to identify the instability without interacting with the hull. A character who casts detect snares and pits also detects the danger.

Entering the Shrine

The only entrance to the shrine is the hold hatch. The rope bridges and ladders make reaching the hatch easy, but if the characters aren't careful, they could disrupt the vessel's balance without even entering the hold (see Tipping the Daughter of Dusk, below).

Zaweri usually keeps the hatch doors open. Due to the angle of the ship and the destroyed rigging, handling these large doors can be quite difficult. Opening or closing them requires a DC 15 Strength check.

The Shrine

The floor of the shrine is actually the side of the Daughter of Dusk's cargo hold. All ribs and slopes, this floor requires a DC 12 Balance check to walk across. In addition, creatures in the hold can potentially tip the vessel (see Tipping the Daughter of Dusk, below). The chamber is 20 feet tall at the center, tapering to a point afore. The three masts pass overhead; the shrine itself sits just abaft of the aft mast.

The shrine consists of a wooden alter, covered with carvings and religious paraphernalia, and a goblin-sized, gold-plated statue of Murakin. Zaweri attends the shrine nearly constantly, and several petitioners usually join her in prayer. If approached peacefully, Zaweri will feign polite curiosity, but is really just sizing up the intruders and looking for an opening to attack. If the party tips the Daughter of Dusk or otherwise defiles the shrine, she will attack outright.

See below for Zaweri's statistics. The three petitioners are typical goblin warriors (see the MM) with 5 hp each.

Spoiler:

Zaweri CR 3
NE Small Humanoid (goblinoid) Cleric 3
Init +0; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +2, Spot +2
Aura moderate evil

Defense
AC 21, touch 15, flat-footed 19
(+4 armor, +2 deflection, +2 Dex, +2 shield, +1 size)
hp 19 (3d8+6)
Fort +4, Ref +3, Will +5
Defensive Abilities —

Offense
Spd 30 ft. (6 squares)
Melee Morningstar +9 (1d6+4)
Ranged Sling +6 (1d3+4)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attacks rebuke undead, rebuke water creatures, turn fire creatures
Spells Prepared (CL 3rd):
2—death knell (DC 14), fog cloud*, hold person (DC 14), spiritual weapon
1—bane (DC 13), divine favor, protection from good*, shield of faith (DC 13)
0—create water, cure minor wounds (DC 12), guidance (DC 12), resistance (DC 12)
*domain spells; Domains Evil, Water

Tactics
Before Combat Zaweri prepares for combat by using her wand of bull's strength and casting divine favor and shield of faith. Her statistics reflect these effects.
During Combat She uses bane her first round to weaken her enemies, then hold person to take out the biggest opponent. After that, she readily wades into melee.
Morale Zaweri reluctantly abandons the shrine if the other goblins die. She casts fog cloud or spiritual weapon to cover her escape and uses her feather token to quickly flee across the water.

Base Statistics
AC 19, touch 13, flat-footed 17
(+4 armor, +2 Dex, +2 shield, +1 size)
Melee Morningstar +5 (1d6+1)
Ranged Sling +5 (1d3+1)
Str 12
Grp –1
Skills Climb –1, Jump –1, Swim –3

Statistics
Str 16, Dex 14, Con 13, Int 11, Wis 15, Cha 7
Base Atk +2; Grp +1
Feats Skill Focus (balance), Toughness
Skills Balance +4, Climb +1, Concentration +7, Escape Artist +0, Knowledge (religion) +3, Hide +4, Jump +1, Move Silently +4, Ride +6, Spellcraft +2, Swim –1
Languages Common
SQ —
Combat Gear masterwork chain shirt; masterwork heavy wooden shield; masterwork Morningstar; pearl of power, 1st level; silver holy symbol; sling with 20 bullets; spell component pouch; wand of bull's strength (3 charges); wand of cure light wounds (9 charges) Other Gear 16 gp; 8 sp; 3 cp; feather token, swan boat

Special Abilities

Rebuke Undead (Su): Once per day, Zewari can rebuke, control, or bolster undead.

Rebuke Water Creatures (Su): Zewari can use her Rebuke Undead ability against creatures with the water subtype in addition to undead.

Turn Fire Creatures (Su): Zewari can use her Rebuke Undead ability to turn or destroy creatures with the fire subtype.

Tipping the Daughter of Dusk

The Daughter of Dusk's balance is very precarious. If the party places 500 pounds or more of weight on the fore half of the ship (the area marked A on the map), it will tip into the water. The party can avoid this tipping by placing weight on the aft portion of the ship: for example, with an additional 200 pounds abaft, the Daughter of Dusk will only tip with 700 pounds afore. Likewise, if 500 pounds are removed from the aft, the ship will also tip.

Characters on the fore when it begins to tip can choose to make a Reflex save (DC 15) to jump aft 5 feet, potentially re-balancing the ship. Characters aware of the dangerous nature of the vessel can ready an action to move abaft if it starts to tip.

If the ship does tip, it does so within seconds. Any creature in or on the vessel must make an immediate Balance check (DC 16) or fall. The hold hatch becomes completely submerged. If the hold doors are open, water nearly instantly fills area A, making it extremely difficult to right the ship. The sudden flood of water batters anyone in the area, dealing 2d6 damage (Reflex DC 15 halves).

If the hold doors are closed, 50 pounds of water enters the hold every round. If left undisturbed, the hold will fill after 10 minutes. Opening the hold door while water is seeping in means pushing against tons of water, requiring a DC 30 Strength check, and results in the sudden flooding of the hold (as detailed above). Once area A is filled, the pressures have equalized, and opening the doors requires no more effort than before.

If Zaweri and the petitioners were not yet aware of the party when the Daughter of Dusk begins tipping, she will immediately realize that something is wrong and will begin investigating. Zaweri herself doesn't know of the danger (the goblins are too light to unbalance the vessel by itself) and could make the situation worse by moving to the fore.

Rewards

Zaweri is a CR 3 opponent, and the other goblins are CR 1/3 each. They all have appropriate equipment that can be salvaged by the PC's.

Treat the entire Daughter of Dusk as a CR 3 trap. If the party tips the vessel, or takes action to prevent it from tipping, they earn the appropriate amount of experience.

The statue of Murakin is worth 2,800 gp. However, as it weights 400 pounds, removing it from the Daughter of Dusk safely could prove to be difficult, and transporting it to market could be challenging as well. The remaining religious items (two candles in golden candleholders, a silver holy symbol, and a jeweled incense bowl) are worth 120 gp in total.

History

About one year ago, the merchant vessel Daugther of Dusk began her first voyage to Zavaten Gura. As she sailed past goblin territory, a heavy fog beset her and her crew. The sailors, blindly navigating unknown waters, found their ship grounded on a sandbar just off the goblin shore. The crew, fearful for their lives, abandoned the ship, taking what they could and fleeing in dinghies down the shore to civilized lands.

Zaweri took the sudden and inexplicable arrival of the sailing ship as a sign from Murakin, the god of the sea. She gathered some of her tribe members and took claim of the grounded vessel, using its hold for religious gatherings. As her followers increased, her shrine grew; by selling off the contents of the ship, Zaweri was able to commission the golden statue of Murakin.

However, the Daughter of Dusk did not sit on stable ground, and during one particularly vigorous ceremony, the vessel suddenly and catastrophically listed to port, killing many of the faithful. Despite Zaweri's pleas to the contrary, many in the flock interpreted the event as a warning from Kobinalu, god of the earth, to return to solid land.

Although her numbers decreased considerably, Zaweri held onto her belief in the miraculous appearance of the ship. She rebuilt the shrine, with the golden Murakin as the centerpiece, and still holds rites there.

[Clark Peterson]

"a 5th level encounter"?

I think he means EL 5. :)

[Wolfgang Baur]

This is well-organized encounter, from the use of an early description of goals to coloring in the scene for the players.

Your decision to make the whole environment a trap is a nice move, putting a bit of a twist on what could be a straightforward goblin encounter. I appreciate that the trap is detectable at decent odds from outside, but I'm surprised that it requires a Knowledge or spell-based detection, rather than the more typical Search for a rogue.

While I like the idea of tipping the ship, the trigger moment requires tracking pounds. I'm not sure whether other groups are as loose on encumbrance as my home game, but... Well, asking for weight is a dead giveaway here. I'm not sure I have a solution, but it's an issue. It might be easier to try something like "when 3 humans enter the fore area", to speed play.

When it does tip, the 2d6 damage strikes me as more than I'd expect from a flood.

The encounter itself stands alone rather than leading to or from related encounters, and the priestess is a worthy foe but perhaps not quite EL 5 material. Not sure how voters will treat this one, and I'm not sure myself whether to recommend it.

So I'm weaseling out and letting the voters make the call.

[Clark Peterson]

Encounter Concept (name/title, is it actually an encounter?, design choices, usability?, conflict and interaction?, is it memorable?, part of a larger adventure?, monster choices?): B-

The Good: Neat initial idea and a tipping ship is sure to be memorable. There is conflict and interaction with the foes and the setting itself, which is nicely done. I like the bold move of a low level encounter.

The Bad: Simple goblins are not the most interesting. Tracking weight is a total drag (I like Wolfie’s “three humanoids” suggestion better). Doesn’t feel like part of a larger adventure. Not sure the cool tipping ship overcomes the relatively boring goblins (clearly, they should have been monkey goblins).

Map (well done?, legible?, encounter keyed to the map?, exciting and memorable location?, well integrated?, all necessary info for cartographer?): A

The Good: Now this is a nice map.

Crunch (mandatory content such as EL, XP, reward, appropriate read aloud text, format choices and organization, stat blocks, monster selections, tactics, etc.): B

The Good: I happen to like annoying treasure like statutes. The stuff is good but not great.

Writing (quality of read aloud text, publishable quality?, over/under-written?, quality of description): B-

The Good: Competently written otherwise.

The Bad: Why are we here? I think this encounter is underwritten for motivation and goals and overwritten for unnecessary history. This is a big flaw.

Tilt (did it grab me?, is it unique and cool?, do I like it?): C+

The Good: The ship is cool, but that coolness just doesn’t carry through a kind of blah encounter. Didn’t grab me, but the ship part is unique.

Overall: B-

Good idea with the ship, just didn’t do enough with it and didn’t really give me a reason why were the PCs go here or how it is part of a larger adventure.

NOT RECOMMENDED for Top 4

[Erik Mona]

I like the idea of the boat tipping back and forth during a fight. That's the sort of exciting, cinematic scene that can really sell a module as a memorable experience, even if the rest of the adventure is really lame and boring.

That said, there's relatively little "wow" factor here aside from the tipping boat. Once you get past that, the encounter with the cleric is pretty pedestrian, and the three petitioners probably won't last even two rounds. I have some real doubts that this encounter can seriously challenge a 5th-level party.

So it's a good gimmick, but I'm not really that impressed beyond that.

Still, this is the penultimate round of RPG Superstar, and everyone who has made it in the contest this far is capable of producing publishable writing. I am in no way saying that this encounter isn't publishable, it's just not mind-blowingly awesome.

And this is a round where the submissions really needed to be mind-blowingly awesome.

Based on this entry, I'm afraid I do not recommend Joe Outzen for advancement into the final round of RPG Superstar.

But I certainly won't be disappointed if the fan vote gets you through.

Good luck, Joe!

[Lich-Loved]

This one doesn't do it for me. The tipping ship is a great idea, but the place needs more goblins; perhaps a fight against goblin archers in makeshift locations aboard the ship prior to the PC's entering the vessel would spice things up. The cleric and her petitioners are far too weak for a standard 5th level party and will be stomped in a round or two unless the characters are somehow bled dry of resources outside the ship before entering. The tight confines of the shrine area might prevent a fireball from destroying the goblins outright, but those same conditions will prevent the goblins from doing much more than annoying the party.

And although this is a nit, the phrase "abaft of the aft mast" tied my tongue into a knot.

[Samuel Kisko]

Well written? Yes

Is it an encounter? Yes

Would I use it? No

2/3

Lacks the impact of the top few entries here. This is standard fare for a 'Dungeon' adventure which is good and bad, since they tended to be very well done but also dry and forgettable.

[Lich-Loved]

Samuel Kisko wrote:

Well written? Yes

Is it an encounter? Yes

Would I use it? No

2/3

Lacks the impact of the top few entries here. This is standard fare for a 'Dungeon' adventure which is good and bad, since they tended to be very well done but also dry and forgettable.

I have read nearly all of the comments throughout this competition. For some reason, yours tend to stand out as containing some thinly veiled barb. At times, the tone of your comments comes across as condescending and arrogant, as this one does with your jab at Dungeon and its contributors. I would be much more inclined to give your comments weight (you are a top 16 member after all) if they focused on the task at hand and left the bitterness behind. It may also improve your credibility.

Just a thought.

[Edit: clarity]

[Samuel Kisko]

Lich-Loved wrote:

I have read nearly all of the comments throughout this competition. For some reason, yours tend to stand out as containing some thinly veiled barb. At times, the tone of your comments comes across as condescending and arrogant, as this one does with your jab at Dungeon and its contributors. I would be much more inclined to give your comments weight (you are a top 16 member after all) if they focused on the task at hand and left the bitterness behind. It may also improve your credibility.

Yeah I apologize (to Joe in particular), in retrospect that came off as harsher than I intended. Comparing to Dungeon magazine was intended both a complement and a comparison on what I consider to be 'fresh' material. Hard to put a finger on it, but after a while most of the Dungeon adventures started to mesh together in androgyny. I know saying that will not be popular at all here but I think it is important that 'next rpg superstar' delineate them self from the norm.

I think Chase on Charred Ground and Monkey Goblins Attack pulled this off this round similarly to what Joe did in Born of Lightning which I liked quite a bit (and voted for). I appreciate Joe's work and honestly do hope he moves on next round, good luck.

[BiggusGeekus]

Hey! A Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check! Nice!

Regarding previous comments that the tipping action of the boat is the one interesting thing about the encounter: I recall an old game magazine ad for the Paranoia RPG, "For years Paranoia has been written off as a one-joke game, but you have to admit it's a pretty good joke." Well, this is a pretty good gimmick. Using weight is realistic, perhaps excessively so, but its something the DM can have the players do before the start of the game and then its easily handled.

What this encounter does not detail, that perhaps some are overlooking is the potential for drowning. The drowning rules in D&D are nasty (or at least they were in 3.0). This is not just a 2d6 hp of damage trap.

I think this is an encounter that will play out with a lot more action and screaming than it may appear as written.

[Michael Raper]

While I don't see anything particularly wrong in this entry I'm not really sure why the party would be here. The idea of a tipping boat is cool though and so I put this in my short list.

[Ernest Mueller]

I like this in that it's simple and usable. The largest issue here is there's too many holes. How much does a given goblin weigh? Once you get a combat going on and ship some water it's going to be too complicated and require too many judgement calls. It's cool though, so I give it a B-.

[Phased Weasel]

- Too much history, and not enough info / motivation for the players. It's a common mistake, and one I used to make all the time until good designers opened my eyes.
- Excellent setup, and I can see where I plan to drop this in my campaign. The setup is the hard part, creatively speaking. Why vanilla goblins? Goblins are cool, sure, but these could have been fleshed out more, or given more fun abilities to make the DM excited to run them.

[Nem-Z]

Great map, and great gimmick right off the bat. Boy do I wish you'd found an easier way to track the ship's list than asking for weight, though. I can't recall a single time I've ever run or played in that was more than half-hearted in tracking encumbrance and the like. I also don't get a solid feeling of just how severe the slope here is, and kind of wish you'd subdivided the area of the ship into 4 zones to better represent the realistic effects of being at a greater distance from the fulcrum point. If the water is shallow enough that the ship became grounded in the first place I'm somewhat skeptical that there is actually room for it to fully submerge.

After all this setup its just a pack of utterly forgettable goblins? Meh.

I'm not sure why the players are here or why they should care, however... there just isn't much in the way of motivation. Someone earlier had a comment about goblin archers attacking the PCs earlier, and I could buy that as a reason to investigate this interesting location while just passing by.

I like the location enough to use it, but not with the current bland occupants and not unless I had a way to get the players to care about it.

[varianor]

Ahah! A beached ship encounter. I love these. Your map is clear. The color does nothing for me, but it does not detract from your map. I would like to have seen area A explained or at least referenced in the sidebar somehow. A=submerge zone or something.

I like your introduction. Right in the read aloud text you show the PCs easy ways to get onto the ship. Whenever there’s unusual terrain (and this qualifies), giving them easy ways onto it gets them to use it. That’s good. Now, you then go on to mention checks to notice “the instability” but you don’t refer the DM to any rules. This would be the point to move the reference to “Tipping the Daughter of Dusk” to. PCs may well still pick up on the “unsupported” part of the read aloud and get cautious about entering, or even decide to try to make it fall before they go in. I think that Profession: sailor (although rare) should probably also allow a chance to notice the problem. One of my pet peeves with encounters where information is relevant is that the designer only gives one means of finding the details. Yet in play, few players wind up with the knowledge skill. Now they’re on alert, but potentially frustrated.

Now, the tipping part is fun. It’s also a math exercise. The DM is going to have to calculate his party’s weight, and hopefully in a means to do so without arousing suspicion. Once people start moving into the forward hold and you ask for weight, those little metagamey antennae are going to go up! I think this would be easier to adjudicate if you notated it in terms of “two Medium characters in the front make it tip, but one additional Medium character in the back counterweights that, so the ship only tips if a third Medium character goes to the forward hold.” Then provide conversions. Four Small = one Medium. Four Medium = one Large, etc. I also think that discussing the Climb rules in the context of a tipped ship is important. The players can climb up. I would think that the ribs help climbing significantly, making this DC 5, an important number for a low-level encounter like this.

Zaweri has a good tactics section.

Is the shrine secured? As I look at the map, and I see that the PCs are likely to go in through the open doors in the tippy forecastle area, I can see where it’s going to go into the drink quick. What happens if the shrine and/or the statue go into the water? (How much does the statue weigh?) This could be really fun as the goblins screech and attack the PCs for their assault on the shrine as it goes “bloop” into the rapidly filling ship and the PCs struggle in the water. Which leads me to another point. I can extrapolate from how the water fills the ship that it’s got some deep water around the sandbar, but perhaps the map could have indications of the depth on it. That matters for swimming versus walking PCs, as anyone in heavy armor at low level (or even mid levels) has a royally sucky Swim score.

Overall, I like that you stretched the encounter to something really interesting and low level. I’m thinking this is for 1st to 2nd level PCs. I find the goblins unremarkable except that the cleric makes a decent opponent. (It may not have helped that I read the Monkey Goblins Attack! encounter first, so you compete with that using the same monster.) This is the kind of encounter that I would see as an editor and think it definitely needs playtesting. That’s a good thing, because it could clearly become memorable.

For purposes of this review, I did not read other’s comments.

[varianor]

Wolfgang Baur wrote:

While I like the idea of tipping the ship, the trigger moment requires tracking pounds. I'm not sure whether other groups are as loose on encumbrance as my home game, but... Well, asking for weight is a dead giveaway here. I'm not sure I have a solution, but it's an issue. It might be easier to try something like "when 3 humans enter the fore area", to speed play.

Now I see this after I posted my comments. This is even easier to remember as a solution.

[Clark Peterson]

And that is why Wolfgang is a Superstar. He comes up with stuff like that--a better, simpler, easier to track way to do something. If I've learned anything from this, it is what amazing designers Erik and Wolfgang are.

[James Blair]

Rock the boat...
(Don't rock the boat, baby!)
Rock the boat...
(Don't tip the boat over!)

The encounter's almost as dangerous to the monsters as it is to the party. The bonus for early detection is rather large... most parties I know would deliberately tip the boat without entering it while the rest ready missile weapons to deal with anyone who makes it out of the boat. I guess it depends on whether the PC's expect a fight or not.

[Rhothaerill]

Standing on its own merits this could be a good encounter, though it has a few deficiencies as the judges pointed out. I like your previous work, especially Born of Lightning, but I think several of the other contestants have stronger entries.

[Jason Nelson]

Clark Peterson wrote:

And that is why Wolfgang is a Superstar. He comes up with stuff like that--a better, simpler, easier to track way to do something. If I've learned anything from this, it is what amazing designers Erik and Wolfgang are.

I've loved Wolf's stuff since way back when in the early issues of Dungeon mag and Al-Qadim.

[Joel Flank]

I like the boat tipping setting, but have to agree that the goblins just aren't enough. Maybe if the other goblins were War 3 or there were more of them, the encounter would last longer and have to deal with the water more.

The other thing, which is major, is that the typical party of 4 would be over the 500 lbs and tip the boat as soon as they entered the hatch. What I think would really save this encounter would be to have the tipping boat fill part way with water, enough to slow movement, and then have the force of the water slam the hatch door shut, and let it fill slowly. This of course would draw the goblins to attack, while the PCs were dealing with trying to get out of the sinking ship. Having a round by round table of what happens when, like Chase on Charred Ground, would really help show how to handle all of the "moving pieces" in this encounter.

[Starglim]

Rope ladders and bridges are always good.

Potentially tipping the encounter area is fun, though once I worked out the map, I was more expecting it to roll on the other axis. I'm not sure why the PCs would venture onto the fore half of the ship to cause it to tip, or why it tips in such a way that it pulls the largest mass of the hull out of a stable position in the sand.

I don't see how the goblins justify EL 5. Generally this seems like a lower level challenge.

[Steven Helt]

Core wrote:

Lich-Loved wrote:

I have read nearly all of the comments throughout this competition. For some reason, yours tend to stand out as containing some thinly veiled barb. ...

Yeah I apologize (to Joe in particular), in retrospect that came off as harsher than I intended.

Actually, I'm disappointed that you apologized for this, Sam. You have been a pretty good sport so far. You stuck by your entries when you didn't advance, but I think there's nothing wrong with that.

Your post isn't harsh, and you said in your post that the comparison to Dungeon is both good and bad. And entirely accurate.

I don't know where Lich-loved is coming from at all, claiming you have lost credibility or accusing you of 'thinly-veiled barbs'. Those comments are out of place and make no sense to me. Certainly a few of us have been harsher critics of your peers than you have. I think retorts like Lich-loved's should be saved for idiotic responses (like the guy who panned an entry because it wasn't scientifically accurate enough about depressed people - how depressing!).

[Steven Helt]

The read-aloud text isn't as dramatic as I would like, and I think a lot of times canned adventures need specific read-aloud text for dramatic moments to help make sure the DM offers the right details. In this case, I would have liked something describing the creaking wood and uneasy feeling you get getting on the ship, and also a specific description of the ship tipping and water crashing through the hull while the PCs are still getting their bearings.

The encounter is not much of a challenge for EL 5. Needs more goblins, more clever tactics by the goblins defending their turf (including use of the beach, maybe a bucket of pirahna in the event the ship tips...stuff like that), and for the boss to be CR4 maybe. Also, I would have added some reflex save or risk pinning a PC underwater: now your encounter has urgency. Moving the heavy wood to free a drowing PC provokes attacks of opportunity.

If the place is treated as a trap for its structural isues, it should also be detectable by a rogue's Search check, and information about adding weight to prevent the tip should be available with a successful Disable Device check.

Finally: I don't much like the trap aspect. I think if the memorable part of the encounter is the combat while half the ship is sliding into the water, make it happen. Make the boss CR4, and offer up six dudes at CR 1/3. That, combined with the guarantee of a sinking ship, should make a fair EL 5 or 6. If the party prevents the ship from tipping, this is a cakewalk and not memorable. Groaning wood and a desk trapping your wizard under water while a swarm of pirahna attack the fighter - that's memorable.

Congratulations, man. Out of 855 people you were the Top 6. You are smarter than a 5th grader!

[Samuel Kisko]

ancientsensei wrote:

Actually, I'm disappointed that you apologized for this, Sam. You have been a pretty good sport so far. You stuck by your entries when you didn't advance, but I think there's nothing wrong with that.

Your post isn't harsh, and you said in your post that the comparison to Dungeon is both good and bad. And entirely accurate.

I mainly apologized for Joe's sake, since I didn't really want my critique to come off as snide or dismissing to the other reviewers. This is his hard work and his thread and I did not want my comments to be taken out of context. I did give it a 2 out of 3 after all.

I am not apologizing for the comparison to Dungeon which I think is accurate, but rather clarifying my point of view. Anyhow, mainly I was hoping for something from Joe that was as creative as his previous entry (Born of Lightning), which I thought was brilliant work - but this entry didn't quite do it for me. Good luck to you Joe however.

[Douglas Smith 33]

Ancientsensei said "I think retorts like Lich-loved's should be saved for idiotic responses (like the guy who panned an entry because it wasn't scientifically accurate enough about depressed people - how depressing!)."

I am that idiot!

But back on topic, as soon as I saw the map, I thought, cool! As I read on, and saw the weight thing, I knew it would be an approximation for my group. Actually, I'd just tip the boat whenever it added drama to the combat.

The suggested PC workaround of tipping the boat and waiting ofr the goblins to come out is genius. Reward the players for comingup with that.

For having a flaw or two, I put this up there with Monkey Goblins Attack.

[mevers]

I really like the setup of this encounter, but it just doesn't seem to carry it off.

It took me a while, but I think most of the comments can be traced back to a single underlying flaw. You have two encounters here you have mashed together, and neither dominates as the defining characteristic.

What defines this encounter? Is it a battle with some goblins in a different environment? Or is it a chaotic battle aboard a titled ship that is danger of tipping over at any second? The problem is that as presented, neither option is especially strong or defining enough to make it a significant portion of the encounter.

The major strength of this encounter is the tipping boat. I really liked this idea, and would like to see it play a significant part in the entire encounter. Perhaps some reason for the goblins to intentionally tip the boat, so now the PCs are dealing with the boat filling up with water while fighting for their lives against a horde of Goblins.

[Ragwaine]

I think a group of 2nd level characters should be able to handle this. I would have given the priest a pet, some water creature (since they don't get used enough) maybe a small elemental. Love the boat tipping, hate having to calculate weight (although it is of course more realistic). Like Clark I like annoying treasure too. This is more like what I thought the entries would be like but that's only because I didn't read the rules about putting the encounters inside a story arc.

[James MacKenzie]

I didn't see the history as unnecessary. The history answers the obvious question about why the goblins would have set up a shrine in such an unusual place.

While some of this round's encounters gave information as if they had been excerpted from a larger adventure, such details were ancillary to the encounter itself. I picture the party seeking some treasure from the Daughter of Dusk, following the lost vessel's final course as they seek clues to the missing vessel's fate. After facing the goblins, they might know to check nearby settlements for survivors of the wreck, people who could tell what became of the item they seek.

[Charles Evans 25]

If the world that this encounter is set in has tides, I would have liked to see some thought given to the effect of high/low tides on the the encounter (if it is low tide and the ship tips, for example, much less water comes in or none at all).
If the ship tips and starts filling, does it start to slide slowly down the side of the sandbar into the sea?
Do the PCs need (to make their lives easier, whether they realise it or not) to take goblins captive in the event that the PCs have come here to try to find an item? (I note that the goblins have 'sold off' most of the contents of the ship to fund the ourchase of the statue for the shrine; trying to get the goblins to give up the details of who they sold things to could be fun.)
Can PCs use broken off bits of mast indicated on the map to be lying around on the sandbar to try to prop up/stablise the ship in some way? (Although the noise of their doing so will surely alert any goblins inside.)

Interesting 'bread and butter' encounter, but leaving several questions unanswered and up against some very tough competition.

[Jason Nelson]

Joe, congrats on getting to the top 6. I think my favorite thing you created was one of the most fun powers in the whole monster round. Become Bolt rocks the house!

[Joe Outzen]

I'm thinking this entry needed a little more time. I was so excited when I got the idea, but my initial inspiration splintered into a dozen different threads. With the few days I had to implement that idea, I couldn't pull all those threads back together into a superstar encounter. Mabye, with an extra week, this might have been something great. But, given the quality of my competitors, I don't know that an extra year would have helped me.

So, some thoughts:

On Encounter Level: Hello; my name is Joe, and I'm a PC killer. I don't try, but for whatever reason - me, my players, luck - PCs tend to die a lot in my games. I've developed the habit of "rounding up" encounter levels to compensate; I just continued to do so for this, without even thinking about it.

On Size over Weight: Why, oh why, did I not do this? I had the idea. Several times. I realized that weight would be clunky, and that it should be replaced with something a little easier to track (such as size). But I never actually did anything with that. I have no explanation.

On "Why are we here?": I think I missed the part in the rules where it specified that the encouter should be a part of an adventure. I tend to prefer out-of-the-box components (such as a single encounter with little context) myself; perhaps that preference colored my reading of the rules. So I went for the side quest/random encounter idea, not the part of a larger whole idea. I felt that the situation was sufficiently odd to warrant a history (though I did probably go overboard on it); this was not intended as a way to hook the encounter into a wider adventure.

On Boring Goblins: The goblins were one of those threads that got away from me. The original inspiration involved simply getting the statue out of the boat without killing yourselves or ruining the statue. I don't remember exactly why the goblins came in in the first place, but had I better held that core idea, they might not have even been there.

On Searching for Traps: I'm with the 4e designers in that traps shouldn't default to Search/Disable Device rolls. Many traps probably should be, but there are definitely a class of traps that I feel should use different rules. This is one. How exactly does one search for this as a trap? And, assuming you've identified it, disabling it is no small task, involving more muscle than your standard rogue probably has. And if the party can disable the trap with a couple of rolls, where's the fun in the encounter?

To Clark, Wolfgang, and Eric, everyone else at Paizo, all my competitors, all those that voted, all those that critiqued, thank you all. This has been a wonderful learning experience, and I've had a lot of fun.