Advance Journey's End


Savage Tide Adventure Path


At the end of last session my group reached Journey's End. We've got four sixth level characters, so I've been running the path as written with no problems. Next session we will likely have a new player and a couple special guest stars, so I'm looking at seven sixth level characters. I need to adjust the challenges for Journey's End, and likely for the rest of Sea Wyvern's Wake, to accommodate the larger group.

Our two special guest stars are first time D&D players, so even more than if I regularly had a group this size I'm concerned with hitting the sweet spot where the combats are challenging, but I'm not going to wipe out the party. Any suggestions?


I think Journey's End needs some serious fleshing out - it was easily the most boring part of the trip to Farshore for our group. (And I even thought it would be cool going in.)

Things I'd recommend:
1) More diverse creature types. It's nothing but plants.
2) More diverse creature roles. It's nothing but beaters and grapplers.
3) Flesh out some of the derelict ships along the way.

So along those lines I'd say add undead, swarms, and a few different plant creatures. Some artillery and skirmishers would be refreshing.
-blarg


My party recently finished it and they were pretty freaked out during their stay at the sargasso. I enhanced the atmosphere by describing vine horrors as freakishly mutilated humanoids, Mother whispering in their minds constantly and when they slept the vines tried to crawl inside of them. By the time they got to mother they were pretty panicked. I have 6 players in my group and either they're all pretty underpowered or Savage Tide is freakishly difficult. When they got to Thunderer 3 assassin vines attacked them, and if I wanted to, I could have easily beat them to a bluddy pulp, but I just wanted them to spend some resources to make fight with Mother tougher and she beat the living crap out of them. Fortunately for them, they had an invisible cleric healing them all the time, and even then 3 of them were dying by the end of the fight.


You could add a stranded ship with savage creatures, or with a crew suffering from savage fever and slowly succumbing to it. This is a nice opportunity to add some creatures of a low CR for the new players to practice on, and it is a nice reminder of the story line (and an introduction to it for the new players).

I do not know if you have Stormwrack, but you could also have the Sable Drake stranded in the Sargasso.

Dark Archive

Some algae-covered sharks and octopi could easily be added (particularly if the PCs ever fall through the sargossa mat). But overall I'd say there is little needs to be added. Lots of vine horrors, the assassin vines should provide a steady challenge. And The Mother is a tough encounter on her own. Particularly if she gets the drop on the party. She nearly wiped the floor with my party even with the assistance of an NPC barbarian they had picked up.
Journey's End was really the highlight of the Sea Wyvern. It was sort of a Night of the Living Dead meets Aliens. Try to keep to the atmosphere suitably creepy. Lots of mist to obscure vision and NPC hysterics help. (Avner: Game over man! Game over! They're going to come in here and kill us!)

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