What Lies In Dust - The Wave Door questions and spoilers

[FarmerBob]

I'm still months away from running this encounter, but I'm trying to get my arms around some of the logistics.

Distance?:

Using the 1 inch = 1 mile scale, it looks like the Wave Door is actually 3 miles from Delvehaven and 1/4 mile from Wart Rock. The original text suggested it was 1/4 mile from Delvehaven and 100 yards from Wart Rock. What do people suggest for reconciling the distance here?

Getting There?:

Going with the distance as per the map, that seems way too far to get a party there and back reliably via magic at 5th level (fly, water walk). Seems like the options are to go by land up and around, or by boat. If they go by land, I measure it being at least 20 miles from Delvehaven, assuming there is a bridge or another way to cross the river just off the map. That's going to be a good two-days travel, there and back. Definitely doable, but not real convenient. Also, since they don't know exact details of what they are looking for, they might have to spend a day or two so resting to recover spells while they search the water for the landmarks to locate the Wave Door.

The alternative is to go by boat. I don't think the party will want to hire sailors or have anyone else know what they are up to, although I could see them enlist some Children of Westcrown. This really limits their choices to something like a rowboat or raft. A rowboat seems most likely. That will seat 2-3 people, so a typical party will need two. A rowboat can move at 1.5 miles per hour, so it will take 2 hours to get there, and another 2 hours to return.

How do people plan to handle the travel to the door?

Getting a boat?:

How would you handle acquiring a boat? Seems like the options are to steal, rent, or buy them from somewhere in the Imperial Marina. I think all of them could attract attention, especially since they'd want to use them at night, and they clearly aren't geared for fishing.

Encounter in a boat?:

Assuming they end up traveling by two boats, how can you avoid a TPK?

Looks like a typical rowboat is 8-12 feet long and from a bit of searching, a 10 foot rowboat is about 3 feet wide.

Should you consider a PC squeezed at that point, since they don't have full range of motion in the rowboat?

Seated in a rowboat, they should be denied their Dex. What about if they stand? What kind of checks should they make to retain their Dex and not fall overboard or capsize the boat?

What about shadow attacks? Seems like the best thing for them is to make touch attacks through the bottom of the boat. PCs would have total concealment, but the shadows would have total cover except vs. readied actions. The shadows aren't geniuses, but they aren't mindless either.

What about PC attacks against shadows attacking that way? Seems like there's a significant risk of damaging the boat (I'm looking at you, half-orc barbarian with a great axe). How would you handle collateral damage and the possibility of them sinking their own boats?

Or just punt?:

The easiest solution is to say the destination is only 1/4 mile away, so a party of 5 can get to the area with a single casting of Water Walk from a 5th level cleric. They still may need another casting or two in order to find the door and return though, and will be sad whenever the spell runs out if they aren't paying real close attention. How many castings they need depends on how well the search goes. They'd effectively get 3 attempts per time the spell was cast.

I'm hesitant to change the distance from the scale of the map, although the adventure was written before the map was given a scale, so the author likely didn't expect it would cause nearly so much grief for the party.

How do people plan to deal with this segment?

[James Jacobs]

The distance problem is something I wrestled with throughout all of Council of Thieves. Unfortunately, the map scale I ended up going with in "What Lies in Dust" is wrong.

I would recommend sticking with the actual distance of 100 yards off shore.

As for how to get there...

Spoiler:

The adventure's for 5th–7th level characters. They probably have access to spells like water walk and water breathing by now. Even fly works. Even if they don't, potions and scrolls and spellcasting can be purchased in town easily enough. Likewise a boat: costs for rowboats and the like are given in the core rulebook in the equipment chapter. Keeping the wave door only 300 feet off shore makes all of these options work the way the adventure intended them to work.

[FarmerBob]

James Jacobs wrote:

I would recommend sticking with the actual distance of 100 yards off shore.

Thanks. Guess I hadn't considered option 3, which is to use the new scale for the distance between Westcrown and Wart Rock, and then go with 100 yards from there. I really like that because it preserves the integrity of the map. I'm sure I'd catch hell if it took them 10 minutes to row that distance now, and then later that same distance on the map took 2 hours to walk.

I also like that they are now faced with a few more logistical decisions on how to get to Wart Rock, and some tactical choices for what to do once they get there. And I've got a few more options for if/when I apply a beatdown...

[CapeCodRPGer]

We just played this last night. I ruled that because of the PCs fame from the play, and they are starting to get a rep with the children of westcrown, they had no issue borrowing a small boat from one of the people involved with the CoT.

None of the playes thought about water walk, fly or water breathing.