Need some help with my campaign! Ideas welcome!


Homebrew and House Rules


I need help refining a rough idea I have for my current Pathfinder campaign and would welcome any thoughts!

SETUP: The party is currently level 2 and consists of
- Barbarian
- Pirate
- Samurai
- Bard

They are currently acting as Guards/Heroes for a trade caravan heading North out of Iceferry towards Turvik.

MY IDEA: I had a cool visual idea of the party seeing a full-blown pirate ship on its side outside of Turvik. As they get closer, the Pirate will recognise the ship as one he's had dealings with in the past, perhaps even having worked with some of its crew members in the past.

How did the ship get there? They were engaged in a raid against a merchant ship when something happened, and the next thing the crew knew, they were crashing outside of Turvik hundreds of miles away.

How will they get out? Well, the crew has an idea: They purchased (at great expense) a scroll of Favorable Wind (From Stormwrack) from a wandering wizard.

The plan: Being some 25-30 miles from open water, the crew has devised a plot to repair their ship and fit it with an undercarriage and wheels. If they can get the ship's wizard to copy the scroll, he can cast the spell enough times to push the ship back out to sea.

The problem? Their ship's wizard, currently the ONLY caster in Turvik, has gone into a deep depression; after shipwrecking, his spell book has gone missing and he spends all of his time either getting drunk or casting cantrips for coin to purchase drink.

This is where the PC's come in. Can they help the pirates rebuild their ship, afix the wheels, and convince the wizard to dry up and help the crew?

The population of Turvik would certainly be happy to see this merry band of cutthroats leave for good.

++++

Any and all thoughts on how I can fine-tune this chapter would be appreciated.

Any ideas or suggestions?

As a player, would you find this fun?

Silver Crusade

hmmm... sounds interisting, I'd have the local mayor offering a reward to the Pc's on the sly should they require motivation.
I persionally play clerics, fighters, and monks
for fine tuning be sure to give the characters proper names.
you know your players better than I do if you can work in a story chapter for each of them it might help.
this one for the pirate
another for the barbarian
then the samurai, and so on.
otherwise you seem to have everything in hand


Is Turvic a dessert area?
I would suggest the town/city makes a strong drink from cactus. A local businessman/Patron has a dream of a ship with wheels that would allow trade.
As for how the boat got there, I recommend a running gag of a colossal wave, with a face.

Silver Crusade

hmmm how they ended up there... if you are in pathfinder I say they attacked a Druman merchant ship. being a massively wealthy non-deity backed religious order. guys they are they are prime targets, but that gold also buys artifacts, magical toys, and 8 shades of magicy goodness.

"oh look pirates... they look angry servant bring me my scroll"
"yes Arch-banker"
"thank you now *ahem* inviticum larratu gariportus" *waves fingers*
"um... arch-banker? where did you send the pirates?"
"don't know, don't care, let's get these goods to port, that spell was expensive."


Thanks so much for the ideas! On my phone now so I cannot type much, but will follow up later. Thanks again!


Question- What about the trade caravan heading north out of Iceferry towards Turvik?

How will the leader/ owners of that caravan feel about their guards helping pirates, that in all likelyhood may be wanted by others or even their own guilds etc.?

Giving the towns folk and pirates proper names can help quite a bit in making the party want to help both sides as was suggested by Vulpae.

Is the pirates wizard powerful enough to cast that spell? (Am not sure what that spell is in terms of level and such)

Other items can include:

Who else has heard about this "problem"?
What do they plan to do about it?


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber

If you'd rather dispense with the wheels, you could buy a decanter of endless water and one of the various digging spells (or summon earth elementals). Use one of the various digging spells to dig a hole under the vessel, fill the hole with water to float the boat. Then dig ahead towards the destination while filling in the hole behind you as you go.


Perhaps a side-quest to gain a (lost?) spell scroll that will allow the ship to sail through the air for a limited time, perhaps 24 hours? It could serve as motivation for the depressed wizard who would offer his help in return for the scroll itself, possibly setting up an entire new line of work for himself.

Who knows, later in their adventures he might become a useful resource, perhaps having researched and perfected the spell to make it permanent? And during the current adventure, you have to believe that the pirates would want this magical knowledge for themselves, certainly enough to turn on the PC's at some point, possibly while still aloft...

I'd say the ship got there by becoming an innocent bystander of a powerful and possibly magical maelstrom, the investigation of which could serve as another adventure hook down the road.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16

On the subject of pirate ships finding their way into a desert, Lord Dunsany has something to say:

A Story of Land and Sea

A tale which, while it might not give much in the way of new ideas for how the ship got there (wheels), is worth reading for inspiration and the sheer pleasure of the thing.


Maps are quite over simplified and there could be a huge valley between the mountains shown on a map.
There might be a road made by titans that leads to the sea. An enterprising Ogre might charge livestock for passage.

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