awesome solution tbug:) my party wanted to ambush him but Rosie talked them out of it
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I may have overdone Captain Harrigan's fearsomeness. My players have successfully slain Captain Plugg and First Mate Scourge after the ambush (on their return to the Man's Promise from Bonewrack Isle), and now they're planning on sailing to Port Peril, just like Harrigan wanted Plugg to do. They don't have Plugg's contacts, so their plan is to dock the ship and wait for Harrigan to show up and tell him what happened.
This sounds like a great group to introduce these elements with. They seem better disposed toward Harrigan than most parties (or just more afraid of him), and they might go for an opportunity to redeem him.
I may have overdone Captain Harrigan's fearsomeness. My players have successfully slain Captain Plugg and First Mate Scourge after the ambush (on their return to the Man's Promise from Bonewrack Isle), and now they're planning on sailing to Port Peril, just like Harrigan wanted Plugg to do. They don't have Plugg's contacts, so their plan is to dock the ship and wait for Harrigan to show up and tell him what happened.
Perhaps someone with some common sense (Sandara might be an option, or perhaps Rosie ) might remind them that Harrigan was awfully fond of Master Plugg (aka "regards him as something like a son" ), and since there won't be any evidence of Plugg's treachery and mutiny, telling Harrigan that they killed Plugg and Scourge for whatever reason(and it will come out - there are too many loose-tongued pirates aboard) might NOT be a wise chocie.
With magic (particularly Abadar's truthtelling) it should be a fairly easy matter to determine. There are people on the Man's Promise who hate the PCs, but not enough to lie to Harrigan (particularly while under the effects of magical lie detection). The PCs will say (truthfully) that Plugg and Scourge disobeyed Harrigan's orders and then tried to murder them, at which point they killed Plugg and Scourge in self-defence. Showing up in Port Peril and handing Harrigan the money from the ship (or possibly the ship itself, if they haven't managed to find a buyer by the time the Wormwood arrives in port) will also go a long way to making him think they're telling the truth.
There are lots of ways that I could force them back onto the path instead of letting them do what they want to do, but I'd rather give them free rein and watch things unfold.
@KarlBob I am taking those ideas under serious consideration. Thanks for pointing out that thread!
Lol I made Pluggs last words chuckling, as he dropped to his knees losing grip on his sword, "You he's my father right."
They had heard the rumor but when it was confirmed dramatically acted by me actually dropping to my knees. They was a collective uh oh.
As I say, I'm happy with RAW but I know my group... ;D
sorry noob ? what does RAW mean?
Rules As Written
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tbug - You're welcome. There are some really good threads for this AP.
Gnomezrule - Excellent. I bet they'll be looking over their shoulders for a while.
Lemahu - Another acronym you'll see pretty often is RAI - Rules As Intended.
Sometimes the rules that the developers actually write down don't produce the effects they intended. In really bad cases, the words can be interpreted to mean exactly the opposite of the intended meaning.
RAW vs. RAI isn't usually a big deal if you're just getting together at somebody's house to play, because your GM can just make a house rule to support his or her interpretation. It gets really tricky in Pathfinder Society games, because they're supposed to follow RAW to the letter.
...My group wasn't big on raiding native villages after the first time they did it and the gunslinger dropped one of the warriors with one shot of his pistol. All the other warriors ran and hid in their huts. The PCs were like "Oh god, we're monsters!" and retreated to the ship. They definitely tack towards the good side of neutral. So, to entice them to another village raid, I had them come across a village being attacked by incutiluses inhabiting fallen warriors. As a repayment for helping them the headman gave them the village's plunder. ...
With my group, I just used slaver villages. Essentially, in the slave trade in the real world, a tribe would raid a rival tribe for slaves that they would sell to the European slave traders. I put a similar set of Mwangi slaver villages and had the party hear about them. They raided them without guilt and rescued slaves, some of which were recruited into the crew.
I added "coins" to the description of the plunder and voila! The encounter runs exactly as written, they get no additional plunder or extra recruits, and the party actively looked for these villages until they felt confident in their piracy skills to stick to the more profitable merchant ships.
Oh and to deal with the cleric purifying the water and missing out on the Dominator encounter, I placed one of the slaver villages they raided upstream from an estuary and had them encounter the Dominator on the way back. Her crew were preparing longboats to go upstream in the morning to get slaves. Again, the encounter ran pretty much exactly as written.
Anyone want to recommend a guide to running a sandbox? I feel like I have a decent feel on doing it but I enjoy reading how other people do it.
(I thought that the Gnome Stew people had put something out on this kind of game, but now I can't find it.)
My PCs have no one with a Charisma above 10, so they'll be slow in hearing rumours.
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Anyone want to recommend a guide to running a sandbox? I feel like I have a decent feel on doing it but I enjoy reading how other people do it.
(I thought that the Gnome Stew people had put something out on this kind of game, but now I can't find it.)
My PCs have no one with a Charisma above 10, so they'll be slow in hearing rumours.
They might be slow in building Infamy, too.
There's a thread in this message board about running S&S as more of a sandbox.
Thank-you, sir!
I also want to take a moment to thank the people who suggested that the drought at Rickety's Squibs should have a cause that can be solved. The first thing my players did when they heard about the drought was investigate. I could have shrugged and said "natural causes", but they had more fun tracking down the nasty fey.
This means that they missed the events back in Rickety's Squibs, but I'm going to run a supplemental game where they'll play Sandara and Rosie and company dealing with the naga/swarm/boars/etc.
For my expansion of Rickety Squibs, I had that some swamp hags had dammed up the river to create more of a swamp. They found this out because of the Naga attack, and the villagers worrying that this drought was much worst that previous.
The breaking of the dam release a sudden rush of water which ended up disturbing the giant wasps. So when they returned back to Ricketys they saw the swarm of wasps flying towards the villagers and arrived back just as that battle was going on.
I then ran everything as in the book.
I think that I'm going to have some vegepygmies upriver diverting some water flow to their 'new god' a yellow musk creeper. Will seed that by having the wasps be zombies to explain more of the fights at Squibs.
I didn't find stats for Cyvantris Tisserond, captain of Famished Mane. I'm missing something?
If I recall, there is a stat block somewhere at the beginning of Part II that is supposed to be used for all ship's officers. it's an aristocrat/expert or some other multiclass that includes aristocrat. Find that and it's your stat block for all ship's officers unless otherwise noted.
She's a non-combatant, so her stays weren't included or possibly cut during the editing process
I'm combining book 2 with Plunder and Peril. I'm starting he campaign as Raiders of the Fever Sea, then my group is going to meet Lanteri (not sure how yet, maybe they need crew, maybe they capture her ship) and she's going to try bend them to her will in the promise of great treasure.
I think they could still "Crack the Rock" as well and maybe even finish the treasure hunt in Fever Sea. All the 'sandbox' events can be put together at any time.
I think its going to be a wild ride, and it gives the PC's options in what they want to do. and I'll just follow their choices.
Has anyone else tried this?
Just a slight bit of thread necromancy going on here. :)
Does anyone have a nice image of "Inkskin" Locke's map? I was certain there would be one somewhere, but my Google-fu is failing me. (Do people even say "Google-fu" anymore? I'm getting old)
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Quick question for my fellow Skull and Shackles DMs who might be more rules savvy.
I was just reading over the encounter with the Ancient Mariner. It's reasonable to assume that my entire party will have water breathing up at the start of this fight.
Does that completely trivialize Curse of the Deep or does its supernatural nature just ignore water breathing?
Thanks for any help you can give.
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Quick question for my fellow Skull and Shackles DMs who might be more rules savvy.
I was just reading over the encounter with the Ancient Mariner. It's reasonable to assume that my entire party will have water breathing up at the start of this fight.
Does that completely trivialize Curse of the Deep or does its supernatural nature just ignore water breathing?
Thanks for any help you can give.
Easy. It's right there in the book:
The creature’s cursed waters are so foul that its curse of the deep ability works even if its victim has the ability to breath underwater.
They even misspelled "breathe" for you.
I have to scale up all of the encounters for my group, so I made the anchor he was chained to into a custom magic item. I called it a "Doom Anchor" that serves as an altar to Besmara with a permanent Desecrate effect on it. And I maxed out the mariner's HP.
Almost got one of them.
For part 13: The Frying Pan if the PC's somehow manage to take the Dominator do they get XP for all 120 marines and the captain (~50000xp) or just the ones they killed? Also do they get XP for the ship itself CR9 in addition to the crew?
The PCs should in no way be encouraged or capable of taking The Dominator. I know that there are others in this thread that have allowed it, but there are also numerous threads that detail the problems of letting that happen as well. We're talking about a ship that is an experienced and capable pirate hunting vessel. It's use is to present Cheliax as a threat, and is best used as a reoccuring villain. I strongly encourage you to not let your PCs take the vessel under any circumstances, given that as written, simply escaping The Dominator can lead to TPKs.
This would be a CR 20 or so encounter and so as per the guidance it is a fight that can only be won by GM Fiat and so is therefore worth 0 experience.
Seriously there is no way 5th level or less pc's can defeat 196 people including a 10th level fighter and a 6th level Cavalier (and if I was going to detail the whole crew I would include at least a 6th level Asmodean cleric and a 6th level Wizard or Sorceror) and then 120 2nd level fighters unless the GM lets them , if you are going to do that just give them whatever level you want
Just looking for some feedback on the ideas below...
My PCs have just taken the "Devil's Due" (A Chelish renamed version of the "Man's Promise") and this week will be shipwrecked at Bonewrack Isle.
The first five sessions were a bit dodgy as the PCs hated being press-ganged, and thought they could arrange a mutiny really quickly to take the Wormwood... .
Sandara managed to talk them out of it, but thanks to their lack of "respect" for Scourge and Plugg they already had a keelhauling (Tharak)... but he easily survived.
I added a side-trek to a tiny atoll (to get more fresh fruit) to get them off the Wormwood and cool things down a bit. Included some Cyclopean ruins where pirates had hidden a bit of treasure.
This was kinda added on the fly, but the pirate loot has since become part of a revised story...
It will turn out that the treasure belonged to Whalebone Pilk, so he and his ghost ship will come looking for the PCs later, in Book 2.
I was thinking of changing Tidewater Rock to be Whalebone's old fortress, and have the "lady" there be his now-vampiric wife, with more undead (wights) as her guards... but still a bit sketchy on details.
Also... I keep having this crazy idea that Sandara is actually an aspect/avatar of Besmara... but not sure what impact that might have or where I will go with it.
Thoughts?
Just looking for some feedback on the ideas below...
My PCs have just taken the "Devil's Due" (A Chelish renamed version of the "Man's Promise") and this week will be shipwrecked at Bonewrack Isle.
The first five sessions were a bit dodgy as the PCs hated being press-ganged, and thought they could arrange a mutiny really quickly to take the Wormwood... .
Sandara managed to talk them out of it, but thanks to their lack of "respect" for Scourge and Plugg they already had a keelhauling (Tharak)... but he easily survived.
I added a side-trek to a tiny atoll (to get more fresh fruit) to get them off the Wormwood and cool things down a bit. Included some Cyclopean ruins where pirates had hidden a bit of treasure.
This was kinda added on the fly, but the pirate loot has since become part of a revised story...
It will turn out that the treasure belonged to Whalebone Pilk, so he and his ghost ship will come looking for the PCs later, in Book 2.
I was thinking of changing Tidewater Rock to be Whalebone's old fortress, and have the "lady" there be his now-vampiric wife, with more undead (wights) as her guards... but still a bit sketchy on details.
Also... I keep having this crazy idea that Sandara is actually an aspect/avatar of Besmara... but not sure what impact that might have or where I will go with it.
Thoughts?
A new idea...
I think that I will have Sandara turn out to be an agent of Tessa Fairwind, investigating her suspicions of Harrigan / Cheliax.
She seems far too important an NPC to just be another random press-ganged person, especially in my campaign.
But she will stay very quiet on her mission right up until when the PCs meet Tessa. Should be a nice reveal (if i can keep her alive).
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Just looking for some feedback on the ideas below...
My PCs have just taken the "Devil's Due" (A Chelish renamed version of the "Man's Promise") and this week will be shipwrecked at Bonewrack Isle.
The first five sessions were a bit dodgy as the PCs hated being press-ganged, and thought they could arrange a mutiny really quickly to take the Wormwood... .
Sandara managed to talk them out of it, but thanks to their lack of "respect" for Scourge and Plugg they already had a keelhauling (Tharak)... but he easily survived.
I added a side-trek to a tiny atoll (to get more fresh fruit) to get them off the Wormwood and cool things down a bit. Included some Cyclopean ruins where pirates had hidden a bit of treasure.
This was kinda added on the fly, but the pirate loot has since become part of a revised story...
It will turn out that the treasure belonged to Whalebone Pilk, so he and his ghost ship will come looking for the PCs later, in Book 2.
I was thinking of changing Tidewater Rock to be Whalebone's old fortress, and have the "lady" there be his now-vampiric wife, with more undead (wights) as her guards... but still a bit sketchy on details.
Also... I keep having this crazy idea that Sandara is actually an aspect/avatar of Besmara... but not sure what impact that might have or where I will go with it.
Thoughts?
A new idea...
I think that I will have Sandara turn out to be an agent of Tessa Fairwind, investigating her suspicions of Harrigan / Cheliax.
She seems far too important an NPC to just be another random press-ganged person, especially in my campaign.
But she will stay very quiet on her mission right up until when the PCs meet Tessa. Should be a nice reveal (if i can keep her alive).
I like how you modified the adventure so far.
The cyclopean ruins are cool and will help bring a sense of continuity later in the AP.Making Sandara an avatar of Besmara could be interesting, and an easy way for Besmara (you) to communicate with the crew about divine matters.
Making her an agent of Tessa Fairwind would probably be easier.
I think there's a timeline issue with changing Tidewater Rock to be Pilk's fortress. His story took place about 100 years before the events in S&S.
You might have a tough time tying in the other events in book 2 if you do that.
They wouldn't have any supplies worth taking and would likely kill any Sahuagin raiders.
You might have a tough time getting the story back on track towards Mancatcher cove.
I guess it could be rewritten to spring from a chance encounter with the Thresher. The PCs could discover the map that way... and maybe Sandara tells them about the legend?
You can always make another island somewhere with a vampire fortress that needs a good pillaging.
The changes sound great if that works for your campaign. It shouldn't be too hard to reconcile with later events.
While I'm pulling from multiple threads I didn't want to post in them all so I'm posting here...
My table is giving up on another campaign by a third party publisher (who shall not be named but only completed 2 out of 6 books), and we're starting S&S tomorrow. They are so psyched it's incredible. I've never seen a group so excited to start a campaign. To that end and to the point of this post...
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been posting their adjustments to make this a really fun adventure and make the most of its sandbox elements. Whether it's plugging in items from Dragon magazine, third party publishers like Legendary Games, or Paizo's own modules, I think I've got a really fun and exciting campaign ahead for my players. I'm super grateful and really looking forward to it.
We're actually going to be starting at level 4 between books 1 and 2. I'm narrating the backstory to the Wormwood, then the players will find themselves on the Mans Promise when they come across a sinking vessel a la Salvage Operation from one of the magazines (in which they'll find gear enabling them to mutiny against Plugg and Scourge). After that to Rickety Squibbs where we'll skip the water naga but hit the other points with the addition of a fiendish enlarged wasp at the Lookout along with an accuser devil. The wasp is expected to go down but the wasp will be setting the stage for Chelish influence throughout the campaign. We'll be swapping our man catcher cove for something from Dead Mans Chest and on we go.
Anyway, super excited for this and just wanted to say thanks to all the GMs before me for their ideas.
The catch-all GM answer:
"Yes, that is mysterious isn't it?"
(And then say no more, leaving the answer a mystery)
My group never questioned it.
This response is great, because players will usually come up with their own answer to the question if given time to think about it. Saves the GM the trouble.
Andrew
I probably missed it some where, but what happens to the crew assigned to take "commandeered" ships to port to sell? Any ideas on how to get them back to the ship or are they released from service (and if that's the case, what happens to the money)?We usually only take Chellish and slaver ships, the others having been given 'The Maiden's Promise', and usually only have one by the time we're ready to make port and sell plunder, so we escort it to port ourselves.
Incidentally, the 'Maiden's Promise' is both the name of our ship and the means by which we've been gaining infamy. Our female captain (who personally prefers female company) has had the story spread about her that she is a virgin (lie) and that she and her ship will only by captured by the man who tames her heart. The 'promise' is one given to every non-slaver, non-Chellish ship we take, that if they surrender without a fight we will only take their cargo and their captain for ransom, leaving all of the rest of ship's officers free to sail their ship home. It took a while for the tale to spread, but at this point we've already had three ships surrender to us without a fight and in two cases the ships mutinied against their captain to do so.
Our 'Maiden' captain has become something of a minor living legend already, and now that she has become the frequent if clandestine lover of Tessa Fairwind, the two have worked together to make that legend grow.
My group has a similar policy on pirating. They're honorable compared to most pirates, attacking and killing only if opposed, but accepting an honorable surrender...once. Usually they just settle for the plunder and items taken from combatants, if any. Chelish and scummier pirates can expect to lose their ships to sale, which helps finance both upgrades to the ship and personal purchases for advancement. Since all the mundane loot goes into the Quartermaster's Room I'm totally fine with that. They pass up a lot of money by keeping it well stocked.
Andrew
I think the 22 siege weapons and 120 squares of sails make for a pretty fitting pirate hunter. To throw some other stats at you, you've got 120 CR 1 Sailors, 14 CR 3 Officers, the CR 5 Commander, and the CR 9 Captain. The Commander is actually just the ship's Bosun, so it wouldn't be totally unreasonable to assume that there's also a CR 5-6 First Mate in there somewhere, as well. The sailors are no pirates, but are highly-trained Chelish Marines, who will definitely raise an alarm at the first sign of trouble, rallying the entire ship, which will likely mobilize into groups of 3 or 4 Marines and 1 Officer (a CR 5-ish encounter). The Captain would most likely step in before too many of these groups fell, because she's not eager to strand herself in the Fever Sea by letting all of her sailors perish wave-after-wave. She would likely send her Commander in with another group of 3-4 Marines and an Officer (a CR 7 encounter) while she prepared by grabbing her weapons and drinking some potions. She would then enter combat with 2 Officers, while 3-4 Marines supported them with ranged attacks (a CR 10 encounter, possibly a CR 11 encounter if including a First Mate).
Assuming this all came to pass, I'd estimate the PC's needing to mow down no less than 25 NPC's. If the PC's are still standing after this, more than half of the officers would still remain, and the Marines would still be 100 strong.
I know you said you wanted to humor the PC's with this plan in a way that didn't involve lots and lots of combat, but I'm just laying out what I think would be the logical progression of the situation, which would be lots and lots of combat, and when that's over, even more combat. I'm also getting at my opinion, which is that no group of 5th-6th level PC's could reasonably pull this off - the encounter and opposition are presented in such a way as to make it crystal clear that this isn't supposed to be a winnable fight.
That said, if you REALLY wanted to take a shot at taking the Dominator, it WOULD be best done by avoiding combat as much as possible, anyway. You could run it as a Heist, which lends itself to sneaking around a location, bypassing obstacles, and reaching a goal, all while avoiding combat as often as possible. Most Heists actually fail if combat does occur. The goal in this case could be the captain's cabin, at which time, they COULD have a combat with the captain, and perhaps leave her alive as a hostage, ordering all officers and all Marines (except what is needed to pilot the ship after the PC's crew joins them) to leave the ship and head for shore. As for how you could run the Heist, well, that's a different story. The link I left has a lot of helpful info on the subject. Finding a defector inside the Dominator early on (maybe they have a brig) could be helpful, and capturing and interrogating a Marine could reveal guard patrol rotations and the ship's layout. They could find some unused uniforms they could use to disguise themselves as Marines (and maybe one officer), though if any of the PC's are of an unusual race, that PC would likely need to find another way to get around, short of sneaking (or maybe the disguised PC's could pretend to have captured that PC, and are taking him in for questioning). There are a lot of fun options, once you give it some thought, to give the PC's more info or access throughout this huge ship on their long trip to the main deck and to the Captain's Cabin. Maybe once they get into the Captain's Cabin, they find it empty, and it goes from an infiltration Heist to a Search and Follow Heist, until they can get the Captain by herself.
Hope some of this helped with your situation!
It can be frustrating not having a clear goal in Book 2. Something to help keep your players reassured that they haven't missed something is to just be transparent with them. Tell them that in addition to reaching 20 Infamy, their big goals for the book are to own Tidewater Rock and claim the treasure of Mancatcher Cove. At which point, they'll probably ask "What's Mancatcher Cove?", because the book doesn't even entertain the possibility of the players knowing about it before they meet and kill Isabella. Well, I personally felt it was a mistake in pacing to withhold the info until Isabella attacks, because in the meantime, the players could easily lose interest in the whole thing because their characters have no heading.
There are only so many unique encounters in the book, and only so many times the players will be willing to run through another generic "raid the ship/village" encounter before the whole thing gets stale. If your players are having trouble earning Infamy, that can exacerbate the problem, because the story can't progress until they get at least 10 Infamy, which allows them to (diplomatically) take Tidewater Rock, which allows Isabella's part in the story to begin to progress, and Part 1 of Book 3 can't really start until they earn 20 Infamy, though I can't remember if this is ever explicitly stated in Book 2. You're doing a good job of working around this problem, giving them a quest that will earn them Infamy over time with the Ushinowa Pirate's daughter, and with your plan to alter the circumstances to allow them to diplomatically take Tidewater Rock while having less than 10 Infamy. Another option would be - if they're not already doing it - to let the other PC's who AREN'T making the Infamy check to roll to assist the PC who IS. You could also let them recruit an NPC who has a more silver tongue, and have this NPC roll for Infamy.
An alternate development to consider for the Genzei story: according to the book Isles of the Shackles, visitors would often find themselves pulled in multiple different directions by the noble families who make a habit of entwining outsiders in their politics. Instead of being killed for getting help from an outsider, maybe another family reaches out to the PC's, beginning this cycle. Infamy points become harder to earn from completed quests as rival families intervene until their own problems are solved.
The Isabella fight is very tough, especially if your group doesn't have ranged combat covered very well. She can fly around, getting a good positioning, and hitting (usually) multiple PC's for 9d6 Electricity with her Lightning Bolt. That's 31.5 average damage. That's not unlikely to two-hit KO the group's tank. And that's just one of her spells (which she can cast 7 times per day). She can also trap PC's in an Aqueous Orb, Summon Monsters, and then there's the almighty Geyser. It's a tough fight if she's able to keep her distance and is allowed to really flex on her enemies with all her offensive spells. The best strategy the PC's can have is to just not fight her on the roof - retreat inside and let her come to them, where she can't maneuver as well. Whether or not they think of that, though is another thing.
I've been giving the "Locke Conundrum" thought, and it seems to me that you could make it so that the "real" Issabella is actually a captive/slave of the Sahaugin for her unique tattoos, while the one the PCs encounter is a shape shifting Sahaugin carrying out it's evil plans. Rescuing the real Issabella would make her more helpful to the PCs,while maybe you could give the PCs a chance to make a perception or sense motive check to notice the fake one.
I'm a bit late to the party on this discussion, but I just ran this last week, and wanted to share.
I had real trouble with the map tattoo. It just seemed absurd that she'd use this poison blowfish quill to suicide rather than reveal the location of the sahuagin lair, when she's got a literal map to the lair tattooed on her back.
So, instead, I lost the tats, and renamed her "Inkeyes," a vicious elven pirate captain whose eyes, it is rumored, turn solid black when she's angry, like a shark's. She showed up in the Shackles with her her ship, the Thresher, a few years ago, and has a reputation for only taking the most desperate or violent of crew members - crew who no other captain will take - and even they're creeped out by their captain. There's lots of stories of the Thresher sailing into port, weighing anchor for a day, then sailing away, without anyone coming or going from the ship, and the few men that have left her crew talk about finding watery footprints on the deck at night, and strange visitors to the captain's cabin that are never seen boarding or disembarking the ship.
In reality, "Isabella" isn't an elf at all - she's a malenti, a sahuagin mutant that looks like a sea elf. I also made her a water kineticist instead of a sorcerer. I'd previously changed Tidewater Rock so that the front door was actually underwater at high tide, which was part of what made it such an impregnable fort. Inkeyes attacks at high tide, using her water bending powers to batter the door down. I also swapped out her pirate henchmen for this encounter with more sahaugin, to make it clear which plot thread this was related to.
For the map, instead of it being tattooed on her back, I added a side quest to Ngozu, the small town northeast of Tidewater Rock founded by juju followers. The party had recently saved the lives of a couple of Mwangi sailors, so I decided that Ngozu was their hometown, and had them suggest a visit to the oracle who runs the place. In exchange for putting down a few rogue zombies, she cast "create treasure map" on Isabella's corpse. Which for RP purposes, started with her calling up Isabella's spirit so the PCs could interrogate her first.
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I've been giving the "Locke Conundrum" thought, and it seems to me that you could make it so that the "real" Issabella is actually a captive/slave of the Sahaugin for her unique tattoos, while the one the PCs encounter is a shape shifting Sahaugin carrying out it's evil plans. Rescuing the real Issabella would make her more helpful to the PCs,while maybe you could give the PCs a chance to make a perception or sense motive check to notice the fake one.
I'm a bit late to the party on this discussion, but I just ran this last week, and wanted to share.
I had real trouble with the map tattoo. It just seemed absurd that she'd use this poison blowfish quill to suicide rather than reveal the location of the sahuagin lair, when she's got a literal map to the lair tattooed on her back.
So, instead, I lost the tats, and renamed her "Inkeyes," a vicious elven pirate captain whose eyes, it is rumored, turn solid black when she's angry, like a shark's. She showed up in the Shackles with her her ship, the Thresher, a few years ago, and has a reputation for only taking the most desperate or violent of crew members - crew who no other captain will take - and even they're creeped out by their captain. There's lots of stories of the Thresher sailing into port, weighing anchor for a day, then sailing away, without anyone coming or going from the ship, and the few men that have left her crew talk about finding watery footprints on the deck at night, and strange visitors to the captain's cabin that are never seen boarding or disembarking the ship.
In reality, "Isabella" isn't an elf at all - she's a malenti, a sahuagin mutant that looks like a sea elf. I also made her a water kineticist instead of a sorcerer. I'd previously changed Tidewater Rock so that the front door was actually underwater at high tide, which was part of what made it such an impregnable fort. Inkeyes attacks at high tide, using her water bending powers to batter the door down. I also swapped out her pirate...
Nice ideas.
I allready ran this - more or less as written, it was almost a TPK but for a lucky grapple by an animal companion in the end.Isabella was flying most of the time so capturing her was not their focus.
Beaware that a couple of geysers are really nasty if the PC's are caught in the open.
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I found the Sahuagin lair a bit boring and lacking tactics of an intelligent race. So I gave them all a sack with mud which they used to cloud the water. Both the Sahuagin and their shark allies have blindsense to give them the advance.
If the players got seperated or lost contact with the walls, floor or ceiling in the muddy water they needed to make survial check to get their orientation in af 3D environment.
This helped much with the sahuagins low to hit and pressed the players to come up with solutions and teamplay.
I also changed Krellroots fighter levels to (Black Blood blodline), which is deadly. He enlarged himself and used his reach to attack from total consealment.
I "forgot" to use power attack and raging brutality as that would have ended in TPK.
My 3 players was level 7 with an animal compagnion and a henchmen healer (from leadership). They surived with 3 of them dying/unconsious so it was a bit close.