Too Many Friends

[LankyOgre]

We started playing Skull and Shackles a few weeks ago and have so far played three sessions. We just finished up day 7 and my players have too many friends. At this point Grok, Fishguts, Owlbear, and all but 6 NPC crew members are friendly or helpful. The few NPCs that are still hostile are the 5 that started hostile and attacked the players. I am running with 6 people, but so far I've only had 4 or 5 at any one session. They haven't been doing a lot of gambling or exploring, primarily focusing on influencing so far. I also have two characters that are focused pretty strongly on charisma skills. I have a sorcerer, bard, rogue, barbarian, fighter, and oracle. The sorcerer, bard, and oracle all have high charisma and ranks in social skills and the rogue, fighter, and barbarian have ranks in intimidate as well. When they aid another, they can swing hostile to unfriendly or even indifferent, and a few times 2 or 3 steps on the chart. I'm not sure if I should have Plug try to influence them away, or just end with allowing influencing for the rest of the 20 days. How quickly have your players made friends on the ship.

And some of them did start by failing multiple checks against people that turned them hostile that the bard was able to recover from.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

First: a single roll can only change someone's attitude a maximum of two steps.

Secondly, although it's not written into the adventure Plugg, Scourge and their allies should be making influence checks too in order to to cause trouble for the PCs. Each day roll a d8, that's how many crew attempt to turn the PCs allows against the PCs (via Diplomacy, Intimidate or Bluff). Imagine Conchobar dropping something on a PC because Scourge started a vicious rumour the PC had something going on with Rosie? You have 6 players make them earn and upkeep their relationships until Plugg & Scourge are dealt with.

[mearrin69]

My group has been similarly successful...just finished day 14 and there are only a few that aren't in their camp or leaning that direction. I like how they've worked it so far, seeing one of the NPCs as a ringleader and methodically pulling away her supporters.

I did as Dudemeister suggested: had Scourge start 'working the crowd' as soon as he realized his chosen NPC (the aforementioned ringleader, Aretta Bansion) wasn't going anywhere. Every day he makes Intimidate and Diplomacy checks on one middle-of-the-road NPC and tries to pull him or her in his direction. Soon, he will have convinced Plugg that these guys are up to something and then Plugg will get in on the act as well.
M

[Chief Cook and Bottlewasher]

It may not matter that much, as

:

Plugg gets to choose his crew for the Promise, and can make up numbers with the Promise's crew

[LankyOgre]

The bigger reason I wanted to do something about it was because they are only on day 7 and I wanted them to still have things to do for the next 13 days. I may just handwave and say"you have settled into a routine of work and entertainment." They are getting pretty bored with the repetitiveness of the days. And they don't really want to steal anything else from the quartermaster out of fear of getting in trouble, despite the fact that Groom is friendly.

Somehow I missed that influence is limited to two steps, but in hindsight I may have been exaggerating for effect. The Dc for hostile is two for more than two steps and I don't think he even made it on unfriendly, once you get to indifferent and the Dc is low enough, there aren't more than two steps to go.

As a humorous side-note. They made Rosie friendly before they found out about her fiddle, so they got the fiddle and gave it to Conchabar to give to Rosie. Now they are both friends.

[mearrin69]

I really rushed things along after the first few days. They didn't insist on a strict flow of 'ship actions', spending a lot of time "observing the crew" and "listening in on the officers", so I started handwaving and focusing only on the things the players wanted to focus on.

I had them make d20 rolls each day for each character and we played through really bad or really good rolls. We played through a nightly distraction to ditch the rum ration. I had them pick a couple of outsiders to try to influence each day and we played through that a bit (and Plugg got one attempt to influence them back).

They just took Man's Promise last session and they've got probably 3/4 of the crew in their corner. Scourge and Plugg think they're likely planning mutiny...even though the PCs haven't really thought in that direction yet, mainly because they know they can't beat the Captain. I imagine things will go the other way once we set off on Promise.

BTW, the Captain emerging from the cabin with a human heart in his hand had an effect on them. They didn't really expect that, I think.
M

[Damocles Guile]

Conversely our group had relatively few.

The most charismatic of the group, a Kitsune Sorcerer, was kept below in the galley and word got out that Scourge wanted her to himself, so anyone caught socializing withher would be the target of his ire... our other high-charisma character did his part, befriending Rosie, Ratline and the barefoot healer, but then Ratline was lost at sea. The character in question (a Summoner) also spent most of his actions trying to do a good job and avoid the lash as his strength score was not very high and his fortitude save next to nothing.

Our other two characters have charisma's of 8 and 7 and more importantly play that way. They use threats and displays of violence to keep potential enemies at bay, but none of that wins them any friends.

At the end, for the mutiny they had Kroop (who stayed below and kept an eye on neutral Rhahdumi sailors), Rosie and Hartshorn (who was killed in the conflict with Plugg when he turned on them) and Sandara. Of course they had already killed Scourge aboard the Wormwood before ever encountering the Man's Promise and they had surprise on their side, mutinying the second night they were out of sight of the Wormwood.

I think many people who run this AP don't use the 'other ship's officers' enough. They are of higher level, should have regular interaction and therefor a great deal of influence over the crew. Any of the middling level characters could be a valuable asset in keeping the PC's from being 'too' successful winning over allies. And besides, liking the PC's is one thing - mutinying for them or being willing to go up against Plugg or potentially Harrigan for them is quite another.

I might like a fellow co-worker a lot, but I'm not siding with him against my boss of six years two or three weeks after I meet him.