After Spending 4 entire books fleeing the dominator while doing privateering. mostly due to DM fiat about a Warship drastically outclassing a sailing ship.
our final battle, is going to be against some thrune lady atop the dominator on saturday may 11th 2013. our party is 14th level, and the foes are 18+. we dropped from 12 members down to 8, and 2 of them will be absent. our rogue and our polearm wielding oracle.
which means our frontline force was halved
all we can hope is that our foes have piss poor will saves and our 2 witches engage in some expedient elimination.
Not very many posts for book 6? hmm. Anyway my party lost the fleet battle, and the Cheliax flag ship is rolling up on the PC's flagship, odd thing is the party will probably take Trhune and company down pretty easy, so I have to think of a way to make it tougher without being overwhelming.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Not very many posts for book 6? hmm. Anyway my party lost the fleet battle, and the Cheliax flag ship is rolling up on the PC's flagship, odd thing is the party will probably take Trhune and company down pretty easy, so I have to think of a way to make it tougher without being overwhelming.
If you'd like some ideas about how to do that, email me at
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My group lost the sea battle by a landslide but took out druvalia and the paralictor to win the victory. Their ship was sunk afterwards with all hands lost but the PCs wizard teleported himself and the other officers back to the island of empty eyes before they met Besmara at the bottom of the ocean.
I also gave Druvalia boots of haste so she could fire all four barrels of her pepperbox upgraded crossbow. I also changed the paralictor by giving her a shield and axe and the arrow shield feat. Her shield also had arrow attraction on it to throw a wrench at my groups zen archer and gunslinger/fighter. It was an awesome fight.
I too have a rotten Zen Archer. Damn monkey. I will have to consider arrow attraction. Check!
Vendor - Fantasiapelit Tampere
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Do you guys have any idea for additional material for this book? It feels little short on material, and I would like to have some extra for thos one. I already read the idea for replacing Bonefist with undead version of Harrigan, but I'm not sure... Do you have anything? Did you do something sifferently? I also thought of flipping the parts, so that fort hazard part comes first, and the grand sea battle is final part.
My party lost the fleet battle pretty handily. When the flagships met I doubled the number of officers and added the Drowning Devils into all one enounter. The party beat them with only 1 person going down. They are now climbing through the depths of Fort Hazard.
No one in my party wants to be the Hurricane King so they are not that motivated to defeat him. They do think he is an idiot so they are somewhat motivated by other throwing him and replacing him with Tessa.
As an AP as a whole my party really likes their island but are little disappointed the AP has nothing written into It that really is a major story line attached to the island.
My players aren’t ready for the AP to end and want something added on to the end of the AP, but I don’t really have time to create something from scratch. So, I’m thinking about using book 6 of Shattered Star and tagging it onto the end of the AP. It’s about an ancient city rising from the ocean. I’m going to add that the city plane shifted away before star fall and plane shifted back hundreds of miles away from its original location hence it’s out of place location to Varissia.
The Hellblood Corsairs from the Rival Guide would be a credible high level threat. They're interested in doing something with the Ghol Gan ruins that are all over the Shackles. The Blood Queen from the book Islands of the Shackles is another credible high level threat. The Lost Kingdoms Guide has a lot of information on Ghol Gan and its ruins in the Shackles if they'd like something like that. There is an advanced Kraken in Mythical Monsters that could also be a high level threat to the Shackles. There is plenty of continuing adventure to be had in the Shackles if the PCs are happy to let Tessa Fairwind wear the crown and continue their adventures as her right hand.
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Vendor - Fantasiapelit Tampere
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Yes, well my problem is that I like the ending, but I need something in the middle or beginning. It just feels like "Congrats, you won the battle against fleet. Now go to Kerdak's place and kick his ass! Tally ho.End of the line." I wanted it to feel more than two battles. All the other books have great chances for roleplaying experiences, but in the final book it's mainly the first part that has any real roleplaying scenes. Rest is just dungeoncrawl. I'm seriously thinking of adding the Harrigan's revenge part, but maybe AFTER the fleet battle. Kerdak seems them as a threat, and sends in the Harrigan Death Knight-version, and something.
If you have ANY ideas for adding material BEFORE the attack on Fort Hazard, please, let me know.
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So has anyone had their players win the fleet battle against the chelish armada? My players lost the battle but annhilated Admiral Thrune. I added a descriptive bit where her dead-but-screaming body was claimed through the black and green bubbling deck by infernal hands. (Despite the dimensional anchor cast by Sandara).
In an infernal-system, surely you would have a clear chain of command, so how does killing the Admiral stop the Commodores from continuing the battle, and taking Drenchport anyway? Ezaliah is still paying them to take down Bonefist, and surely the Commodores have ambitions of their own? They are Chelaxians afterall! ;)
One of my players feels that the entire fleet battle was a waste of time when they could have just scry-and-fry the Admiral and have done with it. The feeling seems to be nothing they did meant anything to the final outcome. I'm going to look at options soon. :(
I'd say they can rest after the crypt, maybe give them a clue when they get to the secret door, that on first glance they are approaching a undergroud fortress and from that point on there will be no resting. And let them make the call.
My party has gone straight through but has mostly classes that don't need much recharging, they realize they are near the end so are using lots of cure wands instead of spells. They took down the Hurricane King pretty easy, but had fits with his first mate, and now they are workiing on clearing the final rooms of the fortress. The mistress has gotten a warning they are coming so she is using planar ally to summon more support. She is unaware the Hurrican king is eliminated so she could zip away to go to his side see he's eliminated and then just leave.
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Just finished the ship fight. Gave the Pc's some extra ships as 2 other captains caught up to them, and left 2 chelish squads at hell Harbor to keep them bottled up. The Pc's got north pretty fast cause of using teleport. They teleported from harrigans to Port Peril to start the meeting. This gave them a jump on the calendar. they head north with 32 ships but are just shy of drenchport when it is attacked. They are on the west side of the Island and decide to head back south instead of chasing the chelish. They get ahead and are coming up north To Hell Harbor to attack the Chelish while they attack the HH. The chelish divide there fleet, leaving 2 to keep HH bottled up. Even with only 6 Squads vs Parties 8 the chelish still won. The Geryon and mammon squads are viscous.
Had the ships linked by magical chairs, which was the artifacts that protected them through the hurricane. When Thrune dies Geryon claims her soul and the chairs blow up. This gives the PC's a chance to escape with 2 ships, other wise there was 2 half squads coming after them.
Did anyone add Ship in a Bottle, Armada in a Bottle, or Shipyard in a Bottle to Kerdak Bonefist's Trophy Hall at K1?
Nice! Totally gonna steal this one.
I had been trying to figure out where to place the Ship in a Bottle, Armada in a Bottle, or Shipyard in a Bottle in Skull & Shackles AP and the Trophy Hall seemed like the best fit. I presumed that Barnabas Harrigan couldn't care less about ship models.
even the most worthless evil piece of s+@# in the world has a soft spot for art:) i would totally give Barnabas Harrigan some sort of odd eclectic art-a-ma-jig to collect:)
Ships in bottles? Erotic Demon statues? whatever passes for high society art in Cheliax or Bloodcove even, he has a thing for secrets so maybe music boxes:)
I just ran the fleet battle for my PCs tonight and i have to say its brutal.
First, through diplomacy I allowed them to take control of Harrigan's fleet after his demise. Once they found Scags Rotgrams notes about taking the fight to Harrigan's fortress they made a beeline there before Harrigan's fleet was ready. Seeing as the book says no one on those ships knew he was a traitor, I figured they had the chance to win them over once they had the proof.
Good thing too, as they entered battle with Druvalia's 8 squadrons to their 11, with just over 50 ships to her 47, and she just started wiping the sea with them. Given, they were rolling like crap and I couldn't roll under a 13 on my attacks.
Next session, we're going to skip straight to the flagship battle, as the rules don't even have an advantage to them winning or losing the fleet battle: it all hinges on their defeat of Druvalia. If I were to do it again, I'd have had them gather a few more squadrons to their banner, or add some sea monsters as suggested in these posts, or give them a few more "special NPCs" to add to their bonuses. At least to try to make it feel a bit more evenly matched instead of a complete one sided ordeal.
The only inherent saving grace I see is the special NPCs with Overwhelming. Read it, it literally says if they are lost, one squadron automatically routes. No rolls, no nothin. And there's four of them in Drvalias fleet. If they're lucky, they could kill four squads and the other four would auto-crumble. Not that it's helped so far.....
Easy come, easy go!
Yeah, I may pull them out a cinematic for the ending. I feel bad as I connected one of the characters to that aquatic elf settlement, but never got to the actual role play in game. (Essentially the bard is an aquatic elf that ran away after her sister was married off to that tribe, but she's actually doing quite well despite her circumstances of arrival.)
And getting my players to remember what they did the session before is bad enough, they didn't even remember any former crew mates of the wormwood, they likely have also forgotten the loot I posted on the items wiki for them. It may warrant a reminder.
I think the cinematic will involve several sea monsters, a fleet of the Master of Gales' ships (as they are fairly close by) and a few others that just had the bad luck if being further away., plus some sea elves riding something other than sharks (the barbarian hates sharks). I will have to think it up ahead of time so we can get to the action!
Hello folks, I'm pondering about the Hurricane Kings fortress - my players have pretty optimized characters (sorceress [summoning], alchemist [bombing, healing], alchemist [mutagen melee] and ninja [sneaky stabbing] and I ponder does the fortress end up boring? There are tons of battles, which can be quite easy and uncinematic (melee alchemist can deal 100dmg in turn) so I'm pondering about buffing these fights quite a lot.
The problem is that they won't be able to sleep probably, has anyone got any ideas what would happen if they will sleep in the sea caves? Also thinking about making the Hurricane King from scratch, his damage output is... not that scary for our team.
Also, for the battle of chelish invasion I've put little side quest to gain some allies: my players have to fetch the ''Horn of Besmara'' a powerful artifact from sea monsters hidden lair, which can summon 1/year aid of sea monsters. They also made a pact with Raugsmada (or whatever the name was), the lich that they will give up Kerdak's corpse for him, so they will gain some ghostly ships in aid.
So how have folks runned the last battles of this AP?
Could your second paragraph solve your first? Sure, the alchemist can mutagen a bunch, but not forever. Are there resources scarce enough that trying to do the whole fortress without sleeping going to be enough to make it more of a challenge?
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All good points. Also, how soon are you going to be running that part of the adventure?
I ask because, if you're looking for a mighty tough pirate king's fort, you might want to take a look at the upcoming Fort Scurvy from Legendary Games, which should be available sometime after GenCon.
Fort Scurvy? Might have to check that one out, as much of Lucrehold is not defined. Thanks for the heads-up!
All good points. Also, how soon are you going to be running that part of the adventure?
I ask because, if you're looking for a mighty tough pirate king's fort, you might want to take a look at the upcoming Fort Scurvy from Legendary Games, which should be available sometime after GenCon.
Has this happened? My players expect to wrap up part 5 by next week, and I have a funny feeling that when Kerdak challenges them regarding the impending invasion, they're going to want to get him out of the way before they do anything else. Since going in the stealthy way has never been my group's way of doing things, I'm hoping to have an impressive pirate castle I can drop in their way...
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Has this happened? My players expect to wrap up part 5 by next week, and I have a funny feeling that when Kerdak challenges them regarding the impending invasion, they're going to want to get him out of the way before they do anything else. Since going in the stealthy way has never been my group's way of doing things, I'm hoping to have an impressive pirate castle I can drop in their way...All good points. Also, how soon are you going to be running that part of the adventure?
I ask because, if you're looking for a mighty tough pirate king's fort, you might want to take a look at the upcoming Fort Scurvy from Legendary Games, which should be available sometime after GenCon.
Unfortunately it's been pushed back repeatedly by other projects and just keeps staring at me with the same scurvy eyepatch. It remains on my to-do list and I hope to have it done in time for THIS year's GenCon. Sorry we didn't have it ready in time for your group, but if you'd like a look at the manuscript version you can email me at makeyourgamelegendary at gmail dot com.
Something that can go differently then as written as it did for me.
1 the party killing the hurricane king in the counsel meeting. (my party did that at start of book 5 technically, killing him before he could do more then one move action. ) so no need for the dungeon crawl.
2 scry and die on the fleet. if you let the party know the name fo the admiral leading it and/or the name of her bodyguard it is a simple thing scry and find out when she sleeps, go invisible teleport and kill bodyguard then her. using cloak of dreams to make bodyguard fall asleep. then go around with overland flight with inadvisability and grabbing something from the other captains to scry on them for next time. while also planting as many castings of fire seeds using holly berry's inside of the ship at night. thus killing a fair amount of the non combat crew and setting the ship on fire from the inside. thus a party of 4 can take on a armada of 50 or so ships and win.( well a high level caster can do this by themselves to any military force not prepared for it. ie scry, fly, greater invisibility, teleport, evocations of some kind, teleport out, do that a few days and watch common military forces die)
thus the last book can turn into one short session with no need for a fleet battle. in fairness yes i know that devil has see invisibility but there are only 4 of them and i missed that in there stat block. You can take this as a warning of how to avoid this or as a easy way to resolve the book as you will.
another idea/warning only the hurricane king has a Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location in the book, so scry and die is something you can do on his first officer who the party has seen before. risk would be things could attack from behind.
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I’ve just finished my S&S campaign last Saturday, however I did an huge overhaul on the last adventure, From Hell’s Heart.
The Adventure Paths I’ve finished before (RotRL and CotCT) usually have its higher point on the last fight. If PCs lost the last fight, it would bring an ill consequence. But, by RAW, From Hell’s Heart was different. If PC fails to kill the Hurricane King, the Shackles will still be there. So, I changed the events order: first they take the Hurricane King, then face the Chelish Armada.
In order to do that, I changed some things. First, Hurricane King said on the emergency pirate’s counsel that he had no fear of the Chelish Armada, and that when they reached Port Peril, they would be defeat. This infuriated some Pirate Lords whose homeports where on Chelish Armada’s path (namely Arronax and Master of Gales).
However, this was just a Hurricane King’s clever strategy to eliminate both Chelish Armanda and his rivals. The idea was to let his rivals (Tessa, Arronax, Master of Gales and PCs) assemble a fleet and go to war against the Chelish Armada. No matter which fleet won, he would destroy the weakened victor and say that we arrived too late to save his fellow pirates, but was able to save the day destroying the Chelish Armada.
But, for Hurricane King’s disgrace, Tessa had captured an Hurricane King’s ally and discovered his plans. She revealed it to PCs and asked them to defeat Bonefist first. So, while the PC allies attacked the Fort Hazard from their ships, PCs invaded the Hurricane King’s secrete readout.
So I GMed the 3rd party of the adventure mostly as RAW (note that PCs where one level higher than they should be).
After claim the Hurricane Crown, PCs needed to hurry up to the Chelish Armada, however, Druvalia had put one last obstacle. A small but fearsome squadron formed by PC’s old nemesis, The Dominator, and some pirate traitors was anchored middle Jeopardy Bay in order to disrupt pirates’ movement.
In my campaign, Dominator was a very, very, powerful ship. A ship no-one on Shackles could rival both in size and firepower. Of course PC’s fleet could defeat it easily, but the fleet was somewhat split (part on their homeport in Isle of the Empty Eyes, part on Port Peril), so they need to defeat the Dominator’s Squadron by themselves. To do that, they teleported to Dominator’s deck and conquered the ship.
So, the Battle of Abendego started. I ran it almost RAW, but had adjusted the profession sailor values to match PC’s (which were at 15th level).
But again, it would be somewhat anticlimactic just take the flag ship… So after they defeated the Armada, Druvalia used her last resource. A gate spell provide by Geryon.
From Hell’s Heart, wave after wave of devils attacked the Hurricane Fleet. If PCs couldn’t close the gate, they would lose every single man of their fleet. However, they had Aiger’s Kiss, a legendary sword which can close gates! So, meanwhile fighting devils and trying to get closer to Abrogail’s Furry, PCs needed to fetch Aiger’s Kiss (which was on another ship).
When they were really close to Abrogail’s Furry, Geryon sent his most powerful devils and, although PCs managed to almost won the fight (which made me very impressed, because I was really expecting that a Pit Fiend would be an easy TPK), they were killed.
I just create an “anime inspired” scene in which PCs met some dead rivals and allies on their afterlife so them could set their differences. Master Scourge, Hurricane King, Harrigan, PC’s family and friends. And, after this scene, Besmara arrived.
Besmara challenged Geryon because he trespassed her territory. She called marine monsters to fight devils and equilibrate the fight (“Your devils may be invincible in hell, but here, they are only fish’s food!”). She also resurrected PCs and reshaped their ship (which was destroyed by a Pit Fiend Meteor Swarm).
So, the PCs finally boarded Abrogail’s Furry, closed the gate with Aiger’s Kiss and defeated Druvalia.
One of my players modified the poem “Demons run” (from Doctor Who), so bards all over the shackles and beyond now tell the tales of the battle of “Devils run”.
Devils run when the Shackles goes to war.
Storms will rise and seas will burn
When the Shackles goes to war
Thrice-Damned, now Thrice defeated
The House of Thrune grit their teeth
When the Shackles go to war
Send your ships, send your men
And Besmara shall welcome then in the deep
Unfortunately it's been pushed back repeatedly by other projects and just keeps staring at me with the same scurvy eyepatch. It remains on my to-do list and I hope to have it done in time for THIS year's GenCon. Sorry we didn't have it ready in time for your group, but if you'd like a look at the manuscript version you can email me at makeyourgamelegendary at gmail dot com.Has this happened? My players expect to wrap up part 5 by next week, and I have a funny feeling that when Kerdak challenges them regarding the impending invasion, they're going to want to get him out of the way before they do anything else. Since going in the stealthy way has never been my group's way of doing things, I'm hoping to have an impressive pirate castle I can drop in their way...All good points. Also, how soon are you going to be running that part of the adventure?
I ask because, if you're looking for a mighty tough pirate king's fort, you might want to take a look at the upcoming Fort Scurvy from Legendary Games, which should be available sometime after GenCon.
Has this happened? Fort Scurvy isn't on the pirate plug-in page.
Starting this part these days and it looks like it will go mostly as written. They have already warned the Pirate Council and set their fleet against the enemy (not Chelaxians in my game as I am GMing a Dragonlance campaign, they are an armada of Dark Knights).
As they have impressive CHA scores and have captured many ships from Harrigan's fleet they are well prepared against Druvalia and I think they'll be doing great.
They have Advanced Tactics, that I find to be one of the best boons, more than 50 ships (mostly sailing ships), and have recruited all the significative characters, I hope they can win.
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Another update after they had the fleet battle:
My players did great. The two fleet were balanced, maybe the enemy fleet was a bit more powerful because they had more battleships and galleys and higher attack rolls but the players were clever when giving the boons to their squadrons and it made a big difference.
The weakness of Druvalia's fleet is that most her significative characters have the Overwhelming boon to allow her to control more squadrons so she doesn't have a lot of boons to give to her fleet.
As I expected, Advanced Tactics made a difference in both sides, it's a great boon.
I had all the allies that had appeared in previous books to come to help the PCs in the battle as a mostly flavor thing. Even the Nagas from the Slithering Coast and Sea Elves (from a short side quest that I added and also because of Mase Darimar) appeared to help. I allowed my players to pick an extra boon to reflect all the help that they were getting from those allies, and they felt rewarded for having dealt in good terms with these people during the adventure. It made everything they previously did have some relevance and they were glad of seeing they had earned so many allies during the adventure.
I encourage GMs to make something similar. Even if they are not giving the PCs any mechanic benefits for having these characters present they will be glad that their allies from former books still remember them.
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I avoided the actual fleet battle mechanics because for my group, the first one kinda slogged along. I used to suggestions in the book to have it happening in the background.
I did, however, mix things up a little during phase 2 of the fight with the drowning devils. The party still had Aiger's Kiss (Aiger died in the first fleet battle) and I figured it'd be cool to get some use out of it. So I gave Druvalia a minor artifact (a gift from Geryon) that she launched at the PCs flagship as the drowning devils were starting to go down. Upon breaking, opened a gate to Stygia and a barbed devil came through, with more on the way.
I figure, cool, they'll fight their way to the gate, fight off the barbed devil, and in climactic fashion, Kiss that gate closed before a rush of devils overwhelmed them.
I figured wrong.
The captain (warpriest of Sarenrae and holder of Aiger's Kiss) drops all his extra crap, tells the oracle she's in charge, steps through the gate and closes if from the other side, hoping to protect his crew from any potential backlash from the artifact. He set the antipathy effect to LE.
Did not see that coming, but it was a pretty awesome scene. The rest of the party assumes he's dead (IC and OOC) but we're having a secret session of his adventures trying to escape from Hell.
Great! Very interesting take indeed!
My players could have done Teleport and Kill but they wanted to have the fleet battle. They had enjoyed the battle against Harrigan and wanted to play this one.
What happened to Aiger Kiss in my game is a long story, as we used it to do a crossover with another adventure and after that it was offered to their sea goddess in sacrifice (during the, battle against Harrigan for some cool effects). Too long to tell, but the sword is gone. In our game the godess that the PCs worship was the same goddess the Shrouded Queen worshipped (they went there to both recover the sword and give rest to the maddened Shrouded Queen) so they didn't have much love for the weapon. But as everything is related to the different setting we are playing I don't think sharing the story is actually useful (I will if you want to hear anyway).