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Title ruthlessly stolen from one of Spoony's Countermonkey things.
He raised a good point in it. I lack the link so I'll sum up.
Aquatic Monsters are cool, but its hard to justify their inclusion. Ergo, players know when they get onto a boat, raft or the like they'll be up to their rears in selkies, giant gars and kraken.
So my question for you folks, is...how the heck do we integrate underwater or aquatic enemies without making the portion into 'The Boat' or 'The water dungeon' or something similar? Particularly as fighting in water is ranked as the #1 thing PCs seem to hate (penalties to movement, attack /and/ damage! Hooray!).
The only examples I can think of involve stuff like The Watcher from LoTR in the lake.
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They're in a dungeon. They trigger a trap that starts the room flooding, but which also drops in an aquatic monster from the lake above.
They're sent to catch the unknown creature that's been killing fishermen.
They're sent as ambassadors to the mermaid kingdom and lent appropriate magical protection against water.
They're attacked by the aquatic creature while on land (it has magical protection, or an undead template, or similar).
Or... visiting an aquarium?
Give the players different routes to their destination, one of which is through the sea or some such.
Each route has its own unique perils and treasures. I'd not be bothered if my GM gave me a good old "sea monsters attacks ship" scenario if I he gave me a choice of different paths and gave it a bit more fluff than "a Sea Serpent crosses your path by mere chance. Roll Initiative.", maybe that's a dangerous route, maybe the island where they want to go is protected by a higher power, maybe it's cursed waters...
And the reason the PCs are considering it anyway is because the other choices aren't any safer.
Well, I used my "Lol. Sea ambush!" quota rather early in my campaign (Don't judge me! It's the first campaign I've GMed in years!), so now I have to find creative ways to throw Sea Serpents at my players...
If you ever ran or played the 1st edition module U3 The Final Enemy, then you see a great way to get the aquatic encounters out there.
Step #1 It is a linear adventure that requires the characters to go there to stop the invasion/big monster/whatever so they do not really have a choice other than abandon the poor townsfolk to their doom.
Step #2 Seed the events leading up to it with useful items such as Potions/Scrolls of Water Breathing, Cloak of the Manta Ray, Ring of Freedom of Movement, etc. That way the party has useful items without having to go purchase everything they need just to survive this single adventure. If something like the ring is too expensive, then may be a mayor/patron/ruler lends it to the party with the expectation that he will get it back. This helps to keep wealth by level guidelines and such intact.
Step #3 A totally underwater dungeon is a beat down for everyone including the DM. Have some parts where there is air and land. Have a cavern with air for the underwater dwelling dragon or whatever to surface and live from time to time. Maybe the big battle will occur on land and sea at the end.
The basic idea is to prepare the party so they are not tossed into this environment without any chance to prepare and do not just leave them there to literally sink or swim. Give them options to come up for air every so often and have some more traditional encounters and such.
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One of the most memorable encounters in my gaming career was an aquatic encounter completely out of left field - wraith sharks.
We were in an environment that had been described as a dried-up ocean that had been destroyed by a magical cataclysm, and were wandering around old shipwrecks - I believe the thing we were looking for had been lost when the disaster destroyed the ocean. We had several undead encounters, so we knew the area had lots of undead.
But what we didn't expect was a group of wraith sharks to come 'swimming' out of a wreck, acting just like they were still at the bottom of the ocean, only now they were undead monstrosities that didn't need water to hunt us down and kill us.
Might have to steal that.
Ooohh, I like that, SteelDraco. Nasty! (Especially when you figure out why the sharks were intelligent enough to become wraiths in the first place...)
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Could make it meaner. Have the wraith-sharks (mechanically) be baby Darkwave Nightshades and make players wonder where Mama might be.
Man, I might need to steal that one too. :)
And Hendelbolaf, you have no idea how right you are. Underwater Dungeons /plod/. But they are nice for the opportunity to have stuff like giant sea anemones or clams (although they're so slow they're basically traps) or other stuff thats hard to justify 'just swimming in.'.
Part of my initial concern though was the 'telegraphing' as well as the difficulty in finding non-gratutious feeling aquatic encounters.
The other telegraph issue is that the really dangerous aquatic animals tend to be enormous (huge and up) which makes fitting them into places difficult from a verisimilitude perspective (Well aside from open ocean, rivers, lakes).
Sky Swim makes underwater encounters work ANYWHERE! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sky Swim makes underwater encounters work ANYWHERE! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Other than the 1 minute/level duration and the proviso that it doesn't grant airbreathing, sure.
It really would work for a single combat so long as the target animals have a decently high Con. Most fights don't last minutes, so the spell should work long enough and they can just hold their breath for a dozen or so rounds. It makes an interesting WTF moment and implies that the caster has to be nearby, so it might actually be a cool scenario.
The real problem with Aquatic Monsters attacking you on a boat is that there is no reason that they can't just attack or drill though the hull from the bottum and in that case there is not allot the players can do to stop them.
Partially flooded ruins are always cool dungeons. If the PCs know they're going into a situation where they might be dealing with a lot of water that lets them prepare properly, making those encounters more interesting to them.
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You could always pull a page from the Shadow over Innsmouth...
Merfolk are already statted out as a PC race. If you establish that The City your campaign takes place in has a harbor and that there are merfolk who regularly trade with the townsfolk, that's all the justification you need for the inevitable undersea quest. Heck, tell the players up-front that they have the option of playing as Merfolk (from the ARG) and straight out of the gate they'll know to favor piercing weapons.
The real problem with Aquatic Monsters attacking you on a boat is that there is no reason that they can't just attack or drill though the hull from the bottum and in that case there is not allot the players can do to stop them.
Actually, there are quite a few possible reasons...
They want to steal the boat. Or take hostages. Maybe they want some treasure that is not waterproof (such as a particularly valuable scrolls and maps). Maybe they only want to kill/hurt/kidnap one specific person (whoever the PCs were hired to protect). Maybe they're Lawful Stupid and believe simply sinking the boat is not honorable. Maybe they wanted to try diplomacy first, but something goes wrong. Maybe they're trying to prove a point ("I don't need water to defeat drylanders!"). Maybe they think stabbing people is more exciting than simply watching they drown.
For unintelligent creatures...
Maybe they simply think of the ship as another huge sea creature and attack it as they'd would do if that was the case, which may or may not involve sinking it. Maybe they're being controlled. Maybe they're just too stupid too think of sinking the ship.
And this is just what I came up with in 10s... Imagine if a GM puts some effort! ^^
