First, I had no idea how I was going to get the players to enjoy the sabotaging of the Dominator using the faulty premise the module set forth. After all, why would a sailing vessel need water when it has an NPC cleric on board who can create water from nothing, or even purify sea water?
Then it hit me, Lady Smythee refuses to enter an alliance with the PCs unless they've reached an Infamy rating of at least 10 (they had 6 I believe). So, claiming that she's never heard of the likes of them, she balked at the idea of an alliance. There wasn't even any evidence whatsoever to backup their claim of having stolen a ship out from under Barnabas Harrigan.
So she gave them a chance to prove themselves: Hunt down a ship called the DewClaw (something I made up on the spot), a pirate vessel manned by a gent named Captain Hague--a lieutenant of Harrigan's. Bring proof that the ship is captured or sunk and its captain slain and then talks of a possible alliance might then occur.
So off the PCs went. First, they found their way to a small fishing village known to be a haven for Harrigan's cronies. There, through some teeth gritting moments and exciting roleplay, they managed to find out that the DewClaw had been severely damaged om battle a week prior, and had limped off to Rickety's Squibbs for repairs. However, they arrived too late, having missed the ship altogether. One of Rickety's men, a fellow who owed a debt since the PCs saved him from "that damned water snake b1tch," refused to say who had just left, but hinted that they were heading to the Mwangi Coast to restore their water supplies (after all, their settlement was experiencing a drought and could not afford to spare what little they had). He was even kind enough to give coordinates to the popular watering hole.
A few days later, the PCs found the sunken wreckage of the DewClaw a ways upriver from the Mwangi Bay. After hours of searching they determined that there had been a great battle, that the DewClaw had been trapped in an ambush, that there were no apparent survivors, and that any loot worth having had already been taken. So they grabbed the DewClaw's pirate flag (a raptor's claw against a stormy backdrop) for presentation to Lady Smythee.
Low and behold, a fearsome pirate hunter, the Dominator, blocked their path out of the river mouth. Realizing that they hadn't yet been spotted, they plotted.
Taking their jolly boat, they stealthily approached the Dominator and attached a anchor feather token to its rudder. They didn't know if their were spellcasters on board who might be able to dispel the effect, however, so they also opted to scale the aft of the ship, crawl into the windows, and disable the tiller.
A naval commander and two men stumbled upon their efforts and a brief but vicious battle ensued. The commander and six of his men were killed in a running battle as the PCs one by one dived out the window to the jolly boat below. Four more marines open fired upon them with crossbows, so the PC Captain responded with alchemist's fire. By the time the fire was put out, the PCs were well on their way back to their ship.
As they hid in the shadows, they realized that the Dominator had been put on full alert and had begin off-loading marines on the shore. They deduced (correctly) that the marines had mistaken them for DewClaw pirates who had escaped the previous battle and were now out looking for revenge. The marines had not yet spotted the PC's ship ("The Moist Wench") and had begun searching the nearby woods for the pirates who murdered their commander.
After healing themselves and preparing for the battle ahead (though they did consider escaping, briefly), they rowed back to the shore where the marines had off-loaded. They kept their distance, hiding in the shadows. The PC's captain took out a wand of summon nature's ally II and summoned a pair of air elementals. He then commanded the elementals to ambush the sixteen marines who had been left to guard the four landing boats. The air elementals easily whisked up all the heavily armored marines and plopped them into the river where they all drowned. By the time the other 42 marines and 4 officers got back to investigate the screams, their longboats had been sunk, leaving them stranded on the shore.
Meanwhile, the PCs turned their wand against the Dominator, ordering air elementals to drown everyone in armor. During the chaos, they themselves boarded the ship and traded blows with the remaining Chelish navymen and their officers.
Even with the air elementals, it was a long drawn out battle. Part way through, the Dominator's captain jumped down from the crow's nest, using her dagger to tear the sail and soften her fall onto a cross-beam high above the deck, just above the PC Boatswain's head (which she nearly removed with a swipe of her rapier). The Boatswain dropped from the rigging a few feet, hooking her legs in the ropes to hang upside down and give herself some distance from the new adversary (essentially a 5-foot step with her racial climb speed) before taking a shot with her pistol, grazing the enemy captain's left breast. Much to her surprise, the swordswoman stepped off the cross beam and kicked upwards to connect to the bottom, essentially standing upside down on the crossbeam in defiance of gravity itself. Before she could kill the upstart gunslinger with a full attack, however, the Boatswain spent a Hero Point to act out of turn, dropping the rest of the way to the deck for minor falling damage.
The Captain, her turn not yet done, hopped down as well, acrobatically twirling upright in mid-air. Unfortunately for her, she fell past the PC First Mate, provoking an attack of opportunity. The First Mate successfully made a trip attempt, essentially grabbing her ankle in mid-air and upending the lady. She belly-flopped the deck, taking full falling damage despite her obvious skill.
To her credit, she managed to parry the blows of three of the PCs while she regained her feet. There, with several of her marined and officers still at her back, she held her ground despite her broken nose and missing teeth. The party's Quatermaster, a salty seadog of a dwarf, took his axe to her face while the gunslinger put another two holes through her.
When she finally went down, it was quickly determined that she was still breathing. Their was a brief discussion after the battle on whether the Lady, obviously a Chelish Paracountess, should be held for ransom. In the end, it was determined that she was too dangerous to be left alive, and the party monk curb stomped her and threw the remains of her pretty face into Besmara's sea.
Once their captain had been killed the remaining officers on deck (all two of them) surrendered to the PCs.
It was at that time that the landbound marines, who had stripped off their armor and began to swim to the Dominator, had just about arrived. Spotting them before they could begin their climb, however, the Moist Wench came up behind them, trapping them between the two sailing ships.
Though they were ordered to surrender, the officer leading the marines declared that they were Chelish Marines and would never surrender to scum such as...
...his own men killed him.
And that is how my players took the Dominator (now the "War Wench").
Congrats?
Er...other people had shared their stories of having taken the Dominator, so I thought I'd do the same.
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Well done, but personnaly I will be using the dominator later on as a re-occurring foe. I think now as a GM you may have made things a tad more difficult for yourself allowing them such a powerful ship so eary on. But im sure you're more than up to the challenge :)
I'm more concerned about the ~50,000gp they made off of selling all those suits of half-plate, weapons, and magical gear to Mr. Rickety.
Try to use settlement rules-after all, only Bloodclove, Senghor and Port Peril should have enough citizens to achieve 4-8k gold limit . It will be hard to buy very powerful items so big plunder should't ruin campaign.
Thanks for the post Ravingdork. My group is four game sessions into season 2 (our group refers to each book as a season), and I'm glad to see some notes/ideas how other GM's have handled Raiders of the Fever Sea. With permission, I'll probably end up cribbing some of your ideas regarding Tidewater Rock and why the PC's venture up an unnamed river before sighting the Dominator.
Oh I am using the settlement rules. Doesn't do much when a PC buys an agile mithral breastplate for under the base limit from one vender, then takes it to another vender and pays under the base limit to have it enchanted to a +2, then takes it to another vender to have it enchanted with the shadow property for under the base limit.
Players are clever, and such limitations are often just a speed bump.
They captured a warship and four other sailing ships in yesterday's game alone.
Why does this module not assume that they will build a powerful fleet in short order? They are now cakewalking ship to ship combat simply because they have more ships and weapons.
I've since instituted a house rule that they must spend 1 plunder point PER ship crew in order to maintain their fleet's happiness whenever they sell plunder. With great power comes great upkeep.
i would have done 4 plunder per ship and counted the fortress as equivalent to 5 ships. effectively 12 crews
1 for wages
1 for supplies
1 for repairs/medical treatment etc
and 1 for bribes and such
or 48 plunder taxed every payday
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As they hid in the shadows, they realized that the Dominator had been put on full alert and had begin off-loading marines on the shore. They deduced (correctly) that the marines had mistaken them for DewClaw pirates who had escaped the previous battle and were now out looking for revenge. The marines had not yet spotted the PC's ship ("The Moist Wench") and had begun searching the nearby woods for the pirates who murdered their commander.
After healing themselves and preparing for the battle ahead (though they did consider escaping, briefly), they rowed back to the shore where the marines had off-loaded. They kept their distance, hiding in the shadows. The PC's captain took out a wand of summon nature's ally II and summoned a pair of air elementals. He then commanded the elementals to ambush the sixteen marines who had been left to guard the four landing boats. The air elementals easily whisked up all the heavily armored marines and plopped them into the river where they all drowned. By the time the other 42 marines and 4 officers got back to investigate the screams, their longboats had been sunk, leaving them stranded on the shore.
Meanwhile, the PCs turned their wand against the Dominator, ordering air elementals to drown everyone in armor. During the chaos, they themselves boarded the ship and traded blows with the remaining Chelish navymen and their officers.
Even with the air elementals, it was a long drawn out battle. Part way through, the Dominator's captain jumped down from the crow's nest, using her dagger to tear the sail and soften her fall onto a cross-beam high above the deck, just above the PC Boatswain's head (which she nearly removed with a swipe of her rapier). The Boatswain dropped from the rigging a few feet, hooking her legs in the ropes to hang upside down and give herself some distance from the new adversary (essentially a 5-foot step with her racial climb speed) before taking a shot with her pistol, grazing the enemy captain's left breast. Much to her surprise, the swordswoman stepped off the cross beam and kicked upwards to connect to the bottom, essentially standing upside down on the crossbeam in defianc
wand of summon monster II : summons small air elementals. Which last for 3-5 rounds (conceivably, or is that an atypically high-leveled wand ?). Small air elementals (2HD) can do a whirlwind for one round each, which can only pick up tiny objects (one step smaller than the air-elemental ).
Frankly I have no feasible idea how two small air elementals can defeat 16 chelish marines in the few rounds they last. I am not even talking about the lamentably misinformed "toss". Or 16 Chelish marines not hearing them (close range for the wand) captain using his wand and reacting to it.. say with a nice charge, be it even to grapple. Or not spotting them.
Really ?
As for the crew of the Dominator : have you had a look at what a Chelish man-o-war commonly has aboard in the way of firepower, magical and otherwise, say like the fury in AP#6 ? Because one only attacks those ships then and so lately in the AP, because they are MAJOR obstacles to pirate survival. A "normal" Chelish officer around that is an 8th level fighter, and I guess the Dominator has at least three lieutenants, plus a master etc etc etc.... some couple of boatswains, perhaps a commander of marines never even talk about someone handling the guns (guncaptain) or a capable commander/captain (it looks like high level ranks in the Chelish navy are filled with Asmodian inquisitor/clerics or possibly other hellknights ?). No healer (cleric?) aboard or a bard (drummer)? Nevermind some access to devils, perhaps ?
Or simply : salvoes by muskets and crossbows... dozens of projectiles all at once, especially nice once everyone is flatfooted according to the standard naval combat rules when boarding or climbing the Dominator's sides.... or paddling away, seated in a rowboat ? Cannonball (salvo or even worse grapeshot ) to the longboat = a number of swimming pirates.
Against the full force of that, I see very little chance of a mid-level group around 6th level surviving.
*shrug* I take that story with a large pinch of salt
Last : Fact from real life : mastheads will easily be spotted over the treetops near a coast (usually very much foreshortened treetops due to winds and gales). Sight/visibility is possible for miles. So... noone spotted the PCs ship ?
To each his own. If the PC and GM both have fun, and it sounds like it from the story written by the OP, everythings fine. This is a war story, told and retold for inspiration and shared enjoyment, not for approval.
My PC's had a very different story. They planned to board the ship in the confusion the infiltration team would sow. But the infiltrators bothched and were discovered, so the pirates found themself sailing towards a fully prepared Dominator, with every man rushing towards battlestations. The fight became a desperate struggle to allow the two PC's who had infiltrated to get safely away. In the end, the pirates left a third of their crew (either dead or captured) on the Dominators deck as they withdrew. I had made it perfectly clear to my PC's from day one that the Fever Sea is a dangerous place, with several possible encounters being way beyond their reach, so nobody was surprised when the fight started getting increasingly dangerous.
The way I ran it, the first minute or so (10-15 rounds) went according to the scheduled encounter. The two infiltrators fought the running reinforcing marines and the Chelian commander... that went ok, allthough the PC gunslinger lost his gun, and thus his usefullness, to an unfortunate misfire.
After some rounds, I began running two battles; one belowdecks between the infiltrators, and one where the remaning PC's had boarded, and were fighting some lvl. 5 Chelian mates as well as several lvl. 2 marines.
After 1 minute, the infiltrators had climbed above and joined tyhe main fight, and that was when the Chelians onboard battlewizard (lvl 8) showed up. In addition to this, more lvl. 5 mates arrived. The PC's drove the wizard away to reheal and cast some buffs, but then they realized that the captain was on his way, and that the battlewizard would soon be back... so they beat it, leaving a third of their crew behind.
Something I've always wondered about the Dominator encounter - how does the crew aboard the PC's ship see the Dominator without the crew aboard the Dominator seeing them? Its a full crew compliment with probably no less than a dozen militarily-trained men on watch at all times, and another ship is pretty hard to stealth...
It worked out with us because we had a Master Summoner who was our pilot, and his eidolon (small sized with both the flying and swimming/water-breathing evolutions) habitually served as an advance scout for our ship both above and below the waves, but I can't imagine most parties had access to such an option nor the wherewithawl to assume something is waiting for them around every bend.
I guess this encounter has to be tailored individually for each group. In my campaign, the pirates had sailed up this very river to raid a wealthy elf-village and had been assisted in this by a group of intelligent apes, who in return only wanted half the elven captives... or, as they called it 'half the walking food'. One of these by now allied apes warned the pirates that a big boat was blocking the river ahead.
Oh I am using the settlement rules. Doesn't do much when a PC buys an agile mithral breastplate for under the base limit from one vender, then takes it to another vender and pays under the base limit to have it enchanted to a +2, then takes it to another vender to have it enchanted with the shadow property for under the base limit.
Players are clever, and such limitations are often just a speed bump.
They captured a warship and four other sailing ships in yesterday's game alone.
Why does this module not assume that they will build a powerful fleet in short order? They are now cakewalking ship to ship combat simply because they have more ships and weapons.
I've since instituted a house rule that they must spend 1 plunder point PER ship crew in order to maintain their fleet's happiness whenever they sell plunder. With great power comes great upkeep.
If there are organized pirate fleets, would there not be convoys? Q ships?
If there are organized pirate fleets, would there not be convoys? Q ships?
yes. The Spanish organized a treasure fleet. the French travelled in West Indies convoys, the British East India company did as well. As did the Arabian pilgrim fleets from India to the Red Sea and the Gulf. I guess the nations of Avistan will be equally smart.
Q-Ships ? not really, but a very well armed merchantman - like the Brittish East India merchants and the Dutch Indiamerchants travelled with a plethora of carronades and painted extra gunports onto their sides, to scare off pirates. Sort of an Anti-Q.
But there will always be stragglers, damaged and slow vessels, ships blown off course or those wishing to travel early and sell first in their home markets. Plus coastal traffic or those not in the know that pirate fleets are around. Nevermind daring pirates robbing straight out of the Fleeet - such as Bartholomew Roberts did to a Portugese (?) Galleon.
Something I've always wondered about the Dominator encounter - how does the crew aboard the PC's ship see the Dominator without the crew aboard the Dominator seeing them? Its a full crew compliment with probably no less than a dozen militarily-trained men on watch at all times, and another ship is pretty hard to stealth...
It worked out with us because we had a Master Summoner who was our pilot, and his eidolon (small sized with both the flying and swimming/water-breathing evolutions) habitually served as an advance scout for our ship both above and below the waves, but I can't imagine most parties had access to such an option nor the wherewithawl to assume something is waiting for them around every bend.
Hmm, my group had simply struck the top yard (and gaff and topsail...yeah, serious naval planning here) from their mainmast (they were using the chelian cutter back then ) to make rowing the sloop upriver - between the overhanging trees - more feasible, so actually their mast did not reach over the treeline. Lucky for them. Easy on a cutter/sloop, hard to do on most other vessels. It can be done, but may have to be accomplished in a hurry.
Overall, the Dominator, having higher masts since being rigged in millitary style with enough crew will be much higher. But any full ship's mast will tower (say at roughly 90' ?) over most coastal trees, smaller vessels may be luckier.
And they got ( temporarily ) rid of the Dominator by soldering her rudder (one bucket of hot lead on the pinions...), silence spells and then cutting the frigate's anchor ropes on the rising tide, making her drift shoreward and getting beached on the ebb... when the players' crew rowed (!) their cutter out of the river in the dark and out of sight. They never fought anyone aboard.