Now that my players have survived Skull and Shackles episodes one and two, I'm beginning to wonder if they have grown a bit too powerful for the coming modules. I was hoping to get a second opinion from those who have played through the series.
Should I expect to challenge them, or will they just make a joke of everything in the modules as written?
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The party currently consists of the following:
- Morgana Adams, Admiral of The Whore's Fleet and Captain of the warship "War Wench"
- Captain Dirgah "Old Saltbeard" Hammerhead of the sailing ship "Moist Wench"
- First Mate Fire-Eye Sang of the warship "War Wench" and Master of Tidewater Rock
- Boatswain Luna Redclaw of the warship "War Wench"
- Cohort Neshka Fullsail, ally from Ilizmagorti
- Followers, Falconers x8, especially loyal pirates
At this time they have 32 Infamy, 24 Repute, and 13 Plunder.
The party I'm running is halfway through book 3, and nearly lost their captain in the abandoned fort.
I was getting worried they were too powerful as well, especially the Witch and the Summoner, but smart enemies, using their own advantages would nearly have had a TPK if thngs had gone a little better for them.
The looks of fear on my players faces made me so happy!
DBH
You can always beef up the enemies if you feel like they are not enough of a challenge. Also might consider cutting down on the amount of encounters in Book 3 as they are a level ahead and just do the important one. Still not clear now they managed to get the Dominator as well crewed as it was, but ok. That might get the Chelian Navy to send 3 more powerful ships to get it back.
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By now they should have a high-maintenance crew. The adventure only takes into account the PCs having one ship. If they are so efficient, it would make sense for shipping vessels to be particularly wary and stay far away from the waters they frequent.
With no loot (or very little loot from the odd merchant vessel), the players would need to let the crew of one of the ships go and sell it, putting them back on the one-ship expectation.
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I'd take away their extra ships. That could be done either by treachery form within, where one of the subordinate captains decided to strike out on his own, or by external threaths. The Chelian navy could decide to take revenge for the loss of Dominator, and send a squadron of heavy warships against Tidewater Rock. If the PC's are away on their own, you could have them return to a destroyed Tidewater, with the crew hanging as a warning, and the bay full of burned wrecks.
One question: have they just started book 3? If so they are a level above the suggested starating level of 7 which could cause problems as the ap is based on parties of the level stated, just beef up the encounters that shoudl be enough.
Next the number of ships. 7 is a heck of a lot and the Dominator too oppps I sense trouble. (see below)
Sea battles are pretty easy once you factor in spells and ramming, I have the same problem myself. The ship rules are not that good to be honest, I use a cross between fire as she bears and the AP rules which works a lot better. Fire as she bears has some really good damage rules and makes ship combat much more deadly.
Book 3 and 4 I don't think are going to be much of a problem though as much of book 3 is spent chasing clues in and around ports and not much ship combat. Book 4 is island based so again no use for the ships for that one.
Thinking about it...I don't think there will be a problem really. The ship combats don't really happen on a large scale until book 5 and they need a fleet by then anayway, the players just have the start of a fleet a bit early on thats all. By book 4 the fleet will be left stuck in the island dock for ages whilst the players do their thing.
My advice: Read ahead and plan, I don't think you have anything to worry about if you are following the AP.
one thing I would do though...the players need to ditch the amount of followers they have and the cohourt once they start the clue hunt and island part. The AP is based on just a 4 person party. By adding in the cohurt and the 7 followers you are making the party double or triple what it should be for the encounters. If they want to take them you will need to alter and beef the encouters up to compensate otherwise it will be a cakewalk.
Many ships is not a big deal- When comes to pursuit I call opposed sailor test for every ship.This little trick keeps PC to be on one ship.
The players had 2 ships last night and I had them roll for each ship against Pilk. The low score got attacked by Pilk and the other one tried to grapple the other side, but at a CMD of 36 it was a yeah right!
This sounds very odd.
Ship-battlerules : I don't see why the ships start within "ramming range". Each square = 30', ships initially only start with a 30' speed, can accelerate only by 30' each round, up to their maximum speed.
Basic setup 1D4+2 fields. So even at the closest distance,... at least 2 rounds of combat (if the opposing pilot is an idiot ). Or do your players have such massively overblown skills as to "adjust" (aka the idiotic "upper hand" alll fantasy flourish rule ) their vessel by vessel by several fields. Straight into their opponents?
I certainly don't see a warship growing wings and doubling its speed (check made by10+) to just skip into their opponent, because my captain is a fancy git. However slow the boat may actually be.
See me fly this rotten scow right into your schooner, simply because you are just an expert and I am a PC with more levels...
All-time stupid rule-crafting. Nevermind the combat starting at only a few hundred feet since effective range for magic is further out. Nevermnd there not being rules as how to magically affect the change
Firing a broaside = Turn to the left or right, fire, resume course.... several actions. normally.
Just saying : going through stays (turning through the course of the wind, to luv ) , back in the age of wood actually took several minutes to do.
Manning : I have absolutely no idea where your people are recruiting the necessary number of pirates. dominator.. should be 100+ men sailing her (in two watches) . More if you need fighters and spares. In Sargava ? At Rickety's ? Bloodcove ? Or avoiding the pirate corridor of the Shackles themselves to sail to Illizmagorti ?
Where are the dozens of "trustworthy" pirates hanging around ? The local bar or job center ? Just wondering the unemployed buccaneers might be dealing with incarceration as pirates in larger cities....
And I really wonder how they ever took down the "Dominator". Hundreds of capable crew, lots of weaponry, probably some competent captain and likely magical assistance aboard..... There might even be strike team capable mages in the cheliannavy who have served on her and should be capable to teleport a strong strike team aboard. Track ship should verify range and likely "state"... say, such as laying at anchor for the last three days.
I must have been far too stringent on my players, I guess, having them deal with capable opposition.
And yes, your characters are technically ahead of "wbl"... so what ? have them sell the ships ?
Been thinking more about this...
Yes Vikingson is correct, using the rules as is there is no way you could ram the ship in the first round of combat. The maximum you could move is 60ft and as the attacker always starts at 1d4+2 squares away then you would be a minimum of 90ft away from the prey provided you rolled a 1 every time you did the combat set up (very unlikley). So if you are playing the enemy ship why are you a not fighting and b not moving away and using tactics?
As for the Dominater...enough said I just don't see how it was possible either to capture it or to crew it as well as 7 other ships, it does not make sense
Also what about the plunder rules, don't forget you will need to give the crew 1 point of plunder everytime they hit port..thats 1 point PER ship not overall so 8 points gone everytime you dock....then you have to stock up on supplies for each ship...more money, etc etc.
Not an easy task with 13 plunder me thinks, the crew are going to get restless and mutiny before long...
Oh and what about officers and captains etc for the other ships? Where are they coming from too? By the look of it you would need 8 captains, 8 first mates, 8 cooks, 8 gunners mates, 8 navigators at the very least. They cant all be just bog standard sailors, it would not work. The need for officers is the one reason why my players still have one ship crewed (they have another in a secret cove). Saliors are easy to come by, officers are not.
I think you need to have another look at this and work it out. Don't let the players lose the ships though that's not very fair. Let them either sell them or find a secret cove to store them in.
also as a sidenote, isn't it a bit silly to send a fleet of 7 ships up against 1 ship?
Surley you should be adjusting to this and either using fleet battle rules or at the very least have a battle with more ships?
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Sounds like it's time to introduce some real-world consequences. So these upstarts that no one had heard of a couple months ago suddenly start raiding the shipping lanes of the pirate lords without a letter of marque and have a little bit too much success too fast? If I was Avimar Sorrenash (or another suitable villain) I would sail down and thank them for collecting all these ships and all this plunder for me. For fear of my reputation half their ships would immediately mutiny and join Sorrenash's fleet. The others would be quickly overmatched and the PC's would be allowed to limp away with one or two of the smaller vessels and invited to bring their complaint to the Hurricane King with whom they have no standing without a letter of marque.
The point is that the PC's are not the biggest baddest things in these waters. Too much success too fast is bad for your health when dealing with pirates.
It really sounds like you're letting your players run over your campaign. The shouldn't have the Dominator, certainly. If it was so easy to go from poverty and obscurity to wealth and infamy via piracy then everyone would do it.
Yes without letters of marque they are subject to being attacked by any or all of the other free captains, especially the more powerful ones. Definitely time to show them they have got too big for their britches!
It really sounds like you're letting your players run over your campaign. The shouldn't have the Dominator, certainly. If it was so easy to go from poverty and obscurity to wealth and infamy via piracy then everyone would do it.
This. In spades.
I have absolutely no clue how your campaign got to this point so quickly, but something is very, very wrong somewhere.
From the character I peeked at, I'd just go ahead and tell them the story from books 3-6 rather than wasting time dicing out combats to find out if they win in round one or round two. Or get busy beefing up the opposition.
Based on our current game, i dont know where they got all the crew. Our game is currently at lvl 10 and Have 1 active ship with another Sitting in port and no crew. In most cases our main ship has its minimum needed crew (20 i think) and usually about 2/3 of its potential crew.
Could we fully max it out? yes but wed constantly be moving from port to port recruiting. I have no idea how much time the Op's players must have spent recruiting to not only have the dominator but 7 ships. (let alone the Dominator itself)
Actually rather curious how they acquired that ship given our group was /terrified/ when we went on board that we would be cought.
My group of players is 5th and they have 75 crew although I have been a little liberal with recruiting. Need to work on crew deaths also I think.
After a quick look at the characters.... so many things changed from normal rules, weapons adapted for group's optimum use (I really like the original Sahuagin trident which as a saw-tooth sabre seems oddly tailor-made for the captain etc etc. Guess Sahuagin must love those inefficient slashing weapons ! Nevermind witches with two-handed melee weaponry or gunslingers in medium armour - actually lightened platemail. Oh, wait it is not HOT in the shackles etc.... ). Personal character WbL, having just checked the gunslinger and the monk, (excluding ships plunder etc.) also seems to be definitely on the "too high" side of things. By at least a level or even closer to two.
BUT
Your campaign, your rules,
Although it appears like your personal take on the rules really helps the players along far too much. And just possibly you might be a bit lenient on the role-playing part and in-character consequences ? A low-level Red Mantis Assassin (probably in training^^) commanding a fleet of ships ? *shrug*
Which of course means the group now has amassed enough power to stomp through everything at the set level of the AP if played semi-intelligently.
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Seems like the better question is 'have you allowed your players PC's to grow too big for Skull and Shackles'?
Capturing the Dominator at the level they faced it should have been a nigh-impossible feat, and even if they did somehow manage it, allowing them to have it (as opposed to having it scuttled or set aflame rather than allow it to fall into the hands of scurvy pirates) is akin to giving them an artifact at the same level. Worse, possibly.
As pointed out by many, wealth by level is too high and the mini-army/fleet they've assembled too capable. It seems to me (with admittedly very limited information) that in the process of allowing your group to have so much fun 'winning' (relatively unopposed it would seem), you may have outpaced the module and ruined it for them long-term.
Best scenario I see is having them unwittingly run afoul of the Hurricane King and having him (through agents/other Free Captains) take them down through a combination of a small fleet and treachery - surely at least one Free Captains has a crewman on board to serve as a spy on these upstarts. Take everything away from them in dramatic fashion and give them the opportunity to escape/regroup and plot their revenge... then they get the fun of earning it all all over again - perhaps this time appropriately.
Also seems like a lot of playing fast and loose with the rules - where did all of those fire spells for the witch come from?
Also seems like a lot of playing fast and loose with the rules - where did all of those fire spells for the witch come from?
I would guess : Element patron, APG ?
After reading this thread I remembered an older one were a GM shared how his party sacked the Dominator.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pu5y?The-Sacking-of-the-Dominator
I remember the first time I read this thread I thought it was pretty fun idea. I even thought through the inevitable that my group will want to make a go at the ship as well.
I returned to this previous thread after reading here and saw it in a new light. Yeah the bigger stronger ship is going to spawn power problems. Not to mention as you pointed out the gear from all the marines.
I have no doubt that the encounter taking the Dominator was fun but there were several choices made in that exchange that opened up doors for them to take the Dominator.
1-Unloading huge amounts of the ships crew to hunt for pirates they already defeated. This might be a good assumption but overkill which played right into the PC hand. Removing the major logical barrier to, "why don't we try to take the ship."
2-A commander and 6 marines fight a sabotaging boarding party and no one raises alarm (shouts, fires a gun, rings a bell, runs out of the room and gets everyone on the ship to come to their aid. Again this encounter was played as a standard encounter that they could win without huge amounts of luck or amazing happenings.
If your players are having fun and you are enjoying it there is nothing to fix. There is a fine dance GMs play. I have played with some that when they go on the fly it always goes in favor of the players and the choice makes for a winnable level appropriate encounter. There is the opposite problem of making every on the fly detail insurmountable so that the party is beaten back on to the rails or at least a position the GM favors.
As to your predicament at hand. I would do an audit of the what upkeep on 7 ships, and a functioning island fortress would take and make sure that you are keeping it up. This I imagine is going to highlight some issues that might need to be addressed either by the players or by their mutinous employees.
Next I would start to look at some of the things brought up here. Let them reap what they have sown both good and bad. Pirate Lords looking to take what they have rightfully stolen (inconceivable). Not to mention pirate hunters looking for bounties.
First of all in said encounter with the Dominator I do not see how 2 small air elementals stand against 16 Chelish Marines. They have a STR of 12 so they are not lifting any of them into the river. The DM has given into the players whole handedly here. Two small air elementals at this level are not even an annoyance. Besides the captain and the first mate there are 14 officers on the Dominator and 200 marines. They are not going to send even half of them off on a wild goose chase. So they send a couple of officers and 60 men, that leaves 140 marines and a dozen officers and the Captain against 4 PCs? Please. Besides, if you are going to allow a gunfighter in an AP that is not supposed to have one then you need to give all of those marines muskets.
they have 7 ships and 1 fortress
i would count the fortress as worth 5 crews, or 12 crews total
i would charge 4 plunder per crew or 48 plunder
1 for wages
1 for supplies
1 for medical treatment, repairs, squibbing and the like
1 for protection and insurance bribes to the hurricane king to make sure he doesn't target your PCS' fleet
i would also recommend they keep a party slush fund for emergencies. a potions and wands budget
i would rate it equivalent to 3 shares for 8 shares, not counting the familiar, unless the familiar needs a share too.
First of all in said encounter with the Dominator I do not see how 2 small air elementals stand against 16 Chelish Marines. They have a STR of 12 so they are not lifting any of them into the river. The DM has given into the players whole handedly here. Two small air elementals at this level are not even an annoyance. Besides the captain and the first mate there are 14 officers on the Dominator and 200 marines. They are not going to send even half of them off on a wild goose chase. So they send a couple of officers and 60 men, that leaves 140 marines and a dozen officers and the Captain against 4 PCs? Please. Besides, if you are going to allow a gunfighter in an AP that is not supposed to have one then you need to give all of those marines muskets.
We had our own experience with the Dominator and it was a blast - but at no time did we ever come close to capturing it. Common sense (and the GM) dictated that it was just too tall an order for characters of our power level, which was fine. There are plenty of ways to 'win' an encounter and still have fun.
We fist encountered the Dominator after being talked into an 'easy' raid on a Chellish fleet, working in cooperation with another ship's captain met at Blood Cove. We had run afoul of the Aspis Consortium while there and were looking for a good reason to get out of port. He (the other captain) had gotten word that a Chellish merchant fleet of five ships was being escourted by a single military ship and that if we worked together to take it down, we'd have easy pickings of the scattered merchants.
So we did, tracking the fleet and eventually layiong our ambush - only to discover much to our dismay that they 'escourt' was the massive man-o-war Dominator. Our 'partner' was reckless and pressed the attack anyway so we supported him as best we could. The Dominator sunk him almost with impugnity and we barely made our escape. Lesson learned.
Later, we encountered the Dominator again anchored at the mouth of a river we had sailed up - we didn't know if it had tracked us or if it was an unhappy coincidence, but we knew there was no way we could defeat it head-on (having seen its destruction of the other ship). Fortunately we had a Master Summoner with us who served as our pilot and he devised a daring plan that might work.
That night he approached on land by foot while we positioned the ship around a bend to make ready for a run. When he got as near the Dominator as he dared, he used a Fly scroll and cast Invisibility upon himself, flying to the ship whereupon he began using his Summon Monster III ability (we were 6th level). With 12 castings, he was able to summon 40 small fire elementals which he set loose on the ship, their directives simply to burn everything in sight.
From there he flew back to our ship and we made our run - the chaos sown was enough for us to make it past the anchored Dominator, but we still took several shots (and returned a few of our own) before we reached the open sea. It was very exciting because we knew that even with out assault on the ship it might not be enough, that the dicipline and training of a crew that outnumbered us 5 to 1 on a ship that had us out-gunned and out-sailed would require luck more than anything to escape.
I honestly don't think the rest of the AP would have been near as much fun had we been allowed to simply capture the Dominator, and of course all the dominos that followed...
Tucker's Kobolds, man. Tucker's Kobolds. There's no such thing as a party that's "Too Powerful". There are only DM's who need to consult their copy of The Art of War and the Thirty Six Stratagems.
How much have your PCs cost Cheliax? Eventually it's going to be worth the effort for them to dispatch a serious fleet to deal with them. I mean, the opportunity to stick a tricorne on a Pit Fiend (with a an Erinyes with parrot wings perched on one shoulder) should be enough to justify pulling out some big guns.
Basically, at some point your PCs are going to do enough damage that they become embarrassing to Cheliax. If you're going to put up with lawful evil rulers and their pet devils you expect a certain amount of protection in return. If the powers decide that your PCs are a significant problem they might arrange a show of force to remind the PCs that they are small fish in a very, very, very big pond. The kind of show of force that can result in a TPK if they don't think fast and have a good escape plan.
Shake them up. Demonstrate that their actions will have consequences and no matter how badass they are the national navies can put a hundred ships in the water for every one of theirs. Remind them that a certain amount of discretion is important, and that there are things out there that aren't impresed by their infamy and disrepute.
And of course should the things you outline above take place and the PC's survive, I've no doubt the Hurricane King and some other members of the Free Captains won't be too pleased with the attention the PC's have drawn, perhaps 'confiscating' some of their wealth or even ships to keep them from causing future trouble. It'll probably hurt them down the road when it comes to trying to rally support against the Cheliax invasion.
To my mind, Cheliax likely won't be quite ready to make its move, but there's no reason why they wouldn't fund some mercenary captains to do their dirty work for them. Or more likely some assassins. Or both.
Of course, some of the Free Captains themselves have bigger fleets than the PC's and alliances as well. Their ships could be sabotaged in port. There are lots of possibilities... might be time to stop allowing the PC's to steamroll through combat encounters taking advantage of resources they probably shouldn't have and put a little more emphasis on making friends and enemies in the Shackles themselves.
they have 7 ships and 1 fortress
i would count the fortress as worth 5 crews, or 12 crews total
i would charge 4 plunder per crew or 48 plunder
1 for wages
1 for supplies
1 for medical treatment, repairs, squibbing and the like
1 for protection and insurance bribes to the hurricane king to make sure he doesn't target your PCS' fleet
i would also recommend they keep a party slush fund for emergencies. a potions and wands budget
i would rate it equivalent to 3 shares for 8 shares, not counting the familiar, unless the familiar needs a share too.
48 plunder is a bit harsh, but I can see 1 per ship and 1 for the fortress, also something for the Hurricane King so I would call it 10 plunder each time. There aren't that many men stationed at the Rock to call it more than 1 crew IMHO. 2 for the Hurricane King might placate him for awhile, but Cheliax will be a problem sooner rather than later.
48 plunder is a bit harsh, but I can see 1 per ship and 1 for the fortress, also something for the Hurricane King so I would call it 10 plunder each time. There aren't that many men stationed at the Rock to call it more than 1 crew IMHO. 2 for the Hurricane King might placate him for awhile, but Cheliax will be a problem sooner rather than later.they have 7 ships and 1 fortress
i would count the fortress as worth 5 crews, or 12 crews total
i would charge 4 plunder per crew or 48 plunder
1 for wages
1 for supplies
1 for medical treatment, repairs, squibbing and the like
1 for protection and insurance bribes to the hurricane king to make sure he doesn't target your PCS' fleet
i would also recommend they keep a party slush fund for emergencies. a potions and wands budget
i would rate it equivalent to 3 shares for 8 shares, not counting the familiar, unless the familiar needs a share too.
She's not saying 4 plunder for the crew, she's saying 1 plunder for the crew, 1 plunder for repair and maintenance, 1 plunder for ship's stores and 1 plunder's worth of bribes and tribute. That might be a touch high, but then again it might not.
Conservatively, assuming there have been no massive ship's battles, I'd say 1 for the crew, .5 for maintenance, .5 for stores, .5 for bribes and .5 for tribute. That's still 3 plunder per ship per period we are talking about - keeping in mind that a single good haul can easily net you 4-6 plunder , I don't think that's unreasonable at all.
48 plunder is a bit harsh, but I can see 1 per ship and 1 for the fortress, also something for the Hurricane King so I would call it 10 plunder each time. There aren't that many men stationed at the Rock to call it more than 1 crew IMHO. 2 for the Hurricane King might placate him for awhile, but Cheliax will be a problem sooner rather than later.they have 7 ships and 1 fortress
i would count the fortress as worth 5 crews, or 12 crews total
i would charge 4 plunder per crew or 48 plunder
1 for wages
1 for supplies
1 for medical treatment, repairs, squibbing and the like
1 for protection and insurance bribes to the hurricane king to make sure he doesn't target your PCS' fleet
i would also recommend they keep a party slush fund for emergencies. a potions and wands budget
i would rate it equivalent to 3 shares for 8 shares, not counting the familiar, unless the familiar needs a share too.
She's not saying 4 plunder for the crew, she's saying 1 plunder for the crew, 1 plunder for repair and maintenance, 1 plunder for ship's stores and 1 plunder's worth of bribes and tribute. That might be a touch high, but then again it might not.
Conservatively, assuming there have been no massive ship's battles, I'd say 1 for the crew, .5 for maintenance, .5 for stores, .5 for bribes and .5 for tribute. That's still 3 plunder per ship per period we are talking about - keeping in mind that a single good haul can easily net you 4-6 plunder , I don't think that's unreasonable at all.
a standard haul is 4-6 plunder
a good haul, including the ship itself, is about 10-15 plunder. assuming you sell the ship.
i'm also factoring the fortress towards this as well.