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My ROTRL party is just beginning book 3, and spent the last gaming session en route to Turtleback Ferry.
They opened the night dusting off the last of the random encounters on the journey (5 trolls that were dispatched with such speed they provided no challenge at all). When the group arrived in town, they went through the motions of chatting with the Mayor to get the set up to the next adventure, then went fishing for rumors.
After some rumor mongering (the most interesting one to the party was the rumors about Black Magga), the group decides they will investigate the wreckage of Paradise, since the town really hadn’t. This wasn’t something I was even remotely pushing them towards, but I give my groups rope when they want to drive the narrative, so I said one of their new drinking buddies from the tavern is a fisherman who will paddle them out to the wreckage.
The big fighter volunteers to go diving, strips off his armor places a dagger in his teeth and a sunrod in hand and dives in.
He quickly sees Pinkeye the huge sized albino gar swimming in the vicinity and turning to notice the new meal that has dropped in to the water. The fighter has ample time to scramble back up into the ship, as the party sees the greatwhite shark-sized gar swim passed the boat…
… it turns out scrambling back to the boat wasn’t born out of a desire to avoid the fish… he just wanted to grab his greatsword for this, and he dove right back in…
The water churned red with blood as the fighter went toe to fin with the fish, and the rest of the party supported with magic and ranged attacks, the fish went down without ever successfully swallowing anyone whole.
The party towed the carcass back to town, gave the fish over to the townsfolk and demanded a plaque be made with their names on it to commemorate the kill. As they left town, the metal worker was looking into bronzing the skull to make a statue.
It amused me to watch how much fun they had with this, but I am now terrified about what will happen when they encounter Black Magga, since this group self identifies as big-game monster hunters, that fight might be a tragedy waiting to happen.
My Party didn't bother searching the wreck either, which kinda made me sad. Black Magga made them crap themselves a bit though, they didn't do so good against it.
I'm not sure they will get this hint that this thing can kill them all without really trying, and their front-liners will charge headlong.
I really don't want to TPK the group... again...
It amused me to watch how much fun they had with this, but I am now terrified about what will happen when they encounter Black Magga, since this group self identifies as big-game monster hunters, that fight might be a tragedy waiting to happen.
If it helps, Black Magga is utterly dispensible in the course of the campaign, as discussed in this thread, and there are certainly ways to modify the encounter so that they never get the chance to do more than cross paths... the danger in my opinion becomes their deciding to track her down and going off on a tangent that could potentially derail the campaign. Its a reasonable assumption to make as a player that if you encounter a significant threat - not just to your party but to an entire town - that you are expected to find a way to deal with it.
Of course, you could always reduce her power levels to something manageable and let them do battle instead. Might be fun for all involved, and the PC's have no way of knowing how tough the encounter 'should have been'.
I'm not sure they will get this hint that this thing can kill them all without really trying, and their front-liners will charge headlong.
I really don't want to TPK the group... again...
Aw c'mon, third time's the charm.