Lemme set the scene for you: during the Bakarra breakout, the cleric of Pharasma was on rowing duty, everyone else was above deck. Bakarra busted through the door, causing everyone to run in fear. The cleric, I should mention, has the Flowing subdomain. Se walked up to Bakarra, in full attacking range, knowing perfectly well that she would get mauled to death as a result, and touched him with Go with the Flow (Flowing subdomain power that imparts calm emotions). Bakarra, being a neutral creature with no particular reason to dislike this one specific human, calmed down and started huffing. Now as a note, Go with the Flow, at that point, has a 2 round duration, so I made the player talk fast. She had no handle animal, but did have really good diplomacy, so I allowed her to roll it (since magical beast) at a major penalty for not sharing a language.
Nat 20. Total 30. Take away 10 and that's still 20, which with an unfriendly attitude towards her at that point and a terrible charisma score, was enough to take it to indifferent. Rolled again. Another super high roll, enough to make it helpful, and now they're best friends.
The party has since negotiated with Bloodtusk to let them take Bakarra with them, so I'm just going to adjust the difficulty of encounters in the future to account for him, and when they hit 11 let the cleric take Leadership with a monster cohort. No followers though.
Just thought I'd share an interesting anecdote.
Lol.
I was going to add that I would have found a way to disallow such a thing, but that's simply not true. I like flavor, and this is big on flavor, particularly if you don't mind modifying for encounter strength. Keep in mind, you'll need to do a lot of modifying as not much coming up is difficult, particularly if they acquire Ingrahild. Well, there's a couple things that are tough, but for different reasons.
I was going to add that I would have found a way to disallow such a thing
Well, finding the way isn't hard. Diplomacy takes a minute to perform, she only had two rounds. Don't work.
That said, I usually waive that myself. I often find it more interesting when players bypass encounters rather than plowing through them.
Well, true, and I agree on the interesting part, too.
My Saturday crew ended up whacking Melira on the first night (captured her, actually) and I'm playing it all differently. Nobody is rowing, and Bakkara escaped to face them on the deck. No penalties. He's tough.
My crew took out Melira early too. I don't like giving my party rests between every combat, I prefer to draw their day out so they have to deal with resource depletion (books 5 and 6 will be fun), so I had all of the saboteur elements happen in a single day.
As an aside, Bakarra has since died, being an unintelligent and belligerent sort of companion (I wasn't letting the cleric's player control him since he didn't have Leadership yet). And so he rammed his face into a rock troll's claws.
I haven't figured out how I'm gping to work the poisoning in for the last of the subterfuge, though it will happen early this weekend. We're probably back to Mummy's Mask next week anyway (our missing player returns), so a continuity glitch won't matter.