The Ruined Clouds: Chapter 1 (Spoilers)

[DrSnooze]

Is the Azlanti attack in Chapter 1 relevant to the plot, or is it just a random encounter? I suspect that my players will take it to mean that the Azlanti Empire is now interested, and somehow connected to the Stellar Degenerator plot. I'm thinking about replacing this with a monster-as-starship encounter instead, but I don't want to miss a key plot point later on by doing this.

[pithica42]

It's the Devs showing off how bad-a the ASE is as foreshadowing for the upcoming second AP. It doesn't have anything to do with the plot, and can be ignored/replaced.

[Jason Keeley]

Yeah, feel free to add a starship-scale monster! Those can be fun and can real highlight the strangeness of the Drift!

[DrSnooze]

Jason Keeley wrote:

Yeah, feel free to add a starship-scale monster! Those can be fun and can real highlight the strangeness of the Drift!

Thanks for the tip! Any suggestions as to what monster I can use? I was thinking about the Novaspawn from the Alien Archive, but I'm also considering maybe a bunch of smaller monsters (CR 4 or 5) instead. Not too many choices available yet though.

[Noven]

I am going to use a Novaspawn that is a bit injured to bring down the CR.

[pithica42]

I think a handful of Garragakals (from DS1) would be a good substitute. IIRC, they're CR 5, so two of them should be CR7 and 3 should be CR8. It would both be challenging for the party, but show how far they've come as characters. Plus, they're drift natives, so it's not even a stretch.

[Noven]

Those are at the character scale not the starship scale, so I am not sure they would work.

[pithica42]

I didn't mean to imply they could be run as a starship encounter. Just as a general encounter in lieu of the one(s) with the ASE.

[Jason Keeley]

To use a novaspawn, I would bring it down to tier 6, and probably even just rebuild it. Its sort of built around a Cruiser frame at tier 8, but you could probably fake it with more of a Destroyer frame.

Alternatively, you could use most of the stats of Azlanti vessel, replacing the torpedo launchers with the novaspawn's tentacle attacks. And, of course, using the novaspawn's critical effect chart.

We are working at creating more starship-scale threats, but they won't be our for some time, unfortunately.