No one is Hostile for Day 19?

[Darth Maximus]

Hey all. I am currently running book 1. At this point, my players have converted nearly the entire crew to their side; only 3 crew members remain at anything less than Helpful. 2 are Friendly, and 1 I ruled was permanently Hostile after they majorly flubbed the influence roll. The Friendlies will be Helpful soon enough.

Looking forward to Day 19, Risky Games in the Bilges, I'm kinda lost. I only have 1 person to use to jump the PC. Have any of you had a similar situation? How did you handle it? Any ideas on how I might handle it?

I'm considering having Plugg and Scourge give Aretta (the permanently hostile one) some drug that raises her to CR 1, so she's worth the same XP. Or having Syl Lonegan lapse into her derangement and flip from Helpful to Hostile, but that seems cheatycheaty, or wrong.

Help?

[MerlinCross]

Some thoughts;

-Drugs: Yeah you can probably do that. Fury Drops gives rage for 1d6 rounds(Can probably auto 'roll' behind the screen for 3-4 rounds depending). Wild-Blood does about the same thing but only damage not hit. Or make your own. But play up the fact that either it's a short bonus(Letting the player out last by fighting defensively or other ways) and possibly crippling withdrawal(So players don't try to use the drug themselves)

-Class: Different way to go about it is to give Aretta a Class. Not Warrior. Let her dip into Fighter or Swashbuckler. Maybe a Rogue with knife abilities/boosts.

-Magic: This goes a bit with Class. If you give her a spell casting class, maybe she can begin the fight with a shove that's actually a touch spell that supplies a debuff. Maybe she can summon a minor monster to help for a turn or two.

-Alternate idea: Aretta KNOWS she can't win one on one. But those Bilge spiders might not make it one on one. Allow her some vermin repellent and maybe trick the PC into attracting them with noise or some sort of spider bait(Beast Lure I believe.). This way Aretta can TRY to kill them without getting her hands dirty.

[cameronpants]

Make one or more of the friendlies do it. Sure, they're friendly with the PCs, but they still have to answer to Scourge and Plugg. Under threat of pain, death, or both, they might choose to accost and injure the PCs to preserve their own hide. Maybe they even try to make some Bluff checks to pass a secret message to them, warning them.

And maybe Plugg and Scourge also find out the friendly warned the PCs, and instruct their guys to turn on the Friendly if things don't go their way, then scream bloody murder. Then Plugg comes running and finds that one of the PCs' blade killed the friendly, and do a Keelhaulin'.

Just an idea. Just because the NPCs are friendly doesn't mean they won't do what the sadistic first mate and cronies tell you do to.

[Reverse]

A 'fake' beating from friendly NPCs might work. Or simply make it a 1 vs 1 one that the PC will easily win - a reward for their hard work of crew conversion.

[Darth Maximus]

What I ended up doing was trading out Aretta's Warrior levels for Ranger. Boosted her CR to the right level, and gave my PC a good challenge. They both managed to crit each other, and were both down to 1 HP in the final round.