| Viconus |
I have players that like problem solving and role playing better than combat. They don't like combat more than once or twice in three hours session. If there is combat, it's nice to tie to someone's character. Attacking plant people doesn't really do that.
Given that, what were the best parts of the Sea Wyvern's Wake?
What kind of role playing with the NPCs brought the most laughter?
I think the mystery of people being poisoned could be fun. The sorcerer is womanizing and might be an easy target for Rowyn to seduce, disguised as Lavinia. (It will be awkward, but hilariously awkward, for me to role play that).
Did anybody add anything else that spiced up the journey?
I think a naval battle has great potential, but 9 pirates doesn't sound especially exciting after they already had a swashbuckling battle on the Blue Nixie in Chapter One.
| Viconus |
One flaw in the Rowyn plotline is that characters can find her with detect magic spells. Any way around this?
Variation: I'll have Rowyn (disguised as Lavinia) approach the party as a group after the dinner party. She will act a little tipsy and encourage people to go skinny dipping. If people resist, she takes off her clothes and jumps in the water, saying "I hired you to protect me. If you want to do your job, you'll just have to join me." For any remaining characters, she uses suggestion. Then, she casts expeditious retreat and summons a shark out of sight.
Does this seem plausible to most people?
| NPC Dave |
I think my players had the most fun with the dinner party and then interacting with the inhabitants of Renkue. Part of the appeal to them for Renkue, though, was I made it a place where you could dive for pearls, so they had a lot of fun doing pearl diving and using magic to try and find good stuff for the purpose of using those pearls as material components for spell-casting.
If you want the rules I came up for it, you can find them at the link, the section on Sea Wyvern's Wake are pages 106-115. I also expanded the Fort Blackwell encounter as my PCs tracked down who implanted the slaad egg.
http://pandius.com/Threshold_4.pdf
Now also mentioned in the pdf is that there was a word document where some fans of Savage Tide and the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan expanded the Tamoachan site by converting the entire 1st edition adventure into 3.5 to run as part of Sea Wyvern's Wake. If you want a copy of that word document I can email it to you, as I still have a copy.
The blockade encounter is deliberately easy for 5th level PCs, so it won't take long at your table unless you want to make it harder by beefing up the pirates and giving them a spellcaster or two.
I will get back to you on Rowyn later.
| NPC Dave |
One flaw in the Rowyn plotline is that characters can find her with detect magic spells. Any way around this?
Variation: I'll have Rowyn (disguised as Lavinia) approach the party as a group after the dinner party.
Most parties, including mine, are going to do a systematic search right after Rowyn's very first sabotage, and they are most likely going to catch her right then, especially if they have see invisibility.
I would argue that they can't find Rowyn with just detect magic. They can use it to detect that there is illusion magic in the vicinity when she is nearby and invisible, but they can't use it to locate her. They need see invisibility for that.
Of course, detecting illusion magic means the PCs know someone is around and makes it very likely they can find her at that point. So I highly encourage you to have her rely on disguise self and come up with a way for her to move back and forth between the Sea Wyvern and the Blue Nixie, especially after each sabotage attempt.
Ideally she also needs a secret door that lets her move from the hold to the deck of the ship, but if you put one in the PCs need a fair chance to find it.