Sewer Encounters


Hell's Rebels


I am in Book 1 and my players have repeatedly mentioned wanting to clear the entire city's sewers as a means of travel for them and their teams, plus any folks they rescue, not to mention as a place to stay if things get too hot.

Aside from the amount of time it would take to clear an entire city, even a "small" one like Kintargo, what sewer encounters outside the book and/or with substance have you created?

I want some longer encounters or even side-quests available from this. For example, I have put a group of goblins down there that has lived there for some time. However, they've recently entered a war for their area. A morgodea (cockroach-controlling fey) has moved in, and needs space and food for its growing cockroach hordes. They have already stumbled on rumors of goblins ranging out of the sewers, and city employees complaining the cockroach problem is rendering sewer maintenance impossible. They'll either stumble upon the lair directly, a goblin scout, or a wounded goblin. This will either lead to a battle with the goblins (four normal gobbos, a warrior, and a shaman plus a neutral giant leech in the water and several goblins and roach corpses around the area) or team up with them against the morgodea and its forces (itself plus a giant cockroach and a venomroach).

I'll be using some of the random encounters, but I want some longer ones, or ones that take several encounters over time as well (like slowly taking back a large section from a particular gang over a few weeks).

Shadow Lodge

Book 2 has a little more information about gangs. I like the orcs and the halflings, but that's just me.

I agree that if you want a mini- or sub-adventure rather than a single encounter, consider a plot where the PCs win over some of the sewer denizens to their cause. Place is easier to traverse if you have people who were already living there patrolling it for you than if you've "cleared it out" and then left it alone. What's more, your enemies remain just as impeded as you were, whereas if you'd cleared the place out, they would be just as free as you.


Given that the sewer encounters don't level up, I modified the encounter chart for Old Kintargo for sewer-related encounters. Here:

Encounter List behind the cut to not use up a lot of space:

Old Kintargo Sewer Encounters
1-10 1d4+2 giant spiders
11-15 - 2d4 giant centipedes
16-30 2d6 dire rats
31-35 2 crocodiles
36-45 2d4 reefclaws
46-55 1d3 violet funguses
56-65 2d3 chokers
66-71 2d4 ghouls
72-77 1d2 voonith
78-81 2d4 Logrunners (cutpurses)
82-85 1d4 Jollytime Girls (axe warriors)
86-89 2 ooze mephits
90-94 The Sewer Sage (p. 78)
95-98 1d4 Spellcrafters (investigator wizards)
99-101 1 wretchghost
102-105 The Gray Queen's Court
106-109 1d4 otyughs
110-111 Diola brothers (cruel devotees)
112-113 1d6 skum
114-115 1 water naga
116-117 1 xenopterid
118+ Elder Cordulegaster p. 82 of Turn of the Torrent

One thing you can also do is create a map of the Sewer System, basically being lines following the main streets and the like. Then create a couple specific sewer maps for set encounters.

Another thing I'd do is alter the Safe house rules a tad. Once you establish a safe house, it shouldn't be an Action to keep it up. Instead, have the Ravens spend money to upkeep the safe house, or allow Safe houses to remain for X weeks, depending on how high they rolled. Then establish sewer routes between the safe houses. If a path is regularly used by the Ravens (whether the Teams or the adventurers themselves), then it will tend to be avoided by other creatures unless they seek food or the like - at which point treat it like an Invasion encounter with the adventurers having to drive off whatever is intruding on the route.


Be prepared for your players to ask if there's sewer access about every location. Then when you say there isn't for the vast majority of locations, be prepared for having to narrate what happens to the "humanoid waste products".


Better yet, say "yes" and then when they reach a four-inch diameter pipe that's spewing sewage, you can smile innocently and say "you never specified what KIND of sewer access...."

Of course, I also have certain areas that WILL have devils guarding the area, such as the sewers by the Asmodeus Cathedral and other types of guards near the Opera House sewer. And the sewers are patrolled by clay golems that have the job of breaking up any of the main sewers that get too much debris in them, along with gelatinous cubes that roam the sewers and reduce the amount of waste.


After some thought, I've suggested to my group that a new Action be created:

Maintain Safe House. This has a cost of 1 gold per Rebellion level per active safe house (thus currently 7 gold each). Maintain Safe House also allows your group to develop "safe paths" between Safe Houses, often using the sewers or (if two safe houses are located on opposite sides of the river) small boats that ferry people across. Specific safe houses can still be lost if Events dictate that a safe house was discovered or if the story has moved in a direction where the dottari or Thrune supporters realize where a safe house might be located.

So long as safe houses are active, each one provides a +1 to Security checks up to a maximum of +5.

The Activate Safe House action must be used to add a new safe house to any existing safe houses, thus if the Silver Ravens had two safe houses and wanted to add a third, they'd have to use both the Maintain Safe House action and the Activate Safe House action. Safe Houses are also an effective place for Caches to be located with the Secure Cache action. Any Event that would result in a cache located in a safe house to be found will also reveal the safe house.

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