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Other than that this looks like a great adventure. It has a fair amount of variation, enough to make it a decent replayable with a nice mix of combat and roleplaying in an interesting environment. What suspect will mmake or break this is the amount of warning GMs give their players about where they are going, at least for the first run.
When I played this, the GM was nice enough to let my druid retroactively change his memorized fire ball spells to lightning bolts.
Which, in world, makes lots of sense. There is absolutely no reason the characters wouldn't have been told in advance that they were likely going underwater.
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I am just not sure that will be the default. This is especially so as after the first encounter the VC explicitly says she was trying to keep things quiet about what was going on.
Well, that is a good way to get both players AND characters pissed at how insanely stupid the Pathfinder Society is being.
That single change would have very, very greatly impacted my enjoyment of the scenario. "Sorry Mr Druid, but your spell selection is useless. Hope you enjoy spamming cantrips" is only a small exaggeration.
Especially for a repeatable its just about begging players to cheat and use meta knowledge.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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Ran into two questions while running this last night.
First... just checking that I'm running swimming right. When they move, the roll athletics to move. Since it's calm water (I think), they can't fail the check, but roll anyways because they can crit-succeed for additional movement. But what is the DC of the check? I went with 15.
Second... What is the travel time between missions. It calls out that you get 10 minutes after each mission before you get your next assignment, but what about travel time? This was an issue because we had a paladin in the party who was able to lay on hands every 10 minutes that we traveled.
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Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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The base Grindylow (Bestiary 2) doesn't have anything like the Tangling Kelp ability - it has a tentacle AOO as a reaction - so Tangling Kelp is likely an intentional addition to the zombified creature as opposed to an oversight.
Reading the text of Tangling Kelp, it is entirely passive (it doesn't require the zombie to actually do anything), so the intent may simply be that it can only proc once per turn as opposed to being (say) an always-on aura.
On a different topic: the text for Reel In under the Sea Devil Impaler says it pulls 10 feet on a success and 20 feet on a critical success, but no mention is made of a check. The intention here was probably Athletics check vs. Fort DC, as with the same-named ability of the CR7 Culdewen (Bestiary 2). [There is another creature (Drakauthix, CR9, Bestiary) with a Reel In ability that does not require a check, but that does not seem to be the intent here.]
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Something for GMs to be keenly aware of:
- Unless you have some special feat (like Underwater Marauder), PCs fighting underwater are always flat-footed.
- Sea Devils get their bloodletting special ability against flat-footed targets. Which in turn enables their blood frenzy.
It goes from a "need to be flanking or such" to "almost always on".
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Firstly, how many swim fins does Meleeka provide the group? The boxed text says "There are enough potions and fins for each of you" but the instructions say "Meleeka also unpacks A pair of swim fins" So is it one pair or one each?
Meleeka supplies four potions of water breathing to each character (including any animal companions, familiars, or the like).<<snip>> Meleeka also unpacks a pair of swim fins...
emphasis mine.
I read "a pair of swim fins" as part of "each character"
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First... just checking that I'm running swimming right. When they move, the roll athletics to move. Since it's calm water (I think), they can't fail the check, but roll anyways because they can crit-succeed for additional movement. But what is the DC of the check? I went with 15.
Agree calm water is what makes sense as there is no comment about current (except with the vortex). So yea, no check. There is a risk to having a check because of the crit failure.
Reading the Swim action, on a Success "you move through the water 5 feet, plus 5 feet per 20 feet of your land Speed (a total of 10 feet for most PCs)". With swim fins on, "you gain a +5-foot item bonus to the distance you move when rolling Athletics to Swim, no when using a swim Speed, and you take a -10-foot item penalty to your Speed."
So the swim fins reduces a character's land speed by -10. Most PCs have a land Speed of 25, so -10 feet would mean their land Speed is 15 feet. If they were to roll the Athletics check to Swim and get a success, they would 5 feet, plus bonus 5 feet, but no additional because their land Speed is not over 25.
So in almost all cases, the character will move 10-feet with each Swim Action. On a fail or critical fail, I believe they would still move the bonus 5 feet.
What about a character who did not success at a Swim action? Do they still sink wearing the fins?
Underwater combat is so fun....
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Contributor
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We went for 10 for the base DC, that being the generic untrained DC.
I would put it at no more than a few minutes. The Monastery dosnt seem to be very big and you are getting transported by hippocampus.
The Gamemastery guide has no legal player options at this time, but our GMs found the following:
The DC to Swim underwater shouldn’t be very high—typically 15, or 13 in calm water.
When someone gets knocked out underwater, they usually float up or sink down. You decide based on their buoyancy; most adventurers carry a heavy enough load to sink.
With nothing else to go on, that's what we used here.
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Speaking of the Hazard, I'm a little confused by the choice of the Consuming Maelstrom as a Reaction. It feels like it should be a "Free Action" with the appropriate trigger. I don't see any previous Complex Hazards with a reaction that's not the 'roll initiative' flavor aka 'pre-routine'. Have people been running it as a reaction (1/per round) or a free action (however many PCs are pulled in).
I'm also assuming that they elided the (1 action) to say how many actions the hazard gets. The is no default for the number of actions a complex hazard gets.
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I'd love to give youu more insight about the vortex in play but...
When I ran it none of the PCs wanted to swim into the vortex and there's no reason for them to do so. The bad guy there has no ranged attacks. I spent a few rounds swimming out to attack and swimming back to try and lure the melee heavy party in. Instead they grouped up, protected by a paladin with reach and some secondary ranged options.
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I have now ran this once and played in it once and a number of questions have sprung to mind about how Encounter C3 is supposed to be ran.
In the level 5-6 difficulty, Silaqui has no listed speed. I assume this is a typo in a copy and paste and that she can swim 50' per her stat block for the level 3-4 difficulty. Furthermore, are the grindylows able to move during the encounter or are they immobile and just "tangled up" in the kelp? Both stat blocks have a grindylow's normal 25' swim speed removed.
I also would like to know how the grindylow's can use their reaction since they are slowed and have no reactions. If they cannot move, I would think a fair balance would to remove the "slowed" condition like some zombies have so they can at least use their reaction.
The bloody vortex has no stealth modifier listed in the Level 3-4 difficulty to roll for initiative. I just did +0 as per the level 5-6 stat block.
Lastly, I would like to know other GMs input on how to run the "weeding kelp" or "magic disruption" activities before Encounter C3. To me, per the text, it seems a PC has to be adjacent to the kelp around the altar at the center of the vortex to "weed" it and adjacent to the altar to disrupt its magic. This makes the following combat make a lot more sense and action-packed, as they are close to the altar to trigger its damage, silaqui can reach out and bite them on the 1st round of combat and if the grindylows are immobile, they have a chance of doing something against the party. Otherwise as Robert stated (and my party did when i played), the party has no reason to get close and just picks off all enemies from a distance and take no damage from enemies or the hazard.
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I ran this last weekend, running the hospital and the dragon turtle battles. The Party of six was at 22 challenge points with one 3rd level character and one 6th level character.
I could have EASILY wipe out the party with the dragon turtle. The +18 to hit pretty much guaranteed a critical on every Strike. Combined that with most of the party flat-foot because they were underwater. One of the characters crit succeeded on a diplomacy check they rolled before I could say that the dragon turtle was not listening because it was pretty much enraged.
Fighting a large sea creature in it's favored environment was just too deadly.
After I had two of the character down and dying, I said that re-reinforcements arrived to drive back the dragon turtle and only rewarded them with one (out of three) treasure bundle. The party was comfortable with this.
This battlefield needs to played with care and only with the best prepared parties and it needs to have a safety valve written in.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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I'm running this tomorrow, it looks really good. Bit bummed about the lack of repeatable content (three variables, of which you have to do two?), but I like the challenges themselves. They really make good use of the environment.
One thing I noted though: the author seems fond of throwing in more weaker enemies for higher CP, which is fine. But in the final combat, that's a lot of sharks to put in a tiny little space. I literally ran out of room to place them. While that isn't a problem in and of itself, I'm just afraid of swarming the battlefield.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I'm running this tomorrow, it looks really good. Bit bummed about the lack of repeatable content (three variables, of which you have to do two?), but I like the challenges themselves. They really make good use of the environment.
One thing I noted though: the author seems fond of throwing in more weaker enemies for higher CP, which is fine. But in the final combat, that's a lot of sharks to put in a tiny little space. I literally ran out of room to place them. While that isn't a problem in and of itself, I'm just afraid of swarming the battlefield.
It's a sneaky way of making it a bit easier for the players. Because the enemies are big and lumpy it's actually hard for all of them to gang up on a single PC.
Also even though ranged attacks are harder underwater, you'd be surprised at how much a barrage some parties can put up in that battle before the enemy can close in fully.
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I am just not sure that will be the default. This is especially so as after the first encounter the VC explicitly says she was trying to keep things quiet about what was going on.
Well, that is a good way to get both players AND characters pissed at how insanely stupid the Pathfinder Society is being.
That single change would have very, very greatly impacted my enjoyment of the scenario. "Sorry Mr Druid, but your spell selection is useless. Hope you enjoy spamming cantrips" is only a small exaggeration.
Especially for a repeatable its just about begging players to cheat and use meta knowledge.
There is a difference between "Hey, Druid known for your fire spells, maybe you should invest in other elemental magics instead", and "Hey, we are journing to investigate troubles w/ our underwater monastery with some nearby sea devils. If underwater combat is required, I won't be able to bring my fire monk protector w/ me, so you better invest in some other elemental spells."
So I as well would have let the Druid swap out his unused spells after the VC briefing. I don't think an answer to a possible question is meant to be read as a reason to dick over a character, more as suggested flavor to help GM's answer questions in character w/ those who they are speaking with.