Thoughts and Observations on episode 1 of Savage Tide (SPOILERS!)

[Wik]

If you are thinking about throwing a zombie in the underwater passage, I'd like to add that my group's PCs, since they ran through Mad God's Key as a prologue, were 3rd level Gestalts when I did this (and really, it was the only part of Parrot Island that really challenged them since they were of slightly higher level than the module is written for).

With James Jacobs' Amazing Zombies grappling and biting as opposed to using slam attacks, all the zombie has to do is grab a halfling or gnome and... hold them for a bit... then it's goodbye PC.

Well, I thought about it, and I thought about it some more.

My group knows me pretty well, and to be quite honest, they'll be EXPECTING a zombie underwater. So, instead, I'm just going to put a corpse down there, his foot wedged a rock. It'll be floating around, attracting a crowd of fish.

The great thing is, it'll keep the whole group on edge, without it actually being a fight (if the group loses their fear of this "zombie" I might have it grab one of the PCs as they swim by, but make it's grapple check so low that the PCs can escape easily, just to make the encounter a tad more climactic.

Thanks for the info, guys - I actually realized I need to read (and re-read) the rules on Improved Grab and Grapples before I start running this game. I mean, the Rhagodessa's, the Zombies, hell, even the crabs have improved grab. So, I figure I need to get the rules for the attack down pat.