D&D 5E Report and advice after our first session in Ghosts of Saltmarsh

77IM · May 28, 2019

Spoiler: I'm not sure whether or not this was in the original, but in the new version, the haunted house has

[SBLOCK] undead skeletons in the basement, including a skeleton alchemist. The smugglers have barred the door to the skeleton room, which is a nice little hint for the PCs.[/SBLOCK]

Gilladian · May 28, 2019

Yes, that’s right out of the original.

WaterRabbit · May 28, 2019

The advice I would give: It is easy to get a TPK with a party in this. A party that doesn't use sound tactics will get slaughtered. I ran this a few months ago before Saltmarsh was released and the party boxed themselves in and tried to take on all of the smugglers at once without bottlenecking them. I even left out the assassin because I figured it would be too much. So I had the party enslaved and shipped out as a result of the TPK. Seriously I have two players with serious hero complexes. The goliath cleric ran into the middle of 4 smugglers thinking he could wipe the floor with them. Oh and the party was 3rd level at the time, figured out there were smugglers, and had an approximate count of them.

Guest 6801328 · May 29, 2019

77IM said:
Spoiler: I'm not sure whether or not this was in the original, but in the new version, the haunted house has

[SBLOCK] undead skeletons in the basement, including a skeleton alchemist. The smugglers have barred the door to the skeleton room, which is a nice little hint for the PCs.[/SBLOCK]

And that's the irony, right? The house is supposedly haunted, but then the heroes discover that it's just smugglers pretending it's haunted...but then they discover that it really is haunted!

Although, if I were writing the adventure, instead of having the climax after the discovery of the undead, I'd set it up more like a Conan story, where the supernatural denouement happens during the final confrontation, dramatically changing the battlefield.

jasper · May 29, 2019

WaterRabbit said:
The advice I would give: It is easy to get a TPK with a party in this. A party that doesn't use sound tactics will get slaughtered. I ran this a few months ago before Saltmarsh was released and the party boxed themselves in and tried to take on all of the smugglers at once without bottlenecking them. I even left out the assassin because I figured it would be too much. So I had the party enslaved and shipped out as a result of the TPK. Seriously I have two players with serious hero complexes. The goliath cleric ran into the middle of 4 smugglers thinking he could wipe the floor with them. Oh and the party was 3rd level at the time, figured out there were smugglers, and had an approximate count of them.

This is why I have Skully. (Plastic skull with names of dead pcs). Why death of the pcs may not always be on the line, players need to know it can happen. Yes, I know some of you only kill pcs when the story/player demands it.

D&D 5E Report and advice after our first session in Ghosts of Saltmarsh

77IM

Explorer!!!

Gilladian

Adventurer

WaterRabbit

Explorer

Guest 6801328

Guest

jasper

Rotten DM

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