Experiences DMing Savage Tide [Adventures, Spoilers, Forked from Gargantuan Eel]

[blargney the second]

Forked from: [3.5, Monsters] Where can I find a gargantuan eel-like creature?

I just want to hear more about the ST part, since we got to Tides of Dread, but then our game died when one of our hosts decided he wasn't having fun anymore.

I'm interested in comparing experiences and ideas about running the Savage Tide. This is intended to be a thread for DMs, so if you're currently a player in the adventure path, begone lest ye read spoilers! (Perhaps a player experience thread would be a good idea as well...)


How far have you gone, how far are you going, what really cool things have happened that you expected or not, where is your Tide set, what pimpin' modifications have you made, what nifty resources have you used, etc.

Get out your allergy meds, 'cause it's cross-pollination season!
-blarg

 

[blargney the second]

Start: There Is No Honor
End: After we finish Tides of Dread
Setting: Xen'drik in Eberron. Sasserine is folded into Stormreach, Isle of Dread is in the group of islands off Xen'drik's northwest coast.

Coolest events: Here There Be Monsters had a couple of great moments by my players. A PC was plummeting to his death from the rickety lift trap on the cliffside path when he was saved by an ally who jumped off the lower cliff, caught him in mid-air, and used a featherfall talisman to slow them down. Later on in the temple of Demogorgon half the party got charmed by the bone naga, and the charmees were brilliant! They actually defended the naga while trying to knock out the others.

Modifications: The Inspired are making the shadow pearls using materials made by daelkyr abominations under the Isle of Dread. They are using the savage tide to power rituals to bring Dal Quor into alignment with Eberron (either temporarily or permanently, I haven't decided). The Mourning was actually their first experiment, done by using several pearls simultaneously around Cyre. A few quori managed to transition at that time. Although the dragons of Argonessen can't see into Sarlona, they've caught some snippets of information about the Isle of Dread. They replace Malcanthet in my adventures.

The Crimson Fleet are privateers based in Dar Qat on the west coast of Xen'drik. They are sent to destroy Farshore because it's going to bring too much traffic too close to the secret Sarlonan outpost and much too close to the pearl operation on the Isle of Dread. During the Farshore invasion the yuan-ti will be replaced with Sarlonan ogre mages, the flesh golems will be astral constructs, and Vanthus is going to be some sort of half-Quori experiment. Toss in a couple Inspired shock troopers for good measure, and away we go.

 

[Wycen]

I was a player, but as stated elsewhere, our game died.

I'm not sure where to start so I'll start with the cool stuff that happened only in my imagination.

What I'm really talking about is the hand waving that occured to get us back on track. Our DM used plots from other adventures to include the arena and plotting between gladiatorial houses as further means of making the city of Sasserine more complete. That was great until people started wanting to fight in the arena instead of following the STAP plot. Hmm, now that I think about it, that wasn't something I bothered to "fill in the blanks", but it become something we did more than once.

The next instance was trying to retrieve the Sea Wyvern and the Lotus Dragon's where still a threat to our group. During one point we encountered a ghost, the captain of an old ship. He apparently decided to haunt our halfling wizard, (but not in a bad way). He convinced us to help him find the Dragon's Eye, a gem stolen from one of the Sasserine oceanic temples, by shark people (the sahuagin, however you spell that). We had originally found the ship carrying the gem, but we realized we were getting derailed, so we never tracked down the gem. Instead we just said we found it and continued on with STAP.

Part of the problem was that our group had split into 2, so we had people on the ship looking for the gem and people back in Sasserine waiting for gladiatorial combat. My character was the only 1 from the original group looking for the gem. So my story was finding the gem, rescuing a kidnapped mermaid and escaping from the rabid shark people. This sounded good enough so the halfling player liked it as well.

Later when we had to impress the locals of Farshore and Tanoroa, I repeated the story, (which of course nobody remembered).

We also hand waved the battle against the demon monkey and gang in the Temple of the Prince of Demons in HTBM. The real reason for skipping was because we were underpowered for the challenge, due to multiple character deaths. Again I felt the urge to fill in the blank, so I figured the best way to take down a temple was some well placed Shatter spells targetting the big red crystal, which brought the roof down literally.

I think our final hand waving was when our fighter/tempest attacked one of the Jade Ravens (what are they called?) and we switched it from getting shanked with 2 short swords to a fist fight. The reason our fighter did it is childish and still something of a mystery to me. Bored? Frustated? Being an asshat? We played a few more times after that, but finally we gave up just after killing one of the Legendary 7 (the tyranosaurus) and animating one to bring back to Tanoroa. Turns out the actual Hit Dice of the legendary monster is too high for Animate Dead, but the DM attacked us with a couple smaller T-Rex's on the way back so my cleric got to animate a trophy of somewhat lesser stature.

 

[blargney the second]

Do you remember the parts that actually happened, or was the hand-waved stuff just more memorable?

 

[Wycen]

Oh no, there are events certainly memorable. I just figured the hand waving bits would be a different experience from most groups.

I remember killing the legendary T-rex. Actually I remember being invisible and running over to heal the fighter who was unconsicous, only to be foiled by the psion who dimension doored away with the fighters unconscious body. Or, during the same fight while I'm casting my buffing spells, still invisible, somebody else, I think the druid finally kills the t-rex with a bolt of lightening and being pissed that I basically contributed nothing to the fight, so, being invisible I stabbed the dino corpse with my spear (thus dropping my invisibility) and stating, "Ha! Killed it!" I had around +17 to my Bluff skill

Dancing around the subject of what we were going to do when we got to Zotzilaha's shrine, since "we didn't have the stolen key" and pulling it out of my backpack in front of the Olman guide, (PC rogue who just joined the group).

Writing secret notes to Lavinia while the rest of the group thought we were supposed to be working for the Lady Dragon. I got to keep the Boots of Striding and Springing for this.

Getting drunk off the green booze from Fort Blackwell? and ending up not remembering the night and how I ended up inside a barrel, naked.

Trying to cut the disease out of Father Feres. Literally. He decided not to follow us to the Isle of Dread.

Being the target of someones repeated, yet failed attempts to poison me. She later was captured and shipwrecked.

The near TPK thanks to the gargoyles in HTBM. We got caught at night, sleeping and basically spent the whole fight on our back or bleeding out. This fight finally gave us a glimmer of hope that our NPCs were worth the babysitting. Essentially Urol, Tavy and Amelia all saved my life. By dying. Urol finally hit something before getting taken out and Tavy was always willing to fight, Amelia as well.

Finally everyone except me was unconscious. I successfully bluffed the gargoyles into thinking I was dead, which allowed me to drink a potion of invisibility while they continued to savage everyones bodies. I crawled over to the dying druid, healed her and turned her invisible and then we slinked off to rest. We came back the next day and slowly one by one the druid reincarnated the party.

Our halfling came back as a half-elf.
Amelia came back as a half-orc.
Tavy came back as a gnome
Urol came back as a gnome (nobody wanted him apparently)
the human fighter decided to make a new character and we had to figure out how to add him
Avner ran off into the darkness and we said good riddence.

In the long run this is partly why we couldn't handle the demon monkey temple, because we were under level for the encounter, thanks to half the group dying.

I know my DM tried to post to this thread but his browser crashed, anyway, he had this to say about Tides of Dread and motivation to continue:

"I've been trying to push my players through "Tides of Dread", but the game has been feeling the strain ever since a TPK in "Here There Be Monsters". Only one player and I feel really into the campaign world. One guy doesn't give a @#$%, and the others are too casual to feel one way or another.

It's a little disappointing. I was hoping to finish off with the big pirate attack but why slog through something no one wants to play? :-(

I feel that the Adventure Paths are for dedicated "expert" players, who want a challenge and like investing time into a full 1-20 level campaign. Casual players will feel frustrated, and min/maxers will not care about the plot.

One of these days I'd like to pick the game up again, perhaps bring new players.

Sigh."

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

Stap

You know that there's a whole messageboard for the STAP on the Paizo boards, right? I just finished posting an account of my Tides of Dread Crimson fleet assault there.

We are having a great deal of fun with the adventure path. We haven't gotten derailed , not even when a T-Rex ate half the party on a beach and ran off !

 

[Wycen]

You know that there's a whole messageboard for the STAP on the Paizo boards, right? I just finished posting an account of my Tides of Dread Crimson fleet assault there.

I read the Crimson Fleet thread. That is one of the things that bums me out about not finishing the adventure, we don't know if our ideas would have worked.

The druids had been swimming around the harbor casting growth on the coral reefs outside the harbor. She also planned to let her gorilla go and gain an aquatic animal companion.

She also spent several hours burning an escape route up the hill overlooking the village and harbor using summoned thoqquas. This was actually the fighters idea I think, but since they were happy, I figured whatever was ok.

The fighter himself was lacking in the mental stats and couldn't really do anything without a sword in his hand. Unfortunately, nobody in the village or party had any carpentry or engineering skills.

Personally after the interrogation of the captured pirate and Speaking with Dead multiple times I figured the village was doomed. We expected an attack by between 20 and 100 Crimson Fleet vessels and that seemed WAY more than we could fight off, in my opinion, but I also trusted the adventure and our DM to make it work out if we did our job.

My cleric asked the olman day laborers if they would carry lumber from the cutting camp to the village, to be used to repair the Devil Fish and Sea Wyvern. I was going to animate the dead for another work party to do the actual wood chopping.

We had wiped out the troglodytes and found the missing olman tribe, (though we missed our Know: Religion rolls to figure out the holy symbol we found inside).

I had also crafted wand of cure light wounds for the lady? leading the infirmiry.

We had won over the olman tribes and were about to visit the racoon people and check out the Rakasta temple.

For the actual battle we were going to tow out the Devil Fish and use it as an advanced firing platform. Though, now that I think about it, we maybe should have had it waiting on the other side of the island to use to retreat if we screwed the pooch.

Once the Crimson ships reached the coral reefs we would use Lower Water to "sink" the lead ships, hoping the following ships would either crash or have to manuever wildly, thus crashing.

Once they landed then the undead laborers would suddenly swarm from the bottom of the ocean/buried in the beach and become undead skirmishers. I had a huge t-rex animated, but wasn't sure we'd be able to get him from the big island back to the smaller island Farshore was on.

We tried recruiting villagers for the militia, but when the fighter tried to murder the Jade Raven and we hand waved, we left to go recruit the olman, so I don't know how that was going to turn out.

Oh well.

 

[MerricB]

I ran the first six or eight adventures. After that, it was painfully obvious that the group wasn't really enjoying it - and, I must admit, I was having a lot of trouble running it. It assumed just so optimised characters and play... I had to fudge every time one of the Shadow Pearls came up, because they'd always be shattered and no PC could stop it from happening.

And it was never quite clear to my PCs what the plot was.

Cheers!

 

[blargney the second]

The middle adventures were:
#6 The Lightless Depths
#7 City of Broken Idols
#8 Serpents of Scuttlecove
#9 Into the Maw

Do any of those ring a bell as to the last one you did?

Also, if you could've done one thing differently with the path, what would it be?
-blarg

 

[MerricB]

#7 City of Broken Idols
Do any of those ring a bell as to the last one you did?

Also, if you could've done one thing differently with the path, what would it be?

Not run it in 3e?

As I've mentioned before, Paizo adventures were a major part of my dissatisfaction with 3e towards the end. I also don't think the structure of the series is really well made. It relies too much on the adventurers thinking "we're on an adventure, hooray!" without much thought about why they're there. Certainly, I think the links between the adventures and the rationale for them, especially once they're on the island, to be extremely weak.

There's no strong mentor figure - Lavinia is useless as that; she's as clueless as the rest of the supporting cast. So why are the party concerned about the shadow pearls again?

I remember when the party went to confront the Dragon Turtle. There was no good diplomat in the party (our usual roleplayers were playing Cha 8 idiots, which is probably the one thing I'd definitely change...) and so, by dint of some exceptional rolling and bribing, they got him to agree to leave the shipping from the isle alone for one month.

Excuse me? One month? It takes 3 months to get to and from Sasserine!

There's a bunch of niggling details like that through the adventures.

Cheers!