Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neil the Knight" data-source="post: 7002527" data-attributes="member: 6801269">Let's expand on my idea of tying Asgaroth in with the Slaving Priestess and where the party will go from there. As I mentioned before the idea here is not necessarily to have Elan Kanto involved directly with Asgaroth and his cult but have Dash Montrose selling the slaves to Asgaroth who is in turn, taking them to a seaside keep and transforming them into undead. The Slaving Priestess is fairly sandboxy, with the PC's able to investigate and confront Elan Kanto from multiple angles, and i am content leaving the adventure as is, but ultimately it is inevitable they end up at the docks where the prisoners are to be sold to Dash Montrose.I plan to have Dash play the part of a simple middle man who's job it is to take the prisoners, on his barge, from the city to the cultists waiting upon a boat named the Cofre Del Mar hidden under the cover of night in the bay.The book says:"The docks are a perfectly suitable place for the characters to have their final encounter with Elan and her minions, especially if she is preparing to deliver the slaves to Dash and his men. If the party comes to the docks by design to foil Elan's plans, then Elan and her acolytes, and all her men are present. Perhaps the characters arrive just as the delivery is being made. The slavers, it should be noted, want nothing to do with a pitched battle, and as soon as they spot a melee on the docks, they pull up anchor and begin heading out."The scene they set lends it self to a particularly exiting chase down the docks. I am imagining having a barge creep along the river and the party  following it. whether they have cause a commotion, and alerted Dash will determine the speed of the boat. As they chase the barge they will need to make rolls to determine weather they run into any obstacles or not, as described in the running a chase in the DMG. The players will have opportunities to hop apon the barge if they wish, weather it be leaping from a peir jutting out into the river or dropping down from a over hanging bridge.At this point I plan to to blend in a second adventure named Hunt for the Cofre Del Mar, from Oerth Journal 19. The adventure synopsis: "The PCs enter Northanchor and with the deed to the ship, The Swordfish. Only to learn that it was stolen from the docks recently and a ship called the Cofre Del Mar is terrorizing Dunhead Bay. The PCs may also learn from the local Thieves' Guild that several ship builders were kidnapped around the same time as the theft of Swordfish and one of them escaped. The Guild has been hiding him at his request ever since he returned. If the PCs successfully talk their way into a meeting with the old shipbuilder, they learn that Swordfish and the Cofre Del Mar are one and the same. To lay claim to the deed of the Swordfish the PCs must set out on a privateer named the Golden Wave to hunt for the notorious Cofre Del Mar and capture it. After investigating a sinking cog, a harpy's aerie, and surviving a harrowing attack by a sea hydra, the PCs come face to face with the Cofre Del Maraud and her crew in a ship-to-ship battle. Should the PCs be defeated, they are sure to suffer the same fate as the crews of all the other ships attacked. If victorious, Dunhead Bay is safe once again from these attacks and the PCs can assert their claim to the Swordfish. The PCs also find clues aboard the Cofre Del Mar that lead them into the Iron Hills to put a stop to the evil mining operation and defeat the rest of the diabolical adventurers behind recent events."Without reading the whole adventure it may be a touch confusing but I will set all the city part of the adventure around the docks of Endhome and use the remaining seafaring part of the adventure as a story arch to get the party to Asgaroth seaside keep.The first half of the adventure involves the party gathering information on the Cofre Del Mar in Endhome. They find themselves at the office of the harbour master and face to face with another one of Endhome gangs, The Black Water Company who control the docks.In the second half of the adventure the party sets out to sea on a privateers ship, The Golden Wave, with a full crew of 10 Marines, 20 Sailers, Captain Morrow and his first mate. The module has four set encounters and I plan to add a 5thFirst encounter is at the sight of an abandoned fishing cog, that was attacked by the Cofre Del Mar, named the Mermaids Kiss. To investigate the scene the party must load up into a skiff and head over. Before they even arrive at the cog they are swarmed by hungry sharks in a feeding frenzy from the Mermaids Kiss hold of dead fish. I don't know how many of you have played Assassins Creed Black Flag but there is a part of the game where you can go whaling with a harpoon. I imagine this encounter kind of like that. Some if not all the party will need to take up harpoons (javalins) and fend off the sharks. If they don't the sharks will capsize the boat and the party will need to try and fight them in the water which will not go their way (remember most weapons have disadvantage to attack under water). One of the ways to make this interesting would be to have the sharks take bites and bump the skiff throughout the fight forcing those on bord to make acrobatics. Checks. Any other suggestions on how to make this encounter not just a battle?The second encounter is the Harpies nest where the party possibly find them selves compelled to try and swim to and Climb a spire of rock jutting out from the sea. Of course the Harpies who nest at the top of this spire have convinced the poor souls that it is a good idea to swim over and attempt to scale the rock. If they make it over and get to within 10ft of the top the Harpies ambush the climbers trying to hurl them back down onto the sharp rocks below. I like this encounter. It involves, swim checks, Climb checks then a battle with most characters hanging on to a cliff face. Harpies them selves aren't to tough but you add in all the environmental factors and you've got your self quite a battle.The third encounter is where the ship comes face to face with a Hydra, a classic sea monster battle. I would probably begin with only having one of its heads above water at a time, keeping its distance and using its reach to try and pull members of the crew, including the party off the deck. Then two heads would pop up, then tree, then four and so on until it was evident this is a Hydra.At this point the beast would clamber onto the side of the ship which tilts the deck making it very hard and treturous for the party to stay out of the water once more. This keep the battle from becoming just a hack and slash and adds a fair bit of intrigue.The fourth encounter will be the one I'm adding in and it can occur any time before the 5th and final encounter. Last year I was a player in a game that involved an elaborate mining cart chase down a frozen tunnel with a pair of Rezmoraze at our heels. The epic scene ended with a climactic finish across a collapsing rail bridge. At the beginning of the final scene the DM awarded each player 3 hero points and got us each to draw a que card he had written up. The cue card described how your part of the cart had crashed and what was happening immediately around you. The ensuing rounds you needed to describe how you were going to scramble your way to safety, he would determine what kind of roll was required for such a feat and each of us had a choice to use our hero points to augment those rolls. But it wasn't simply you get to roll some extra dice and add it on, we needed to describe the circumstances in which our characters would manage some thing they normally couldn't.For example lets say you began the encounter hurled out of your cart, hanging from the bottom of the bridge by a rail truss. To get to safety, you were attempting to swing your way across but OH no you fail your acrobatics check and slip. You can use a hero point to pull out your whip and try to catch the next beam down (Indiana Jones style) which would involve a roll to hit against some thing like an AC 10. Or you can blow two hero dice to automatically succeed on the attempt.The scene i will set is a sudden storm will whip up on the seas, and its all hands on deck. There will be three stations they can help out on. I haven't completely thought it through yet but let's say one up in the riging of the sails, the second on the deck buttoning down the hatches, and third below deck securing cargo. (If you have any idea what actually needs to be done on a ship when a storm hits, please chime in) Each player will be  given three hero points and each station a challenge. Maybe a large wave sweeps the deck and everyone needs to make a Athletics check or be swept off board. The same wave presumably rocks the boat considerably causing those up in the riging to make a strength check or be flung into the sea. Finally those below deck will need to operate the pump or risk drowning. Depending on the players successes and innovation a number of crew may be lost to Davie Jones locker. You ask what is all the meaningless loss of poor NPC sailer life for. Well now we reach the 5th and final encounter, the show down with the Cofre Del Mar. This unfolds as a ship to ship battle, some thing I have no experience in but am super excited to try. In charge of the Cofre Del Mar is one of Asgaroths lackies named Gravewind. He has had much success with his battle plan before and has no reason to change it for this encounter. The battle begins with the Cofre Del Mar sneaking up to the Golden Wave under the cover of night. A volley of flaming arrows is fired, by lobotomized orcs  from the deck of the Cofre Del Mar, when the ships are 500 ft apart and the Cofre Del Mar continues its barrage (20 rounds in total) until it is right up next to the Golden Wave. These will start small fires in the sails and riging. The crew will need to act quickly to put them out. The more crew there are the more successfully they will be. When the ships are side by side grappling hooks and grappling planks are deployed to connect the two ships. Over the planks Gravewind send ghouls to paralyze as many of the crew as possible. Mean wile the orcs continue to fire their arrows keeping the Marie's and the sailers bussy.Weather the ghouls are successful or being held at bay by the party, next Gravewind sends forth, the Cofre Del Mar's captain, first mate and a handful of zombies to board the Goldenwave and depending on how the battle is going either drag the paralized victims back to the Cofre Del Mar or help to push the attack. If things begin to go poorly for Gravewind he heads below deck of the Cofre Del Mar and shouts for his acolyte, Ramises, to bring the skeletal rowers into the fray.Obviously this is a large scale battle and I would apply mass combat rules to the orcs firing flaming arrows and crew of the Goldenwave. Captain Morrow and his first mate will take on the captain and first mate of the Cofre Del Mar. This helps set the scene of a chaotic, full scale naval battle but will allow the Party to mainly worry about the ghouls and Gravewind himself. This task will be made easier if the party can mitigate the loss of the crews life through the various encounters leading up to this one.Assuming the party is victorious not only will they have control of the Cofre Del Mar but will also find a map leading to Asgaroth seaside keep along with clues as to what he is doing with the poor souls he is enslaving.On top of all this I thought of adding in a wilderness survival / resource management challenge. The Golden Wave would begin with a certain amount of rations. If the rations run out the players and the crew would be at risk of becoming exhausted. I would encourage the PCs to use some of the non combat related aspects of their character to help mitigate this. Things like using survival skills to help navigate reducing the risk of getting lost and using up more rations, maybe some one has proficiency in carpenters tools and they can help to increase the sturdiness of the boat which helps some thing not break during the storm lowering the risk of rations being flung overboard. The bard can perform for the sailers which raises moral and staves off exhaustion for a short wile or the Druid can speak with dolphins who warn them of the Hydra giving the crew more time to prepare.Is the survival challenge on top of everything els to much? What is Asgaroth motivation for enslaving and turning all these people into undead? Does he have a hidden mining operation beneith his seaside keep? What is he mining for? Gold,Gems? Cause you know running a cult ain't cheep. Or is he trying to retrieve a rare substance left behind by a meteorite will help him free Devron? If there are any published adventures that fit this bill let me know. I looked into Pits of Azak-Zil but can't find it available any where.</blockquote>

Verification