Update & Fun with Skill Challenges
Sessions 5, 6 & 7 saw the players finish searching the old house. The most notable find is a semi-naked man tied up in one of the upstairs room. Suspicious, the warforged Graven sneaks into the room (spotting and avoiding the rotten floorboards). The man, however, seems grateful for his release and claims he is an itinerant who entered the house a few days ago to find somewhere to sleep, whereupon he was set upon and knocked-out by persons unknown.
In game terms this was an interesting encounter. In the original adventure, this would have been solely roleplayed with the players having to ask clever questions to try and see if the man was for real or not. Of course all players are bound to be suspicious and immediately question the man relentlessly and ruthlessly and regardless of their character's intelligence until the DM eventually gives up and attacks them anyway. In 4e, however, we have passive insight and skill challenges that replace some this roleplay fun with balanced mechanics that properly represent the abilities of the characters (that is if you don't use the recommended DCs in DMG, which are frighteningly simple given that I have 2nd level characters now regularly topping 25+ on skill checks).
So I went for the skill challenge approach to see if the PCs had the canny sense to trick the man into revealing his true intentions. To start with, whilst the players were suspicious I used their passive insight checks to see if their characters could sense that the man was perhaps a little tense, shifty and perhaps not trustworthy. A success here would allow more active skills to be used, e.g. diplomacy to get friendly & talkative, bluff to use a lie to catch him out, etc.
Only one character - the girl wizard, Brelynn - had the passive insight good enough to beat the man's take 10 on a bluff. I told the player (away from the other players) that whilst she sensed this, communicating her fears directly to the other PCs in front of the man might result in a hostile reaction. Once Brelynn had successfully made a relevant skill check as part of the active skill challenge I generously allowed the others players to pick-up on Brelynn's suspicions and join in. Unfortunately I didn't tell them of the hostile reaction so when they succeeded, with Thanor the bard taking the lead, they were surprised when the man reacted with violence, viciously stabbing them with a poisoned, cloaked dagger.
The fight took place in a corridor which wasn't great from the PCs view and whilst they thought they had the guy cornered for a while, he was tough (Lvl7 lurker vs 5 1st level PCs) and put down 2 PCs before he had to flee. Fortunately, no-one died but the man's poisoned dagger was doing on-going poison damage & the players weren't making their saves so even the warforged was struggling. Both Thanor and Deimos were down to their last death saving throw before being brought back from the brink by Enigma's healing checks (pretty lucky as she is untrained).
The rest of the house contained just some more vermin which were easily cleared. The incident with the assassin man didn't seem to perturb the PCs too much surprisingly although he was tied up, had been knocked out (genuinely), locked in room with his belonging stashed in another room. Nevertheless, the PCs didn't try and investigate him until later.
The players immediate concern after searching the whole house was to try and sell their loot. At this point they made 2 crucial decisions. Firstly, that they would sell the smugglers' contraband legitimately as this would (probably) raise least suspicion and secondly that they wouldn't tell the town authorities about the smugglers. It was at this point I realised that they planned to sell their loot and depart Saltmarsh ASAP, which is a problem for me as they are technically only halfway through U1 and still wanted to run U2 and U3!
There is some downtime built into parts 1 and 2 of U1 and the players did a few notable actions in this time. Firstly, I levelled them up. Secondly, they figured out the code the smugglers are using to contact their ship when it arrives. They found a clue in the quarters in the cellar of the house and I developed a skill challenge for them to break the code. Again, originally it was left to players to work this out but I used the 4e mechanic so that the characters broke the code rather than smart players. By breaking the code, the players realised that they had about 2 weeks before the smugglers' ship returned.
Fourthly, the players wanted to sell the loot so found a merchant who was very keen to buy their goods. This man was influential town merchant, Egan Lassiter, a man who had become rich from smuggled goods and who had planted the assassin in the house, unbeknown to the players. Egan came to the house to collect the good and suss out the players, trying to find out what they knew and what they had done. The players for their part confessed nothing of smugglers or assassins so Egan let them be (for now). At this point, Thanor decided that he would try and get rid of his cursed luckstone by selling it Egan. I had written a skill challenge for this using the recommended DCs in DMG (not even the modified ones in DMG2), so DC ranged from 12-15. Our bard used his new inspired competence ability and totally caned the skill challenge, not getting below 22 on any of his checks: not much of a challenge IMO.
Next, the PCs - well, Graven anyway - were invited to meet representatives of the town council who were very worried about the warforged coming back to life. All the local folklore tells that he will only reanimate if the town is threatened by great evil. Representative of the town include, Erolin Timertikos (council leader), Lyra Ivessa (representing the local Baron) and Egan Lassiter, merchant. The meeting goes badly for all sides. The PCs conceal the smuggling activity from the councillors who get suspicious. Accusations are made on either side and the meeting dissolves without the key action of getting the PCs to continue investigating the smugglers.
Next the players decided that the assassin man was worthy of investigation, realising that he must have left some tracks and may have been seen fleeing from the house. I had written a skill challenge for this too, again using DMG recommended DCs. Again, the PCs caned the skill challenge with no failures. They tracked the assassin back into Saltmarsh and the trading post owned by one Egan Lassiter. So, the players decide to confront Egan in his own trading post. This goes poorly for the players, particularly after the meeting at the Town Hall and Egan throws them off his property some harsh words.
Finally, having sold some loot, Deimos immediately buys back a pawned box that had been left by a slaver he had escaped from and partially assumed his identity (the slaver was in his background the pawned box was my addition as it will provide a clue/link to later adventures). The fine box is magically locked. After some exceptional streetwise rolls I allowed the players to buy a ritual scroll of "knock" and with another exceptional roll they open the lock (it was DC35!).
Inside the box is...nothing. Well, not quite. Deimos figures out that the box collapses and folds out to show a mysterious sea chart. Also there is an affectionate inscription, written in Elven, to the owner of the box signed by someone called "Edralve". Finally, there is a false bottom that contains some papers and an IOU from someone call "Ragnar" in the The Hook tavern, which happens to be a sea front dive in Saltmarsh.
So, the players are now focused on investigation The Hook tavern, which should be interesting as this encounter I thought might take place when they were about 4th level (when they would be able to get into the box - ha!). So in 1e style, I'm going to keep it as a hard encounter for 4th level characters and see if the players have the good sense to avoid it...
I'm also faced with the problem of getting them back involved in the U1 adventure if possible. I have a couple of options: either appeal to their base greed and get Lyra Ivessa to hire them directly or use Enigma's background as a gangster from the big city to get the nod from her Boss to investigate the smugglers with a view to taking over their operations.
