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View Full Version : Well, My players just went off the Evil End. Hehehe (Skull and Shackles PF Spoilers)



Crustypeanut
2013-01-13, 12:27 AM
For those unaware of the Skull and Shackles Adventure Path, the players are press-ganged onto a pirate ship (The Wormwood), suffer at the hands of Mister Plugg and Master Scourge (The First Mate and Boatswain, respectively), capture a merchant vessel and are set to crew on it with Mister Plugg now set as the Captain and Scourge the First Mate, then have the ship run aground on some reef on a ghoul-infested island, only to return to it and mutiny.

This is the Mutiny, which is the end of Part 1 of the adventure path. I posted this elsewhere, and copy/pasted it here because I don't wish to type it all over again. Its a long read, be warned. :smalltongue:

So, my players have finally finished Part 1 of the adventure path. The Mutiny, which took our entire session, was quite a bit of a turn from our usual hilariousness, and instead was quite gruesome. I think I made the players evil.

I had wanted this to be a true grand finale of Part 1, so I changed it up a bit to try and challenge the party. They're made surprisingly well and have so far passed through most of the campaign without 'too' much trouble. I blame myself giving them 25 point builds and offering them different races. But we're having fun so its aight.

The party consists of:

Hobgoblin Pistolero Gunslinger (LE)
Undine Rogue (CN, now CE)
Dwarf Witch (Not sure what Alignment)
Human Fighter (N, Borderline NE)
Human Summoner with Bipedal Eidolon (NG, not so much anymore)
Ifrit Oracle of Life (Not sure what Alignment)

The Rogue and Oracle are played by the same person, as we lost our Halfling Cleric due to school reasons, and the oracle was made quickly one session before this to replace him. As such, the Rogue has become a "Redshirt" - but hasn't died yet.

Anyhoo, the session begins just after the players had finished rescuing Sandara Quinn and the now-legless Narwhal Tate from the Grindylow. It was about noon one day before they had to get back to the ship, and they decided, with information given to them by Narwhal, to attempt a mutiny late that night.

Onboard the ship, if you include the PCs, they had a total of 13 people on each side - On the player's side, they had Kroop, Sandara, Rosie, Cogward, Owlbear, Jack Scrimshaw (Made into a gunslinger), and Ratline Ratsburger (Made into a Ratfolk Rogue). On the other side, there was Scourge (Given an extra level of rogue, and rearranged his feats a bit), Mister Plugg (Now a rather bad ass level 7 Two-Weapon Warrior), Conchobhar (Level 4 Sea Bard, with Pluck as a familiar.), Syl Lonegan (Now a Fighter), Jape (Cosair Fighter), Chumlett (Brawler Fighter), Giffer Tibbs (Rogue), and five other non-modified people. Narwhal was on their side, until he had defected.

Unbeknownst to the players, Conchobhar had been spying on them with Pluck (They never noticed him) and Pluck was able to overhear their plans to mutiny in the dead of night. So, Plugg and them came up with a rather mean counter attack. Tibbs and Conchobhar would be in the crows nest, with Tibbs keeping an eye out with a spyglass and Conchobhar concentrating on an illusion of Owlbear being chained up in the crow's nest, to cover Tibbs keeping watch.

Meanwhile, after the crew friendly to the players had gone to bed, the five less important crewmembers had barricaded Kroop, Rosie, Ratline, Crimson, and Scrimshaw in the Crew Berths. Syl Lonegan had taken up residence in Kroop's quarters and barricaded herself in there, with the trapdoor to the Captain's Quarters unlocked. Maheem (One of the less important crewmembers), was keeping 'watch' up on the Foredeck, pretending to be busy fishing. Meanwhile, Scourge, Plugg, Jape, and Chumlette were hiding in the Captain's Quarters' two small storage rooms. They had drugged Owlbear with taggit oil, dressed him up as Plugg, and put him in the captain's hammock laying face-down. The doors and windows to the Captain's Quarters were left unlocked.

The players, meanwhile, had their plan - They would use their original boat as a decoy, having just the rogue and a fake-made up dummy with one of the suits from Aaron Ivy's Stockade. The ship had the water barrel in it, as well. The rogue, and the dummy, were supposed to be the 'last two survivors' of the island. However, the rogue faked collapse, fell down in the boat, drank his potion of invisibility, and slipped into the water to push the boat closer to the ship. Meanwhile, the rest of the players, including Narwhal and Sandara, would row under the cover of darkness in the Besmara's Tricorne boat and slip to the other side of the ship, board it, and take out the crew as they were focused on the other ship.

Most of it went well, as the five unimportant crewmen were fixated on the decoy ship. However, as they knew something was up, Giffer was able to spot the real group in time. It was a clear night with a near-full moon, and she was quite a good spotter. As the players boarded the ship, the gunslinger, oracle, rogue, and summoner snuck into the captain's cabin. The gunslinger promptly coup-de-graced the captain without looking to make sure it was the captain, only to find that it was Owlbear (The players were horrified, as they loved Owlbear, and were glad that he was safe in the crows nest). This was the que, and Giffer attacked with her Screaming Bolts given to her by Plugg to begin the attack.

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Since I was managing the entire battle instead of having the two crews fighting behind the scenes, this was a clusterf!*%, but a very fun clusterf**&. This entire fight took a few (4-5) hours, but was easily the most fun fight we've had so far, with everyone basically on the edge of their seats.

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One major mistake the players made was locking themselves in the captain's quarters with the chain they procured from the Stockade. This likely would've caused those four players to die horribly in the captain's quarters as they fought Plugg and the other three, but they had enough sense to quickly open the trap door, dogpile on Syl (who became unconcious after two ~180 pound people body-slamming her, with a third roughly the same size jumping feet-first and landing on the pile Mario-Style).

They fled like this after having faced only one round in the cramped quarters fighting Plugg, and they decided that it was a bad idea to continue this way. Plugg was a beast and had a surprisingly high disarm skill. He disarmed the gunslinger, whose pistol fell down the trap door. The Gunslinger was able to get down there and, when plugg was looking down the hole trying to intimidate them, got a crit off on Plugg for ~40 damage. Needless to say, Plugg decided he wasn't going down there.

On the topside of the ship, the fight was going very well, with the Eidolon and Fighter ripping up the unimportant crew. Giffer was continuing to rain bolts down (Missing most of the time), and Conchobhar had gone invisible, feather-falled from the Crow's Nest, and had joined in with Inspire Courage, his Foppish +1 Glamoured Studded Leather Armor and Dandy +1 Flaming Cane Sword.

Meanwhile, the friendly part of the crew was working on bashing their way through the barricaded doors. Kroop was working his way into his room from the galley, and Rosie was hacking apart the door to the armory. Took them about three rounds to do this. Once they broke through, all of them but Kroop ran up to the top deck and started helping, while Kroop helped get his friends out of his room and up deck.

Since the players had retreated through the trap door, Jape and Chumlette were working on breaking through the captain's door, while Scourge and Plugg went through the captain's windows and were going to climb up on the Sterncastle. Well, Plugg was. Scourge decided to abandon ship, as it wasn't going well, and he began to swim away. He only made it 60 feet though when they had taken out Plugg (Damned Slumber Hex and a bad will save), then the Undine swam circles around Scourge and demanded his surrender. With seething rage, he did.

Meanwhile, Conchobhar was fighting a losing battle against the Eidolon, Crimson (Who was stabbed fairly hard with that cane sword), and the Fighter. The Fighter was determined to get Conchobhar's ears, as it was a thing with the party (mostly the Gunslinger) to get the ears of certain enemies they hated. Conchobhar was no exception. So, the Fighter successfully grappled Conchobhar, the Witch put him to sleep, and then the fighter ripped -both- of his ears off, which of course, caused Conchobhar to awaken and begin screaming in pain. The Fighter then went and punched him to 1 hp for a few turns, when finally Conchobhar was able to scream for mercy.

With that, they had taken the Man's Promise. Overall, only three crewmembers died (three not-important ones on Plugg's side), the rest were stabilized and captured, then punished by being hung over the side of the ship until morning, when the Rogue asked them who will be turning to their side. Everyone did, of course.

But.. they weren't allowing that mercy for Plugg, Scourge, and Conchobhar.

Conchobhar got off easy. He had his voice-box disabled through the Heal skill (He was screaming too much), then was simply tied to the front of the ship to serve as the ship's new Figurehead. Before that, though, they captured his bird, forced alcohol down its throat, then shoved Conchobhar's flaming sword up into it, roasted it from the inside, then the Fighter ate it slowly, all while Conchobhar watched.

Scourge was poisoned with his own punching dagger, flogged until unconciousness, healed, flogged until near-unconciousness again, had his gold teeth ripped out while he was alive, then tied up and waterboarded numerous times by dunking him in the ocean until he succumbed to 'scraping against the coral a bit too much'. He was shark-food from there.

Plugg is the ship's new mascott. His left ear was taken, his right-eye plucked out, his name branded on the back of his neck ('Captain' Plugg), his fingers removed just above the first knuckle, his tongue cut so he has a permament lisp, and they disabled a few tendons in his legs so he has to hobble from now on. He was then assigned as the ship's 'runner', so he was forced to move constantly, which was painful. They plan to parade him around various ports while telling their tales. I don't think it will end well.

The Rogue, who was infected with Ghoul Fever this entire time (still is, but has had his attributes healed by Sandara), and was also the group's redshirt, has been voted captain by the rest of the players and has since changed his name to Ghoulbeard.

They are now on their way to Rickety Squibbs.

Doorhandle
2013-01-13, 02:20 AM
I think they kinda made themselves evil. They slipped down the slippery slope VERY fast after the accidental death of owlbear.

That being said though, Skulls and shackles is the pirate campaign (if I remember correctly,) so it's not like being evil is going to hinder plot progression, right?

Also, If he's willing, Ghoulbeard may want to pick up 3 levels of anti-paladin: Allows him to keep his disease without losing attributes from it.

Crustypeanut
2013-01-13, 02:46 AM
Being evil won't necessarily have an impact on the campaign by itself, its all about how the players interact with certain npcs.

Most of the players may now be evil, but they only are truly evil to people that cross them. Plugg and Scourge have plagued them since day 1 of the campaign, and Conchobhar wanted to have his way with their halfling, Rosie Cusswell, and was willing to go to rather extreme lengths to have at her. He even had an Oil of Animate Rope and Elixir of Love stashed on him. He also was the one spying on them, and also caused the illusion of Owlbear, which fooled the players into killing Owlbear, even if disguising Owlbear wasn't his idea.

They weren't 'quite' that bad until they accidently killed Owlbear. That was me entirely, and it caused them to really really want revenge on the three. I'm actually quite proud of that turn of events.. its wholly evil and they were completely unexpecting that from me. ;)

Currently, the Gunslinger has 6 ears - Aretta Bansion (an elf who tried to bully them on day 2 and later tried to kill him in the Bilges. She drowned in bilgewater), Syl Lonegan (Tried to kill him in the bilges with Aretta, but he didn't let her drown), the Brinebrood Queen in Riptide Cove (A Grindylow Druid), Plugg, Scourge, and Conchobhars. He only takes the left ear. He's currently surpassed their old captain, Captain Harrigan, in ears.

And I love the idea of the anti-paladin. However, since its extremely unlikely he'll go Antipaladin (And he'll have lost the disease by level 7), I'm going to DM-Fiat that he has that ability ONLY for Ghoul Fever, which befits his current status. I think he'll agree, once I speak to him about it tomorrow. One of the other players also loves the idea, and agrees.

The damn rogue wasn't supposed to live this long anyways, as his Oracle was meant to replace him. The Oracle has the Seeker Archetype, so he can trap-find as well. Its just by pure luck he's survived..

Crustypeanut
2013-01-13, 04:31 PM
Also, If he's willing, Ghoulbeard may want to pick up 3 levels of anti-paladin: Allows him to keep his disease without losing attributes from it.

Since I've told Ghoulbeard he's been granted a boon by certain otherworldly beings for his bloodletting, ritual scarification, and sacrifices, he's now considering in earnst to become an Antipaladin.

What I did was allowed him to be a plague bringer for Ghoul Fever only - he can spread it through his blood, and is immune to its effects himself. Also, since he's an Undine with the Chameleon racial trait (He can easily disguise himself as human), he can also use this to disguise himself as a ghoul - he's also spontaneously grown a rather hideous beard to fit his name.

Now he's considering himself a Plague Marine from Warhammer 40k, and is seriously looking into becoming an Antipaladin/Rogue. Luckily for him, he has an above-average Charisma (16), so this could work out quite well. He has a low strength and con (10 each), so he'd still have to rely on his finesse, though.

Hehehehehehe I approve of this turn of events.