YO HO~ A Warforged's Life For Me~

[Yael]

I am DMing my group next weekend, and they are starting on a port-city, setting out to explore the seas and reach new lands in order to help their kin to expand and not die in overpopulation (yeah.)

That's the point, and they should take from two to three sessions to reach the new continent I've prepared, they come from a continent full of human and human cross-breeds (most are half-elves, half-orcs, changelings, and else), so they'll find a new world for them, well, that's outside of the point of this thread.

I wanted to create a crew full of warforged, like, actually full of them. The captain being a human who re-activated a forgotten forge hidden inside an island, for more details, this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17885728&postcount=1) contains the information about the rules of the game and the history of the place they come from (the rules changed a bit, I've buffed tier 5 classes and such, lots of things have changed since that post, also the history is written in Spanish, because yeah, I'm Spanish... Poor English writter...)

Anyway, I want to create a crew, fully composed by Warforged and Warforged Scouts, all being trained in being sailors and everyone having their role (though they are a lot...) The captain is named Linebeck Williams (named him before this week tho...), he is a human marshal, gunslinger, legendary captain with an ECL of 12 (the gunslinger was a transfer from PF's Ultimate Combat to 3.5, changing skills and importing grit feats) with the Leadership feat and a score of 27, so he has 135 1st level followers, 13 2nd-level followers, 7 3rd-level followers, 4 4th-level followers, 2 5th-level followers, 2 6th-level followers, and a 10th level cohort (per the DMG rules on Leadership.)

So far, I've created every 1st level follower:
► 55 1st-level warforged experts,
► 45 1st-level warforged scout rogues,
► 35 1st-level warforged warmages.

Also, I've created half of 2nd-level followers:
► 7 2nd-level warforged bards.

► I also created one 6th-level warforged artificer.

So forth, those are all the warforgeds that I have on repertoire, as I see I have left 6 2nd-level followers, 7 3rd-level followers, 4 4th-level, 2 5th-level and 2 6th-level. The cohort is already covered.

The crew isn't specifically a pirate crew, but they sail under the Chaotic Good alignment, also they are a CR 15 crew and the party is made of 8 4th-level PCs (this isn't designed to be an encounter, at least for now); however, I want to have this prepared in case of something unexpected happens. So, help with the crew? Also, it is a really big boat, a Galleon, constructed by the same warforgi that were awakened by Linebeck, so there you go. I need some halperino here because I don't really know what to put as the crew... For a Robin Hood-like crew with the captain being a childish bastard (:smallbiggrin:)

Also, I could use some help with sea encounters, I like the Sahuagin, but don't really know how to employ them. The point is that the PCs are going to sail under a government-payed mercenary ship towards the unknown, but the ship should be eventually left out in order to introduce Linebeck. I thought of using sahuagins to kill the crew at nights, maybe stucking the ship on a coral reef or something of the sort. I'm really blocked here, and help is appreciated. Also, Kuo Toa? Friggin' Leviathan? Something for their ECL?

[Yael]

Wow, no help at all? It must be a really bad concept...

[Gildedragon]

Well you seem to have a handle on it. Don't be too enamoured with your npc
And I don't really see what questions you got

[Yael]

Well you seem to have a handle on it. Don't be too enamoured with your npc
And I don't really see what questions you got

Just ways to improve the crew, sure its a plot npc (disposable) but I want to make it special, whether when the PCs sail along with it or fight it (their choice.)

The questions should be of what kind of classes should fill the role of warforged sailors?

[Gildedragon]

anything and anyone with ranks in profession sailor.in Eberron prolly mostly fighters and warriors, but its the roleplay that's key theredont get hung up in statting minutiae.

[avr]

The higher level guys are the ones who have broken out of the warforged mold a bit, right? Maybe a druid who's more interested in animals than people, maybe a bard with a level or two of the Master Inquisitive PrC who thinks itself a great detective, maybe a dragonfire adept who preaches the wonder and power of dragons.

There should really be some lower level characters to help heal the crew; artificers probably. Repair infusions might also be useful in repairing battle damage to the ship. Some simple fighting types to take the front line when boarding a ship or repelling boarders seem likely, I can't see a group of warforged neglecting that.

[Erik Vale]

Have some be warlocks with Swim the Styx. 24hr underwater protection, and if needed, they can sink ships from under them by swimming to bellow them, grabbing on with something, and eldritch blasting the bottom of the hull until it's full of holes.


Also, aquatic encounters suck. They eat your boat, and then unless you're amphibious with a swim speed, they eat you. Unless they have a really good reason for boarding the ship and fighting over it that is. You wanna know how bad they suck?
At night, a first level warlock uses Swim the Styx to swim to you, Eternal Wand [Spider Climb] to get aboard, douses your ship with last amounts of oil flasks [which are really cheap] and a twinder twig, or a couple of alchemists fires, also taking the time to hit your sails. All well within WBL, and unless they're really luck, they've lost this encounter no matter what as should the warlock be found, he jumps overboard and strikes the bottem of the ship, so the players are too busy putting out the fires [and possibly wondering if they remembered to buy a spare sail] to notice or deal with holes popping up in the bottom of the boat. And in exchange for some slight danger, this CR 1 encounter is trading some alchemists fire/oil for whatever it can loot from what is left from the players drowned bodies. Which will be more than enough to make it ludicrously wealthy... Oh, and it's just earned a boatload [pun intended] of XP, halved [as it is] due to the low risk, but lots of XP.
So please, for the players sanity, don't do aquatic encounters unless it's against big dumb animals who are wondering what the large floating thing is, instead of beings that would try to kill them.

[VariSami]

Since I have had an adventure with Warforged Pirates in the past, I will PM you the characters page from my ObsidianPortal campaign notes. I am simply not sure if I should publicly share something like it although it is publicly available since it might offend WotC lawyers. Some of the builds integrate 3rd party material but mostly to a very moderate degree (with one exception).