Low level Dragon turtle encounter

[Afrodactyl]

Hello Playground.

I'm putting together a campaign for a group of level three characters, which includes an ocean based section. I want the climax of this encounter to be a dragon turtle. This huge, untillable beast from the depths that is going to sink the ship.

To make things fair, I'm only going to make the turtle attack every other round and only making a single claw attack against the party (without modifiers, as 2d8 could be pretty rough). His other attacks might be directed towards the NPC crew or the ship itself. I'm also going to include cannons on the ship that take two turns to load, and a third turn to fire, taking only one turn to load if two people are working on it. The cannons will do like, 8d8 damage, and after losing half of it's max health, the turtle will wreck the ship and start the next story arc.

Is this reasonable? I want it to be this frantic, dramatic thing, but I don't want the turtle to just wipe the party. Also, should I include any kind of minion monsters to try to disrupt the cannons?

[Reaper34]

as the dm you have the power to control if the party lives or dies through the power of fudge it. on the otherhand the party might just susprise you and kill the turtle. i wouldn't add minions just because managing the DT so he doesn't party wipe or they just become discouraged from "OMG this is too much!" roll with it and see what happens.

[MasterMercury]

What you could do is have the dragon turtle focus solely on the ship, bumping it, taking chunks from the railings, causing huge waves to wash over the ship, wiping people away.
The dragon turtle might also never be seen but glimpsed, with the party uncertain of what's going on.

Also, minions would work. Maybe some sanguine wash aboard in the waves, trying to take gold and look before its lost to the turtles belly.

This makes the turtle a threat, but won't directly kill anyone. The sanguine are a threat, but also a distraction.

[Afrodactyl]

Thanks for all the feedback guys!

I've settled on using reskinned bullywugs and poisonous snakes as fodder minions to make things hectic up on deck. I'm also going to have the turtle focus on the ship primarily, and only 'attack' the party when they hit it with cannon fire, wherein the turtle will smash the cannon to pieces on his next turn (and anyone still standing next to it)

Thanks again everyone!

[djreynolds]

How about they have to ditch the ship and get away?

Escaping is a very cool way to have fun for the players. Are they going to swim or is there a life boat? Ect...

[Afrodactyl]

How about they have to ditch the ship and get away?

Escaping is a very cool way to have fun for the players. Are they going to swim or is there a life boat? Ect...

Knowing my players, they're going to try to fight the turtle haha. However, if they do decide to flee to the lifeboats, then I'll do a similar thing; having them chased by bullywugs/snakes, and the turtle smashes a lifeboat at random every other turn while the party is doing checks to get the boat free

[Khutef]

I have to say that your encounter sounds awesome.

One thing that popped into my head about the situation is have you considered what happens to a PC who might accidentally fall into the water before the ship is supposed to sink?

Does the DT eat the unfortunate person or is it of no importance when a PC ends in the water?

[Afrodactyl]

I have to say that your encounter sounds awesome.

One thing that popped into my head about the situation is have you considered what happens to a PC who might accidentally fall into the water before the ship is supposed to sink?

Does the DT eat the unfortunate person or is it of no importance when a PC ends in the water?

I have a 'falling in the water scenario' earlier on in the ocean section, where players have d6 turns to rescue the one who falls in. Throwing ropes down, the one in the water trying to grab the convenient stowage on the side of the ship, etc.

As far as I can, I'm going to not include anything where the ship will rock too much in the turtle encounter, I'm sure the party will be fed up of that after the thunderstorm/harpy encounter haha