Need an idea for a trial

[evilwoody1337]

Hey all,

I've been assisting a friend of mine in co-DMing his campaign and it's been going extremely well. My friend and I are looking to create a water-themed trial for one of our PC's to overcome in order to gain some (minor) control over water for some character flavour. We've been putting him through the ringer to obtain elemental control by virtue of trials beset by an NPC who keeps the balance of all the elemental planes and their influence on the material plane. Anywho, back to the point, I'm looking for some ideas of what this PC can do for a test of water. I did some quick research and bounced some ideas off the other DM. So far we've gotten;

- The character becomes a water elemental to aid our ship encounter
- Must adapt to a scenario with skill-checks after being stripped of armour and weapons
- Ability to shape water at will temporarily to do.. something. Unsure of what.
- The ship the party is on is transported to the Plane of Water to do some sort of undefined task

The party is currently on a ship to be dropped off somewhere in our homebrewed map. We have an upcoming encounter with some slavers and pirates who will be raiding the ship. I'm not totally satisfied with our collection of ideas yet so any creative input would be appreciated. We are playing a 3.5/pathfinder mix, for the record.:smallsmile:

[Geddy2112]

As a note to session design, either make the trial brief, or let all the other players be involved in the side quest. A side trial that splits the party is really a pain and it takes a lot out of the session if one player goes off on their own and the rest of the party has to twiddle their thumbs.

That said, since you have 2 DM's you can easily pull this off. One of you focuses only on the player, the other continues running the party through the adventure.

I like the idea of making this player be the Calypso of the ship encounter- they are still on the side of the players and interacting with the greater challenge, but while the rest of the PC's are going for ship to ship combat. In previous aquatic based campaigns, the party druid always went overboard and became an octopus/shark/ orca and provided caster support/attacked the ship's hull from the water for large ship to ship combats or similar encounters.

In a sea battle, the wind and waves are a key aspect. If the ship can't be steered, you can't win. Favorable/unfavorable winds and tides are the difference between victory and defeat. A strong enough storm can destroy/capsize/sink a ship. So shaping and controlling water would be very useful.