Pirate campaign

[jguy]

I just started a 3.5/PF game with my group after our previous one had to be shelved for awhile. After some discussion we came up with playing a group of Chaotic/Evil pirates that are stationed off a string of islands.

Through some talking and brainstorming, it ended up that all of them worship the Drowned God. Yes, I am ripping the god off George R.R. Martins "A song of fire and ice". It has been awhile since I've read the series, mostly because it took forever for the last book to come out, and I've forgotten a lot of what that god is like. I just know he is a very harsh and demanding god that breeds strong and harsh men. Could anyone help me with what his tenants and domains would be?

Also, I've never really run a pirate or sea based campaign. Usually I run open plain/city/dungeoncrawls, so I am a little out of my element here. Ship based combat is very new to me and so are the unique challenges each bring.

Also, outside of a couple silly one-offs, I've never run an evil campaign that was serious. Any tips/suggestions/advice on what I should look out for?

Oh, my players are a Swordsage 2 that will be going into swashbuckler/rogue, a Psion 2 (kineticist), and a Martial Adept Ranger that wields essentially an Arbalest into combat.

[deuxhero]

Find a copy of It's Wet Outside.

[TurtleKing]

Okay for starters here are two books you will want. Stormwrack is 3.5 while Ultimate Combat is Pathfinder. Both have quite a bit on sea based campaigns. Ultimate Combat's main thing is the firearms and siege weaponry that helps with the feel of a pirate campaign. Swim, Climb, Use Rope, Profession: Sailor and more skills are much bigger than else where. Watch out for heavy armor since it can hurt the Swim checks, but can still be used if measures are taken. A swim speed is a characters best friend. Combat in general be it from what type of weapons can work underwater to what spells can work based upon Spellcraft checks also matter if fighting/ casting underwater. A few feats in Stormwrack and Lords of Madness help with this, and Pathfinder might have something but not sure. Weather is pretty big based on how bad by either a storm or just calm seas ie no wind for the ships with sails. Also certain damage types become problematic due to fire burning wooden ships or igniting the Black Powder. Acid and sonic is just has deadly by ignoring hardness so a acid or sonic attack could result in a leak. Sucks if the treasure burned/ melted away. Mobility and ranged attacks are more prominent since you will likely know of what you are fighting before you get in melee sans fog.

If I think of anymore I'll post. Feel free to ask how I did in the Pirate campaign has a baby Black Dragon Duskblade.

[Tvtyrant]

Leadership is a much bigger deal in ship type games, since they provide you with a crew. By mid levels you can have hundreds of sailors, and by high levels each player can crew their own ship (or one giant ship).

[Greenish]

Deities usually have tenets instead of tenants. For domains, Blackwater, Storm, maybe Water seem to fit, off the top of my head.

[Roland St. Jude]

My quick advice for an evil campaign is to get an out-of-character agreement from all the players that they'll work together toward a common end, and while they can be evil, they don't do blatantly evil things to each other. If they all worship the common god, that provides a good in-character rationale. The god has plans for them and will be angered if they get into petty squabbles between themselves. Or at least they have a reason to care about each other.

As for a good seafaring campaign, my main pieces of advice are: 1) read Stormwrack, which has many 3.x rules for such things and 2) decide between you and your players what kinds of things, in addition to running their characters they are interested in doing (like running ship operations, captaining or navigating, etc.) and how detailed they'd like ship-to-ship combat to be. These can be fun additions to the usual character-playing but if players aren't interested it can also be a chore (and one which you can easily take care of by having NPCs take care of those roles).

[jguy]

We've already discussed that, while and evil campaign, the players work together and generally get along. Worshiping the same god and all working on the same pirate crew help that along.

I do plan on reading Stormwrack soon to get ship/sea based combat in. More than likely I am going to have NPC's and the captain handle most of the ship detail while the players fight. We don't really enjoy busy work that keeps us from killing.

For a note, the Swordsage is head of the boarding crew, the Ranger is head Cannoneer, and the Psion is actually the 1st mate, charged with strategy.

[Kaje]

The Dragonlance book Legend Of The Twins features a base class called the Mariner. It's just a sailor class and it's tier 5 or so, but you may want to look into it for NPCs.