Razor Coast


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Greg A. Vaughan wrote:
Ernest Mueller wrote:

I ran my PCs through the Freeport Trilogy (in Riddleport, but whatever) and here's the hooks I have to get them down there. I mashed together Riddleport, Freeport, and Razor characters/plots freely to do it.

1. Elias Tammerhawk, rogue serpentfolk, escaped down there and they have a "dead or alive" bounty out for him.
2. Black Dog's ghost (both from Freeport and also Jaren the Jinx's dad from the NPC Codex) geased the party rogue to find and kill the Shark Lord's mistress who betrayed him.
3. The captain is a Bonuwat Mwangi from down there.
4. The captain is loving up the Golarion equivalent of Mami Wata, a juju water spirit, who then urges him along the spirital side of the path
5. The cleric is a cleric of Gozreh, so Shimye-magalla is involved (related in some undefined way to Mami), same deal

That's awesome, Ernest. :-)

Thanks man! One of the best techniques you can use slotting in 3pp stuff like this is "start early." Razor has all different gods, all different ethnicities, etc. so you just retcon early and often. Tulita = Bonuwat Mwangi, "Dolphin, Whale, and Whatnot" = some offshoot of Gozreh, whatever you need to bridge into your PCs.

In this case the number of "shark" and "kraken" references in every other piratical/nautical thing is almost too much! "We went to kill the Shark Prince, captain of the Kraken's Caress, but it turns out he's not actually related to the Shark God or the Kraken... Just an emo poseur..."

Heck, I think it's pretty likely that once they get down there, they might find that Barrison Hargrove is really that elusive serpent man in yet another disguise...

The Exchange

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Session yesterday in my tabletop game. We started trying to build ships using Fire as She Bears. Has anyone already done this for Thunderstrike and Baron of the Tide? I'm having real issues seeing how the costs in the book to buy them relate to what size/type of ship should be built using FASB?

Spoiler:
On with the events and they quickly dealt with the Nightslinks threatening the Tulita and outskirts. Slightly concerned with how quickly they went down.

With that sorted they decided now was the time to go deal with Bonegnaw. They had run away from the Midnight deal before and didn't do any preparation to know what they were heading towards. This is compared to the PBP game BRvheart's running where we still had Garreg to give us information and we were ready to go deal with various beasts that Bonegnaw had.

They hired Captain Montgomery and started to look for the cove. Due to the Captain they managed to spot it and then did a backtrack of the coves coming in from above. They didn't stealth up so the watchers fired a crossbow bolt warning of an approach. They did deposit all of the smugglers up top in the water and then fireballed the Cockatrices killing two. The other two they dealt with in the air as well as the Chimera. They used a haemonculous to observe the beach so knew there was a large number of people down there.

A standoff started with Bonegnaw in the end calling them out to surrender or he would kill a slave. They tried to bluff that he should. So he did and Rake, the ex slave, demanded they get in there. So they backed off and went into the water via rope then water walked or swam in.

Obadiah went in first and almost straight into the Chuul. Despite the players going that's a Chuul without having done the Knowledge checks they didn't seem to do a lot about him having been grabbed by a claw. Nor do much when the tentacles came into play. He kept attacking it with his rapier. Mary Belle, the cleric, went up to do a lightning bolt down the beach, targetting the smugglers, Bonegnaw and his hyena. Took out a few, but again not targetting the big threats. The others stayed out on the water with a fireball coming in on the clump of smugglers and Bonegnaw (who ignored it due to his effect).

In the end Obadiah was eaten, Mary Belle has been captured and the rest have retreated. They are going to go back to try and rescue Mary Belle, hopefully this time with a proper plan. Mary Belle is the last remaining original party member.

This is now the campaign I've done the most damage to a party in as well.

The Exchange RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32

Excellent job, Mr.Peyton :-)

And if they come back well-prepared and do a number on the opposition they'll be just as proud of themselves :-)


I've never really had a chance to make use of FASB. My party has done lots of sailing but almost all had access to flight from the start at Lvl5 so all ship encounters tend to run with aerial scouting from outside cannon shot followed by a boarding attack from the party.

....except:
(Whalebone Pilk being the one exception, the scouts found nothing but his skull collection before it sank on the second night. The final night it chased them into the darkness, then dived and surfaced immediately ahead to board)

Play Report:

My players bit the Jungle Fever hook after all - they've learnt most of the back story and rescued Nattering Nam (although they are insisting that he stays on board...). Nam joining the dots for them really seemed to 'press their buttons' as a story that really summed up what Razor Coast means to them. Kudos to Owen - I hope I do it justice as it's my first try at running (or even playing) at this level. On to the island next week. More invisible flying eidolon scouts coming up.

Sovereign Court Contributor

Mark Peyton wrote:

Session yesterday in my tabletop game. We started trying to build ships using Fire as She Bears. Has anyone already done this for Thunderstrike and Baron of the Tide? I'm having real issues seeing how the costs in the book to buy them relate to what size/type of ship should be built using FASB?

** spoiler omitted **...

Nice!

Spoiler:

As for sizing the ships using FaSB. I went with a loose approach, based on my party's style. The Pride is supposed to be the biggest bad-ass ship around. She's 46 guns if I recall. After that Bethany's Quell's Whore is an 18 gun sloop and should be able to take out anything short of the Pride.

So do your players prefer to be the underdog in a confrontation? Do you want their ship chewed up underneath them even as they emerge victorious? Or do they get to be the Pepsi to something like the Pride's Coke, leaving the outcome of a clash with that size ship anybody's guess?

So what I mean by a loose approach is I just gave them the ship they wanted despite the yard sale prices in the Razor Coast book. The reason is those ships are all on fire sale, and they are priced so low to make certain even the poorest party has the means to secure a vessel.

Their prices are not related to build prices in FaSB.

To suck all the treasure out of my party into one nice, explodable package I showed them all the cool ways they could pimp their boat. And spend they did! *rubs hands evilly*

0onegames has a FANTASTIC pirate ship blueprint for $2. It's billed as a Pirate Galleon, and when I statted it up in FaSB it was indeed a galleon by FaSB rules. They have other ships as well.

One pointer: I underestimated how devastating the control water spell can prove. If that's in the mix it can utterly neutralize a ship -- even the Pride -- by simply dropping it in a 10-20' deep water ditch so her guns point at a wall of ocean water.

If your players have the spell, I urge you to have a counter measure prepared. Perhaps something they need to board or otherwise target to take out.

EDIT: oh, the Albatross might be a good match to the Thunderstrike for campaign flavor. Badass but not the baddest on the Razor. I believe she's already statted in FaSB.

Sovereign Court Contributor

Arquestan wrote:

I've never really had a chance to make use of FASB. My party has done lots of sailing but almost all had access to flight from the start at Lvl5 so all ship encounters tend to run with aerial scouting from outside cannon shot followed by a boarding attack from the party. ** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

I really love Jungle Fever. My party passed because the

Spoiler:
Bonedeuce and Jacob Razor
threads were so immediate and compelling for them. :/

That said, they also loved Mr. Pett's Veiled Island.

True story: Owen and Stan published one of my earliest adventures; it was my first solo (not co-written) piece. Call of Cthulu. I respected and respect the two of them immensely.

Imagine my joy a few years later that I got to turn the tables and offer Owen some adventure design work, then edit/develop him!

Kinda humbling and full of warm fuzzies.

Er...I mean, manly grunting and chest bumping!

PS Not that Owen needed much in the way of editing or developing. I think I may have asked for less passive voice. ;)


Sigh...my Razor Coast game has died a sputtering death just as I was about to throw some solid story elements at the players.
I'm very sad.

The Exchange

Speaking to my players they are concerned that they want to play quirkier characters and that it feels like the adventure assumes they will have damage dealers to be able to deal with stuff. They want to use combat maneuvers rather than just dish out damage.

That said the reason they gave for rushing into stuff last session was that after way too long in the sewers they just wanted to get on a ship and do stuff.

I'm tempted to try one of the island adventures with them to give them something different to do for a bit.

Sovereign Court Contributor

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They should absolutely be able to play quirkier characters, especially at higher levels. Do you have Heart of the Razor? Those are some great add-on adventures.

Sovereign Court

wspatterson wrote:

Sigh...my Razor Coast game has died a sputtering death just as I was about to throw some solid story elements at the players.

I'm very sad.

Start over with another group


I have a question re

Samuel:
I am confused on the details of this rumor Sagacious Samuel got caught forging official documents (PARTIALLY TRUE – he’s been hung out to dry for forging documents at officials’ requests. Does this mean he gets arrested, is executed, run out of town, what? I can't seem to locate the details here. As he is the only real source for magic in Port Shaw this is rather important


Anyone have experience with Angry Waters yet? Hope to run it soon.


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Louis Agresta wrote:
One pointer: I underestimated how devastating the control water spell can prove. If that's in the mix it can utterly neutralize a ship -- even the Pride -- by simply dropping it in a 10-20' deep water ditch so her guns point at a wall of ocean water.

Yeah, my PCs have been doing LOTS of naval combat and this one was a corker; definitely a battle-ender. I decided that ships should get a haed Pro: Sailor check to get out of it so it's not automatic.

One way to force more naval combat is what I do, using mass combat rules (not unlike the troop rules) for the crews. A unit of N guys gets one attack at +.5N/+N, and usually I break them up into 10-person units, so PCs just flying over and dumping into a ship with 40 crews aren't just killing infinite third level guys, they are fighting 4 troops attacking at +5 to hit/+10 to damage, which tends to take them a little more aback. Add some murder guns and they're happy to grapple and board and let their units of pirates take some of the heat.

The Exchange

Having been going through FASB it really does need a summary spreadsheet as hunting down how many crew are needed means going through a lot. Though for Brvheart's online game we do now have the quirk where the two clerics are the navigator and Surgeon whilst the Bard smuggler is probably the Chaplain.


Sending you one that another poster created about a year or so back Mark.

Sovereign Court Contributor

brvheart wrote:
I have a question re ** spoiler omitted **

Gotcha. Here's the answer:

Spoiler:
Sagacious gets arrested because Hargrove doesn't want anyone learning that he paid Sagacious to create the Garr Bloodbane map used to lure Commander Perrin out to sea in the Albatross.

We didn't specify what Hargrove did with him, exactly, since what works best depends on the party's level of interaction with Samuel. I had Hargrove toss Sagacious in prison in Fort Stormshield on the grounds that Samuel was too important a resource to waste. The party opted not to rescue Samuel -- they'd had some negative run-ins early on -- and the group wizard took over Samuel's shop.

Hope that helps.

Sovereign Court Contributor

Mark Peyton wrote:
Having been going through FASB it really does need a summary spreadsheet as hunting down how many crew are needed means going through a lot. Though for Brvheart's online game we do now have the quirk where the two clerics are the navigator and Surgeon whilst the Bard smuggler is probably the Chaplain.

Agreed. I also want to make cheat sheets so all the ship roles have a list of possible moves in front of them for reference.

There's probably enough material for a version 2.0 at this point, not to mention errata.


Yes, that helps Lou:) And I understand the particulars! Mark, please don't read the spoiler. If you release a 2.0 let me know so I can get one please:)

Sovereign Court Contributor

Ok, so I just finished my 2 year Razor Coast campaign (has it been that long?!). So happy that so many things worked out as planned. So brow-wrinkled that there is so much room for improvement.

Brain on fire.

Sketching out better ways in notebooks.


Excited to hear your thoughts, Mr. Agresta!

(My level 8 PCs just killed Dalang Jalamar in a brutal ambush below Beacon Island, so I might have time to keep in mind your reflections...)


Shh Alex, my group has no idea who Jalang is yet!

Sovereign Court Contributor

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Alex Cunningham wrote:

Excited to hear your thoughts, Mr. Agresta!

(My level 8 PCs just killed Dalang Jalamar in a brutal ambush below Beacon Island, so I might have time to keep in mind your reflections...)

That's a great opportunity to...

Spoiler:
...create a new Dalang of Dajobas from someone the party pissed off or shat upon or otherwise humiliated. Just saying. Also when you do, up them a level maybe, so the new Dalang can use the special powers of Jalamar's equipment.

The Exchange

One of the things to keep going with my tabletop group I have been asked to look at is making combat a little less lethal. As I said I don't think I've ever had a game where quite as many PCs were killed. That said I've also said to my players that being stupid and blundering into things will get them killed. I need to rebalance things and get the pirate flavour a bit more in the mix, but also get them to finish dealing with Bonegnaw and moving things on.


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Another great session this past weekend.

- PCs killed Dalang Jalamar underneath Beacon Island in the previous session.
- Two new players joined the group whom I decided were among the "stone statues" off the shore.
- I saw the little encounter about a mass of air elementals who have formed a cloud that attacks the PCs' ship.
- This encounter took 5 minutes to set up in Roll20 and almost 2 hours of frantic, stressful (in a good way) fighting as the PCs realized that 5 air elementals in "whirlwind mode" was enough to cover the entire top of the boat with a constantly-damaging storm.
- The oversized octopus animal companion was the most violent hero.
- Another two hours were the PCs slowly, slowly investigating the GOOD DAY'S CATCH, ending the session just as the ambush struck.
- The only modification I made to the GOOD DAY'S CATCH encounter was to add a Ship Sentinel to the ship, planted there by weresharks to warn them when any ships approached the GOOD DAY'S CATCH.

So of the 6 hours of prep I did for this session, I only used about 30 minutes of it. I'll count that as a victory for roleplay.

Sovereign Court Contributor

I love that encounter. Didn't get to use it in my campaign, which wrapped up a few weeks ago. Love hearing your play reports! Thanks for that!


I haven't had a chance to keep my play reports up to date, sadly, but we did start playing "The Krakenfiend Rises" back in early June 2015. Here's a (maybe not-so-) quick summary of what's happened to date. Spoilers abound. (NOTE: I am also combining Razor Coast with Savage Tide, so you'll see some references to that AP scattered through this and future posts as well.)

"In retrospect, I think our biggest mistake in the last campaign arc was not burning Port Shaw to the ground." -- Evan F., player of Marlin Martigan

Two PCs--the fighter and now-Dragoon captain Marlin Martigan, and the monk and Tulita tribal leader Hokan Ali'i--returned from our "Night Of The Shark" arc. Another returning player introduced a new PC named Zydrunas, an elven arcanist and Dragoon sorcerer who studies under Aeron Chambers. Our new player started out playing a cleric of Quell named Syrian, but quickly switched over to running a rogue privateer named Flynnerrol (Flynn for short) instead.

The campaign kicked off with a series of vignettes customized to each PC's backstory:
1) Captain Martigan sees off a taunting, arrogant Gregory Bonedeuce, who is supposedly sailing off to rescue Trey Perrin and the Albatross.
2) Hokan receives a letter from a lord far to the southwest who insinuates that Barrison Hargrove is shipping illegal arcana through his territory and into the Razor Sea with the help of crooked Dragoons.
3) Zydrunas' lessons with Chambers are interrupted when Xander Brim storms in and attempts to assassinate Chambers with what little arcana he has left to his disposal.
4) Syrian arrives in Port Shaw and meets Zalen Trafalgar, who tells him of the holy whale Hafguta and charges him with finding and redeeming the beast.

Zydrunas helped take Brim into custody and Martigan interrogated the mage, who accused Chambers of leading a demon-worshiping cult that planned to destroy Port Shaw. However, evidence found in Brim's makeshift hovel in Tide District (planted by the Ring of the Kraken) indicated that Brim was the cult leader. Brim challenged Chambers to a public duel, during which he managed to cut free Chamber's clothing, allowing Martigan a glimpse of the Ring's mark beneath his arm. Chambers finished off Brim with a stroke of his cutlass, then covered up the mark with an illusion which neither Martigan nor the others could see through, and Martigan was charged with insubordination when he accused Chambers of being a cult member.

Shortly thereafter, a necromancer in Hargrove's employ set off a shadow pearl beneath Port Shaw, causing a flood of horrors to rise from the steam tunnels, and the PCs had to infiltrate his base (the former laboratory of Tarath-Vreen) to stop the problem at its root.

As punishment for his insolence, Captain Martigan was tasked with escorting some of Hargrove's merchant ships from the Pearl Eye Atolls to the edge of the Razor Sea, removing him and his loyal crew from Port Shaw for several weeks. Zydrunas was assigned to his ship to spy on the captain, and Hokan offered to join the expedition, filling out Martigan's crew with his Tulita followers.

They spent a few days at sea fighting enemy ships (including the frost giant pirates known as the Gert Brothers and the lycanthropic Nightslinks), and befriended Bethany Razor by informing her of the evidence they uncovered in the last campaign arc suggesting that Bonedeuce had betrayed her husband. Bethany clued them in that Bonedeuce had been dilly-dallying in his supposed quest to rescue Perrin, sailing far off-course from where the Albatross had last been sighted. She also mentioned that she had been hired to escort Hargrove's ships out of the Razor Sea, and would relieve the PCs when they reached the middle of the ocean.

Next, they explored a few of the islands in the Pearl Eyes, where they heard rumors of Old Makana but never chased down the leads, and I inserted a short but deadly sidetrek adventure, replacing its BBEG with Rachel Ventura's bad-ass sea witch, Orsolya, from JBE's Advanced Merfolk. Among the witch's treasures was the cloak known as Fiend's Embrace--an artifact hewn by the demon lord Graz'zt and given to his lover Iggwilv (another plot seed for upcoming events in Savage Tide). Also in the booty was a silver cup made from a skull--in fact, the skull of Garr Bloodbane. His men retrieved the pirate king's disembodied head after Bonedeuce executed him and fashioned it into a drinking chalice--when someone drinks the blood of a slain enemy from the cup, they gain the benefits of greater infernal healing, but if they don't do this every day after using the item in this manner once, they are subject to a nightmare in which Bloodbane tortures them in horrible ways. Martigan has claimed the cup for his own, and I have alluded through story elements that only Old Makana can tell him how to break the curse.

With that quest completed, they made their rendezvous with Hargrove's foppish merchant-marines, who were actually disguised contract killers hoping to lead the heroes into an ambush. The killers sprung their trap early when the PCs confronted them about some irregularities in their cargo manifest (Flynn had snuck aboard their vessel and found false cargo boxes fluffed out with packing material, as well as a pair of hidden swivel-mounted 12-pound cannons built into a secret hull compartment and listed in the manifest as a crated steam engine).

During this fight, Zydrunas was badly poisoned and teleported back to Port Shaw to seek aid from Chambers--but when he came to, he found himself tied to an altar in the shrine of Harthagoa beneath Fort Stormshield, with Chambers leading a ritual to empower a massive black pearl with the elf's life essence. Luckily, he had the means to cast a silent and stilled teleport spell, and escaped after gleaning as much information as he could from Chambers, but at the cost of all of his gear and, most painfully, his spellbook.

Once the PCs reunited, they searched the assassins' vessel, and found and freed a large group of slaves trapped inside a portable hole with a bottle of air and scant iron rations meant only to last two weeks, but they knew not for what purpose (the slaves were meant as gifts to the troglodytes and kopru of the Isle of Dread as payment for more shadow pearls). Nevertheless, their path was decided: it was time to stage a piratical insurgency against Hargrove, Bonedeuce, and Chambers.

Fearing that an ambush had also been set for Bethany and the crew of Quell's Whore, the PCs sailed to where they were to rendezvous with Captain Razor to warn her. In the process, they fought and killed Captain Barnabas Harrigan (who I lifted from Skulls & Shackles and had introduced in my last Razor Coast arc), who had been holding the disgraced pirate captain Falken Drango in his brig. They set Drango free and gave him command of the Wormwood and the few crew members they could ascertain not to be evil-aligned, asking him to raid Hargrove's ships and any Dragoon vessels he might encounter along the Razor Coast (which, of course, he was all too happy to do).

At the rendezvous point, the PCs found the minotaur Korg floating in the water upon the wreckage of the Whore. After being revived, the minotaur led the party to the northern coast of a huge island nearby (the Isle of Dread), where they found the remains of both the Albatross and Quell's Whore. They followed the trail of Perrin's men south to the Omargwato ruins, where they fought off the cyclopes and rescued both Bethany and Perrin from certain death.

Bethany and Perrin are now repairing their ships so as to join Drango in raiding Hargrove and Bonedeuce's vessels, while the PCs have departed southwest to seek out the aid of the foreign lord who warned them of Hargrove's illicit activities (namely, shipping slaves and other illegal goods to the Isle of Dread in exchange for shadow pearls to aid the imminent coming of Harthagoa). In our last session, they awoke one morning to find themselves trapped in the Skull Sargasso, for which I used a re-flavored and highly advanced version of the Mother of All and her plant minions from Savage Tide's "The Sea Wyvern's Wake". As of the end of this adventure, the PCs are all 13th level.

More to come later--oh, and I've got a bunch of stat blocks for rebuilt or advanced NPCs and monsters if anyone wants them, btw. Here's some of the more interesting ones I've made for this game so far:


  • Omargwato Medicine Man (CR 13, huge cyclops bloodrager 8)
  • The Mother Of All (CR 14, advanced version of boss monster from Dungeon 141)
  • Sargasso Host Skeleton (CR 7, replacement for vine horrors from Dungeon 141)
  • Aeron Chambers, Sorcerer Supreme (CR 14, sorcerer 7/fighter 1/eldritch knight 6)
  • Gregory Bonedeuce, Dragoon Commandant (CR 14, swashbuckler 9/duelist 5)
  • Falken Drango (CR 17, fortune-spurned male human fighter 2/rogue 9/deep sea pirate 6)

Savage Tide Notes: Bonedeuce, Bethany, and Drango are all stand-ins for (respectively) Vanthus, Lavinia, and Harliss in Savage Tide. So, yeah, there's, erm, another stat block for Bonedeuce sitting in my pocket... I got to break out one of my favorite monster templates from the 3.5 version of the Dragonlance Campaign Setting book. =D

Sovereign Court Contributor

Dude!!!! That is mighty!

I love the way you've united the two AP's. I love your player's quotation, "In retrospect, I think our biggest mistake in the last campaign arc was not burning Port Shaw to the ground."

HAH! I laughed out loud.

I love the way you brought them all together, and tossing Bethany in with the Omargwato was a stroke of genius.

Best best best? The drinking skull of Garr Bloodbane. Have you entered RPG superstar?


Power Word Unzip wrote:
Awesomeness.

I concur with Master Agresta. That's excellent work, sir.


One sad thing I forgot to mention: Korg died while valiantly defending a prone and disabled Bethany from an Omargwato cyclops. =[ She is PISSED.

The drinking cup is actually a nod to a legend about the infamous pirate William Teach, a.k.a. Blackbeard. (I'm an NC native and grew up on sailboats in the Pamlico Sound area, so my treatment of Bloodbane in this campaign draws heavily on the legends of Blackbeard, including his penchant for taking a wife in every port he visited.) Gov. Alexander Spotswood of Virginia sent Lt. Robert Maynard to kill the pirate king, and Maynard ambushed Teach and his men off the coast of Okracoke Island in November of 1718. Blackbeard was beheaded; his body was thrown overboard and his head was tied to the bowsprit of Maynard's sloop.

But it was rumored that men loyal to Blackbeard (who was much beloved by the people of Bath and other coastal communities in North Carolina) retrieved the head from Maynard's ship and fashioned a drinking cup from the skull. As recently as the mid-20th century, a secret society that met at Blackbeard's castle is said to have drank from the cup, but their members and guests were forbidden to speak of their participation in the rite for a full 30 years after attending a meeting.

Charles Harry Whedbee, a retired NC judge who wrote a series of excellent books about the legends and folklore of the NC Outer Banks, attended such a meeting in his youth and revealed the details of it prior to his death in the 1990s (having maintained his oath for far longer than the promised 30 years). Whedbee always hoped to obtain the skull from a surviving group member and have its origin verified by a friend with the NC Museum of History, but whether he ever got access to the artifact is unknown--if so, he carried that secret to his grave.

As to your final question, Louis, I entered in a few of the early years of RPG Superstar with no success, but I hope to throw an item in the ring this year (I like working with weapons and armor more than I do wondrous items, so I'm glad to see Round One opening up a bit since Owen took the reins on the competition). I have a few other projects that are ahead of that, though, since I work for Jon Brazer Enterprises and also freelance for a few other companies, both gaming-related and otherwise. (Incidentally, my first full-length adventure, Reign Of Ruin, is available via Paizo.com and all the other usual suspects among digital retailers if you want to see some of my design work in action--I'd love to hear feedback and get some reviews posted for it!)

But thanks for the praise--it means a great deal to me, and makes me all the more likely to participate in RPG Superstar ths year if I can manage it!


Somehow, I got two weekends in a row of GMing RAZOR COAST! Highlights:

- The PCs smashed the hell out of the weresharks who ambushed them aboard the GOOD DAY'S CATCH (monk's attacks count as silver now), then spent 20 real minutes and an expensive casting of Stoneskin just in planning how they were going to attack the one Great White circling in the water.
- A PC's daughter had contracted lycanthropy from Dalang Jalamar, and there was no cleric in the party, so they finally ran into Zalen Trafalgar, who would not cast Remove Curse unless the PCs stopped the plot to blow up his church.
- The PCs had previously been driven back from the secret Dajobas shrine by the flesh golems, and had a lot of fun coming back now, much higher level, and smashing them to bits.
- But in the demon-infested sewers, they got jumped by some incredibly-high-rolling babau, who used the tight corridors to get a mess of sneak attacks in. My overconfident monk thought he should grapple the giant scorpion, as well. So that would be where two PCs died, with one of the babau teleporting away to Vrina.

Thanks, RAZOR COAST authors, for the note about how deadly this section of the sewers is. I'm only sorry my players didn't catch any of my numerous hints...


Quote:
My overconfident monk thought he should grapple the giant scorpion, as well.

Yikes! Yeah, those sewers are a death trap for lower-level PCs. Like a sandbox full of poisoned caltrops.


Power Word - that's a great read.

I'm not actually sure how much of a hint there is that there are demons down there. It caught my lot unaware as well.

Spoiler:

My tabletop game played a few weeks back and managed to redeem themselves. They bargained with Bonegnaw to buy their captured Cleric back and would return with the money to pay him. Bonegnaw had a crew sent into Port Shaw to drop off Dragonsmoke and to get in some new muscle. The party ambushed them enroute, having been joined by their newest party member - another Pirate/Rogue. They captured the skiff and used it to disguise themselves to go back into the cove. They got in and put it into its docking position, then started to row to shore, at which point they were spotted. The party responded blasting away and then got very nervous about the Chuul, who they just managed to kill before he devoured another party member.

In the end they were able to defeat Bonegnaw and rescue all the captives. They took the ship back to town and met Bethany. They hired her and her crew to take them out to Beacon Island. Captain Montgomery is on his way to stepping up back to his previous self and they are contemplating how to get his Warhammer back.

It dawned on me that unless Bonedeuce's mark is well hidden then if Bethany has had any more than flirtatious dealings with him then she should be able to tell any party members who mention the mark of the kraken to her.

Sovereign Court Contributor

Bethany and Company:

In my campaign I had them going on a few dates but not yet getting naked. That let the PCs intervene into that relationship. Also I decided that Bonedeuce's mark was in his armpit and harder to see. Closer to the main events, Harthagoa gets a little sloppy with lesser minions.

Sovereign Court

Question : has anyone used Fire as she bears ship rules ?
How did it work out ? aére they worth the extra effort ?

If so, have you used ship minis, and from what companies ?

Sovereign Court Contributor

I used them. Okay, I wrote them too, but my group seemed to like them a lot. It gave structure to naval encounters.

Three suggestions:

1. I went with a rules like version. Easy for me to put together on the fly because of my intimacy with the rules. Everyone was into the core naval combat rules, not everyone at the table wanted to get quite as "tactical-wargamey" as everyone else; so, slightly simplifying made and sticking cinematic made it work for our group.

2. I directly converted the Thunderstrike but based it on a galleon. It was WAY to large and powerful a ship. Don't base your players ship on a 16th-17th century galleon. Especially don't give that galleon 18th-19th century sales and weapons. I oopsed.

3. Control Water which can shape large quantities of ocean water is devestating. It can drop a ship 20' so all the cannons point to the inside wall of a water pit. I suggest either:
a. ban it
b. prepare counterspells
c. put your cannon on extendable towers or build a ship with decks that separate on metal legs -- something.

Not sure how they handled Control Water in Skull and Shackles. Anyone?

Any way, hope that helps. Please hit us with a play report if you use FaSB? John Ling and I are considering a 2.0 of the rules if I can get my head out of other projects long enough to make it work.

Sovereign Court

Sure I will. We're not starting immediately, though.

Sovereign Court Contributor

Stereofm wrote:
Sure I will. We're not starting immediately, though.

EDIT: rules lite

EDIT: slightly simplifying and sticking cinematic
EDIT: WAY too large and
EDIT: base your players'
EDIT: 18th-19th century sails and
EDIT: , which can shape large quantities of ocean water,

Clearly I need an editor. :)


Louis Agresta wrote:
Stereofm wrote:
Sure I will. We're not starting immediately, though.

EDIT: rules lite

EDIT: slightly simplifying and sticking cinematic
EDIT: WAY too large and
EDIT: base your players'
EDIT: 18th-19th century sails and
EDIT: , which can shape large quantities of ocean water,

Clearly I need an editor. :)

*cough* Call me anytime. =D

As to Fire As She Bears: Our group came to the opposite conclusion. We looked at the rules and tried to apply them in play once, but our findings were that they were just too dense for our needs at the table, and my players preferred combat that focuses on their individual struggles but allows for the opposing crews to affect the situation in small ways on a round-to-round basis. We've stuck to using a combination of the vehicle rules from Ultimate Combat and the mass combat rules from Kingmaker/Book of the River Nations/Ultimate Campaign.


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After two long campaign arcs separated by a nearly year-long hiatus, my game group concluded the main story line of Razor Coast last night. Here's how the finale played out at our table.

Once the threat of the Skull Sargasso had been eliminated, the PCs went on a short side-quest in another part of my home campaign world to solicit the aid of a nearby city-state, Iskara-Ankul, in overthrowing the Dragoons of Port Shaw, helping to quell an army of gnolls in the process. Their success netted them the promise of another warship to add to their fleet, so they sailed back towards the Razor Coast to gather more allies in the fight against Harthagoa's cult.

Their first stop was Sammerlock Sails; the elven arcanist had taken note of the site and decided it was worth investigating to see if any vessels could be salvaged (they had also found and rescued a derelict Sammerlock sloop in the Sargasso that was crewed by a lone warmech, an intelligent construct race that pops up in my campaigns from time to time). I built upon the notes in the gazetteer that mentioned the sea fort had been bombarded by Pele by leaving behind a mess of creatures from the Plane of Fire and the Hells, including a pod of fire whales from the Tome of Horrors Complete, a snake-headed aghasura, a brigade of huge fire elementals, a banshee, some callers in darkness from Ultimate Psionics, and a nasty haunt that had sprung into existence after the elves trapped in Sammerlock starved to death during the siege of Pele's minions. After exterminating the holdovers, the adventurers repaired and befriended the remaining warmechs and set them to work on building prototype battle jetskis (which were of great help during the battle for Port Shaw in our finale).

Next, the PCs returned to the Pearl Eye Atoll in search of Old Makana, where I put a major twist on the included material by having their ship run aground by the possessed Hafguta. They awoke on an island populated by some familiar monsters from a certain video game franchise, battling their way past a green dragon charged with keeping Makana sealed within a dream world. Makana told them she could help them defeat Bonedeuce if they could free Hafguta from the curse of Tsathogga, so they set sail for the Witch's Teeth to find the behemoth. (I tied Makana into the Hawaiian legend of Namaka, Pele's divine sister, and in turn slated her as the creator of the three animal spirits which the Tulita worship.)

We did the Jonah thing, and although they had little difficulty overcoming the tsathar pirate hordes of the Swordsinger's Folly inside the whale's belly, the idol itself gave them problems--it possessed nearly the entire group, causing the arcanist to teleport to Port Shaw and go on a fireball-dropping rampage before he snapped out of it while the rogue and fighter came to blows over who should get to keep the idol. Once they made their saves against the curse, Captain Martigan destroyed the idol with his god-touched holy longsword, but it shattered in the process.

With Hafguta and Makana freed from their respective curses and a rebel fleet amassed in the Pearl Eyes, the PCs were ready to begin their assault on Kai's Bay. This is where things got ugly. Their ship, the Loa's Blessing, and the Albatross brought their cannons to bear on the Pride, and Bonedeuce ordered his forces to board the ships after returning fire. In perhaps the most anticlimactic moment of the campaign to date, Bonedeuce was eliminated in the very first round of combat when the arcanist Zydrunas dropped a prismatic spray on him, simultaneously killing him and turning his remains to stone (although he'll soon be brought back in place of Vanthus Vanderboren in the Savage Tide arc...).

Aeron Chambers was hot on the PCs' heels soon thereafter, and a magical duel between Chambers and his former student, Zydrunas, ensued in the air above the Pride as the other PCs cut down Bonedeuce's lieutenants. Chambers killed Zydrunas with a finger of death spell and disintegrated his remains, forever eliminating his troublesome apprentice as a threat. Captain Martigan taunted the Sorcerer Supreme, insulting his swordplay skills and challenging him to a fair duel sans magic. Chambers' hubris was too great to refuse, and they fought a 3-minute-long duel on the deck of the Pride. Of course, once he was close to death, Chambers tried to use magic to escape--but the monk Hokan Ali'i, radically shapechanged into a monstrous hulking form thanks to a spell Zydrunas had placed in his ring of spell storing, interjected when Chambers broke the terms of the duel and pounded him into oblivion. It was then that Harthagoa surfaced in the waters east of the naval battle, and the pressure was on to reach Port Shaw before the Krakenfiend did.

With the Commandant and Sorcerer Supreme both dead, the remaining adventurers and their allies--Hokan the monk, the roguuish Flynn, and the fighter Capt. Martigan, alongside the warmech Iaq, Hokan's slayer protege Sla'ark, and Bethany Razor--sailed into the harbor. Their allies from Sammerlock and the city-state of Iskara-Ankul pounded the opposition--I had a great time just narrating all of this rather than actually rolling it out, especially since they had worked so hard to attain allies in their rebellion. The Iskaran warship was pulled by two elder water elementals that crushed waves of skum and weresharks as it sailed inland, and the jetski-riding warmechs used cannons of force to blast away sahuagin shark riders before they reached the shoreline. Still, the PCs had to contend with a large group of scrags and some particularly nasty sahuagin mounted on toothwraiths (undead flying shark spirits cribbed from Rogue Genius Games' Monster Menagerie: Oceans of Blood), losing their warmech sidekick in the process.

During this fight, Makana and her flying whale appeared, attempting to hold off Harthagoa--but Pele emerged from Fiery Heart on the back of a massive red dragon and commanded Makana to retreat, saying this conflict was not hers to decide. The two deities came to blows in the skies over Kai's Bay, soon taking their escalating conflict elsewhere, and leaving Harthagoa free to rise from the waves and begin creeping toward the Elder Lodge.

In Bawd District, they faced off against a huge group of skum and weresharks led by two clerics of Dajobas (recycled Dalamar stats) that were terrorizing the red-light establishments. In this fight, Captain Martigan met his end when a wereshark cleric got off a lucky harm spell. Another apprentice mage of Chambers (I used the mage sniper from the NPC Codex) showed up as well, leading a crew of cultists from the Ring of the Kraken. The mage sniper wiped out Hokan with a suffocation spell, although the monk managed to roll well enough on his saves not to die outright, and Flynn had to duel it out with the wizard. As the tide of battle turned against the rogue, a team of clerics of Quell flooded the alleyways and beat back the horde of cultists, leaving Bethany an opening to take out the mage with a well-placed pistol shot to the head. The clerics took the body of the fallen knight of Quell, Marlin Martigan, promising to do all they could to raise him from the dead at their first opportunity (the player intends to retire Marlin and leave him in my hands as the new NPC leader of whatever organization replaces the Dragoons).

The clerics of Quell healed the PCs to full hp and restored some negative levels they'd acquired while fighting the toothwraiths, leaving us into the final battle of the campaign at the Elder Lodge. Barrison Hargrove sent a particularly nasty message to Hokan Ali'i in the form of a half-flayed Tulita child who told the chieftain that Hargrove demanded his presence at the lodge to take the place of his people as a sacrifice to Harthagoa. Hargrove had also forced the young boy to read several spell scrolls prior to sending him out of the Lodge, casting a contingent disintegration spell on himself that was set to trigger if anyone tried to heal him--which Flynn did with one of his wands. Enraged by Hargrove's cruelty, their resolve to dispatch the racist old cultist was further steeled.

The fight at the Elder Lodge was nasty--Hargrove was backed up by eight elite Dragoons, four Ring cultists, and a corrupt Dragoon chieftain from the Elder Council who pretended to be a hostage and waited until Hokan left himself vulnerable to strike at the monk. As Hargrove's forces fell to the heroes, the wily old entrepreneur took a badly-wounded Bethany hostage and threatened to kill her if they did not back down. Hokan called his bluff, knocking Hargrove away from the wounded captain and beating the plantation master to an unrecognizable bloody pulp (approx. -40 hp!) with a flurry of blows. The newly-acquired oracle, Dezun (a replacement PC for the now-dead Zydrunas), consecrated the Elder Lodge to disrupt the glyph of power prepared to strengthen Harthagoa, and the heroes ran into the streets, using fly and air walk spells to ready themselves for the fight against Harthagoa.

Between hurricane-force winds disrupting ranged attacks and spells, summoned vrocks creating waves of lightning, and Harthagoa's mighty tentacle attacks and sinister spells, it was a tough battle. Yet scarcely six rounds later, it was all over--Harthagoa fell from the skies, reality folding in on itself around the Krakenfiend as its bloated, dead body was sucked back into the Abyss. The Dragoons have been overthrown, the Ring of the Kraken is irreparably broken, and for the first time in a long time, Port Shaw is well on its way to becoming a place where true justice and free commerce can thrive once more.

I'll have more info in my epilogue post after our next session, and then we will continue our sojourn into the latter half of Savage Tide, beginning with City of Broken Idols and using the environs and NPCs of the Razor Coast as our backdrop for that campaign! Since that's a bit off-topic for this thread, I may begin a new campaign journal thread elsewhere to detail how that endeavor goes, but I'll link to it from here for anyone who wants to keep following our games.

Many, many thanks are due to Nicholas Logue, Louis Agresta, and the rest of the team at Frog God Games for making this campaign a reality after years of struggle and offering such excellent feedback on these forums--we have had a blast playing through it!

Pathfinder Creative Director, Frog God Games

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O.O

that's...really cool, PWU.

Thank you for sharing all of that, it sounds like it was a blast! I'm glad you guys had so much fun with it. :-)

Coincidentally, when we finally were able to pick Razor Coast up from its untimely grave and get it funded and distributed to its many backers, Nick Logue actually also fell from the sky, reality folding in on itself around him as his bloated, dead body was sucked back into the Abyss.

He got better, though...

;-)

Pathfinder Creative Director, Frog God Games

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But then, Nick also just calls that a weekend off.

Sovereign Court Contributor

Hey!

Anyone with a new play report? I'm Dajobas hungry for more. :)

Editor, Jon Brazer Enterprises

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I'm about to add a chunk of stuff to this thread later today, but it's more Savage Tide than RC at this point... although when we finish City of Broken Idols (which ought to be this week or the next), I'll be staging Serpents of Scuttlecove in the festering seaborne shantytown of Carcass!

Sovereign Court Contributor

Cool! Can't wait! I miss my RC campaign.


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My party just returned from The Veiled Island and had some close calls. They decided they were far too beat up to play out the final scene, lucky for them, and returned to Port Shaw. From there they have headed to Beacon Isle and have just started exploring.
Sorry no long blow by blow write up at present.

Editor, Jon Brazer Enterprises

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Guh, took me forever to find time to do a write-up, but here's three sessions' worth of material. Thread updated.


Louis Agresta wrote:


3. Control Water which can shape large quantities of ocean water is devestating. It can drop a ship 20' so all the cannons point to the inside wall of a water pit. I suggest either:
a. ban it
b. prepare counterspells
c. put your cannon on extendable towers or build a ship with decks that separate on metal legs -- something.

Not sure how they handled Control Water in Skull and Shackles. Anyone?

I've been using my more pared down ship combat rules but control water has come up. Skull and Shackles makes it a bit of an "uber" spell in the Player's Guide:

Quote:

Control Water: A ship cannot leave the area affected by

this spell and must take the “uncontrolled” action for the
duration of the spell.

This is undesirable as it's pretty much a naval combat-ender in a fight with only a couple of ships in it (short of dispels).

I've altered that, and set a navigation (profession: sailor) DC based on the depth to escape the hazard instead, with a speed reduction even on success. In large scale battles I also like using Spellcraft checks to determine precision of spell placement.

Sovereign Court Contributor

Nice fixes Ernest! We should update FaSB with the errata, various play report findings and new material.

Editor, Jon Brazer Enterprises

New updates to my campaign journal are now live, with notes on how I mashed up Carcass and Scuttlecove and united plot points and characters from Razor Coast and Savage Tide!

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