Nautical Encounter ideas

[Laserlight]

If you're in the New World Monday Night group, back away from the thread now.

One of my regular players hasn't come to a session in the current campaign arc, and I just found out that's because he's moving across the continent next week. He's going to have One Last Session with us Monday night, and I'm flailing about for ideas. After we get done with barbecue and dessert and "why exactly are you moving to South Dakota" we'll have about three hours of game time.


The campaign is in Primeval Thule, a swords and sorcery setting summarized as "Conan and Cthulhu".
The party is L6. Existing characters are Zetos, a nobleman built as arcane archer 3/rogue 3 (based on Green Arrow) and dedicated to Justice; Alric, his longsuffering valet and minder, a halfling monk; Kella, a fighter and Sacred Slayer for the temple of Asura (think Xena); and Fauna, who's trying out a moon druid build but is fairly timid and inexperienced at the class.

Due to a little contretemps involving murdering a noblewoman and most of her household--which they all participated in, but was blamed on Erma, former player, now NPC--they have just been ordered to leave the city by the next turn of the tide and track down Erma.

Meanwhile, Kella (who was formerly a pleasure slave and now has a hatred of slavery and slavers, and also of men in general) has just found that out the reason Zetos has been treating her as "just friends" is not because he and Alric are gay, as she'd assumed; instead, it's because she is an outlander commoner, and any romantic liaison between them would be unthinkably beneath his social rank. And no, he's not gay, he's been using the slave girls at the House of the Shuttered Lantern every Tuesday. This led to (in character) a screaming argument and fistfight between them and (OOC) literally laughing until tears.

The player who's moving away will only be here for one session. He wants to run a Quodethi Thief (rogue, probably thief subclass) who is an agent for an infiltrating rakshasa. He doesn't want to die gloriously; he'd rather become an NPC and de facto recurring villain. He has an obvious motive to connect with the nobleman--surely a fop like that has some gold on him.

His character in our previous campaign was introduced as a shipwrecked sailor, with the party taking a boat out to pluck him from the sea and fighting off a plesiosaur.

I have Monster Manual, Volo's, Fifth Editon Foes, Maztican Bestiary, and the Primeval Thule books.

Nothing has really gelled for an encounter design. I've thought about a sea serpent, or deep scions, or kuo toa, or a coven of sea hags doing the "tie a captured sailor to two posts to sacrifice him to the Deep", or something of a Cthulhu Mythos feel. I'll probably have time to make it a two part fight (wave 1 and wave 2).

I'd like to have interesting terrain. Previously I've used giant lilypads that drift away in reaction to your jumping from them. Maybe a heavy tide sloshing the players back and forth among rocks, or atop a coral reef?

Brainstorming? Suggestions?

[Lombra]

It depends if you want to make it memorable story-wise or encounter-wise, in 3 hours not much can be done (in my experience, but my group is fairly slow, so maybe you'll be able to get more things done). A battle on a ship is very cool, huge octopus trying to wreck the ship, sharks all over the place, merfolks cultists of that octopus climbing on the ship, sounds like a fun encounter.

Edit: you should fake it all (or at least most), in favor of memorable-ness

[Laserlight]

The party decided to bring clothes,equipment and money but no minions--although Fauna brought a potted tree, and a squirrel named Alric--and boarded the merchant galley Aodrenell, of which Zetos' family was part owner.
At the last minute a Dhari merchant trotted up the gangplank; he introduced himself as Eithas. The captain, Sklaer Sobrinho, invited Zetos and his friends to the quarterdeck (Kella pointedly went to the bow); Eithas sought out Zetos and offered to sell him merchandise, described in glowing but vague terms. When Zetos asked for an example, Eithas surreptitiously lifted an embroidered kerchief from the nobleman's belt and offered to sell it to him. Alric noticed but did not denounce the theft; instead, he plucked the kerchief away from Zetos' hands, said "'But you already have one just like that! Here it is!", and handed it back. Zetos remained oblivious. After that, Alric kept a sharp eye on Eithas. At the bow, the women were occupied with their own conversation about the manifest shortcomings of men in general and that lowlife scum Zetos in particular. Fauna conjured a flower and offered it to Kella, who accepted and put it in her hair.
As the tide turned, they pulled away from the dock and raised sail. Captain Sobrinho mentioned some of the sights they were passing, such as the Fortress of the Captain of Night, and the Gates of Sunset and, later on, the ruined Moonstone Keep. They spent a few days making easy sail out the Dereje Channel past Tempest Island. Near twilight, the captain pointed out the mysterious Pillars of the Deep. The pillars, he said, were a pair of obelisks of an unknown stone, standing on the barrier reef that separated the shallow water around the island from the deep ocean.
Alric spotted people on the reef around the pillars and the party decided to investigate; they asked the captain to approach from the lagoon side rather than the deepwater side of the reef. As they got closer, they realized that the group on the reef were eight fish-headed men, and a priest with tentacles for fingers and more tentacles hanging from his head; they had tied a young Dhari man to the pillars and were carrying out some ceremony. The party decided to interrupt things.
Zetos and Alric ducked below decks so Zetos could change into his vigilante outfit. Kella hurled her chakram, which struck the priest, then rebounded off a pillar and came back to her hand. Eithas's eyes widened at this impossible occurance, but that was nothing compared to when Fauna leapt into the water, Kella jumped in as well, and a plesiosaur swam away from that spot with Kella mounted on it. Eithas moaned "Sorcery! Witchcraft!" (badly failed a Sanity roll and acquires a psychosis). Suddenly a masked, green clad archer came up from belowdecks--a man Eithas had never seen before, which was impossible on a ship this small (unless your d20 is cursed)--and behind him was Alric. Alric's nobleman was nowhere to be seen. Panicked, Eithas tumbled below decks and looked; there was no sign of Zetos at all. Was the malevolent litte halfling yet another magician? Was the archer actually a demon conjured in human form? If he, Eithas, remained with the ship, how long would it be until he too "disappeared", sacrificed to summon some glowing-eyed hellish warrior in the halfling's service? He had to purge the ship of evil and get away. Whimpering but determined, he got out his flint and tinder and set to work.
The priest fought back with lightning and the fearsome Voice of the Kraken, but the party broke his concentration and forced him to take cover, while Fauna-plesiosaur ripped apart a fishman and devoured him. Kella leapt onto the reef, but as she scurried up toward the enemy she stepped in a giant clam--a giant clam containing an oddly-marked pearl--which clamped onto her foot, badly hampering her. Zetos found himself diving into the water, but emerged onto a coral outcropping, where he narrowly avoided stepping into another giant claim (with its own oddly marked pearl). Black tentacles sprang up and entwined Kella, Zetos and plesio-Fauna (Alric had remained on the ship), but the heroes quickly broke free and resumed their attacks.
As the fish men retreated, Eithas came back on deck and headed for the ship's boat. Alric realized Eithas was leaving the ship and said, rather wistfully, "Take me with you." The brushed past the steersman with some glib tale, clambered down into the boat and cut the line. Behind them, unnoticed, the first faint wisps of smoke rose from belowdecks.
And then huge tentacles curled up from the water and seized the ship. From the deeps an ancient monster arose, huge baleful eyes peering above the waves. Eithas gibbered and paddled faster (critfailed another Sanity roll). Zetos, already mounted on the plesiosaur, yelled at Kella to hurry. The sacred slayer quickly hacked through the prisoner's bonds, dragged him away from the pillars, and leapt onto Fauna's back. They fled toward shore.
Behind them, the ship's crew fought desperately but futilely; one by one, the monstrous tentacles plucked them from the deck and brought them to the beast's maw. The kraken then pulled Aodrenell onto the reef, stoving in her stern. From the shore, the party watched the wreck burn for two hours before the tide lifted the galley off the reef and she sank in the lagoon.

Encounter 1 was a Kraken Priest + 4 Kuo Toa Whips + 4 Kuo Toa + some giant clams which did no damage but required a DC DEX13 to avoid stepping in, or either a DC STR16 or doing 22hp to break out of.

Encounter 2 was a CR11 combination of a morkoth and a kraken; each tentacle can be attacked and requires 12 or 20hp to sever. Not that anyone actually made any attacks at all against the monster.