Think I have an idea but it needs refining

[Ferronach]

I am currently working on a swashbuckling adventure of proportions that the party will never guess. Unfortunately, I have some holes in/concerns about the story and would appreciate any ideas that you may have.

I am thinking that the campaign will start off around Character level 13-14 - please feel free to comment on this if you think it needs changing for a specific reason

The gist of what I have so far is as follows:

Spoiler: Story so Far

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1. 1 on 1 session with each player to somehow get them onto a merchant ship - will vary based on each character type/personality
2. Ship will encounter a few sea based encounters with various options - not everything will be a winnable fight
3. On the ship is an NPC who seems a little different and some higher spots checks will hint at his true nature - he is an old gold dragon in human form who has wandered the lands for a few centuries learning all sorts of things. He has a spell on him that causes him extreme pain and can potentially kill him if he uses magic so he is somewhat trapped in his current form (more on this later)
4. depending on how the party handles certain encounters they will end up either being attacked by a leviathan which will smash the ship to pieces, or s massive storm of magical nature will capsize the shim and break it apart.
5. The will be teleported to an island (that does not show up on any maps) along with a random number of crew and other passengers by the dragon NPC who they find writhing in agony on the beach.
6. He will be mumbling something about "that 'jerk' and his stupid curse" and "didn't think it would still work, especially at this distance" and "can't use any powers or he will know"
7. The party will lose most of their items unless they had them on them or have some other way of retrieving them from the shipwreck (they don't know where it is in relation to them) but the NPC has a bag of holding with various items that should suit the party's needs. He will give them these items if they help him bring the other people to a village on the island and consider entering his employment afterwards
8. Getting to the village will be a classic escort mission with a few wildmen and jungle creatures thrown at the party. Other then their natures and the NPC, there is no real incentive to keep everyone else alive (hooray for options).
9. The party will get to the village guided by the NPC who seems to be getting weaker as time passes.
10. The villagers will help the wounded and feed the party. When asked for a way off the island, the villages will mention a legend of a ship in a mountain.
11. At this point the NPC reveals that he wants the party to help him get the ship, which was one of his ancestors and was stolen a long time ago - this is the employment that he was hoping to pay for with the weapons
12. Hopefully the party will accept :S and head out despite warning from the villagers
13. More jungle slogging to get to the mountain...
14. Inside the mountain I would like to have a bunch of undead pirates and living pirates of long lived races with booby-traps.
15. To make matters worse there will be devils and demons who are looking for the ship for some reason (more on this later). They will be fighting each other as well as the "pirates"
16. When the party gets to the ship, it is unlike anything they have ever seen as it is actually an airship (of sorts) and is immensely large
17. The crew of the ship will be battling a bunch of devils and demons. The captain of the ship notices the party and shouts to the NPC, asking if this is his doing. The NPC says no but he is powerless to help because of the captain's curse. The captain responds that he to is powerless because of the NPC's curse.
18. It is now revealed that the NPC was the captain of the ship and the crew mutinied against him with the current captain. The villagers are descendants of the crew who went with the NPC but stayed on the island. Out of spite the NPC cursed with a spell that will turn the crew undead if they stray too far from the ship or die while within that radius in addition to sabotaging the ship. The new captain placed the no magic curse on the NPC that also saps his strength while he is on the island and cast a spell that caused any ship that the NPC was on to encounter the magic storm if it came too close to the island. The NPC used an item that created a custom anti-magic effect (to suit my needs) on the ship.
19. While the two captains argue over who's fault it is, I hope that the party convince them to release their curses on each other as the devil and demon armies are about to mount a huge assault on the ship.
20. The mutinous captain will be a red dragon who was raised as the gold's brother. He constantly battles his evil nature but it got the better of him and caused him to mutiny. I hope to have them patch up relations and if the party decides it, have them reveal that the ship is capable of trans-planar flight and be willing to take them on as crew or take them wherever they wish.

I guess that what I need help with most is, do devils and demons fit the theme? Would they want to control a ship capable to travelling between planes?

I have purposely weakened the NPC to prevent him from becoming a DMPC but will have him step in if things look incredibly bad. Will his presence be too much of a railroad?

If all goes according to plan and the party have access to planar travels and want me to continue, should I? I don't really have any ideas past that point. The players have experienced interest in becoming pirates... The gold dragon may object to piracy though.

[Mr Adventurer]

I don't think you need both devils and demons.

Demons are likely to want to just kill everyone and destroy the ship (though not necessarily). If not, it's probably because there's a high ranking demon who wants the ship for some reason, keeping them in line.

I wouldn't expect most of the challenges you've outlined to slow a 13-14th level party down at all.

[Ferronach]

Thanks for the response.
Ditch the demons, keep the devils and maybe drop the party level to 10-12?

[Strigon]

Or buff up the monsters.
Quite frankly, we don't know much aside from the themes of the monsters, so it's difficult to say.
For example, you've said "sea monsters", "demons", "devils", and "pirates". What sea monsters? There's a leviathan; what else?
Which demons? Which devils? What classes are the pirates, and how many levels do they have? Also, what's the terrain like? Sure, a high-level party can easily warp the terrain around them, but that still takes time.

There's no reason these challenges couldn't slow down or even stop this group of PC's, but you'll have to plan it out carefully. Set up ambushes, difficult terrain, and the like.

Now, there are two (fairly large) concerns I'd like to point out.
1) What's to stop them from teleporting out? Why would they stay on a random island and fight their way to a ship that may or may not be there, when they're well past the levels where they need mundane transportation? Sure, you could say they're being blocked somehow, but that ties in with my next concern.
2) Why are you taking their loot away? Especially at higher levels, loot is as much of a part of the character as the actual abilities are. I understand what's happening, but randomly taking away their equipment and handing out a new set isn't a good idea. It's very railroady, and even if your players don't mind that, it's still punishing them for no good reason.

So, now, how would I fix those? For the first one, simply give them a reason not to teleport out. Either they'd have to leave something behind, or there's something on the island worth fighting for. You could always say that teleporting simply doesn't work, but it's always better to find another way.
For the second issue, it's also quite simple: Have them play out the shipwreck. Have them make skill checks, make important decisions, and fight for their way out. If you really think it's best that they don't have all their gear, have each mistake or failed skill check cost them some loot.

For example...
You: "The leviathan begins tilting the boat on its side; what do you do?"
Captain: "I try to steer into the leviathan and coast over top of it." (Rolls) "13!"
You: "You turn into the beast, but you most certainly don't coast over it; you slam directly into it, slamming into the great monster's mouth and lurching the whole ship. Roll reflex to avoid falling to the ground; anyone who fails loses grip of what they were holding, and it's washed overboard."

[Ferronach]

Or buff up the monsters.
Quite frankly, we don't know much aside from the themes of the monsters, so it's difficult to say.
For example, you've said "sea monsters", "demons", "devils", and "pirates". What sea monsters? There's a leviathan; what else?
Which demons? Which devils? What classes are the pirates, and how many levels do they have? Also, what's the terrain like? Sure, a high-level party can easily warp the terrain around them, but that still takes time.

There's no reason these challenges couldn't slow down or even stop this group of PC's, but you'll have to plan it out carefully. Set up ambushes, difficult terrain, and the like.

Encounters that I have planned during the initial sea voyage are:
CR 15 Gargantuan Sea Drake (Fiend Folio 147) - this is more of an RP encounter unless they attack it.
CR 12 Kraken (MM1 p 162)
CR 25 Leviathan (MM2 p139-40) - more of a plot thing than an encounter that they have a hope of winning

Have not gotten around to the devils and such as of yet.
I intend to have the pirates be seasoned veterans that are accustomed to close combat in smaller areas. They will know the tunnels very well and use that to their advantage in combination with their traps.
Most of the combat on the island that is intended to be challenging will be conducted in tunnels and occasionally caverns so the party will have to plan accordingly.

My group only has a one or two seasoned players with the rest being 1-3 campaigns in. Only one of the players even knows what optimization is so I will ask him to work with the others to ensure party balance and I will assist where/if needed.

Now, there are two (fairly large) concerns I'd like to point out.
1) What's to stop them from teleporting out? Why would they stay on a random island and fight their way to a ship that may or may not be there, when they're well past the levels where they need mundane transportation? Sure, you could say they're being blocked somehow, but that ties in with my next concern.
2) Why are you taking their loot away? Especially at higher levels, loot is as much of a part of the character as the actual abilities are. I understand what's happening, but randomly taking away their equipment and handing out a new set isn't a good idea. It's very railroady, and even if your players don't mind that, it's still punishing them for no good reason.

So, now, how would I fix those? For the first one, simply give them a reason not to teleport out. Either they'd have to leave something behind, or there's something on the island worth fighting for. You could always say that teleporting simply doesn't work, but it's always better to find another way.
For the second issue, it's also quite simple: Have them play out the shipwreck. Have them make skill checks, make important decisions, and fight for their way out. If you really think it's best that they don't have all their gear, have each mistake or failed skill check cost them some loot.

For example...
You: "The leviathan begins tilting the boat on its side; what do you do?"
Captain: "I try to steer into the leviathan and coast over top of it." (Rolls) "13!"
You: "You turn into the beast, but you most certainly don't coast over it; you slam directly into it, slamming into the great monster's mouth and lurching the whole ship. Roll reflex to avoid falling to the ground; anyone who fails loses grip of what they were holding, and it's washed overboard."

[/QUOTE]
Good points. I didn't even think about them being able to teleport off. I could argue that the anti-magic effect will prohibit that but hope that the NPC can convince them to hang around.

As for the gear, they shouldn't lose much because there will be an encounter right before the leviathan shows up and they will only lose what they left in their rooms. The NPC will have a comparable replacement for anything that they lose and may have a better item depending on how I roll for the loot generation.
The main reason for the loss of items is that most of my players will point out that the ship sank and they teleported off so anything not teleported will have gone down with the ship except for their gear somehow. It is not intended to punish them but to add realism for those who require it.

[MisterKaws]

You have to lower the party level quite a bit, otherwise, they could simply put a telekinetic sphere and call it a day, since neither the Leviathan, nor its aspect(which is somehow stronger than the original), can do anything about a flying sphere of indestructible force.

[Ferronach]

Telekinetic sphere?
Sorry I usually play bruisers as opposed to casters.

[Mr Adventurer]

Telekinetic Sphere is an 8th level spell, which the players wouldn't have had access to even under the original, higher level, plan.

[MisterKaws]

Telekinetic Sphere is an 8th level spell, which the players wouldn't have had access to even under the original, higher level, plan.

Oops, guess I mistook it with Forcecage or something, though they still can just put an open Forcecage and fire freely at everything outside, since the Leviathan can't hit inside the cage.

[Strigon]

Oops, guess I mistook it with Forcecage or something, though they still can just put an open Forcecage and fire freely at everything outside, since the Leviathan can't hit inside the cage.

The can, but the leviathan's meant to sink the ship, not kill them.
They can't really fit the whole ship in a forcecage, so it would still go down. No problems there.

[Mr Adventurer]

You have to lower the party level quite a bit, otherwise, they could simply put a telekinetic sphere and call it a day, since neither the Leviathan, nor its aspect(which is somehow stronger than the original), can do anything about a flying sphere of indestructible force.

Also, the Leviathan is so big it doesn't have stats (if it wakes up, it smashes its way out of the planet itself), so I'm not sure what you mean about its aspects being stronger.

[Ferronach]

The leviathan is just a really big whale. I believe that you are thinking of the Terrasque?

Edit: Thank-you for the clarification of the telekinetic sphere.

[MisterKaws]

Also, the Leviathan is so big it doesn't have stats (if it wakes up, it smashes its way out of the planet itself), so I'm not sure what you mean about its aspects being stronger.

It does have stats, and it's weaker than its own aspect...

[Mr Adventurer]

It does have stats, and it's weaker than its own aspect...

What page of Elder Evils are you looking at for that, please? I just took a quick look and couldn't see anything. Also, page 67:

The Leviathan itself is so huge that normal statistics are
meaningless, and it is impossible for anything short of a god’s
avatar to effectively fi ght it directly.

[MisterKaws]

What page of Elder Evils are you looking at for that, please? I just took a quick look and couldn't see anything. Also, page 67:

MM2, it's just a slightly big whale, with a not deserved CR 25, as it's weaker than its own aspect.

[Mr Adventurer]

MM2, it's just a slightly big whale, with a not deserved CR 25, as it's weaker than its own aspect.

That is not the same creature.

[Ferronach]

That is the Leviathan I was talking about (the one in MM2) there is one in the elder evils too?

[MisterKaws]

That is the Leviathan I was talking about (the one in MM2) there is one in the elder evils too?

Nah, just its avatar, though it's legitimately scarier than the original.

[Mr Adventurer]

The aspects present in Elder Evils are not aspects of the MM2 creature. That they share a name is coincidence.