Skull and Shackles: Actual Play

GM: +Jeromy French
Players: +Douglas Cole +Matt Sutton +kung fu hillbilly +Joshua Taylor

We pretty much leaped directly into combat, crashing our ship into two others that were grappling together, a “fellow” pirate and their quarry.

We were able to pilot our ship unnoticed towards the two vessels, and slammed our ship into the smaller of the two, and the only one that was armed.

Pel started off the combat, quaffing an invisibility potion provided by Gimble ( +Joshua Taylor‘s character), who is our resident far-too-helpful alchemist (remember, this ability is the one that makes my inner destroyer of munchkin’s cry). Still, poof, I was gone and then I shot two arrows at the bad guys, Sneak Attack, and nailed him.

Malgrim ( +Matt Sutton)  I think cleaved two foes, Gimble set someone (or several someone’s) on fire, and then we saw that there were spellcasters involved on the other team. Alejandro ( +kung fu hillbilly ) rapiers him successfully and nails him with a dagger as well for about 12 points. Definitely got his attemtion.

Atori the magic watersnake misses; these guys have decent AC.

Gimble flings another firebomb at the guy who threw a ball of fire at him (not a fireball, but a ball of fire; definite difference). He hits, but some of the flame seems to actually absorb into his skin. Five other neighboring marines also are splashed with this flaming mix (alchemy bomb) and have to make DC 15 Reflex saves. At the end of the round, five foes are on fire, and no PCs were accidentally lit up. For Gimble, that’s a notable improvement.

Malgrim, who’s drunk a potion of bull strength, and usually operates under Enlarge Person, makes another good use of Reach and enlarge, does Great Cleave and kills two.

Pel looses two arrows at two targets, nearly gets a crit on one, but solid shots on both. He scores 14 points of Sneak Attack damage on each, killing both.

Malgrim draws fire from two marines, both of whom hit and land a total of 17 HP of damage. Two more run over to Alejandro, and another closes on Pel.

Bad guys’ attack. Atori the Wonder Worm gets slashed for 6 HP by a flaming marine. Marine8 attacks Pel for 5 HP. The twe marines facing Alejandro get all fancy against AC 19 and hit him for something like 16 HP.

Alejandro strikes back at one of his foes, hitting for 6 HP. Those on fire continue to burn for 7 HP each. Gimble himself casts Invisibility on Alejandro, and seeks the high ground (hey, it worked for Obi-Wan). Malgrim does his cuisinart impression, and misses both of his potential foes.

Pel tries to bluff his way into invisibility, rolls a 1 (still good for a 10), which means he is left to leap overboard (Pel swims like a fish), but takes 5 HP due to extreme bellyflopping, since Pel rolled 2 1’s in a row, this time for Acrobatics.

The two marines swing at the now-invisible (Concealed) Alejandro and miss. Two marines gang up on Atori the Wonder Worm and while the potential flanker misses (punk), the other hits for 6 HP.

Alejandro breaks his invisibility to hit a marine from the flank for 7 HP; Atori back-slithers and nails the marine-on-fire with 13 HP, killing him. Gimble casts Targeted Bomb Admixture on his stuff, which prevents them from getting all explody, and moves behind his quarry. Malgrim, however, Cleaves and kills two in a row again.

Pel climbs up the side of the ship with his Rope Master ability, and since he also has Fast Stealth, he rolls 31 for Stealth and becomes one with the background. This was basically the plan for leaping overboard. Turns out I do not swim like a fish; I misremembered something from Character Generation. Still, this is what I wanted. I’m all sneaky behind the captain, who seems pretty much like a badass.

Alejandro’s marine tries to slash at him, but drops his sword. (oops). Gimble’s foe chops at him, misses.

Alejandro swings and misses; Atori does another 13 HP of damage to his foe and flings the corpse overboard. Gimble drinks a potion of shield and runs through his foe’s space, and the attack of opportunity swings idly by. He throws a bomb directly on the captain, nailing her for 13 HP (and this will continue to burn for full damage rolls for three turns).

Pel sneaks over and fires two sneak attack arrows into the captain, both hit, and scores 34 HP. That’s all she wrote for the Captain, and the single most effective attack Pel’s ever thrown.

Someone comes up behind Alejandro and guts him for 10 HP, reducing him to -2 HP. The disarmed guy punches at Gimble (AC 25 now), provoking a decisively feeble return strike.

Atori eats the disarmed marine, while Gimble heals Alejandro with Cure Light Wounds, bringing him back to 9 HP and now suddenly hale and robust; Pel gives Alejandro another potion for another 8 HP.

The marine swings at Pel; he misses. Alejandro steps and casts Hold Person at the last man standing, which holds him successfully. We lash that marine to the (unburning) mast.

Most of the other ship’s cargo has already been transferred to the unburning ship by the pirates we just killed. So there are about 7-8 of the original sailors surived our attack, and another 14 from those we saved, plus about 25 on our own ship. Time to split crews. Pel and Alejandro crew the newly acquired vessel with the 14 we

The minimum crew for each ship to navigate is 20 people. So we’ve got 47 crew for the two ships, and can sail them to port. We find many barrels of liquor, rum, and sailing logs. Pel looks around and digs out a secret compartment in the Captain’s quarters, with some personal effects, one of which is a marriage licence, plus a few bars of gold and a bag of gems. The spellcasters have tatoos on them; magical glyphs of dragons and waves – so no real plunder there other than spell components.

We dig into the marriage licence a bit, out of curiousity. There’s something that’s a marriage of convenience where you contract as a legal marriage for a certain number of time; this was a method to create alliances between pirates. The captain’s log also mentioned replenishing supplies at Tidewater Rock; there was a rumor that it was impenetrable, but they thought there was a way to assail it.

We broke there, having determined to sail back to a “friendly,” or at least “not so hostile” port and use Gimble’s black market contacts to offload the ship. We’re also going to nab some of the ballistae from our new-found acquisition and make some firing ports in our cargo hold. Anachronistic is trumped by Awesome any day of the week.