Live streamed and uploaded every week on YouTube. Join us live on Fridays at 7:30 pm Pacific/10:30 pm Eastern!
Original character art by Jimmy McClure.
Music by Kevin MacLeod.
Chat with us in the Official Discord Server.
Support the channel via Patreon!
Previously on Call from the Deep
Starring:Gotwald Ironhorn, level 7 minotaur Rune Knight Fighter
Mac, level 7 tortle Drakewarden Ranger
Savra Akkedis, level 7 lizardfolk School of Necromancy Wizard
Torrel, level 7 kenku Fathomless Warlock Pact of the Amulet/Fighter
The battle in the barracks was on (area 48), and serves as a fine example for a ridiculously over-tuned encounter that takes way too long.
As written in “The Final Enemy” module from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, there are four sahuagin coral smashers (CR 1), one sahuagin champion (CR 3), and one sahuagin wave shaper (CR 5). But we also include the two deep divers (CR 4) in the nearby armory (area 49).
That’s a deadly encounter for a party of four level 7 PCs, and represents about half their daily budget of adventuring XP.
In other words, this had the makings of a huge boss battle, not a seemingly random encounter.
And to make matters worse, we were down a player this session!
Needless to say, I had to make a lot of adjustments to course-correct.
Sahuagin Stronghold maps from Bear Gardner: https://www.patreon.com/beargardner
This first change was to hand-wave Chris’ character Gotwald. Per our rules, a missing player means a mysteriously disappeared PC.
It’s very awkward in the middle of a fight, but I have Gotwald grab one of the coral smashers and disappear into the kelp forest. One of the deep divers also goes after him, effectively taking out those combatants.
During last session, the wave shaper swam up the stairs to warn the rest of the sahuagin, prompting Mac to swim after him (and take some nasty hits from attacks of opportunity).
Borgas swims after him, eager to help.
The wave shaper uses his whirlpool feature on the stairs, but Borgas and Mac make the save to avoid getting sucked into the vortex.
Torrel, Savra, and Kysh the triton deal with the remaining two coral smashers (one was killed last session), the champion, and the other emerging deep diver.
Savra’s Nathair’s mischief spell knocks some of them out, and Torrel makes great use of his eldritch blast to make sure they get knocked into the area of effect.
Then he casts hunger of Hadar to add another giant zone of badness!
Both AOE spells effectively shut down the sahuagin. The deep diver has one chance to use his light ability to charm and incapacitate everyone in the room, but all six PCs, summons, and allies make the dang WIS save — even both of Savra’s zombies with their -2 modifier!
Unfortunately, the dark void spell also prevents the party from swimming up the stairs and helping Mac and Borgas.
Mac slices the wave shaper with a critical hit as he tries to swim further down the corridor. The wave shaper uses his shark telepathy to summon the sharks from the nearby shark pen (area 39).
The DM once again adjusts on the fly, reducing the number of armored shell sharks from 10 (good freaking lord) to three, and delaying their turns until the next round.
On Mac’s turn, he pulls a Gotwald and grapples the sahuagin, dragging him back toward the stairs and hitting him with another scimitar attack, putting the wave shaper at around half health.
But no one expects the wave shaper to hit like a bloody truck. Or maybe a submarine in this case.
Although he only has a +4 to hit, the wave shaper deals 2d8+1 slashing damage plus 3d8 cold damage on a hit, and has multiattack. That’s an average of 23 damage with one regular attack!
In a single strike, the sahuagin dealt 32 damage to Mac, downing the shocked tortle.
Now we have an unconscious PC next to a powerful sahuagin, with three shell sharks (CR 2) barreling down on them, and no allies in sight.
Except Borgas.
Borgas yells in fury and floats between Mac’s body and the enemies. He stands firm as the sharks come at him, and a miraculously timed critical hit downs the wounded sahuagin (with copious HP fudging from the DM).
Borgas’ heroics grant Cheese the time to swim through the hunger of Hadar and up the stairs (the whirlpool also disappears when the wave shaper goes down), and in the next round, administer a healing potion to his Ranger master.
The shell sharks rip through Borgas and Cheese, however, while Mac does his best to float like a corpse.
The rest of the party finally finishes off the sahuagin downstairs, drop the AOE spells, and race up the stairs.
Savra unleashes another shatter spell and Torrel fires off eldritch blasts.
Kysh moves in to tank some hits against the vicious shell sharks, who often and purposefully forget about their multiattack, blood frenzy, and magic resistance traits.
This is not a boss fight, damn it!
Mac heroically grabs Borgas’ dying body and swims back to his allies, plopping him inside Savra’s cube of force, while the rest of the party finishes off the sharks.
He revives Borgas with a potion, rips off the coral armor from a shell shark, and bestows it upon the brave little catfish man.
The DM is touched, and Borgas is too.
The party swiftly moves into the seaweed covered shark pen room for a 5-minute short rest (another house rule!) to recuperate their strength. Savra uses Arcane Recovery, while Mac uses his last spell slot to resummon Cheese.
The battle is finally over, and they managed not to alarm the entire dungeon. Yet.
They’ve left behind several corpses, Mac’s arena shenanigans got them noticed earlier, and there’s a loose giant seahorse being returned to the dungeon cells.
The entire stronghold is going to be on high alert very soon, and they’re still deep in the middle of it.
MVPC – Mac
Live post-session discussion:
Live streamed and uploaded every week on YouTube. Join us live on Fridays at 7:30 pm Pacific/10:30 pm Eastern!
Support my channel via Patreon!
RogueWatson 