Fishmen Plan

The Crew of the Queen Robyn is a player group operating on The Moonshaes, with plot centered on seafaring intrigue in the service of Queen Alicia Kendrick. The premise of the campaign is that all of the player characters are privateers, and joining the campaign involves being recruited to serve on The Queen Robyn.

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Xanthea
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Fishmen Plan

Post by Xanthea »

Okay. Killing fishmen.

As far as Nioniel understands it, having little knowledge of sharks, less of fishmen, and not having been present for the chat with the fishelf... throwing a bunch of bloody stuff in the water will attract sharks, and the fishmen will follow the sharks.

If that's the case then she suggests scoping out the surrounding coastline for some suitable terrain to lay a trap. Preferably some sort of natural bay with a small mouth that isn't particularly deep. Attract sharks, fishmen swim in, we roll boulders and/or metal nets into the mouth of the bay to block the escape and then have fun shooting fish in a barrel. If the natural bay has a steep cliff line around it to make it harder for them to charge out at us, so much the better.
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Rumple C »

Vug concedes that's actually a good plan. He also points out that arrows won't do shit when fired into the water.
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kiyoti
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by kiyoti »

Sweets likes the plan as well. A few weighted cast nets may be a good investment. Might be a good idea to see if our new fish-elf friend will be joining us in the fight.
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Zelknolf
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Zelknolf »

I'm just gonna set out this link here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm

The stuff about aquatic environments would probably ICly be common sense to a bunch of sea dogs like you guys, and might assist in planning.


Most of that is scripted (not the fire magic part, though; I'll have to like... pause... and ask for dice... if you start flinging fireballs into water), so can count on it applying.
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Xanthea
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Xanthea »

Are there specialty weapons available? Say, for example, harpoons?

Can we locate a suitable bay in the general area? Something with a mouth that can be blocked off, but big enough to hold a fair sized number of water based creatures.
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Zelknolf »

Anyone with ranks in Survival or Knowledge (Geography)?


// Edit: Also, ballistae are as close as you'll get to a harpoon gun. They're currently set to not apply penalties for moving through water, as anything close enough to the surface to be represented in the area wouldn't be a significant impediment to ammunition that size. Though you wouldn't be able to shoot deep into water with them.
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Xanthea
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Xanthea »

+7 Survival. +8 if we assume I got my hands on the +1 ring before doing this.
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kiyoti
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by kiyoti »

Count on getting the ring. I can be around most EST evenings between 8:30-11:ish if you or anyone else wants to grab lootz.
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Zelknolf »

Survival: 11 + 8 = 19 vs. multiple tiers of success.

Yeah, you can find a harbor. It's not quite ideal-- entrance is a bit wide for your tastes; take a pretty big net to seal it off. Maybe two. Definitely the huge sort that the big fishing boats use, in any case. But you know enough about catching fish to know where you can find calm/enclosed enough water to put a boat on it an drop a line, and it's thus better than nothing.

(this doesn't stop others from also having checks, of course; in matters like "knowing stuff" or "finding stuff" the party gets to use the best result)
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Xanthea
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Xanthea »

Alright... plan.

Have the ship within sailing distance of the mouth of the bay, but out of sight. We toss bait in the water, sharks come in, fishmen come in. We sail the boat around in front of the mouth, drop several large heavy duty metal nets down to seal the critters in and then use the ballista to start shooting them.

At that point presumably their only options are trying to lift the nets up enough to get under them, or boarding the ship. We ask our fishelf pal and her friends(?) for whatever help she can offer from the safe side of the metal nets, jabbing them through the links with a spear or whatever else it is she does. Meanwhile we stand by to resist boarding. I'm assuming that we'll get some sort of bonuses if we're only facing them with one side of the ship and are prepared to stab them repeatedly in the head with long spears and shoot them as they try to climb the side of the ship.

Ideally the confusion of the trap and our superior ground lets us wipe them out.

And one last detail, Nioniel mentions they have shamans in their ranks and they should be the first target for the ballista in the opening salvos if they're at all possible to spot.
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Zelknolf »

So... I have to derive costs here

But given that 50 ft. of hemp rope is 1 gold and 25 sq feet of hemp netting is 4 gold
And then given that 10 ft of chain is 30 gold and therefore 50 ft. of chain is 150 gold, we'd expect that 25 sq ft of metal netting would be about 600 gold.

I imagine that price point could be cut down by making the metal thinner and more wire like, but I suspect that this suggestion exists because you want it to be hard to cut the net (and, of course, less material is easier to cut, and we're still looking at a price point orders of magnitude higher than beating and twisting plant fibers)
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Xanthea
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Xanthea »

How much is labour and how much is raw material? Presumably it could be reused afterwards.
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Zelknolf »

1/3 of a mundane item's price is in raw materials.

And of course 25 sq. feet is only 5'x5', and probably 100-300x to little to seal up a whole harbor. You could probably throw a grand at it and have enough rope net, and try to section off surviving parts for resale after, but metal would be very hard to make happen.
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Xanthea
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Xanthea »

Okay. Any chance of narrowing the mouth of the bay to a more manageable size by hauling some large boulders over and rolling them down into the water beforehand?
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Re: Fishmen Plan

Post by Zelknolf »

It's possible. I'm not sure if it would be as popular or as timely as you like, as it would reduce the ability of boats to get into/out of the habor and it would be a lot of rock to move, but that's basically building a super-low-quality dyke with a big hole in the middle of it; I could probably math out how many man-hours and what animals you'd need to make it happen. Likely several weeks, if the party would still be interested in those sorts of timescales.
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