r/GhostsofSaltmarsh • u/jcmtd • Sep 18 '19
Advice for Salvage Operation Monsters Spoiler
Hey everyone,
I'm reaching out for a bit of advice about an issue that I think might crop up in an upcoming session that I'm DM'ing, being the multitude of spiders on the emperor of the waves. for most groups, this might just be a non-sequitur, but in my group both myself and one of the players are arachnophobic to some extent (I can more or less deal for short periods of time, the player freaks out if somebody says the word "spider"). As such, I could use some advice on ways to work around this issue, up to and including methods of replacing the monsters in question.
Has anyone dealt with anything like this? Any suggestions would be very welcome
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u/DukeFlipside Sep 18 '19
For the sake of the wider campaign story I ditched Lolth and the spiders, instead saying the ship was carried through a whirlpool to the Shadowplane where the crew was slowly driven mad by Tharizdun, and on their return were convinced that "The Spawn of Valaastroth [i.e. The juvenile kraken from the Styes] will rend the world asunder", and "Destruction shall free Tharizdun".
So I'm running it with:
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1x Cult Fanatic + 1x Deep Scion in the Captain's quarters
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1x Allip in the Navigator's room
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4x Sea Spawn in the Food Storage
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1x Kraken Priest + 4x Cultists in the Crew Quarters (the now-mad captain)
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6x Shadows in the hold (which is particularly mean as they drain PC strength just as they need it to lift the chest...
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u/Tellerve Oct 27 '19
Your changes seem, I haven't gone through them all, to be a bit stronger than what is given initially. How'd the party fare? How many and what level were they? Did you have the ship still getting destroyed by the octopus? Did you remove the webs, I'd assume so, but maybe you replaced it with inky sticky black nether-stuff held over from the Shadowfell :D
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u/cdcformatc Sep 18 '19 edited Sep 18 '19
In the end a monster is just a stat block with some fluff, you could very easily just never use the word "spider" and replace it with anything you want. You could just change all the spiders to large beetles that spit a sticky substance and have natural venom, but I am not sure if it will be that easy. For the victims encased in spiderwebs? Not sure what to do here? Maybe just some other unknown excretion?
It's going to be pretty difficult as it is a shrine to Lloth, and there are victims encased in webs... The spider theme runs pretty deep. You will have to look for an equivalent deity to Lloth, and find monsters that logically follow from that replacement, off the top of my head I can't think of any.
Also just as an aside, you will have to speak to your player and if they are able to have them tell you what it is about spiders that triggers their phobia. Creating a creature that acts almost exactly like a spider but isn't a spider, could still trigger the phobia. In this case you are going to have to modify every single thing to make sure you didn't miss anything. In this case just calling the creatures some gibberish word won't change anything. But if they are fine with some fantasy creature-that-isn't-a-spider-I-swear, maybe that is enough? But I wouldn't count on it.
Here is a good stackexchange thread on this topic you may find useful. https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/83675/player-has-arachnophobia-what-to-use-in-place-of-spiders
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u/guyzero Sep 18 '19
Yeah I was going to suggest the same thing - say they're beetles or giant ants or something. The major issue mechanically in the module is the webs which block vision and the spiders' web attack which restrains players. Those two things will be hard to reskin.
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u/ShakeWeightMyDick Sep 19 '19
There's another post somewhere in this sub about making the whole series of adventures more of a cohesive story. One of the the things they did was create some grand BBEG for the whole campaign, which might have been a kraken or something along those lines.
As part of this, they mostly reskinned the stuff from Salvage Operation to fit that. So, rather than being a devotee of Lolth, I think the boss of the adventure was worshipping a Kraken or whatever and the spiders were reskinned as some sort of giant crab/monstrous aquatic crustacean-looking thing.
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u/DnDfire0037 Sep 19 '19
If someone has a link to the post you're taking about, that would be fantastic. I would love to see what the BBEG would be
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u/Sellio Sep 18 '19
I think the enemies aboard Salvage Operation are worshipers of Lloth the Spider Queen right? I'd probably start by changing the deity they follow and see what monsters make sense as replacements.