I finally found this, and wondered why a 3-8 quest fighting kobold pirates wasn't more popular.
Turns out, because it could really do with some more loot. The loot on the first part is pretty rubbish as shops only buy jewellery for 5gp.
The fact it has a second optional part is cool, but the fact you can (apparently) fail it in a boring way by not having EFUSS Sailing is not.
It's kind of sad that when offered the chance to
ram and board a pirate admiral's ship you're encouraged to say "No". Because the sailing trip is great fun to roleplay, but all it gave us was the loot off a couple of waves of kobolds. It's not worth doing, especially as if it goes wrong, it effectively retcons your victory for the quest.
- IC: But it's a kobold, why should we trust it?
- OC: But if it randomly fails we lose our pay and end XP
I basically did the quest out an OC motivation of BUT BOARDING ACTION :D.
Suggestions:
- Change the second part quest giver to a more sympathetic NPC, such as an escaped gnome prisoner.
- Rather than it having a random chance of "The ship hits a rock, haha you lose", have EFUSS sailing checks for avoiding attacks and other problems, or getting to the end boss faster. That way there's no way to fail the second part short of "actually losing the boss fight"
- Improve the loot to include some more thematic stuff or potions, and maybe up the difficulty. It's currently both much easier than Cave of the Grandfathers, and really unrewarding. So even though the level cap's higher, I'd never seen anyone do it.
I'm bumping this as we failed the 2nd bit on a PC with 13 EFUSS sailing, so maxed out and loot. I have no idea how that's meant to be either fun, or an incentive to do the cool extra quest. Why gamble the end XP and money?
Also why does it cost you the end XP and money if you fail? I'm never sure. If you leave, you leave that kobold alive anyway. It's not like if you fail it resurrects all the lizards you killed. You've taken out all the local pirates who offered any resistance, then teamed up with a kobold traitor to kill even more pirates. It's a net plus on the Dead Pirate Meter.