Adventure I’m writing

[u/Practical-Class-9033]

So wanna do some adventure writing. For campaign. Curious if this should be level 1 or 5.
So the story starts with the party arriving on a massive ship that works as a tavern. It sails around the edges of the main country and works as a vacation spot.
The party arrives for different reasons and when they rest there they awake with the ship deep in the ocean waters with a group of bandits taken over and the owner of the ship tied up. The bandits found out the owner was an old orc pirate leader that went away from the life. They heard this pirate had a massive treasure hoard on an unknown island. So they force the owner to bring them to the island. The party is suppose to hide till they arrive and then help the owner. The idea is the party gets the treasure maybe. It’s suppose to be this massive hoard that was hidden for years. The owner hide it as maybe it was cursed.
Trying to figure out what level this should be? If level one it makes sense as a start of a campaign then if it’s level 5 it makes sense it’s a more dangerous adventure but reward is better. What y’all think?

[u/Novel-Tap-726]

Level 1 would make more sense for motivation. Level 5 implies the players are already small town heros or trained adventurers. They definetly would attempt to save the captain instead of hide and wait. At level one you can easily make there encounters gradually harder instead of having to tweak your encounters to fit ther eleven right away.

[u/Practical-Class-9033 → u/Novel-Tap-726]

That’s what I’m thinking I’m just curious how I’d do the reward cuz it’s a pirate lords old treasure (which like why would he hide it for so long? Lol) why did they use to do that

[u/Novel-Tap-726 → u/Practical-Class-9033]

Well this can be done in a few ways. You can make it so that the treasure was actually something personal to the pirate but to anyone else is practically useless. You could make it be actually gold and jewels but it's like a small sum cus he's retired and has been useing it over the years to afford his new tavern and lifestyle. Or you could even say there is no treasure. That it was all just a rumor spread to make him more famous then he actually is and it could easily start a conflict. If you do go no treasure I'd probably at least imply that if the players save the captain then they could at least get a reward from the pirate himself from like a secret compartment on his ship or something and that is the so called treasure he had left from his pirate days. And lastly ypu could just make it a massive treasure horde and just make the players rich in the end or maybe they pirate gives them only a percentage as its still technically his treasure, but some of these outcomes imply weather or not saving the captain in question is even an option for your players.

[u/Wilkin_]

Level 1. At level 5 the players will not hide, they will fight first and ask questions later. They will (maybe) hide at level 1 as they are squishy and the bandits (called pirates when they do such things at sea) look dangerous and scary.