PDA

View Full Version : Opinions on altering premade adventures.



herrhauptmann
2009-06-05, 10:37 AM
Heya,
I'm currently DMing for a group of 5 2nd level adventurers. The party consists of a monk/sorc and a druid (both have sacred vow), a goblin wilderness rogue (Evil, keeps trying to circumvent various rules like poison making), a wilder (neraphim I think), and a favored soul.

Right now, I'm sticking to premade adventures until I can make up something neat on my own.

Last week I ran 'Something's Cooking in the Kitchen' complete with Calzone golem and 2 quasits instead of 1.
And since that ran quickly, I threw an extra adventure on the end, 'kill 2 ogres.' The party locked the ogres down with an entangle, then convinced them to get up and move (the elf cleric also made very good friends with the ogres in that time). I gave the ogres a 5% chance every 10 minutes of walking time to break the word, because they were being led by the guy who dealt a good bit of damage to them.
Eventually, they did, mostly because the party stated they were going to lead the ogres a good 4 hours away. In the fight, the druid lost his wolf, got knocked to 1 hitpoint, the monk/sorc went to -1, the cleric died (his new character is the favored soul), while the wilder and rogue separately led the ogres in different directions and escaped.
All in all, the ogre fight was more entertaining for the party.


Anyway, here's the thing.
I want to make my next 2 adventures The Burning Plague and A Dark and Stormy Knight as they're making their way home. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20030530b&page=1).
The problem with these, is that neither one is currently built for a 5 man 2nd level party. So I'd like to get opinions on the changes I've listed.
FIRST

The burning plague, has like 3 kobold encounters (There is also a chance of contracting the burning plague which eats your Con score).
1 in a dining room,
1 in a storeroom (both are just with 4 or 5 regular kobolds),
The third in a big room with kobolds up a cliff and cover for PC's (a shaman and several regular kobolds). And the final fight is a lvl 4 or 5 orc cleric, with a con score of 6.
What would everyone recommend I do to make these a little tougher?
I'm thinking just increase the number of kobolds for the first 2 fights, for the kobold shaman, include a CR 2 creature, maybe a giant insect.
For the orc cleric, probably just add in 2 regular orcs. Maybe 3 with con scores <=8.

Second
A dark and stormy knight. They'll be taking cover in a ruined keep.
-First fight is a bunch of normal rats, probably remove that.
-Second is a couple of hobgoblins. I think I'll make them second level fighters.
-Third is a medium webshooting spider. Probably make it large webshooting.
-4th fight is a lesser vargouille. Lesser? Does that make it weaker than a regular one? If so, I'll just take the Monstermanual standard vargouille.
-The last fight was originally a bugbear zombie. Since zombies are a bit ridiculous, and don't really fit some of the fluff text of the adventure in my opinion, I'm going to change him to a human Vampire warrior. And make him a CR5. So that should be a what? 3 levels if he's a PC class, or 4 levels if he's an NPC class?
If I remember right, monsters with a PC class have a 1 higher CR than monsters with NPC classes.


So, what does everyone think?

Coidzor
2009-06-05, 11:12 AM
Burning Plague: Well, since the adventurers are more powerful, Gruumsh might only have punished the cleric to a less severe extent(though unlikely)/only the initial con damage is there so that the cleric is less gimped. Perhaps tweak the undead/kobolds so that they maximize/have upped tactics/ability to transmit the plague.

You can tweak the kobolds and possibly up their traps, make them less likely to be willing to parley or possibly more willing if you want the party to have a ready hook for getting involved with some of Tucker's Kobolds later on down the line.

Say, in your CR 2 or so creature along with the main body of kobolds which are up in the ledge... well, the creature is a bit of a "tank"/ambusher that is hiding in the stalagtites of the cavern and attempts to flank the PCs while they engage with the kobolds from a distance using the cave formations as cover.

Another thing you could do is have the kobolds have some traps set up that intentionally try to infect intruders with their plague (say, even before their alarm trap have a trap that splashes some of their filth [to the PCs: You don't want to know how kobold bodies made this] as a contact for the Burning Plague [ and maybe even filth fever :P]) or have the sicker kobolds with the plague decide to sacrifice themselves to grapple/infect a PC to try to help out the less sick/uninfected members of the band.

Since kobolds definitely believe the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the individual/few. Though they don't like killing one another which is why rather than killing the sick to prevent infection after it got bad they just sent off the sicker kobolds from the healthier ones. And of course, making the band larger never hurts, since they did slaughter the miners(though I think we only found like... 5 human bodies, hardly a mining team for something that size. Maybe I'm forgetting the fluff about how the mine was being looked after/the timeline of the plague hitting the area though.)

Having the orc cleric have buddies along never hurts, since the orc cleric when I faced him with a 6-PC party (got split into two thanks to use of Darkness, the plaguewater dividing the room in two, and a summoned lemure devil/demon/thing) wasn't much of a threat on his own if we actually managed to bring our force to bear against him, but was pretty dangerous when we were distracted by multiple concerns. In my parties case we had to pull an unconscious/bleeeding out half-orc barbarian that managed to jump on top of his pillar only to be hit with a readied action attack spell full force that knocked her to 0/negatives(at least it didn't get all of us since it was AoE somehow I think) and that was after we got split in half due to a darkness spell which the summoned lemure lurked at the edge of and tried to drag anyone who passed by into melee with it/into the sphere. So, having, say two orc warriors wouldn't be too much, I think, especially since they'd be effected by the plague as well. Or if you'd like a big boss fight having him keep back his main undead force with him and leaving basically sentinels instead of the ambush at the corpse-room.

And of course, a larger force of kobolds descending upon the mine means that more of them have died from the plague(probably) and so more zombies of the kobold variety if not humie as well.

Or maybe he has a small contingent of orc skeletons from his lost tribe that he dug up and animated to join in with his vengeance (possibly he's actually been stoking himself up to do what Gruumsh wants and personally kill the humies but has been favoring caution and building up his strength from these kobolds first.) Who knows, he might be impatient to get out of the mine, but is still smart enough to know that the more kobolds die from the plague and bolster his ranks as zombies, the less work he'll have to do in just frightening them off so he doesn't waste effort and can easily just kill the humans. Perhaps if the party manages to get the kobolds to agree to leave but doesn't investigate the last of the mine, he'll emerge with his motley crew and if they're staying up on the kobold rocks they'll catch him by surprise.

Dark and Stormy Knight: I'm not sure but perhaps using a less gimped vargouille and adding in maybe a tougher undead form for the final fight (say a ghoul [maybe with a class level or two] leading some tweaked eaten-clean animated skeletons) or making the "boss" a wight instead of a... I think just a tough bugbear zombie? Or was the boss the giant spider? I forget...x.x

Hmm, vampire could work, and might make more sense than a goblinoid tomb as the adventure suggests if I"m remembering correctly... Although depending upon their level, a CR 4 vampire spawn might be enough for them for now.

Depending upon the adventurers' natural curiousity, for the initial encounter you might have either a group of skeletons assault the party from multiple directions through the three collapsing doors or have the lesser vargouille fly out from its opened corridor and have them encounter a regular vargouille if they go down the corridor it came from.

Duke of URL
2009-06-05, 11:15 AM
If I remember right, monsters with a PC class have a 1 higher CR than monsters with NPC classes

Maybe. It depends on if the class is "associated" -- i.e., does it play to their natural stengths/abilities? If yes, than 1 PC level = +1 CR, otherwise 1 PC level = +1/2 CR until PC levels exceed hit die, then it's +1/level after that.

And, of course, CR is always a "rule of thumb" anyway.

AslanCross
2009-06-05, 06:28 PM
Maybe. It depends on if the class is "associated" -- i.e., does it play to their natural stengths/abilities? If yes, than 1 PC level = +1 CR, otherwise 1 PC level = +1/2 CR until PC levels exceed hit die, then it's +1/level after that.

And, of course, CR is always a "rule of thumb" anyway.

Correct.
-An ogre with fighter or barbarian levels is in his element; thus, every level gives a +1 CR.

-An ogre with levels in sorcerer, on the other hand, only gets +1 CR for every two levels until his class levels exceed his racial hit dice. (As a rule, casting classes are only considered associated if they advance innate racial casting. See: Rakshasa)

-NPC class levels (warrior/adept/expert) are always unassociated.

herrhauptmann
2009-06-06, 01:49 AM
Alright, thanks for the help guys.

Coidzor
2009-06-06, 01:57 AM
Well you were more than welcome to it. :smallsmile: Make sure to let us know what you do choose to do and how it goes over well though! haha

We're always eager to hear about misadventures and sundry around here :smallbiggrin:

herrhauptmann
2009-06-06, 02:46 AM
Well for dark and stormy,
They're fighting a 4th level fighter vampire. Spiked chain, tripping. I gave him combat reflexes before checking bonus feats, so the party makes out slightly better that way. 22 str.
He was a mid level lordling who's family was killed when his keep was taken by orcs while he was on campaign. He returned home, killed the orcs, but was himself fatally wounded. His keep was repaired, turned into a mausoleum, and he was interred with his family there. The funeral procession was a mile long, and included such notables as Elminster and the lords of waterdeep as pallbearers.
That was a long time ago. When the seal on the crypts was disturbed, the dying curse of the orc chief/cleric was woken, and he animated from the dead with his family. He as a vampire, and his eldest son (age 15) as a medium zombie, wife and 2 small daughters as skeletons.
He wants to be left alone, and will go to great lengths to protect the bodies of his family. So should his family be turned and destroyed, expect the cleric to die. :) On the plus side, it's entirely possible for them to talk their way out of this and return them to their eternal rest. For which they'll gain XP.

herrhauptmann
2009-06-08, 12:26 AM
Well, we only managed to complete the burning plague saturday.
I added a bunch of kobolds to the first fight, which still went easily.
The avoided teh second by accident. Talked their way through the third,so I gave them XP for peacably negotiating a truce between kobolds and town until the kobolds could leave.
Fourth fight, against zombies was a pain in the ass because only 1 carried a slashing weapon. I didn't add anything to that.
Fifth fight, against the cleric and 2 warriors, each had a potion of invisibility. The party ranger spent more time arguing with me about the orcs hiding from him (he was rolling search checks, not spot,and they were invisible) and finding him (trying to hide against a flat wall in a room with no real terrain), than the party spent actually trying to kill the 2 warriors. Against the cleric hmself, readied actions were his bane. Even when I gave him additional hit points so he didn't get crushed in the first round.


All in all, changes were either not needed or ineffectual. But we've got a good group so they had fun regardless

BooNL
2009-06-08, 03:21 AM
I my experience adding extra monsters can only create one of the following situations:

A: the creatures are still too weak and the pc's end up killing them easily.

B: there's too many opponents and the pc's have no chance of winning.

I find it easier to change the situation where the encounter takes place. For example:

You have your standard dungeon room with standard dungeon treasure and your standard goblins guarding it. Now, if they're just standing around in a clear, square room the gobbo's will be slaughtered. However, if there's a ledge overlooking the room with goblin archers behind cover...
Or maybe the goblins have user activated traps, like a spike shooting out of the wall when hitting a switch.

These things can challenge the players, without changing the initial CR of the encounter.