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Aharon
2009-08-04, 01:06 PM
Hi

I'm DMing 3.5 right now. I'm not all too experienced (played 2nd ed as DM, but nobody really cared about the rules, played 3rd ed the same way for a while. My new players prefer another style of play, though). That's why prep time is rather long for me, which sucks.
I thought about using published adventures instead, but when I looked at them (3.0, a friend didn't need them anymore and gave them to me), I noticed that they feature many many ...many battle encounters. Is there a way to deal with that without losing suspension of disbelief (15 minute workday never was part of my self-made adventures, and I think I would have a hard time accepting it)?

Neither the players nor I am very experienced at optimization, but I followed the BG and 339 boards for a while while I wasn't able to actively play, so I have some rough idea what to do and gave them optimizing advice (Warblade instead of fighter, dread necro, sorcerer, cleric, take grease instead of magic missile - the basic stuff). The cleric won't play tier one, he explicitly stated he wants to be a healbot/deal with undead, so he will be about on par with the others.

Still, I don't see how the recommended number of encounters/day mesh with the number of encounters in the published adventures I have access to (for example Speaker in Dreams, Deep Horizon, City of the Spider Queen).

Best regards and thanks for your input!

Keld Denar
2009-08-04, 01:32 PM
Its my experience with published adventures that a little optimization goes a LONG way. If your party brings something like a Warblade to the table, be prepared to pretty much double HP values given. Some really optimized parties can pretty much finish a goodly number of published adventures without resting once.

Since your party isn't going to be overly optimized, the best advice I can give is sound things out. If your party trashes the first encounter or two without a scratch, consider adding a monster or 2, or increasing HP a bit, or similar. If they are just barely scraping by, help them understand tactics, give them ample oportunity to rest, and maybe lower DCs and HPs a little.

Just because its published doesn't mean you can't exercise your DMs license.