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View Full Version : Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil [My Players Stay Out]



Jack Zander
2010-09-28, 11:44 PM
I'm thinking of running this massive adventure with my group. It looks like it might be 3.0 material though. Anything I should know beforehand in my conversions? For example, the bearded devil (I think) gained +2CR from the 3.0 to 3.5 versions. It would be handy to know of any "problem spots" such as that one I might run into. A lot of treasure changed prices. Should I just run with the good and the bad?

Thurbane
2010-09-28, 11:49 PM
I downloaded a 3.5 conversion for this, from Enworld I think. Have a look there, if you don't have any luck, I can upload it for you. :smallwink:

Shhalahr Windrider
2010-09-29, 05:16 AM
Yeah, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is 3.0, so there will be some rough spots that need conversion.

I’ve been running Return on PbP for a while. I’ve just been converting things on the fly to better incorporate a lot of expanded material. Even going so far to change certain NPCs’ classes if I think some of the newer ones fit the character better. If you’re gonna do anything like that, you’ll find any problem spots as they come up.

As for the treasure prices, I wouldn’t worry too much unless you are a stickler for exact Wealth By Level. In a campaign as big as Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, there’s going to be more than enough going on to even out the occasional spike or valley in power level.

Jack Zander
2010-09-29, 06:53 AM
I downloaded a 3.5 conversion for this, from Enworld I think. Have a look there, if you don't have any luck, I can upload it for you. :smallwink:

That would certainly be helpful. I registered a new account, got as far as the conversions forum, then tried to do a search and it said I didn't have a cool enough account or something. :smallsigh:

So... if you wouldn't mind linking me please... :smallredface:


I’ve been running Return on PbP for a while. I’ve just been converting things on the fly to better incorporate a lot of expanded material. Even going so far to change certain NPCs’ classes if I think some of the newer ones fit the character better. If you’re gonna do anything like that, you’ll find any problem spots as they come up.

Is handling the rough spots as they come up at the table (erm... desktop) a problem? I know some monsters in the MMII are just a pain to try to convert on the fly becuase of how different DR/magic works and whatnot.

hamlet
2010-09-29, 07:46 AM
You can search for the 3.5 conversion on Google and find it without any trouble. It's a very nice little conversion and includes a good bit of healthy advice on how to run things.

The module is . . . not bad . . . at least from the perspective of somebody more familiar with the Greyhawk materials. It's not tremendously great, but it's not horrible.

The biggest problem that I have with it is that, after a really decent start, it then morphs into one of the biggest dungeon crawls I've ever seen that somebody felt they could pull off with a straight face. Yes, the original Temple T1-4 had a big dungeon crawl, but it is dwarfed by the crater mines, and if you aren't really into that style of play, your players are going to get bored quickly. A way to remedy that might be to run the Return as a "tent pole" so to speak with a bit going on around the area that the players can use to take a break from things. Common use in the day was to have a dragon lurking about causing trouble that the players would have to deal with from time to time, or reinforcements on their way to the mines that the PC's can intercept.

Toliudar
2010-09-29, 01:01 PM
Yes, if the players really like politicking or dungeon crawling, the crater rim mines can be great. By the time they got through them, though, they really wanted the Outer Fane to be the capstone battle, and I had to truncate the rest of the module on the fly in order to wrap up in a couple of sessions.

Matthew
2010-09-29, 01:19 PM
Here is a link to the pdf conversion: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (Errata, FAQ, and v3.5 Conversion) (http://www.zansforcans.net/v35/RttToEE%20Errata%20and%20FAQ%20v3.5.pdf), and also to a word document conversion of the original module: T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil (http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachments/conversions/37580d1227114753-attempt-rebuild-conversion-library-please-upload-conversions-3-5-here-t1-4_temple_of_elemental_evil.doc).

Jack Zander
2010-09-29, 01:34 PM
Here is a link to the pdf conversion: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (Errata, FAQ, and v3.5 Conversion) (http://www.zansforcans.net/v35/RttToEE%20Errata%20and%20FAQ%20v3.5.pdf), and also to a word document conversion of the original module: T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil (http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachments/conversions/37580d1227114753-attempt-rebuild-conversion-library-please-upload-conversions-3-5-here-t1-4_temple_of_elemental_evil.doc).

Thanks again Matthew. You have been most helpful.

Matthew
2010-09-29, 02:24 PM
Happy to be of service. :smallwink:

arguskos
2010-09-29, 02:27 PM
Happy to be of service. :smallwink:
Are you ever NOT helpful and full of victory? Not sure that's ever happened. :smallwink:

Also, RttEE (man that's a rough acronym) is a serious grindfest in places. I'd suggest shortening the mines somewhat or do as the above posters recommend and include other subplots running around that serve as a break from the crawl of the mines.

Shhalahr Windrider
2010-09-29, 02:30 PM
Is handling the rough spots as they come up at the table (erm... desktop) a problem? I know some monsters in the MMII are just a pain to try to convert on the fly becuase of how different DR/magic works and whatnot.
Back in the day, Wizards released conversion PDFs for MMII and a number of other books on their website. Pretty useful tool. They’re still available, actually: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20030718a

Anyway, at the speed of play by post usually gives me at least a week to tweak things over. I’ve never really found 3.0->3.5 stuff very hard. Most of it is pretty obvious. Only trick is if you need to do a comprehensive conversion of a monster that had a weird skill or feat acquisition rate. But, hey, those usually had fewer feats and skills than 3.5, so it’s mostly adding stuff.

What I spend most of my time doing is adjusting ELs (I started the campaign at a higher level) and adding splatbook material. Did a total redesign of a couple NPCs who’s builds weren’t very good for what they were supposed to represent. But you really don’t need to do that if you don’t want to or have the time to do that, just remember it’s Craft (Alchemy) now, and just suffle those ranks in Scry off to a Knowledge skill, and you’ll be set.


Also, RttEE (man that's a rough acronym) is a serious grindfest in places. I'd suggest shortening the mines somewhat or do as the above posters recommend and include other subplots running around that serve as a break from the crawl of the mines.
Is anyone saying this taking into account that the adventure indicates that the mines will pretty much be abandoned completely if just two of the temple factions are eliminated?
Remember, the inhabitants do react to what’s going on around them. Most of the descriptions of who and what is located where should be considered worthless after the PCs infiltrate the place.

But, yeah, there are seeds in the book for a few grand subplots. Use those.

Jack Zander
2010-09-29, 02:43 PM
Yeah, reading through the module it doesn't seem like such a grindfest to me. It talks about how the temples actively react to threats and whatnot. So sure, the first time yo visit an area everyone is set up as described. But after you depart the inhabitants start to change their plans very quickly.

arguskos
2010-09-29, 02:52 PM
Is anyone saying this taking into account that the adventure indicates that the mines will pretty much be abandoned completely if just two of the temple factions are eliminated?
Remember, the inhabitants do react to what’s going on around them. Most of the descriptions of who and what is located where should be considered worthless after the PCs infiltrate the place.
I have considered that, but in many cases, PCs are just going to charge off towards the mines out of the gate, or that's what my PCs would do (based on prior experience with similar-ish plots), and what many other people's PCs would do (based on the MYRIAD posts on this forum about PCs doing stupid things or not thinking logically about situations or gathering intel or or or etcetcetc). :smallwink:

While yes, the mines can be utterly neutralized, that doesn't always happen, and if it doesn't, you need to take precautions to stop grindfests if your party isn't a big fan of those. That's all folks seem to be saying. :smallwink:

Jack Zander
2010-09-29, 03:00 PM
I have considered that, but in many cases, PCs are just going to charge off towards the mines out of the gate, or that's what my PCs would do (based on prior experience with similar-ish plots), and what many other people's PCs would do (based on the MYRIAD posts on this forum about PCs doing stupid things or not thinking logically about situations or gathering intel or or or etcetcetc). :smallwink:

While yes, the mines can be utterly neutralized, that doesn't always happen, and if it doesn't, you need to take precautions to stop grindfests if your party isn't a big fan of those. That's all folks seem to be saying. :smallwink:

My group likes to go nova and then go home, so I doubt they will keep rushing encounter after encounter unless they absolutely have to. I do appreciate the warnings though.

Shhalahr Windrider
2010-09-29, 03:28 PM
IWhile yes, the mines can be utterly neutralized, that doesn't always happen, and if it doesn't, you need to take precautions to stop grindfests if your party isn't a big fan of those. That's all folks seem to be saying. :smallwink:
Well, my comment is directed at people more concerned about how long it takes.
Are these people speaking from a game where the DM handed them, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water in all their entirety? ‘Cause that’s not quite how it should happen.

But, yeah, the PCs are in for a bloody time if they try to charge in recklessly.

Zherog
2010-09-29, 03:56 PM
I'm running this for my 3.5 group. I do pretty much what Shhalahr -- convert as I go. I leave a lot of stuff as-is, ignoring the differences between 3.0 and 3.5. Every now and then I rebuild an NPC because I want to use something other than what was in the core books, such as a new class or a feat chain or something.

I also rebuilt...

the blue dragon in the moat house and the green dragon in the crater ridge mines (sort of near the main gate) because dragon stats changed and I wanted to take advantage of some different stuff.

I'm probably going to end up rebuilding more NPCs as I go along. I really dislike having NPC stat blocks in the back of the book, away from the room(s) where they appear. So if I'm going to transfer the stats over to a character sheet, I may as well do it right and rebuild them.

Shhalahr Windrider
2010-09-29, 04:11 PM
I also rebuilt...

the blue dragon in the moat house and the green dragon in the crater ridge mines (sort of near the main gate) because dragon stats changed and I wanted to take advantage of some different stuff.
Heh. I rebuilt the first one, too…
But that was mostly because I didn’t like the placement of a blue dragon in such a wet environment. Yeah, it’s an intelligent creature and is free to move about as it sees fit. But if dragons prefer specific environments, then there’s probably a reason, right? Maybe I’m just overcompensating for the tendency of adventure writers to pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to the environment line where dragons are concerned. :smalltongue:

Matthew
2010-09-30, 10:44 AM
Are you ever NOT helpful and full of victory? Not sure that's ever happened. :smallwink:

Tough question; I suppose it must happen from time to time. :smallbiggrin:

ToEE can definitely turn into a bit of a grind. As others have said, the dungeon needs to be treated dynamically; I imagine RtToEE is similar.

Jack Zander
2010-09-30, 11:44 AM
I've only played the ToEE computer game, but to me it seems like you could join an element and treat the dungeon as a massively detailed town, doing quests and whatnot for one faction, and then if you wanted to take them all out, betray that one in the end. That method would allow you to rest within the dungeon itself and make it much less of a room to room crawl.

hamlet
2010-09-30, 12:50 PM
I've only played the ToEE computer game, but to me it seems like you could join an element and treat the dungeon as a massively detailed town, doing quests and whatnot for one faction, and then if you wanted to take them all out, betray that one in the end. That method would allow you to rest within the dungeon itself and make it much less of a room to room crawl.

That is how many people handled the original, though it is not without its perils of course.

Return could be handled in much the same way and, in fact, it is talked about in the module as I recal.

Shhalahr Windrider
2010-09-30, 03:35 PM
I've only played the ToEE computer game, but to me it seems like you could join an element and treat the dungeon as a massively detailed town, doing quests and whatnot for one faction, and then if you wanted to take them all out, betray that one in the end. That method would allow you to rest within the dungeon itself and make it much less of a room to room crawl.
Yeah, when I actually played it, we tried that technique. Didn’t last long, though. See, we had a paladin in the party…

Thurbane
2010-09-30, 05:12 PM
That is how many people handled the original, though it is not without its perils of course.
Yep, when my old group played it, we usually sided with one of the temples, then played them off against each other.

Thas was under one of the most awesome DMs ever....he was the improv king, and usually fleshed out the modules a lot more than was actually written. Happy days. :smallsmile:

Jack Zander
2010-10-04, 12:23 AM
So we ran the first session today. It was completely awesome.

Spoilered just in case nosy players are in my thread.


Graymayre shoo

So they met Burne, Elmo, and Jaroo at the Welcome Wench (Rufus was attending to business at the keep) and heard about the moathouse, but were told by all three that its been empty for years. That didn't stop them from wanting to check it out anyway. Halfmoon, the comical useless bard wanted to tag along and my players thought he was so aloof that they decided to let him come. Then Chatrilon interrupted and tried to sway them from going to the moathouse. He told them there was no adventure to be had there but there were some hobgoblin bandits in the old temple. They really liked that idea but insisted on at least giving the moathouse a look first. He offered to join them just in case he missed anything but they refused, as they already hired all the help they needed with Halfmoon. As they departed a few patrons and the owner of the tavern laughed at their companion, and lost a bit of respect for them.

Along the way they met the crazy old halfling who warned them about the dragon. They all laughed as everyone said the place was empty and this guy kept saying there were actually several bad things inside. Once they got there, the giant frog took the main fighter (a spike chain fighter1/wizard3) down while the rest of the party (a cleric and a halfling ranger who uses a sling from atop his riding dog companion) struggled to save him from it's jaws. They then saw the blue dragon (I decided to keep it as written) and they were extremely puzzled as to why it was in a swamp. They used diplomacy to talk it out of slaying them on the spot and ran away (dragons scare our group immensely). They ran back to town and traded their halfling (he had to leave early) for Chatrilon's help (waking him in the middle of the night). They intended to keep him unaware of the dragon but Halfmoon couldn't keep his mouth shut. He'd never fought a dragon before (or anything I don't think).

They take out the dragon fairly easily with the spike chain fighter tripping it every round, and Chatrilon deals the final blow with a sneak attack that shocks the party for the amount of damage he dealt (he failed to get a sneak attack before then). The party loots the bodies in the room while Halfmoon jumps up and down ecstatically over the fact that he helped take out a dragon and Chatrilon watches the cleric. After a half minute he asks the cleric for a healing, and thanks him with a death attack. Fortunately, he misses, and leaves Halfmoon confused. The cleric responds with a hold person, succeeds and they slap a pair of manacles on him (the cleric was well prepared) before he resists the spell. The fighter thinks he's a bandit and is probably with the people in the moathouse that the dragon bragged about. The cleric thinks that's stupid and believes Chatrilon's story that he is a greedy adventurer that thought he could get away with a full treasure share.

We ended there. Halfmoon leved up and I'm unsure what to do with him. Should he stay a bard (he's got 10 cha) and be nothing but comic relief, or should he level into something else and slowly turn into a seasoned adventurer? Also, what happens if they take Chatrilon back to town? My idea:

They bring him to Elmo. Elmo looks him up and asks him why he did what he did. He says he didn't and that the party robbed him of his possessions and share of the treasure (which they did) when they had him alone in the moathouse after slaying the dragon. Elmo will be distrubed, being more inclined to believe him than outsiders and maybe ask for Jaroo's wisdom in the matter. Jaroo will ask for a private word with him, get the scoop, and tell Elmo that his divinations confirm Chatrilon's story and that the players must be captured. Next chance the town gets, they will try to arrest the players for their "treachery" (including Halfmoon to everyone's surprise). If successful, everyone involved in the temple will have succeeded in not only ridding themselves of the dragon, but also those nosy adventurers (making the players huge Xanatos Suckers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnwittingPawn?from=Main.XanatosSucker)).

This kind of puts a big damper on the adventure, but is the most realistic outcome I can think of. Any ideas for how else the town might react or what do do with Halfmoon? Thanks.

Shhalahr Windrider
2010-10-04, 05:37 AM
We ended there. Halfmoon leved up and I'm unsure what to do with him. Should he stay a bard (he's got 10 cha) and be nothing but comic relief, or should he level into something else and slowly turn into a seasoned adventurer? Also, what happens if they take Chatrilon back to town? My idea:

They bring him to Elmo. Elmo looks him up and asks him why he did what he did. He says he didn't and that the party robbed him of his possessions and share of the treasure (which they did) when they had him alone in the moathouse after slaying the dragon. Elmo will be distrubed, being more inclined to believe him than outsiders and maybe ask for Jaroo's wisdom in the matter. Jaroo will ask for a private word with him, get the scoop, and tell Elmo that his divinations confirm Chatrilon's story and that the players must be captured. Next chance the town gets, they will try to arrest the players for their "treachery" (including Halfmoon to everyone's surprise). If successful, everyone involved in the temple will have succeeded in not only ridding themselves of the dragon, but also those nosy adventurers (making the players huge Xanatos Suckers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnwittingPawn?from=Main.XanatosSucker)).

This kind of puts a big damper on the adventure, but is the most realistic outcome I can think of. Any ideas for how else the town might react or what do do with Halfmoon? Thanks.

Well, I never got the impression that Chatrilon was that much less an outsider than the PCs are. He only moved into Hommlet not much further ahead of the rest of the cult. Plus, he’s not exactly a friendly fellow. I don’t see much reason for his account to be automatically more credible than the PCs.

Elmo also struck me as being responsible enough to have any prisoners interrogated as well as getting an account from the accuser. If he has “Jaroo” check out Chatrilon, he’d probably also want him to check out the PC’s and Halfmoon’s stories. If only because he is seasoned enough to understand that even Jaroo’s magic could be fooled. This would naturally give the PCs a chance to spot the impostor Jaroo.

As for Halfmoon, I found it odd that the module described him as an incompetent Performer while at the same time giving him 4 ranks in Perform—enough to fascinate a listener. That’s major competent. He just lacks natural talent and showmanship (Charisma 10). That said, I tend to see him as less incompetent as simply naive. As such, once he gets some adventuring experience, I think it’s definitely in line for his build to shift.

If you want Halfmoon to be useful, you have to do so, as well. At Charisma 10, he’s not gonna get much use out of the spell progression.

Jack Zander
2010-10-04, 07:01 AM
Well, I never got the impression that Chatrilon was that much less an outsider than the PCs are. He only moved into Hommlet not much further ahead of the rest of the cult. Plus, he’s not exactly a friendly fellow. I don’t see much reason for his account to be automatically more credible than the PCs.

Elmo also struck me as being responsible enough to have any prisoners interrogated as well as getting an account from the accuser. If he has “Jaroo” check out Chatrilon, he’d probably also want him to check out the PC’s and Halfmoon’s stories. If only because he is seasoned enough to understand that even Jaroo’s magic could be fooled. This would naturally give the PCs a chance to spot the impostor Jaroo.

As for Halfmoon, I found it odd that the module described him as an incompetent Performer while at the same time giving him 4 ranks in Perform—enough to fascinate a listener. That’s major competent. He just lacks natural talent and showmanship (Charisma 10). That said, I tend to see him as less incompetent as simply naive. As such, once he gets some adventuring experience, I think it’s definitely in line for his build to shift.

If you want Halfmoon to be useful, you have to do so, as well. At Charisma 10, he’s not gonna get much use out of the spell progression.

Thanks, that's a good idea that can keep the story from coming to an immediate halt.