Is the Expedition to the demonweb pits good?

[Pigkappa]

I'm going to start DMing for a new group in a month or so. We'll start with Expedition to castle Ravenloft, since I know that adventure very well and I like it. However, we are probably going to play for about 1 year, so I need to plan something more.

Out of the other Expeditions, the one to the demonweb pits has caught my interest. It starts from level 9 and that is nice, since Ravenloft ends right there. I'm looking for opinions from someone who played it, DMed it, or just read it all. I'm also open to other adventure advices, too (no "City of the spider queen" though since I'm currently playing in that module).

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I vaguely recall hearing that the Demonweb Pits have an issue with some of the more social-orientated encounters/monsters being significantly high on the CR scale, relative to the party, but I don't know first hand.

[CockroachTeaParty]

I'm currently playing in a play-by-post of this module. Given the slowness of PBP, we probably haven't gotten very far. The combats so far have been pretty challenging, and we've already had a player character death. Fortunately, I'm playing a cleric, so we're backtracking to raise our friend.

I... don't really have any major opinions on it so far. It's nice that it starts at level 9, as these boards seem to be currently flooded with level 1 adventures.

So... so far, so good? I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to playing, however.

[MammonAzrael]

I'm in the same game as CTP, and so far so good. Its gotten pretty far (at least, for my PBP experience), and is continuing to hold interest. The combats have certainly been challenging, but not blatantly unbalanced.

[Eldariel]

I've played through it with a 2-person party. It wasn't very challenging (outside few changes our DM made in it).

Spoilered analysis:
Pros:
- I absolutely love the setting. Planescape happens to be one of my favorite settings ever and it uses Sigil as the base of operations.
- There's a lot of non-combat stuff in it. Overall, the variety of things you need to accomplish is quite high and there's a lot of stuff to keep players interested.
- Most of the opponents you face are somewhat respectable. That is, they tend to have spellcasting prowess and sufficient capabilities to challenge melee types (just about everyone on the Planes tends to have at least some degree of spellcasting prowess)
- It goes into some detail about the areas that most of the 3.X setting books neglect. It does this quite well. Some good stuff about the Abyss too.

Cons:
- The relics you're sent to find suck. Hard. Basically, one is a stupid Bastard Sword whose greatest value is being sellable for a massive chunk of gold, and the other is a Weapon of Legacy Bow which sucks. Our party had an Ultimate Magus and a Dervish; nobody could use those even if we wanted to (no, we didn't). Homebrew something worth the players' while in their stead. Maybe some staff for mages too (something that helps overcome SR and like restricts the creatures' dimensional movement) and some actually potent, shaping weapon that does not remain useless 'cause it's the wrong weapon (seriously, who the hell uses Bastard Swords?)
- Some parts of it are quite confusing and poorly thoughtout. For example, a place needs a non-chaotic non-evil party member to enter IIRC. We had none; had to Dominate a random to get that job done. And if you see through the Rule of Three's disguise immediately, well, all the scripted discussions are kinda weird. Overall, you gotta be able to think on your feet quite a bit in it.
- It's event-based. It's specifically designed to be different in that it's event-based. I absolutely loathe event-based games. Everything happens just when players get there, not a moment sooner or later. Removes all sense of urgency and the possibility of missing something important. Everything waits. World revolves around PCs. My personal simulationist gaming style does not fit with that at all. Our DM had to work hard to make it flow a bit more naturally without the PCs being the catalysts at every point.
- It does underestimate especially the magic PCs of those levels can bring to bear. Like I said, with the Ultimate Magus we got through it quite reasonably in spite of being a two-person party. We got lots of good information, a subservient Glabrezu and all the good stuff with just few spells. Most challenging fights we had were both homebrewed (one a level 15 Lich and another a Divine Companion Swiftblade in the 15s too). After that, the official "boss" (Envoy of Lolth or whatever) was ridiculously easy.

[Pigkappa]

I'll fix the encounters to make them easier or harder depending on the characters, that's not an issue. I'm going to do that in Ravenloft too.

I always wondered why they put some crappy magic items in important plot points; I'll certainly make the relics stronger if they suck.



- It's event-based. It's specifically designed to be different in that it's event-based. I absolutely loathe event-based games. Everything happens just when players get there, not a moment sooner or later. Removes all sense of urgency and the possibility of missing something important. Everything waits. World revolves around PCs. My personal simulationist gaming style does not fit with that at all. Our DM had to work hard to make it flow a bit more naturally without the PCs being the catalysts at every point.

Can you elaborate? Is this easy, hard or impossible to fix?

[Eldariel]

Can you elaborate? Is this easy, hard or impossible to fix?

For many players, it might not even require fixing. Some players don't mind at all that the plot waits for the players. That said, we aren't like that so the DM had to kinda wing it. It's not...hard to make the events more time- than place-based. It might work even better if players simply don't know it's event-based; then you might not even need to do anything as the players will kinda hurry themselves for you.

[Pigkappa]

What's the point of the encounter with the Cranium Rats?

They're Evil, and they don't know anything about the PCs. Why should they warn them about Rule-Of-Three? They don't know the PCs are going to talk to him, and even if they did, I can't see any good reason for them to care.

Also, if the PCs don't trust Rule-Of-Three, this 230 pages adventure will be over in 1 session.

[Eldariel]

What's the point of the encounter with the Cranium Rats?

They're Evil, and they don't know anything about the PCs. Why should they warn them about Rule-Of-Three? They don't know the PCs are going to talk to him, and even if they did, I can't see any good reason for them to care.

Also, if the PCs don't trust Rule-Of-Three, this 230 pages adventure will be over in 1 session.

Meh, the PCs kinda need to go with the Rule-Of-Three if they wanna stop Lolth; he's the only lead the have (and they came to Sigil to deal with that particular issue). I guess it's kinda given they won't really care much for him but it's a mutually beneficial business venture.

The Cranium Rats...well, they're psionic, they know more than one'd think. They're also a hivemind. On the planes, evil things often combat other evil things rather regularly. They probably have a bone to pick with the Envoy of Lolth or whatever.

Really, they're just there to drive home what kind of a place the City of Doors is.

[begooler]

I can't say anything about it as far as running the module, but I have been cracking open that book for a few monsters and rules and such.
It has a treasure of a monster, the Carnevus demon. I can't decide if its woefully under CR'd or if it just represents what a CR 9 demon should be.

They have a bunch of spell-like abilities, and what's great about their SLA's is that each Carnevus has a unique set (You choose one of about 3 options for each ability it has.)
Options include great things like hmm... spider climb, fire ball, lesser globe of invulnerability, BLACK TENTACLES.

Oh, and they get to choose between using an SLA twice in a round (while this is beastly as far as action economy goes, it does drain their resources a lot faster) or always having a counterspell readied.
Always having a counterspell readied!

When armed, they do massive amounts of damage. Unarmed, they use their improved disarm to steal the PC's weapons and then use them to do massive amounts of damage.

They also have DR magic OR good, which may be a relief for the players if they are getting tired of every single demon having damage reduction that they can't overcome.

[Olo Demonsbane]

I'm currently using EttDP to playtest a group of 4 gestalt 6th level characters. I've doubled the number of monsters in each encounter and then added in two more monsters/groups of monsters, just to make things interesting. I planned that whenever a character would die in an encounter, I would level them up and then restart the encounter.

Unfortunately, they haven't died yet. They're about to face the Envoy(s) of Lolth, along with two hammers, a Nalfeshnee, and 6 Vrocks.

Don't get me wrong, I love the flavour, and they do crunch relatively well (Vrocks are so much fun :smallbiggrin:). But they still can't challenge a relatively optimized party without significant buffing up.

[Pigkappa]

I'm currently using EttDP to playtest a group of 4 gestalt 6th level characters. I've doubled the number of monsters in each encounter and then added in two more monsters/groups of monsters, just to make things interesting. I planned that whenever a character would die in an encounter, I would level them up and then restart the encounter.

Unfortunately, they haven't died yet. They're about to face the Envoy(s) of Lolth, along with two hammers, a Nalfeshnee, and 6 Vrocks.

Don't get me wrong, I love the flavour, and they do crunch relatively well (Vrocks are so much fun :smallbiggrin:). But they still can't challenge a relatively optimized party without significant buffing up.

Two cranium rats swarms should be devastating... Since the PCs are likely to be in a cone in that encounter, each PC might have to roll twice a Will save (DC 23) or be stunned for 3d4 rounds. Each swarm can also use Fireball for 10d6 area damage, which is a quite a lot of damage at level 6. Did you use the swarm at full potential?




Regarding Rule-Of-Three (isn't the name ridiculous?!): I can't think of a good reasons for the PCs to work with him if they know who he is (Knowledge(Planes) DC 25). Good PCs working with the cambion son of an extremely Evil demon lord? Trusting in him just because he might have them do something against Lolth in a long time?

[Jair Barik]

The main problem with the cranium rats is that as written they can very easily be either a TPK or non encounter.

Example.
Running two groups through this encounter group one asked some questions but in general were slightly bemused by the voices they heard. Once they stopped they moved on and headed for the oarsman.

Group two however shad someone cast detect magic. As per the encounter description upon the party drawing weapons or casting a spell the swarm attacks.
Surprise round-Slow hits 2 party members
Round 1, swarm wins initiative-Activates stunning cone with all but 2 members failing their saves, the rest of the party being effectively removed from the encounter.
Party round 1-Party surrenders.

Now as per the module the rats should not accept surrender but instead fight till the party leave the alley but I decided they would instead accept surrender in return for some gold to add to their stash.

Really the problem is that the combination of the swarm effectively getting a surprise round in most cases, plus the likelyhood of at least 1 round of confusion as the party tries to work out what it is they are fighting it can be very easy for the swarm to rip the party to pieces with debuffs before switching up to damaging spells. The DC's on many of their abilities are pretty high as well making them a potentially lethal encounter if the PC's inadvertantly trigger combat (not surprising they are a MM 2 critter).