Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk - concerns

[Izar Goldbranch]

Hey guys.

Im getting set to run a group of friends through "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk."

In reading through the book, though, I am getting the impression that the encounters seem invariably underpowered for the ELs, especially for a group of experienced and tactical players.

Am I imagining things or has this been a problem for groups running it?

If there has been issues, what have DMs done to alleviate the problem?

Thanks in advance

[Bayonet Priest]

Hey guys.

Im getting set to run a group of friends through "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk."

In reading through the book, though, I am getting the impression that the encounters seem invariably underpowered for the ELs, especially for a group of experienced and tactical players.

Am I imagining things or has this been a problem for groups running it?

If there has been issues, what have DMs done to alleviate the problem?

Thanks in advance

I ran first third or so of it for some friends at college and they certainly seemed to enjoy it. That said most of the early fights were very easy for them.

I had a rather well put together archer fighter with a bunch of different material arrows. He swiss cheesed anything he came across, rarely missing because of his very high to hit and just ignoring DR with those adamantine arrows. That poor golem never new what hit it. The library beholder was an interesting fight, he was dangerous but they managed to flank him and put him down rather quickly. Once again Archer (I just called him Archer because I couldn't remember his elf name) slaughtered the guy. I was a bit worried about the Black Pudding because I remember it being capable of dangerous damage but they just annihilated it.

That all changed when the reached the Mind Flayer, stupid rogue went scouting off alone and got hit by a mindblast. The party was able to sprint in and drive it off before it pulled out his brain but because it had Greater Invisibility the couldn't murder stomp it like before. I honestly could have wiped the party here if I played for keeps. I could have just mindblasted every round until they were all stunned and the extracted their brains. AOE spells were ineffective against the guy because of his crazy spell resistance, something like 29 I think. The Wizard saved the day after casting See Invisibility and using Alacritous Cogitation for Assay Spell Resistance. This allowed him to murder the Illithid with spells. The party still lost a dwarf fighter though.

The next couple fights were pretty easy and that is as far as they got. I'm apparently really bad at estimating what makes a good challenge at high levels, with the mindflayer being the only thing I was rightly fearful of, but the next fights had me worried. Especially the one with the Cleric of Iuz at the shattered temple. She looks like a monster herself but she also has 4 of these archer demon things that will ventilate anything that appears out of cover.

All this was about my players though, none of them are any good at optimizing and they weren't really good at tactical combat either. The Archer turned out so scary compared to the others because I had helped the player build the character, I'm nothing compared to some of the optimizers on this forum but I did succeed in turning that fighter into one of my biggest headaches as a DM. And that was in a party with a Wizard and Cleric.

[Allanimal]

I am DMing it right now, and I have had to optimize some encounters. Generally, I tweak the feats and spell selection of the opponents, sometimes up the CR (advance monsters HD or additional class levels), and once or twice I have swapped out monster types for something more challenging but still fitting to the theme.

This isn't a problem with the adventure itself, I would do the same for any module I was running to tailor it to the group I was DMing.

My problem with the module is the pacing. As described in the book, some events happen days or weeks apart. That is ok for downtime between sessions, but when we are all together at the table in real life, days of in-game downtime are rare - we like to be actively persuing some goal. So, in general, I have compressed the time line of the events of the story so that there is no so much waiting between key elements in the main and side quests.

[killem2]

My problem with the module is the pacing. As described in the book, some events happen days or weeks apart. That is ok for downtime between sessions, but when we are all together at the table in real life, days of in-game downtime are rare - we like to be actively persuing some goal. So, in general, I have compressed the time line of the events of the story so that there is no so much waiting between key elements in the main and side quests.


This interests me. My group will more than likely only meet once a month and it will be for for really long sessions. Would this module be pretty good for that in terms of pacing?

[Allanimal]

This interests me. My group will more than likely only meet once a month and it will be for for really long sessions. Would this module be pretty good for that in terms of pacing?

That is pretty much my group's schedule. The campaign is set up to have long-ish dungeon crawls separated by open-ended time in the city of Greyhawk. There are several side quests involving various people and places in the city. The city is huge, but most of it is left to the DM to flesh out. Similarly, the dungeons under castle Greyhawk are vast, but only the relevant portions are detailed in the book. There are suggestions for how to fill in the gaps if the PCs leave the detailed part of the dungeons, but much less guidance for the city.

The events happening in the background, if taken as written, can easily cover a month or more of in-game time, but as I mentioned above, there was too much lag between the PCs accomplishing a goal & finding the path to the next part of the main adventure. So I pulled in the timeline when it seemed that the players were getting bored with exploring the city. The longish delays also, to me at least, reduced the sense of urgency in some cases, so by bringing the
NPCs to the characters after a day or two instead of after a week and a half, for example, kept the players feeling like they have a job to do. But I think it is something that any DM will have to adapt to the players and the group's dynamic.

I made the mistake of opening up too many of the side quest possibilities at one time during some downtime in the city, and the little thngs started to distract the PCs from the main goal. Probably something a more experienced DM would have handled better...

Overall, I think it is a decent adventure. Very rich in the traditional Greyhawk mythology and plenty of appearances from persons of note. I don't really like the book's format, however. Too many related things spread out all over the book.

[Alabenson]

Having ran through this module some time ago, I would like to point out that several of the fights can be trivialized if your group has a ready method of dealing with illusions/invisibility. (My group had a psiwar who made a point of keeping steadfast perception up almost continously).

[Allanimal]

Some of the encounters have borked ELs listed in the book. So run through a sanity check first before just throwing it out there.

As alabenson said above, some can be trivial depending on the party. Some are quite difficult.

For example, the "Haunted House" encounter, one of the optional side encounters that may happen in the city of Greyhawk, the players come up against 3 Evolved Greater Shadows. The book listed the CR of each as 6 and the total EL as 10, which is totally incorrect. It should be EL 12 at least. I would even go so far to say that it is even higher due to circumstances - the shadows attack when the characters are sleeping and spread out in several rooms of the house. And, in my case, they had just finished a tough fight and were very low on spells. I hadn't checked the encounter level before and the shadows killed one PC before the others who had the means to deal well with incorporeals and ability damage could prepare.