DMing Advice: The Age of Worms

[Element Zero]

Hello, Playground! I am in a bit of a quandry, and posting here has always helped in the past, so I thought it was a good idea to try again. My issue is as follows;

I am running the Age of Worms adventure path. We just finished out the Prince of Redhand and are about to begin the Library of Last Resort. The only issue is, my players have gained less experience than they should have up to this point, have only just this last session attained 15th level at the conclusion of the adventure. I know the reason for this is because they are a five man party rather than a four man.

My question is this; is there a decent prewritten module that can be inserted between these two adventures to allow them to rise to 16th level before getting into the meat of Library of Last Resort? Barring that, is there any other advice, encounter ideas or the like, you can come up with to try to get them back on track?

Any advice would be most appreciated.

[aeauseth]

I've never played/DMd the Age of Worms, so my advice will be generic.

The simple solution is to hand out XP as if it were a party of 4.

The solution I use is to have side missions based on random encounters. Perhaps instead of a single CR15 monstrous spider, turn it into a spider layer.

Maybe a random Storm Giant encounter, hints at a skirmish between the Storm Giant enclave and Fire Giants (or something else in the area).

Basically just turn small random encounters into mini-adventures. You have to be a bit creative. Have a small map showing giant outposts that they take from the first giant, etc.

Create an enemy of the party (or a single character) that attacks them, or that they come upon. This works well if a party member is evil, broken laws, or is of an unusual (or untrusted) race.

Pick a foe that the party failed to defeat (perhaps he escaped or was resurrected from his cult), he seeks revenge.

Pick an interesting piece of a characters backstory and make a mini adventure out of it. I had a druid character who's family was killed by hobgoblins, most of the town was destroyed, he managed to survive (that was HIS background). I enhanced it a bit and threw together that the nearby forests were infested with hobgoblins. Their leader was a warblade hobgoblin with a CR equal to the party +2. He had 20 commanders (CR party -2) and 100 CR 3's. It was a huge battle in the forest, with the hobgoblin encampment comprised of small caves in the forest and the large encampment on a rocky hill. I split the battle into 3 sections based on the parties actions. It was almost epic (although they were only level 8). They LOVED it and it was simple for me, only 5 basic foes to keep track of. The commanders were a mix of cleric/sorcerer/trippers. I was going to allow the party to take the warblade leader captive and force him to train the party (allow warblades as a class), but they killed him instead.

[Garktz]

Actually, it might be easier than you think, as you might already know, when they get to the island where the "library" is hidden, they have to get trough a portal to go to the actuall library, this portal can lead to a dungeon and at the end of this dungeon, is the exit to the library...

make it big and add some stuff already beaten by kethos and leave some nasty traps/monsters hidden in there, or just this dungeon restarts when somebody enters it.....

[dysprosium]

I have DMed the Age of Worms and I agree with the above posters.

Just add more encounters on the Island itself, I believe it even mentions that you can add encounters and the ones listed are the "bare bones" encounters that need to be there.

[Diarmuid]

Out of curiosity, why do you see this as a problem?

They have more people, the tradeoff to having more people is splitting the XP pool more ways but you get more action economy and role diversity.

[Element Zero]

Out of curiosity, why do you see this as a problem?

They have more people, the tradeoff to having more people is splitting the XP pool more ways but you get more action economy and role diversity.

Technically speaking, I suppose it's not really a problem. However, this is the first game I've run that looks like it's going to make it all the way to the end, and the first game for my players where they've made it this far as well. I just want to make sure that they make it all the way to level 20, preferably 21.

[Garktz]

Technically speaking, I suppose it's not really a problem. However, this is the first game I've run that looks like it's going to make it all the way to the end, and the first game for my players where they've made it this far as well. I just want to make sure that they make it all the way to level 20, preferably 21.



they will be lvl 20 for sure, even they might get to 21 without much problems...

im running this same ap, we´re a group of 4 chars 2 of us are 18 and the other 2 are 19 and all of us about to level up and we are half way trough 10th adventure and we have 2 left to go....
so yeah, im pretty sure we would get to at least 22 so your group shold reach to 20/21

[Diarmuid]

I just think that its going to cause a lot more bookeepping for you as they get higher. The inherent balancing splitting the XP more ways introduces balances out the more difficult encounters in the book. If you've got 5 lvl 18's going against what should be hard for 4 18's, it could really make the "climactic" encounters in the module a bit of a let down for your players.

Dont let your artificial "it would be neat for everyone to get to level 20" outweigh the "everyone should be having a lot of fun". If you're going to give them extra encounters, make sure you're appropriately beefing up the important encounters so they dont lose their impact.

[Element Zero]

Dont let your artificial "it would be neat for everyone to get to level 20" outweigh the "everyone should be having a lot of fun". If you're going to give them extra encounters, make sure you're appropriately beefing up the important encounters so they dont lose their impact.

An excellent point. :smallsmile: I will make it a point to do so, should I add any new encounters.

Thanks, everyone for the excellent advice. This is the reason I frequent this site.