Temple of Elemental Evil

[Caelestion]

Other than the epic campaign I mentioned last month, I'm also running Monte Cook's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. (I don't know about other groups, but we like to have several campaigns on the go at any one time.)

This isn't a problem as such, but due to the players tending to rest up a lot (and wading through reinforcements), taking on the fully advanced Howler (at great personal risk and several near-deaths) etc., they've managed to become 7th/8th by the time they've dealt with Hommlet, the Moathouse, Ruined Temple and map A of the Crater Ridge Mines (expected level 4-6 or so).

Now I can either increase the opposition appropriately, somewhat exacerbating the uneveness of the "expected level" problem or I can continue to give the written encounters, which I fully expect the party to defeat and gain fairly small amounts of xp (which is self-regulating, but fairly tedious as level advancement goes).

I had thought about adding a fifth party member (an NPC fighter-type) to take up the slack with the party ranger, but that will slow down the levelling even more and they're not exactly bad in combat as it is. (I had to physically ban the cleric from taking Divine Power under threat of all the cleric enemies using it on him!)

What are people's thoughts on this issue?

[Kel_Arath]

just take the encounters written and double it (or appropriate to level additions), so it will have the same feel, but be more difficult

[Zherog]

Other than the epic campaign I mentioned last month, I'm also running Monte Cook's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. (I don't know about other groups, but we like to have several campaigns on the go at any one time.)

This isn't a problem as such, but due to the players tending to rest up a lot (and wading through reinforcements), taking on the fully advanced Howler (at great personal risk and several near-deaths) etc., they've managed to become 7th/8th by the time they've dealt with Hommlet, the Moathouse, Ruined Temple and map A of the Crater Ridge Mines (expected level 4-6 or so).

I found two things about that adventure. Well, OK, three:

1) My PCs levelled really fast. Really fast. I don't know if the adventure assumes you won't kill everybody, or if it assumes item creation going on, or what. But yeah - they gained a ton of XP.

2) They gained a ton of items, too. Even mundane stuff has a value. They took everything they could carry, and then stashed stuff in places so they could come back for it. They purchased bags of holding and eventually a portable hole to carry it all. They ended up having to go to different cities to sell stuff - but the wizard had teleport, so that wasn't a big deal.

Those two items combined to make an "arms race." I opted to increase the power of the bad guys. I pain-stakingly rebuilt every NPC in the adventure to make them more tough, to take advantage of stuff in splat books, and so on. I re-picked spells for all the casters; I advanced animals and beasts and things that go bump in the night so their CR was higher. And so on. And my players still pretty easily plowed through things.

And that comes to the final observation:

3) The crater ridge mines have the potential to get crazy boring for your players. It quickly becomes redundant - walk down the corridor, find some stuff, kill it, loot it, head for the next corridor.

So, with my personal observations on the table (proverbially speaking), here's my advice:

Leave things almost exactly as written. Tweak a bad guy or two (mostly the bosses), just so they realize it's a dangerous place.

However, you should also make sure you play up the plot of the crater ridge mines. Have the different factions fighting each other; have the PCs find prisoners from Nulb or even Hommlet somewhere in the mines - and therefore they have to get the person out and to safety. Hedrick (am I remembering the dude's name right?) has two assassins in the inner temple. Use them. Don't worry about killing a PC - they can either have the cleric cast raise dead or bring in a new PC.

Basically, let XP and treasure even themselves out, and make sure you work to keep the overall adventure interesting - especially a feeling of danger. Keep them on their toes, and don't let things fall into any sort of a routine. The crater ridge mines are huge, and it's easy to have an adventure bog down.

[the_tick_rules]

i've been to that temple, it smells funny.

[TomTheRat]

I've been playing in a ToEE game, and I don't honestly see how you could run the game without repeatedly killing your PCs. XP loss from new characters (coming at lowest level -1) or Raise Deading (level -1) will keep the obscene XP gain of the campaign down.

If you play the mobs smart, xp attrition will take care of the rest.

[Zherog]

I've been playing in a ToEE game, and I don't honestly see how you could run the game without repeatedly killing your PCs. XP loss from new characters (coming at lowest level -1) or Raise Deading (level -1) will keep the obscene XP gain of the campaign down.

If you play the mobs smart, xp attrition will take care of the rest.

That's actually a good point, too. There's several places - especially in the Crater Ridge Mine - where PCs are likely to get in over their head.

Although in my RttToEE game, that contributed a bit to the "too much wealth" problem I mentioned earlier. See, you have a PC who has all this stuff, then they die. The player makes a new character, so the surviving PCs loot his dead body and spread his stuff around. The new PC has his/her own gear (though in some situations, they had to find it.

I guess that leads to some other advice. Don't be afraid to use things like sunder or the shatter spell. They're going to get so much stuff, it should be relatively easy for them to replace their gear.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

If memory serves, there's a bit of a jump between "expected" level of the adventurers between the toughest part of the Crater Ridge Mines and the Outer Fane. I believe the nonlinear nature of the Mines influenced the decision by Monte Cook to do so. In short, I believe the heroes are supposed to get a little bit ahead of themselves where levelling in the Crater Ridge Mines is concerned.

I say leave the encounters. The players will certainly appreciate the chance to just stomp on some of the bad guys for a while. The attack, kill a few guys, run, then come back routine gets dull rather quickly. Do also remember that an adventurer is supposed to have a certain number of encounters below the PC's level.

EDIT:
Also, the adventure text does state that after the PCs eliminate two of the temples, the remaining temples will naturally dissolve themselves. The PCs will be unable to level up any from them. That enhances the power gap between the Crater Ridge Mines and the Outer Fane even further. The PCs really do need to get ahead in the mines in order to be prepared for the Outer Fane.

[storybookknight]

I say ToEE is so tough anyways that you really don't need to scale things. Just let them go faster through the dungeons until they hit something of high enough level.

[TomTheRat]

I say ToEE is so tough anyways that you really don't need to scale things. Just let them go faster through the dungeons until they hit something of high enough level.

I'm never gonna understand this campaign. Ok, you turn a corner and 3 of your party get turned to stone. Its a basilisk, tee hee, and your level 5 party can't -possibly- have a spell on them to break the gaze effect. Have a nice day.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Ok, you turn a corner and 3 of your party get turned to stone. Its a basilisk, tee hee, and your level 5 party can't -possibly- have a spell on them to break the gaze effect.
That's where hiring another spellcaster or buying a scroll of the right spell comes in.

And, seeing as how basilisks are only CR 5, you can't exactly fault a guy for thinking they might make a good challenge for a 5th-level party.

[TomTheRat]

That's where hiring another spellcaster or buying a scroll of the right spell comes in.

And, seeing as how basilisks are only CR 5, you can't exactly fault a guy for thinking they might make a good challenge for a 5th-level party.

Oh, I know they're CR 5, but tell me there is nothing wrong with needing a 6th level spell to deal with the (permanent) effects of a CR 5 mob. The little bastards only have 45 hps, but it still means a trip back to town.

[Toliudar]

Fair enough, although there is a reasonable warning that that encounter is coming up.

Having spent the last 18 months of play, 2-3 sessions a month, getting to the Outer Fane, I will join Zherog in suggesting that starting to scale encounters UP is a bad idea. If you're having wealth creep from characters looting dead people and then selling their gear...well, there are a lot of situations where they don't have a chance to recover dead PC's. It can work both ways.

By the time regular and reliable use of teleport is an option (one accidental teleport to a DIFFERENT Temple of big T on return from a shopping trip may discourage trivial use of the spell), you can be ratcheting up the importance of the clock on the situation. By then, plot would ideally be taking precedence over scooping up coins.

And, as SBK mentioned, the leveling-down from party deaths can also slow down the curve, although it also can become disproportionately distributed.

And, to the OP: I had most of my big-boss clerics use Divine Power, but it wasn't as much of a factor as I'd thought, because by the time they're actually engaging in melee, they've lost the battle. Intelligent use of buffed mooks and summoned creatures was the only way I was able to put the brakes on the PC's in the CRM. Plus fear and misdirection, of course.

[paigeoliver]

I once tried to run the original temple of elemental evil in 3.5. Had to give it up eventually, the characters would have been Epic level before they ever completed all the encounters in it.

[Rad]

The crater ridge mines are long and can easily get boring. One thing that I kept in mind is that there are things happening while the PCs adventure. Some temples will be at war among themselves and probably some monsters will not be killed by the PCs (thus, no XP). As for the gear, sunder, shatter and other means of disenchanting are usually underused.

I'd also want to point out that the adventure was out right after the 3.0 came out: that means that the PCs all have access to splatbook feats, spells and equipment and the NPCs don't. That also means that some things that used to be hard to do when the adventure was published are now possible and maybe easy.

My advice is to have the temples destroy themselves in some way and have the party move to the inner fame soon. Also take the time to rebuild the boss monsters, possibly including some of the PCs killer tactics. Ah, and let the cleric use whatever spells they want and use them yourself too. The cleric NPCs are supposed to have access to it and by ruling it out you are nerfing down only one PC and a lot of NPCs.