Need help with published adventure. (3.5)

[M3tal_H3llth]

Hello all!

It has been a few months since I've been involved with D&D and my girlfriend and I have finally managed to get a group together. Most everyone we've gotten together has little to no experience with d&d or ttrpg's at all and I have only ever DM'd once before. That being said, I've decided to run a pre-made adventure to get everyone acquainted to the system/rules and to take a bit of the pressure off myself. To start with, I've limited everyone to what is on the SRD barring Psionics, Epic and Divine rules, solely to limit over-exposure to the millions of options for 3.5, with the intention to open up more books as we go.

The plan is to run the Paizo gamemastery modules for "Hollows Last Hope" -> "Crown of the Kobold King" -> "Revenge of the Kobold King" -> "Hungry are the Dead", but I have a few issues with that.

The first, there seems to be a level/narrative gap between "Crown" and "Revenge of the Kobold King." I had originally planned to squeeze in "Carnival of Tears," however that seems like it will be above their level/system mastery.

My second issue is, that "Hungry are the Dead" says that PC's will end at level 7-8, and I would really like to give everyone 1 last fight at their PC's "Full Power Level." Does anyone have any ideas for a good, quick "Boss Fight" type adventure that could be run right after "Hungry are the Dead"?

Any general advice for DMing to newbies would also be helpful.

Thank you so much, to anyone who take the time to read through my ramblings and help me out.

TL;DR Newbie DM with newbie players, looking for a decent, short pre-made adventure for level 4 PC's, as well as a short Encounter or Adventure that could be run for level 7-8 PCs to "show off" their abilities at the end of a campaign.

Edited title for clarity

[ExLibrisMortis]

Dragons are pretty classic single encounters, so you can always get a dragon to engage your party at level 8. This might even be a 'divine' favour to the kobold king (kobolds worship dragons). There is a thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?490026-Help-me-design-my-Dragon-boss-fight) on dragon bossfights.

As for making the modules fit: the XP you hand out is under your control. You can simply level the PCs slightly faster during Hollows and Crown, so they will be at the level you prefer for Revenge. During the early levels, faster levelling is not a bad idea, especially for new players. You don't get a lot of choices or abilities at level 1, especially for PHB melee classes, so the extra stuff at level 2-3 is worth getting a little sooner.

[ksbsnowowl]

Forgive me, I do not own any of these adventures, other than Hollow's Last Hope. Going off of what you said, I'm guessing the level ranges are this:
Level 1: Hollows Last Hope
Levels 2 - 3: Crown of the Kobold King
Gap
Levels 5 - 6: Revenge ...
Levels 7 - 8: Hungry ...

ELM's advice to speed up the XP awards during the first two adventures isn't bad. I inadvertently did that when I was running The Sunless Citadel (due to a 3.0 -> 3.5 change in goblin CR), and it worked out quite well (especially considering I only had 3 PC's at the time). They reached 4th level around the time they were "supposed" to reach 3rd level.

If altering XP awards doesn't strike your fancy, to fill a one-level gap in an adventure series, I'd turn toward some of those free adventures WotC used to have on their website. (They'll be harder to track down, now, but they can still be downloaded for free). This blog post (http://www.dungeonmastering.com/campaigns-adventures/83-free-dd-adventures) lists lots of the old free adventures, with (now dead) links, and short descriptive hooks. A quick google search of each title with the author's name will bring up the archived address, where you can download it. (Alternatively, click on the dead link, then when you get the "Critical Failure!" Error 404 page on the wizards site, click on the address bar, and replace the beginning "http://dnd.wizards.com/go/" in the address with "http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/"; basically, "oa/" is the first part of dead address you are going to keep.)

Those little free adventures are often perfect to fill one level of a game, as most published modules in your needed level range usually cover at least two, if not three, levels. Looking at the list on that blog, I see 8 different adventures that are intended for one level only, and are for levels 3, 4, or 5. Any of those should work nicely for you, without much, if any, alteration.

Edit: This site (http://www.dndadventure.com/dnda_adventures.html) also has links to several adventures, and downloads of homebrew adventures. At the bottom of the page are links to sub-pages (broken down by level range) with the actual links and downloads.

[Troacctid]

My advice is to read and familiarize yourself with the module beforehand and anticipate what the players will do at each stage.

Also, if you have Dungeon Master's Guide II, read the first chapter. It has some good advice in it.

[M3tal_H3llth]

Thank you everyone for the quick reply's! I really appreciate the assistance.

@ExLibrisMortis, Dragons, d'oh. I hadn't even considered that. It's the option that was so obvious it never even crossed my mind lol. I'm thinking I can work in a Kobold Shaman making a plea to Tiamat for vengeance... A Juvenile Red Dragon would be a wonderfully iconic way to end their first campaign.

@ksbsnowowl, Thank you for the links, i'm going to go through and see if i can find something, failing that, faster leveling might be good for newbs

@Troacctid, I've read through the adventures a couple times, I definitely don't want to go in blind lol. I don't think I've ever read through the DMG 2 in any depth so I'll give that a look through as well.

Thankfully Session 0 is not for about a week, but I want to have all my ducks in a row before I've got a party at the table.
Thanks again for all the assistance!

[ExLibrisMortis]

@ExLibrisMortis, Dragons, d'oh. I hadn't even considered that. It's the option that was so obvious it never even crossed my mind lol. I'm thinking I can work in a Kobold Shaman making a plea to Tiamat for vengeance... A Juvenile Red Dragon would be a wonderfully iconic way to end their first campaign.
I'm glad you like the idea, but consider that dragons are deliberately under-CRed, meaning that they are more powerful than other monsters of their CR.

A juvenile red dragon has 16 hit dice, twice as much as your players at level 8. This means it's going to have +8 extra bonus to Listen and Spot, and most effects based on hit dice won't affect it. It also means it has +4 extra to all saves, and +8 extra base attack bonus.
Juvenile red dragons have a full attack of +25/+23/+23/+23/+23/+23 (with Multiattack), dealing 4d6+3d8+38 damage, average 75, before any adjustments for Power Attack or other abilities. Remember: dragon stat blocks are without feats - this dragon gets six feats, each of which makes it stronger. At level 8, your party may have AC 25, but the dragon will just ignore that, and it can likely pick up the raging barbarian as if they're an action figure.
A juvenile red, which is a fairly slow dragon, can charge 300 feet and bite, or even 600 feet when flying down, or it can take flyby attacks and strafe the party with its 8d10 breath weapon (enough to one-shot an 8th-level wizard) ad infinitum.
Add to that that dragons have blindsense, darkvision, and supreme low-light vision, and that they are quite intelligent (you just can't play a dragon like a big lizard, that's boring), and you've got a TPK waiting to happen.

In short, dragons are a huge pain. Unless you have specific tricks (like shivering touch, from Frostburn), be careful. Add 3 to the CR of a dragon to get an accurate CR estimate (this is deliberate on part of the designers).

Of course, the good news is that dragons come in convenient packages of twelve varieties, so it's fairly easy to switch in a dragon that won't eat your party and leave you wondering where you went wrong :smalltongue:. Good luck!

[M3tal_H3llth]

@ExLibrisMortis Thank you so much for your reply (and sorry mine has been so late in coming, I've just gotten back from a short trip). I had not realized how under CR dragons really were. When you put the numbers on paper it really spotlights how strong dragons are lol. It hadn't crossed my mind that feats aren't even included in the stat block. My old DM ran some seriously under-powered dragon fights lol. I'll have to re-think the plan, maybe select a different color, or even just a younger dragon, thankfully, session 1 (or rather 0) is this coming monday, so I'll have some time to get something together. Again, thanks for all the help! There is a very good chance I will ask for some more in the future!!

P.S. Sorry if this is considered thread necromancy!!!

[Darrin]

I find that wyverns and chimera do really well as dragon "stand-ins" at lower levels. And they're both kinda dumb, so you can run them as stupid meatbags without breaking plausibility.