Sunless Citadel advice - level and 3.5 conversions

[AshfireMage]

I've been playing 3.X for years, but trying my hand at DMing for the first time in a very long time. I've decided to ease into it with a module and was eyeing Sunless Citadel as a starter adventure.

The group is 4 players. Two are old 2e players who've only tried later editions a few times, and the other two are experience roleplayers but have little/no experience with D&D specifically. Nobody has committed to a concept yet, but they range from low- to mid-op in their playstyles with systems they're comfortable with. Expected party composition is something like Paladin/Wizard/Ranger/Druid or similar. There might be a 5th player joining eventually, but not for at least the first few sessions, so I'm not really thinking about them right now.

My first question would be how realistic it would be to start the module at level 2 or even 3? I find lvl 1 to be somewhat boring, with so few class features and squishy characters and I'd like to give them a bit more to play with here. I think given that there's new players and lacking a cleric or rogue, it should still be challenging enough to be interesting, but I'd like some input.

The second question is regarding the ease of converting the adventure from 3.0 to 3.5 - has anyone done this? how difficult was it? anything major to watch out for?

[Fizban]

Expected party composition is something like Paladin/Wizard/Ranger/Druid or similar. There might be a 5th player joining eventually, but not for at least the first few sessions, so I'm not really thinking about them right now.
I would recommend making sure they have a Trapfinder of some sort in there- I don't think even the newer editions have stopped making that an expected thing, and if you're running old modules the party can and will miss loot and could potentially die to full-room traps if they don't have the perfect spell ready when it hapens. There's an ACF in Dungeonscape that will let a Ranger cover it just fine. I'm usually the first or only person to point out that Druid can't actually do all the things Cleric does, but it does enough and is clearly meant as an alternate.


My first question would be how realistic it would be to start the module at level 2 or even 3? I find lvl 1 to be somewhat boring, with so few class features and squishy characters and I'd like to give them a bit more to play with here. I think given that there's new players and lacking a cleric or rogue, it should still be challenging enough to be interesting, but I'd like some input.
Honestly, sometimes I wonder if these modules that say "for characters of X level" which then immediately say "well actually 4-6 characters of X to X+2 level," are actually massively lowballing their advertisement- though that may have been a whole thing for some 3rd party publishers, and the power creep in later 3.5 modules is blatant enough, but I digress.

2nd level is probably fine, unless your players need significant danger to feel invested. The extra hit points of 2nd will make a lot of creatures significantly less immediately threatening, while the offense (and defense) of the party increases little, particularly if they start with 1st level starting gold rather than 2nd WBL.

If you want to start at 3rd, better to skip to a 3rd level module- with the next 3.0 module in that "series" being the Forge of Fury.


The second question is regarding the ease of converting the adventure from 3.0 to 3.5 - has anyone done this? how difficult was it? anything major to watch out for?
I have Complaints about Sunless Citadel, which I bring up every time it gets mentioned, which is often, though they're not huge crippling impossible complaints. A series of quotes on Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, and also popular 1st level short adventure A Dark and Stormy Knight:


Here's a secret you might not have noticed about "1st level" adventures: they're almost never 1st level.

Sunless Citadel? Well let's see, the very first fight is against three Dire Rats, full EL 1, except they ambush the first party member that comes down the rope. The first encounter is literally a gank squad. Let's see, second major encounter is 3 skeletons, again EL 1- but these were 3.0 skeletons, with AC 13, +0/1d4 attacks, and only half damage from slashing instead of DR 5, so if you use the humanoid warrior templated skeleton from the 3.5 MM that gets way more dangerous. There's a Quasit which is absolutely not appropriate for a 1st level party, nor is the water mephit, thoqqua, shadow, or modified troll, though you might argue those are supposed to be fled from and fought after the party levels up. The kobolds are "CR 1/6," except their crossbow attacks are more powerful than the rats, plus range- while 3.5 jacked up skeletons and zombies thanks to templates, they fixed the kobold entry by changing that to a sling. But in the module as written, all those little 3 kobold clusters which should be EL 1/6*3=1/2, allowing you to clear several in a row for easy xp, are actually as dangerous as other CR 1/2 creatures with their 15 AC +2/d8 attacks (3.0 crossbows didn't care about small size) and effectively EL 3/2 for no additional payout. And a whole psychological effect of "tiny cowards we should be crushing" baiting players into overextending.

Forgotten Forge? Openly admits its second combat is EL 3, followed by an EL 2 which is immune to weapons, and its final fight is another EL3 which attacks the party on their way back to the civilized part of town when they're likely to be tired and expecting safety. First areas of World's Largest Dungeon? EL 2-3 across the board. Expedition to Undermountain? Well the cover says 1st-10th and the random encounters for the first area are 1st-2nd, but the rooms themselves are no lower than EL 2 with an average of EL 4 or so. That short web adventure A Dark and Stormy Knight? Starts with 8 rats which sounds easy until you see their +4 attack/14 AC and minimum 1 damage per hit, multiplied by 8 rats, then also brings in a "lesser" version of a more power monster with an area save vs helpless, and ends with a 42 hp zombie.


Heck it, let's take a look at Forge of Fury. Starts with orcs, massively under-CR'd as usual, but the actual thread should be fine for 3rds (despite the NPC classed NPC written CR of 1/2, orcs are at least as threatening as other CR 1 creatures, so two orcs is really EL 2, and four are really EL 4 [encounter math for low CRs is weird], and they should give xp and loot accordingly). And. . . that's like the entire first section, orcs, then orcs with more ranged weapons, then some boss fights where there's an orc with more levels, and one fight with an Ogre and two Wolves (note that Ogres were also buffed by the 3.5 change to weapon sizes). Okay, I'm pleasantly surprised, that's not actually terrible. Boring, but appropriate foes without gotchas at least. Some Stirges, they're fragile but good for teaching about con damage. Then it's on to trogs, lizards, and a brown bear (watch out for the Brown Bear, they're ridiculous), and there's the Yellow Mold trap, that's a killer, and it's not even listed as Search detection. Gricks are a good intro to DR, and a great spot for the Warlock to shine if they don't have magic weapons yet. Of course there's also the infamous Roper further down, but everything up till then is fine.

And of course there's the next Balance gotcha: step into area, fail check, fall down waterfall, and if unconscious get schlorped into an underground river and die- all without involving, ya know, swim checks, and at a speed that if the other characters are actually obeying movement and action costs, means 1d4+4 rounds is likely not enough. I think the lesson is: early 3.x modules will kill you for not having Balance maxed. Admittedly, falling down loose and/or slippery stuff is a major danger in real life wilds, but doing so in-game with arbitrary mechanics is not fun.

Then we've got duregar, duregar, and more duregar, animated objects, a Wight, an Allip (that one's always been borked, low CR incorporeal with full Ability Drain that nearly REQUIRES the Cleric to get a lucky Turn Undead roll, don't use one of these on that party, period), a random arbitrary Succubus (which isn't even programmed to attack), and then finally a dragon. Note that the dragon's listed tactics include an illegal action (you can't partial charge after moving) and and implied Pounce attack (which dragons don't have), and being a Black dragon with a lake, it has maximum terrain advantage, which the PCs can't match even if they're level 5. This party would have to spend most of their wizard slots on Energy Resistance to even show up. But the hoard is on land and the dragon runs if it's about to die, so the party can force it to fight and doesn't necessarily have to hunt it down.

So Forge of Fury actually is an appropriate 3rd level adventure- but note that all the classed humanoids mean that a party starting there will have almost no experience with actual monsters, leaving them rather unprepared for the boss or indeed most of the Monster Manuals.


Regardless and once again, the best way to get help with encounter design is with the PC's sheets and an idea of what you want them to fight.

In considering it for my own possible use, I've found that Sunless just has a fistful of annoying problems- playable, but rough around the edges. Not nearly as bad as say, The Sinister Spire- where every encounter is above the party's level, with terrain advantages, and some are just under CR'd because they botched the advancement rules. With some awareness the pitfalls [of Sunless Citadel] should be avoidable, and I do agree that there's not much else and what there is is potentially worse [for 1st level adventures].

I personally found the massive number of enemies and numbers on the boss [in A Dark and Stormy Knight] to be quite a bit higher than a 1st level party should be taking on.
-8 normal rats sounds perfectly reasonable, but with their high AC (Edit: well not that high, but on par with full CR 1s) and so many bodies saturating one AoO per round, it's quite possible to have four attacks coming per round for up to four damage, while you're sitting there missing. It's not a fun fight, and depends highly on either luck, or having the right AoE spell and the rats to be in the right position for it to work. An "EL 1" encounter that just doesn't work well to me (from personal experience).
-2 hobgoblin raiders with short swords and javelins, perfectly appropriate, but after the previous encounter more risky.
-1 medium spider, again fine.
-1 CR 1 dart trap, the platonic ideal and a good choice for bringing up the concept of where everyone is when the trap goes off.
Now we've hit four EL 1 encounters, but the last one was a trap that may or may not have affected anyone, and the first one was chaos. Is the party supposed to rest, or not, and if they are will they actually do so?
-1 Lesser Varoguile (much better than the original version), and a good introduction to save or lose.
-And 1 bugbear zombie. This is the big snag. A foe rated at CR 2, but with 42 hit points, and given a deliberately bad set of "programming." But the target switching tactic lacks any mention of the PCs being able to flee, either. If the party got through the rats and trap with little damage, they might very well end up here at the end of the "day" with zero resources left- actual starting gold characters won't have any amount of consumable resources to bring in to compensate. Being a zombie means their available ranged weapons, especially with starting gear, can barely affect it and could very well run out of ammo. In fact, unless the party all armed themselves with slashing weapons, it's entirely possible that one or even none of them can penetrate the DR, or at least be pushed to daggers.

It's also a Bugbear in a big fancy tomb, when goblinoids are usually portrayed as tribal, not having "knights" and big fancy stuff. And for a group that doesn't recognize zombified bugbears on sight, it's basically just an arbitrarily more powerful medium zombie, setting all sorts of questionable precedents for how dangerous what things are. And then the loot is a bunch of new items so cheap they can "fit" in the treasure allotted to the adventure, and thus so underwhelming they set a bad expectation for magic items- the headband and belt are super meh, and the translation ring is plot gear or useless. A 1st level party on their first adventure needs a pile of cash to finish out the basic armor and weapons they couldn't afford with starting gear and buy a couple scrolls or potions (or even pool it all for wand of cure light), not vendor trash applying a value penalty before they've even got the most basic of basics.

In short, it's basically the quintessential 1st level adventure climax. Overleveled, placed so the party can stumble into it with zero resources, just ambiguous enough to let confusion bait them into a mistake, with questionable verisimilitude on top of all that, and new made-up items of further questionable value. So in a way, it *is* the perfect 1st level adventure, because the final encounter is a trap that can teach them about over-extending and evaluating risk. But if you want them to succeed, a no-op 5e party that expects things to just work? Might not go so well.

The other major 1st level adventure recommendation is usually The Sunless Citadel, which is mostly fine. The biggest thing that annoys me is the reflex or fall to your death rat ambush on the cliff, very first thing and also not how any of that works, followed by "CR 1/3 crossbow kobolds," and there's an early fork where you can just run into an Imp or Quasit the party should have no means of dealin with. And it ends with some completely arbitrary vampire tree fluff thing, and finding out that the person you may have been sent to rescue can't be saved (at all, period, DM text says no), which is just unfun if you ask me. . .

There could also be an opportunity in deliberately picking a DR creature the party does not happen to bypass, to teach them that DR is a thing that can be a problem. The adventure already has poison and save-or-lose, if the DR is picked to be effective and you threw in some disease, it'd have nearly all the basics covered (a swarm of rats would cover swarm dangers, but is also a big enough change in rules that it's better to save for the second outing). It does so by being an arbitrary grab bag of unrelated monsters that all just happen to be chilling out in different rooms of this dungeon and not interfering with each other, straining credulity- but there's no way to showcase the wide variety of monster abilities quickly without doing that.

So anyway, make it a single dire rat- which is too large to run through the PCs at Small size and has a chance of disease proc, and a CR 1 skeleton or zombie tailored to block the meatshield's main weapon. . .

Also worth noting is that the encounter order of the adventure is not actually the order listed at all. It starts with the rats, but there are then three doors, and encounter "5" is actually at the far end of the dungeon. After the rats the party can go straight to the chest or varoguille, or down the hall into the hobgoblins, after which they could hit the bugbear or the spider. So it's not quite fair of me to take the bugbear zombie as the final enemy, but even in a straight line it's no earlier than the third (rats, hobs, zombie). But the grab bag of random monsters all right next to each other problem combined with the given inciting incident (party has to enter to get out of a storm), means that the party either needs to clear the entire dungeon before resting, or rest with monsters in the next room.

And finally most recently in TL;DR version:

I don't know about Rise of the Rune Lords, but a recent mention in another thread seemed to indicate that Age of Worms runs at a later 3.5 power level. Meanwhile, Sunless Citadel will be running at the earliest 3.0 power level.

I find Sunless Citadel to have some annoying problems. It basically starts off with an ambush designed to catch a single character alone, and incorporates checks that doesn't exist in the normal rules (a balance check in response to sufficient damage on stairs, resulting in a fall for more damage). After that you have the problem of skeletons: 3.0 skeletons are very different from 3.5 skeletons, so whether you're using the stats in the book or the stats in the 3.5 MM or srd makes a huge different. The same goes for the goblins and kobolds. It also allows for encountering some foes that a 1st level party should not be fighting, which on the one hand allows them to learn that running might be a good idea, but also means they could all just get killed. I also find the conclusion unsatisfying, as the "boss" uses arbitrary mechanics and the rescue mission hook has no chance of success (though the hook allows for the fact, I would not want my first adventure to be "welp you're too late and they gotta be put down, sucks to suck I guess.")

[Kitsuneymg]

I’ve run it as written for a pathfinder group of mostly new players. They did pretty fine. You may wanna tweak the twig blights to be a threat (more hp and maybe a +1 or +2 to hit) but other than that, it’s serviceable simply by using the MM to update stats.

You will want to waive the BS only rogues can find some traps bull**** niche protection. And someone will want to take search etc.

[Ronin Duelist]

That was a fun read, Fizban, thanks for sharing. I enjoy reading about people's experiences and breakdowns of modules, especially ones I've run.

I've (somewhat) recently run The Sunless Citadel, that party just finished the Forge of Fury. The party started off very unorthodox, and continued to be very unorthodox. The premise I pitched was for players to give "monster" characters a shot, using some homebrew monster classes made by someone I won't mention because they're banned here on the boards, and the fact that the party was so bizarre ended up with some encounters being cake walks, and others being harrowing. I did update the monsters and increase some stats or numbers here and there, since the party was running off rolled stats that averaged around 40-50 point buy.

Party started as a Succubus, a Summoning Ooze, and a Tentacle Whip (symbiote). The rat gank ended up being fine, funny enough. The Succubus had high dex when she landed, and they hit her I think once, before she and Tentacle Whip (he was attached to her) made short work of them while the ooze played catch up. Dominatrix jokes were made.

Of note, the skeleton fight... almost killed them. Only the Summoning Ooze had a weapon to overcome their DR (his Slam), and he and the Succubus went down. The dang Tentacle whip led them back to the front door trap to use it against them and eked out a win.

None of the other fights were very noteworthy, (except the Paladin adversary at the last fight nearly obliterated the Succubus with Smites) other then they recruited Meepo and Calcryx after some good RP for lack of party members. Them not having a trapfinder was actually super hindering to them, though (another reason they picked up Meepo), but they did manage to find most hidden doors at least.

[zlefin]

Those remarks about Dark and Stormy night seem a bit over-worried to me; or maybe the party I had doing it was just more optimized (which they were to some extent, though nothing truly crazy, some of it was just using ToB classes). It seemed like a module which a first level party would handle fine; though I suppose if they were quite low op there could've been trouble at some parts.

Sure the rats can do some damage, but they also die horribly to any AoE; and can die pretty fast in combat as well. Between the regular attacks each round, plus attacks of opportunity as the rats approach, they shouldn't do much damage at all, and at least 2 should die every round, if not more.

The zombie at the end may be beefy, but it's still a zombie and has plenty of exploitable weaknesses; and it seems like a very appropriate cr 2 encounter to me, as its meant to be the boss fight of the dungeon.