Just picked up Rappan Athuk *spoilers*

[ken-do-nim]

I really, really like it. I'm worried, however, about the encounter depicted on the cover with the 2 iron golems. I don't remember, but I imagine iron golems were boosted from 3.0 to 3.5, because the module lists the encounter as CR10 when I think it is CR15, and that doesn't include the spectre wizard...

... not that I would nerf the encounter anyway. Let the chips fall where they may!

[DownwardSpiral]

Well, an iron golem would be CR 10. Two would be.....11? And I don't know what the spectre wizard is, but it'd be 13-14 probably right?

....But yeah. You might actually want to nerf it. Golems are kinda strong, with the immunity to magic thing and all. And the cursed wound. And the free haste.

But hey! It isn't fun unless it's boarderline deathlike, amirite?

[Ethdred]

I'm running through this in an online game, and we did the golems a long time ago, so I'm trying to remember. I think it was a very nasty encounter that would have been close to a TPK, but fortunately all the impetuous characters died first, so I was able to get everyone else to bug out back to town, buy adamantine weapons and come back. I'm not sure how much of that plan was doable by the module and how much is due to stuff our DM has put in. But I think it's one of those encounters that your party is going to have to learn to run from!

[ken-do-nim]

Well, an iron golem would be CR 10. Two would be.....11? And I don't know what the spectre wizard is, but it'd be 13-14 probably right?

....But yeah. You might actually want to nerf it. Golems are kinda strong, with the immunity to magic thing and all. And the cursed wound. And the free haste.

But hey! It isn't fun unless it's boarderline deathlike, amirite?

Actually I was right in the original post if converting the adventure to 3.5; CR 13 and two would be CR 15. The spectre wizard is a 9th level wizard, so since a spectre is normally CR7, I guess that would be CR15 or 16, making the whole encounter about CR17. Yikes!

I don't mind encounters that the party has to run from; that's part of the ecological charm of old school design.

[potatocubed]

One of the things I discovered when running Rappan Athuk for a group a few years back was this: the listed CRs mean nothing.

Unless you've picked up the more recent Rappan Athuk Reloaded, which I think corrected a load of the more egregious flaws that resulted from a direct conversion of 2nd to 3rd edition with very little fine tuning.

The only changes I made when I ran it were to swap out the spells of a lot of the spellcasters for ones that would challenge the party more. It was a blast, although it got very very silly and I don't think they even looked at half of it before the campaign kind of died of crazy.

If I were to run it again, I'd halve all the monetary treasure that's listed. That should keep things from getting too ridiculous as the party descends, and also get them into nine kinds of trouble when they decide to steal the golden bridge.

[ken-do-nim]

One of the things I discovered when running Rappan Athuk for a group a few years back was this: the listed CRs mean nothing.

Unless you've picked up the more recent Rappan Athuk Reloaded, which I think corrected a load of the more egregious flaws that resulted from a direct conversion of 2nd to 3rd edition with very little fine tuning.

The only changes I made when I ran it were to swap out the spells of a lot of the spellcasters for ones that would challenge the party more. It was a blast, although it got very very silly and I don't think they even looked at half of it before the campaign kind of died of crazy.

If I were to run it again, I'd halve all the monetary treasure that's listed. That should keep things from getting too ridiculous as the party descends, and also get them into nine kinds of trouble when they decide to steal the golden bridge.

I didn't know about Rappan Athuk reloaded, that's probably why I got it for so cheap.

[Lycar]

Oh yeah, Iron Golems. I remember that encounter when we played the module. We werea bout lv. 12 or so.

Good thing we had the door to the tomb propped open via Immovable Rod.

When we realized that the inert statues were made of metal, we got 'a bad feeling about this'. When they started to stir, we ran.

What? That is a totally valid tactic to survive an encounter with iron golems.

...

Of course, our GM took it a bit easy on us when we were approaching the main building on the graveyard...

Spoiler

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.. after all, you are hard-pressed to deal with a 1-1 of gargoyles if you don't have magic weapons. And the first time around, our cleric(s) didn't have magic weapon prepared (we were lv. 3 then). It was tough and a close call. The first fight and we limped back to town.

At least they gave good XP. And we later learned that their eyes are valuable. Plus our GM made them not respawn once we started 'harvesting' them for their eyes.

Lycar