How fast is this SUPPOSED to go?

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fjeTheNarrator Ebon Hand Cultist (2/16/04 12:53 pm) Reply	How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? My group has met 4 times. We meet once a week on Sundays and play for about 5 hours a session. The first two sessions were pretty average ... Session one they arrived in Hommlet looking for Spugnoir as a favor to a friend. They poke around, ditch Chatrilon, move to the Moathouse. They cleared most of the Moathouse in that session, and we ended as they were about to go down the stairs to the well room. Second session they cleared the rest of the Moathouse and rode back to Hommlet, ineptly alerting the entire cult and allowing them to escape. End of session. Third session they return to the Moathouse to wait for the wagon from Rastor and are ambushed by an overwhelming force. Dunrat and the Hommlet cultists leave and a huge battle with the remaining "Wagon" forces ends the session with the whole group making Lvl 5. Over the week, through email, the group moved to Verbobonc to sell items and gear up and get new spells for the Wizard. They purchase a scroll of Travel Via Plants for the Druid and step out of a tree a mile outside of Rastor 8 hours before the wagon gets there. I expected a knock-down drag out fight. Dunrat and Chatrilon were part of the wagon crew, along with Garrick and a few gnoll guards and Chenashi and Vacra. Three of five characters, however, are spellcasters. Surprise round the two Clerics throw out overlapping Silences and the Wizard tosses down a Fireball. The next round the Druid goes before most of the enemy and tosses out Entangle. Good night, cultists. Of 8 individuals, 3 survived the fireball (Specialist Envoker with spell focus ... DC 20 fireball ... now DC 21. Ouch.) Of the survivors, Dunrat was Silenced ... and couldn't move out of the Silence because of Entangle. Garrick and he fell back behind the wagon for cover. Dunrat tossed a Bead Of Force and almost killed the wizard (- and encapsulated the Bbn/Clr. Good plan, but the Bbn/Clr had cast Spiritual Weapon the round before so he just reclined in his cozy sphere and mentally bludgeoned Garrick to death from afar. They kill everyone but Chatrilon ... who was sneaking out of the Entangle. Now, the group had a rather masterful plan. None of the clerics could CAST Invis. Purge, but the Bbn/Clr bought a scroll of it ... but then he gets stuck in the Oti'-sphere. Doh. So the Wizard and other cleric both cast Detect Magic and triangulate, searching for an Illusion ping. ... Threw me for a loop. I went looking for some rule about Invisiblity NOT leaving a magical sig, because that sort of renders it useless if somebody can just use a 0th level spell and get a general idea of where you are. True, it takes several rounds, but Chat was stuck for most of the time in the Entangle. Finding no reason at hand that it wouldn't work, I told them they could get him within 5'-10'. So the Druid tosses down Faire Fire. Good save, really. So I gave it to them. Chatrilon looks around, sees everybody else is dead and five powerful adventurers are flexing their fingers and looking directly at him, and drops his Invisibility and raises his hands. They capture Chat and high-tail it back to Verbobonc. (The Druid had gone into Rastor to contact Rerrid and see what kind of help they could get from the town. Rerrid truthfully told them that the "Individuals from the Religious Retreat" were well-recieved by the town locals and had many friends. He let Rerrid read the various documents they'd picked up along the way, so Rerrid agreed that the temple was probably trouble, but his hands were tied by Thandain's friendship with the cultists. Knowing they'd recieve no help in Rastor, they return to Verbobonc.) They sold some items and pinned Chatrilon down in a Zone of Truth and questioned him about what he knew of the cult and the temple in the mountains. I gave them a little data on Mt. Stalagos and the CRM, specifically that the southern gate is much more well-used than the northern gate. So they assaulted the North Gate. Long story short, they went with stealth for a short period of time, but eventually fell to arguing IN THE MAIN HALL and blew a Move Silently check, allerting Mereclar and his goons. Within 4 rounds the whole complex was pouring into the hall. It was touch and go, but they work well together, tactically. The Bbn/Clr stood up front raging and dealing SICK amounts of damage for most of the fight, but by the end Terrenygit had almost brought him down and his rage was ending. The other cleric healed him up and the Bbn/Clr fell back exhausted and started casting spells on the rest of the group. By the end they were entirelly sapped of spells and strength, but they had killed everything within listening distance of the fight... And were sixth level. In four sessions they've gained two levels and they cleared the first gatehouse. It feels a little fast, to me. Granted, we have alot of things in place that speed things up. I'm using I2K's PSD maps of areas, which cuts down BIG time on the mapping ... and I'm using DMGenie ... which is an insane help as far as book-keeping those large battles go. I did get a little swamped toward the end when I had 12 zombies and 12 mooks and a bunch of other things on the radar I had to deal with, but no-where near as bad as if I were trying to run that beastly combat with paper and dice. In the end, though, we were all seriously surprised. One (long) day's gaming and the whole group jumped another level. They hadn't even gotten used to Level 5 and here came Level 6. If we cut down on how much these combats bog down, is this something we're going to have to get used to? Kicking down a temple door, slaughtering everything, and leveling instantly ...? --fje
Killiak Deathmantle Cultist (2/16/04 1:18 pm) Reply	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? The module is set up to have a couple of serious combats once in a while, so that when you actually play a whole day and keep a steady pace, the XP will jump pretty fast However, be aware that some encounters may not happen at all. Do not feel pressed to let ur players have it all. Mine missed the encounter with Dunrat and his companions altogether, as well as a bit of Nulb and haven't gone into the Dwarf Temple and missed the Athach and his pet Rust Monster. But yes, that wagon encounter was WELL executed and some luck played there too => massive XP Main Hall vicory, mine won due to high AC and complete exhaustion => massive XP It's the big battles that get it going. Don;t worry, they are going to need it
Siobharek (2/17/04 4:20 am) Reply ezSupporter	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? I'm pretty sure that every group playing RttToEE experiences an XP hike. I fell into the Boosting Trap, which is a bad place to go. Instead, play the opposition as intelligently as possible and let them level. Once they begin overpowering the temples with ease, their XP rewards are reduced and it should level out. If they seem to have too easy a time of it, give them the information they need to proceed to the Fanes immediately after they get hold of 2-4 different elemental keys. Siobharek ...it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Killiak Deathmantle Cultist (2/17/04 4:27 am) Reply	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? U know what is really funny? I described the keys to my players like this; Earth Key: This brown , 3 dimensional triangle looks like a symbol of sorts. It is smooth on one side, but has several small spikey bits on the other side, as well as a few holes. Almost like it's a key of some sort..... They have 2 earth keys and 2 air keys, all lesser. But hwat do ya think? They didn't understand the hint I gave them => The two triangles aren't exactly the same on the bumpy side, the place of the spikes and holes is slightly different... And they still didn't get it... gaaaaahhh DUN DUN DUn => VARACHAN! woohoo
Siobharek (2/17/04 4:36 am) Reply ezSupporter	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? Either that, or an identify spell. The keys are magical, after all. But yeah, players can be quite dense about the keys (he said, wincing from old memories...) Siobharek ...it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Narben Ebon Hand Cultist (2/17/04 7:28 am) Reply ezSupporter	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? It could be going the other way. My group has managed 9 sessions (usually 3-4 hours) spread over 3 months and they're about to face off against Lareth in Nulb, having killed off Wat/Dala and the ochre jelly/wraiths. They completely skipped the millhouse encounter with Dunrat by ignoring the clue in Festraths journal. I've also rolled low on encounter tables so between travel from Hommlet and 3 hours in Nulb they've encountered 1 Yeth hound as the sole non scripted xp. After last session 2 of the 5 players made 6th level, the rest are 5th. Lareth's death might see one more level. Your party doesn't seem that far ahead on the xp curve On a side note I'm curious if you were making escape rolls for Chat while the 2 casters were attempting to get a fix on him with detect magic. 2 rounds of half movement would have seen him free (less if he was at the edge of the entangle effect to begin with). You could have then had him drop invis himself by making a death strike on one of the poor players
Infiniti2000 Brother of Venom (2/17/04 8:00 am) Reply ezSupporter	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? Narrator, I don't think it's unusual and really isn't even particular to RttToEE. It's not like crashing a big gate complex should be that atypical in a D&D world. Instead, the XP hike is typical of 3.0 and 3.5 D&D. As levels increase you will definitely see the XP lessen. Do not 'pull a Siobharek' and boost though. I have never boosted with 6 high level characters and have definitely challenged them at most areas. Because the remaining adventure is already spelled out, I would not change anything. Just go with the flow as long as everyone's having fun. The hardest part you will have, though, is to play those high level NPCs, if you have little experience with it. In particular, the scryings and reactions of the Outer Fane. When you get to that point, read through some logs to find out what the bad guys might do in some situations. In possibly a future campaign, you can curb the XP hike by awarding 1/2 XP or something so that the lower levels drag on longer. It all depends on what power level you have fun gaming at and how quickly you as the DM can adapt to the subsequent power level of the bad guys. Make no mistake, it is not an easy thing to cope with all the powers of the high level bad guys. To deal with it myself, I starting writing (in my log) cut scenes of the bad guys, and I keep thinking to myself: Okay, if I were a 14th level cleric, what would I do? The key spells become: scrying, greater scrying, crystal ball, tourbillion, word of recall, lesser planar ally, planar ally, false sending, etc. BoVD Note (and hijack): If you use the BoVD, you simply must use false sending at some point. I personally would like to entertain ideas on it.
Siobharek (2/17/04 8:53 am) Reply ezSupporter	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? "Pull a Siobharek"... The nerve! Siobharek ...it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
fjeTheNarrator Ebon Hand Cultist (2/17/04 11:58 am) Reply	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? As to how they caught Chat. Bad rolls on his part. He failed the initial save, unluckily ... he saved against that insane DC20 fireball, but flopped on the Entangle. The next round he used his action to cast Invis, and couldn't break free. The next round he flubbed his Escape Artist check. The round after I rolled a d6 to decide what direction he was going to bolt in. The choice was easy, really, as the Druid cast to good effect ... the enemies were close to one corner, but both of those sides had adventurers waiting with swords and spells. So he fled AWAY from them through most of the spell area (by my roll ... and he's not stupid. He could kill one, but that would just make them angry). When they finally pinged him and cast Faerie Fire he had taken his first full movement. Really, ruling, he had probably moved out of the effective area of Detect Magic but not Faerie Fire ... I figure after all of their planning and their spending (1650gp for a Travel Via Plants and 350gp for an Invis. Purge) it would be cruel to have Chatrilon escape their clutches once more because he was 15'-20' out of their range. He surrendered, anyway. That left them with a moral problem. He couldn't approach to assasinate one of them, anyway, because they had an animal companion with Scent and all of them were clustered around it. Scared to death. Hrm. I haven't upped any of the encounters ... I've rewritten some of them ... I reworked the Swordmaster as a half-elemental, but his CR is about the same ... I've secretly replaced Vranthis with a Belker and two small Air Elementals who were sent to kill the dragon in his lair ... about the same CR. When I replace things I try to keep the CR the same while focusing on things they're not so good at dealing with. And I didn't like a dragon hanging out in the middle of the dungeon for no reason. Especially a forest dragon. --fje
Narben Ebon Hand Cultist (2/18/04 6:09 am) Reply ezSupporter	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? *Quote:* He couldn't approach to assasinate one of them, anyway, because they had an animal companion with Scent and all of them were clustered around it. Scared to death. Shouldn't have stopped an assassination attempt. Assassination requires the target be unaware of the attack. While the animal companion can pinpoint a scent thats within 5 feet the empathic link isn't sufficient to provide awareness to the druid/ranger and certainly not to any other players. "He says he can smell someone pointing a rapier at your throat" doesn't really work.
Infiniti2000 Brother of Venom (2/18/04 7:08 am) Reply ezSupporter	Re: How fast is this SUPPOSED to go? Narrator, you're doing a great job. Change what you need/want to change. You need to be comfortable with the story, too, otherwise it will adversely affect the game. Keep up the good work. I was personally okay with Vranthis, because I don't view dragon ecology as an "only" condition. If I did, then the party would quickly realize, "okay, we're in a forest and there's a dragon about, it must be a green dragon, there's no way a white dragon would be here." PS For those DM's really want to be evil. The absolute best trick a dragon can pull is to use alter self or disguise self (low level spells) or perhaps a potion of it, to change color and minor shape. Then, wait till the party prepares defensively against the appropriate breath weapon. Heh heh. I did this once, really nasty.