Murder in Baldur's Gate: Where are the Encounters?

Uller

Adventurer
I started running Murder in Baldur's Gate last week. We're enjoying it. It's not at all like other "Encounters" adventures and works very nicely for a theater of the mind/sandbox style game. I also bought Legacy of the Crystal Shard.

LotCS has downloadable PDFs for each edition that contain suggested encounters and stat blocks for the monsters/NPCs. MinBG has a single stats download that includes the stat blocks for the monsters but does not have any suggested encounters. Is this on purpose? Is there some other downloadable content I'm missing?

In the event descriptions it will say what the make up of the encounter should be ("halfling rogues and thugs" for instance). It's not terrible...I know that for my first level party of 4 PCs, an easy encounter is 50XP, average is 80XP and hard is 160XP so I can use that as my guide...but for a published product it seems incomplete to not have at least a suggested encounter for each event that will likely have a combat encounter...
 

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Echohawk

Shirokinukatsukami fan
LotCS has downloadable PDFs for each edition that contain suggested encounters and stat blocks for the monsters/NPCs. MinBG has a single stats download that includes the stat blocks for the monsters but does not have any suggested encounters. Is this on purpose? Is there some other downloadable content I'm missing?
It sounds like it. There is an events supplement here.
 


Uller

Adventurer
Yeah, we actually started with the launch event "adventure". Which is partially why I am confused. In the launch event material it gave specific numbers of monsters. No big deal though. Just before each session I map out 2-4 possible combat encounters and detail them in advance then throw them in as they make sense. I think I'll be able to control how hard things are that way. Tonight the party actually backed down from one fight and talked their way out of 2 others (then got lured into a trap in a fourth and had half the party down to just a couple hit points). So it's all good.
 

CapnZapp

Legend
I started running Murder in Baldur's Gate last week. We're enjoying it. It's not at all like other "Encounters" adventures and works very nicely for a theater of the mind/sandbox style game. I also bought Legacy of the Crystal Shard.

LotCS has downloadable PDFs for each edition that contain suggested encounters and stat blocks for the monsters/NPCs. MinBG has a single stats download that includes the stat blocks for the monsters but does not have any suggested encounters. Is this on purpose? Is there some other downloadable content I'm missing?

In the event descriptions it will say what the make up of the encounter should be ("halfling rogues and thugs" for instance). It's not terrible...I know that for my first level party of 4 PCs, an easy encounter is 50XP, average is 80XP and hard is 160XP so I can use that as my guide...but for a published product it seems incomplete to not have at least a suggested encounter for each event that will likely have a combat encounter...
There are no encounters.

Remember this is an adventure trying to accomodate both 3rd/5th edition gameplay as well as 4th edition. And the 5th edition "Next" rules were still in heavy development at the time.

So I think it is best to say Murder is not recommended for DMs that still struggle with XP budgets and need help setting up encounters.

Actually, it is a very advanced adventure with a very loose plot, so I'd say it is completely unsuitable for anything less than confident veteran DMs. Absolutely no hand-holding included - it is one of the most challenging D&D adventures I've seen actually. The very definition of "not introductory".
 

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