Night Below

Tyrian · Jul 3, 2008

Anyone able to send a copy of the converted books to tyrian(at)telenet(dot)be? I tried the download page, but that one doesn't seem to work atm.

I've been mastering this campaign for nearly 2 years now and we're currently on a small break with someone else gm'ing a different adventure. We plan on starting up again in about 3m, which should be enough for me to convert book 3. Any help on that is ofcourse appreciated.

My players have almost cleared the City of the Glass Pool, with just the temple and the dukes remaining. However, their wizard just got Teleport and they tried to Teleport out of the City to the surface. I'm using the Underdark effect that is hampering teleportation effects, so imagine their surprise when they ended up in some unfamiliar tunnels, a nice cliffhanger.

Zanticor · Jul 10, 2008

Check your mail Tyrian. Hopefully it came through. Anyone else need some night below help? For me the dungeon has been a great ride to DM. Great and very long because my group has been at it for three years now and we're on the verge of starting our attack on Shaboath. The conversion made by Seravin has been invaluable to me (thanks ever so much man, hope you can finish your story hour one day), although I made a lot of modifications to almost every encounter becauce of the power level of my PC's. They just turned level 16 and still have the whole city to go! I'm aiming for a level 20 grant finally with a CR 27 end boss and her many minions (who won't drop with one hit)!

Ciao,

Zanticor

thedmstrikes · Jul 15, 2008

oohhh...me...me...me!

Hi Zanticor! I am always on the look out for useful stuff for my Night Below campaign. I will be restarting it soon (hopefully, player recruitment pending) and most of my additional work has been for the lower level portions (especially from the second edition days when the campaign setting itself was not enough to level up for the later areas without side adventures). What I did was took other material with similar themes and adapted it for use in the campaign. For example, I use the module N1, Against the Cult of the Reptile God (originally published by TSR) for additional experience and a few new items (including a never before introduced legacy item gained from one of the priests at the temple in Orlane). The party can not even use it yet, but they have plenty of time to figure out what it really is and make use of it for later in the campaign. I did the same thing for Finslayer...it'll keep the mystery up on that item....

Anyway, I am also willing to share any conversion notes I have, but mine are scattered about and mostly not in electronic format, but I can get some of it done easily for really interested DMs.

Zanticor · Jul 16, 2008

Hi thedmstrikes,

I too had to subtract and add a lot to make the adventure playable for 3.5 rules. The main problem seems to be that ad&d monsters are a lot less deadly so keeping things balanced is less of a problem. Nowadays you need to make absolutely sure your guys are at the right power level or your level 11 mind flayer priest will have them for lunch. In the latter stages I noticed my players leveling at a much higher pace then the adventure had in mind. This makes using the conversions document of Seravin a bit problematic because it is a strait conversion (happily he added some suggestions to scale up the encounters. Thanks Seravin!). Preparing for encounters takes quite a wile since your constantly adding or subtracting levels, hitdice or ability scores. I learned to just throw away the CR system at times when it comes to the hordes of multi-classed monsters, and just eyeball what I thought my group could handle. This campaign is hard on a DM but so worth it.

Greetings,
Zanticor

thedmstrikes · Jul 16, 2008

I have had similar difficulties. I am dying to see how psionics (played differently from magic as they should be) will have an effect on the characters since they will have no defences against it when first encountered...

As a side note, I used to have the Dragon Mountain adventure as a follow on to the Night Below until the change of additions. Has anyone had any luck in converting this since the new addition will not work well with a direct conversion? Specifically in the mountain itself...The Kobolds will not stand up well against anything over 10th level in combat without giving them levels as well. If I remember right, the premise of using the kobolds was not to amp them up like that....

Tyrian · Aug 5, 2008

Same here, I keep an eye on the CR, but wing it as we move along. It took me some time to get a good feel for it, but it's working better and better.

When my players came up to the renegade derro, they were getting fed up with the hack n slash this adventures provides in abundance. I had already changed some encounters to reduce this, fe allowing the players to ally with the Quaggoths to face the hook horrors. I handled the renegade derro as one gigantic multi-phased encounter, adding in reinforcements to keep the players on their toes and in the end went all out to give them a though time, but they came through. Think the fight ended with half the group unconscious, spells nearly depleted and some one shot items used. Played it high speed to keep up the suspense and they loved it. Took me quite some preparing, but it greatly payed off and I can really recommend this approach to the encounter.

The City is proving to be a bit of a pain now, mostly due to unsufficient scouting on the side of the party and just drags along. After several incursions, they finally managed to strike a blow to the City and killed the 'King'. To get things moving again, I'm going to use a trick our current dm is using: cutscenes. I'm going to use these to describe the social collapse of the City and tie the players much closer to the story. They were sort of loosing their drive as to why they are taking on this underground challenge and need some reminders of the consequences of their (in)actions.

Anyone faced the asme issue? How did you handle it?

Zanticor · Aug 6, 2008

Spoiler alert! For DM's only

As a DM I had a real blast with the city. It gives you the ability to trow an enormous amount of reinforcements at your party that keeps on dieing and refilling. My guys could only survive by teleports and almost started crying when one of those awful Ixan or thief priest showed up and they had to run again. This became tedious for the players to say the least but I managed to get them through the eight encounters by varying the modes of attack they used. Remember they need to kill a good number of individuals one by one so tailor the encounters to the guy you want them to kill that time. I also had the bad guys respond two times because they have ixans who can teleport and a crystal ball to find them. I used the following encounters:

1. Sneaking in by magic jar: explore
2. Sneaking in by teleport: Kill the monitors (monks)
3. Mind flayer priest and a duke take over the town. They and in league with Cameren and Parlfray: Kill a duke, mind flayer flees (PC's kill Cameren and are now outlaws).
4. Frontal attack on the gate: Kill the derro and Ixan, run for the duke
5. Two Ixan wizards a Duke and some other teleport into their church: Kill some the last Ixan flee from the duke that lays wast to the church.
6. Teleport into mind flayer shrine: kill the mind flayers and two dukes that come to their rescue (resources to respond are now depleted but this was a hard one. may need more than one go)
7. Attack on the palace: Death of the king and mind flayer master.
8. Attack on the shrine: Victory

This undertaking cost us a lot of time but was rewarding to say the least. Your PC's never want to see a Koa-tua after this again but if you keep varying the opponents and the place of conflict you can keep the story going. After this my PC's needed a break from the underdark and I let them deal with their being wrongly accused by going after lord Parlfray who turned out to be the Green Dragon.

Good times,

Zanticor

Papa-DRB · Aug 8, 2008

Zanticor said:
Check your mail Tyrian. Hopefully it came through. Anyone else need some night below help?

Zanticor

Could you send me the docs also, to papa.drb@gmail.com? I ran this a long time ago, and the group fell apart around mid the 2nd book. I'd like to start it up with my new group and we are playing 3.5 rules now.

Thanks

-- david
Papa.DRB

xiamegee · Sep 9, 2008

Could someone please send me a copy of Night Below conversion notes for 3.5 to xiamegee@yahoo.com ?

Thank,
Xiamegee

clomac · Sep 26, 2008

night below

Hi,

I just got hold of a copy of NB on Ebay and started reading. I'm not finished, and not quite sure what to make of it yet. It kind of reminds of the games I had "back in the day" and I'm not sure if my players could take this much hack n' slash now. But still, it's nice, very well thought out, very rational and clearly a challenge for the players. To pull it of, I think I should have to get back to that old "gamist" and mean style of DM-ing. To make the players fear me, and realise that I wont let them survive just because they role-play well and have neat character bakgrounds. Instead, make them feel that character is not to too important, but rather their ability to size up their opponents correctly and employ what ever tactics are necessary to prevail. And to have that last coil of rope, last phial of holy water and last lightningbolt-scroll when it's needed.

In order to make it fun, it seems to me, you must make the players fear for their pcs lives and preferably kill of a few now and then. I read a post (here or elsewhere) where a DM had 10 pc kills over the campaign with one sole pc surviving the whole of it. That seems a reasonable kill-rate.

Now to the point: Could someone send me these 3e conversion notes everyone is talking about? (Also, do send any other homebrew additions to NB that you're especially proud of.)

thanks,

clomac