Rechan said:Given that there's a huge emphasis on many, many weak opponents, I might want to wait for 4e, with its capacity for droves of monsters.
Eeeh. Bandits? Guess they aren't as death culty.
Actually, this makes me wonder how easy it could be to say, meld the Keep on the Borderland with the Night Below - making the priests in the Keep the cultists giving the spellcasters.
Also, I had the thought of turning the illithids into one of the allies against the aboleths. Aboleths and Illithids, I think, wouldn't get along.
I'm wondering about replacing Book II with something else, some other adventure that might mix in, maybe.
Needless to say, more SPOILERS below:
Well, to be fair, the bandits are lead by death cult priests; but the rank and file are described as bandits, implying they are in this for the money more than anything else.
One of the nice touches in the adventure is that it gives suggestions for who that deity might be in Mystara, Greyhawk, and the Forgotten Realms
As written, melding the Keep on the Borderland with Night Below would be possible, but might be a little disjointed without some careful thought. The county of Haranshire is a pretty large and there are a large number of encounters there already, enough to take a party to 5th - 6th level if they only do the main ones.
That said you could certainly put the keeep on one end - maybe replacing the earl's home. The caves of chaos might find a home in the badlands on the north end of Haranshire (the name escapes me, but it's a large rocky, rift-like area).
It would certainly explain where some of the death-cultists come from, which isn't a bad thing.
As for the aboleth/illithids, some of those uncertain allies mentioned are a faction of illithids who do not agree with their brethern who are allied with the aboleth. The other group is set of demonic assassins intent on getting rid of devilish embassy within Shaboath.
Getting rid of Book II is possible, though off the top of my head I'm not sure with what. Book II serves at least 4 purposes.
1. Get the party some XP so they can take on a city of aboleth
2. Give them some low level allies at the beginning so they can survive to reach book III (the svirfneblin).
3. Give them a high level set of allies (the rockseer elves) who can provide some plot specific information.
4. Have them assault the kuo-toa city so they can find some clues about what is further on as well open the door to Book III
With that in mind, most other encounters can be hand waved. I'd read the ones you're getting rid of carefully though as quite a few will reward with clues or items about other encounters as well as the overall plot.
Whatever you replace it with, you should consider transplanting those clues/items and make sure there are replacement allies who can serve the same purpose. I'd leave the kuo-toa city as-is.
Also, keep in mind what level you want the party to be whey they hit the city. My group was around 14th at the end of Book II. they actually stopped getting xp for a lot of the stuff (derro, kuo-toa, etc)- which they didn't mind quite so much because they were focused on the plot and rescuing slaves; and they still received XP on the leaders. Two of those levels were gained in surface adventures.
There is a wonky mismatch in power levels between the leadership and the minions by the end of Book II and carried over to Book III. The leadership is always classed, so there are Mind Flayer and Kuo Toan clerics capable of 6th level spells. Players at 14th level were able to walk over Glass Pool leadership with only a couple hiccups. To be fair though I was not on my A-Game when I DM'd this portion of the adventure though.
So, that said, if you replace the book, you'll want an adventure that takes characters from 6-12 or thereabouts. Ideally there will be allies available. Maybe a death cult that the Mind Flayers are recruiting from, and it should be reasonable to have kuo-toa at the end point.
You could wait until 4e to run this, but I think with the conversion notes it works pretty well under 3e. Exceptions would be the very first encounter in Book I, where the party is way-laid by bandits; and the stupid trolls in Book II.
Personally I ended up making the initial group of bandits Commoners which helped, and as for the trolls, as written, the party is expected to use hit and run tactics, finding a safe place to sleep between forays. My group did that and it worked well until they forgot and let themselves get sucked in a little too far. It wasn't a party wipe, but it was close.
After that, the large combats tend to favor the party. The derro encounter in Book II has about 100 derro that can get involved when it is all said and done (two factions of them); but the terrain favors the party more than the derro, and the derro are like a CR2 or CR3 critter vs. 12th level PC's.
The two cities (Glass Pool and Shaboath) aren't full-sized metropolis' and their population is kind of hand-waved. Presumably the party will use tactics other than trying to go through the front gate and burn their way to their objective.
