D&D 5E Out of the Abyss Advice Requested

[MarkB]

I can somewhat corroborate that - if you do start with your PCs a little higher (as I did) - many of the later encounters, especially the random ones, become somewhat of a cakewalk for the heroes.

I really ramped up (often increasing the amount of, or adding additional monsters) those encounters, but many of them were still quite the yawn for my players, as they buzz-sawed through them.

The last section I ran my players through was Blingdenstone, and I found it fairly hard to challenge them even there. In a lot of cases they were up against only one or two opponents, and unless I did a lot to pad things out with random encounters, they often only had one or two major confrontations a day.

One particular encounter was absolutely ridiculous in the end.

[sblock]They heard about the Medusa early on, and then had a scare when one of them was petrified (no pun intended) by a basilisk in Entemoch's Boon - so despite a couple of them really wanting that shiny big diamond, they managed to sneak around Rockblight and steer clear of her until after they'd done everything else there, including defeating the Pudding King (who was also, quite frankly, a pushover).

When they finally went back for her, I tried spicing up the encounter by adding a couple of gargoyles to the mix, and tarting up the medusa's lair with some statuary and a waterfall for her to emerge from behind - but it was still ludicrously simple.

The warlock cast Darkness over the entire party, which removed the need for anyone to avert their eyes. The way darkness works in 5e basically means its penalties cancel out (characters suffer disadvantage for attacking someone they can't see, and gain advantage for attacking someone who can't see them) so everyone was essentially hitting at full strength while negating the medusa's main power.

The medusa stayed back outside the darkness and took potshots with her bow, but the players had planned ahead, and had used their previously-acquired Stone of Controlling Earth Elementals to summon an Earth elemental just prior to entering the chamber, plus they had Glabbagool with them. So while they kept the gargoyles busy, the medusa was confronting one opponent who didn't use eyes to see, and another one who was already made of stone and could also see without eyes if necessary using tremorsense. Glabbagool engulfed the medusa and got a full round of dealing massive acid damage to her before she managed to use her +0 strength to wriggle free, after which the elemental pounded her into goo.[/sblock]

 

[CapnZapp]

Is this the same thread where I've already said OotA feels in some instances like it was written by people completely unfamiliar with the relative power levels of various monsters and player characters...

From memory... A random encounter pitting level 8(?) characters - possibly with a gaggle of hapless NPCs - against a few goblins.

The level 10(?) party vs a couple of minotaurs.

A pair of Shadow Demons occupying a random Magnificent Mansion the level 12(?) party stumbles over.

There sure are a lot of such WTF moments if you're not prepared to instantly discard garbage ideas like that.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Is this the same thread where I've already said OotA feels in some instances like it was written by people completely unfamiliar with the relative power levels of various monsters and player characters...

From memory... A random encounter pitting level 8(?) characters - possibly with a gaggle of hapless NPCs - against a few goblins.

The level 10(?) party vs a couple of minotaurs.

A pair of Shadow Demons occupying a random Magnificent Mansion the level 12(?) party stumbles over.

There sure are a lot of such WTF moments if you're not prepared to instantly discard garbage ideas like that.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

The random encounter charts almost without fail put up totally trivial encounters for the party after a few chapters. And in most places you are checking twice a day which means the party is rarely starved for resources and its just a joke. Best to just handwave all that stuff.

 

[MarkB]

The random encounter charts almost without fail put up totally trivial encounters for the party after a few chapters. And in most places you are checking twice a day which means the party is rarely starved for resources and its just a joke. Best to just handwave all that stuff.

Yeah, it's not that they're bad, they're just trivial. They're okay building blocks - weld a couple of them together, or supplement them with additional forces, and they can work out well.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Just to avoid dragging this out longer I'm just going to check from random encounters they may face in the future when "trekking" through the underdark and just say "OK here is XP for the 3 minotaurs you just beat".

 

[CydKnight]

Sorry to dig up an old thread. I only do so to update that my current group has been in OotA now since October 2018 and they still seem to enjoy it. We only meet for this campaign every other week on Saturday night's so we are just now getting ready to leave Mantol Derith after just reaching Level 9.

Much of this campaign has been by the book but much also has not. These guys never visited Gracklstugh or Neverlight Grove and never went to Gauntlgrym after finally getting out of the Underdark. For the latter they actually went to Silverymoon largely based on the Harper's mission one of the PCs was on to deliver something to someone in that city. It made sense to have them go there and cut-out Gautlygrym.

There are other deviations but I don't want to get long-winded. My group does seem to enjoy it though and have expressed their desire to see it through to the end on more than one occasion.