D&D 5E Hot to handle level progression in Princes of the Apocalypse (or sandbox adventures in general)

Yeah, sandboxes generally allow parties to face disproportionate threats. If the party investigates something out of their depth, I would recommend a combination approach to keeping them alive. Play the encounters as written but:

1) Offer appropriate clues as to the danger. "These foes seem particularly hardbitten, fierce, magical, etc." "You feel the intense waves of heat coming from that tunnel."
2) Be a little lenient with interpretation if the PCs are in over their head. Ok, so the PCs are caught in the cage trap. Maybe they have a little time to get out before the Bringers of Woe show up.
3) The cultists could easily have reasons for wanting to keep PCs alive, at least in the short term. They might hope to sacrifice or interrogate the PCs at a later occasion. Interrogation makes an excellent opportunity to justify reprisals against the PCs' party or to capitalize on PC weaknesses later on. IF the PCs are kept alive, there might well be opportunity for escape or rescue. Keep in mind that the area is filled with monsters and rival cultists that are not necessarily friendly to potential captors. It would be relatively simple to stage an ambush against a PC's captors that might allow them to escape.
4) Be SPARING with all of the above. If the DM backs down from every potential threat or character death then the sense of danger quickly fades away. PCs death is not infrequently more painful for the DM than the players.

Kaychsea said:

The problem (for me) with a sandbox that doesn't adapt to the party level is that it becomes as much a railroad as the adventures that they proponents claim to hate, it's just that the party have to self-railroad or die horribly.

The whole choice thing becomes a thinly veiled fiction, the characters may become aware of things that they can't handle but they still have to wait until they can handle it before they can engage with it and hope that they don't attract the attention of a big bad too early.

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That's not what railroading is or means and one can't "self-railroad."

If anything, a sandbox where PCs can encounter higher-level threats by choice is rather like a game that lets you set the difficulty level. If you want more of a challenge, set it to "Hard" or "Nightmare" by going to over-level places. If you don't fancy that, play on "Normal" or "Easy" mode by going to even- or under-level places.

iserith said:

That's not what railroading is or means and one can't "self-railroad."

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Thanks for the lesson. What would you call wandering around looking for the things you can, rather than would like to, do?

plancktum said:

So, what if my player's are not going to the dungeon intended for level 3 but for the dungeon intended for level 6?
Just let them go in, running into the first encounter and realizing that this is way to hard?...

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Yes, but as others have posted, in a sandbox style game, it's important to allow some kind of clue before the pcs face SUPERBADASSDUDE in his lair that he is, in fact, super badass. I don't have PotA, but rumors from nearby villagers, the remains of slain patrols/monsters/whatever, adventurer survivors who have been there, etc. should all help.

plancktum said:

Additionally, should I use the milestone system or XP System? The XP systems seems attractive, because if, for example, the 3rd level PCs go into a 4th level dungeon, they will level faster.

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One thing that I think is a fairly key feature of a sandbox is that the pcs are free to choose their reward level. XP is part of that- if a lower-level group slays a higher-level monster, that's awesome, and they should be rewarded appropriately. Meanwhile, if they stumble into that kind of encounter, they might have to work hard to avoid a TPK.

Kaychsea said:

What would you call wandering around looking for the things you can, rather than would like to, do?

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Irrelevant.

iserith said:

Irrelevant.

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That's hardly selling the concept with conviction.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but find most published versions of it either static and difficult to keep people engaged once they start butting their heads against a wall or extremely hard work to keep the world developing around the characters because that's not what they do.

Taking PotA as an example, the side quests are, with the odd example to the contrary, fairly lethal unless you are the right level. Even the main path is a relatively linear stroll around Red Larch and its environs, there aren't many opportunities to shortcut without running into something that, as written, virtually guarantees the party will be toast. Which, apart from the various editing/version/which-bit-of-the-map-is-that-on issues, generated a lot of heat for Hoard. While that is undoubtedly linear to a fault, it at least wears the t-shirt with pride.

Building in scaling factors is hard and expects a fair degree of work, interpretation and customisation of the product.

Kaychsea said:

Building in scaling factors is hard and expects a fair degree of work, interpretation and customisation of the product.

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Running D&D has not generally been all that easy, and being open to DM interpretation & customization is arguably a strength of 5e (DM empowerment), anyway. Yes, it takes some effort to adapt any published adventure or encounter to your group - their mix of classes, play styles, attitudes, etc, as well as to your style and what you're trying to get out of it. It can be well worth the effort.

If you let players sandbox their way into a trans-deadly encounter and just run it 'straight' yes, it's a trainwreck, and you'd've been better off with rails. If you telegraph it, and help them find an alternate approach (like avoiding it, taking it on in smaller bites, or taking a non-combat approach, even if it's not too heroic, like paying a bribe or promising a service in return for their lives, or whatever), you can stay true to the sandbox concept - not changing what's there, just how the PCs interact with it. It's not formalized, like 4e were doing that would mean re-writing a standard monster as a solo or presenting a skill challenge instead of a combat encounter, or intractable like 3.x, where the party would just have no chance - between bounded accuracy and the degrees of freedom you have as DM, you should even be able to make those adjustments on the fly, once you've gotten the hang of it.

Here is a good series about what railroading is

So yeah, I don't agree that PotA is a railroad due to the difficulty levels of the areas, still it can be a bit annoying and preventative towards the exploring absolutely everywhere. I'd have liked to see the places on each layer being a bit closer to each other in difficulty, with perhaps the highest difficulty on one layer overlapping the lowest difficulty on another. Bu that's definitely more difficult to do in a published product than in a home game.

Kaychsea said:

That's hardly selling the concept with conviction.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but find most published versions of it either static and difficult to keep people engaged once they start butting their heads against a wall or extremely hard work to keep the world developing around the characters because that's not what they do.

Taking PotA as an example, the side quests are, with the odd example to the contrary, fairly lethal unless you are the right level. Even the main path is a relatively linear stroll around Red Larch and its environs, there aren't many opportunities to shortcut without running into something that, as written, virtually guarantees the party will be toast. Which, apart from the various editing/version/which-bit-of-the-map-is-that-on issues, generated a lot of heat for Hoard. While that is undoubtedly linear to a fault, it at least wears the t-shirt with pride.

Building in scaling factors is hard and expects a fair degree of work, interpretation and customisation of the product.

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What you're saying reinforces my point: The players get to choose the difficulty setting of their particular game by the choices they make. If the DM is affording them the opportunity to make informed decisions, then it's all good. If they have determined that a given side quest looks "fairly lethal," then they can take steps to mitigate that through smart play.

I played Hoard and found it to be pretty easy. But then, we were pretty smart about how we approached things, while making sure it was still exciting and fun.

Kaychsea said:

That's hardly selling the concept with conviction.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but find most published versions of it either static and difficult to keep people engaged once they start butting their heads against a wall or extremely hard work to keep the world developing around the characters because that's not what they do.

Taking PotA as an example, the side quests are, with the odd example to the contrary, fairly lethal unless you are the right level. Even the main path is a relatively linear stroll around Red Larch and its environs, there aren't many opportunities to shortcut without running into something that, as written, virtually guarantees the party will be toast. Which, apart from the various editing/version/which-bit-of-the-map-is-that-on issues, generated a lot of heat for Hoard. While that is undoubtedly linear to a fault, it at least wears the t-shirt with pride.

Building in scaling factors is hard and expects a fair degree of work, interpretation and customisation of the product.

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Sandboxes are a fair degree of work at best for the DM. Much of that work is spent preparing in anticipation for possible decisions by players, as well as improvising on the fly. A sandbox adventure can only provide a starting point. If the DM slavishly follows only what's in the published product without extrapolating and expanding on what's there, in accordance with the actions of the players, then you don't really have a sandbox. You just have an adventure with some degree of non-linearity.

A "sandbox adventure" is, when you get down to it, a campaign setting. The setting may be limited to a certain area, but within the limits of the box, the players do and go what and where they will. PotA is essentially a localized campaign setting (Red Larch and Environs) with a fairly non-linear adventure laid over it. What's good about it is that it can be run either as a sandbox or more straightforwardly as an adventure pitting the PCs vs the Elder Elemental Eye. But how it is run depends on the DM and players. It is not itself a sandbox; it needs a DM to make it one.