Pseudopsyche
First Post
I agree with most of the advice you've already received, but I'd like to emphasize a few points.
DDI is not necessary. As you figured, the Stealth errata is the one most likely to come up. The skill challenge DCs changed too, but HS1 already uses the new numbers. You can pattern your own skill challenges off those.
To encourage role-play, don't announce your skill challenges and give them a list of choices, as the module format encourages. I recommend doing everything narratively, and when your players tell you what they want to do in-game, tell them what skill check to make. Be flexible: skill challenges are more of a loose framework than a tightly balanced game system. (For example, even for the skills listed as "1 success only", it won't break anything to allow your players to do two different things that happen to use the same skill.)
To keep combat short, remind yourself not to fight to the bitter end. Most of the opponents are kobolds and goblins who should totally bolt once the tide turns decisively in the PCs' favor. You could even have the bad guys flee when they still have a good shot at winning, if they've taken heavy losses. Have them role-play their panic as the PCs rough them up, a big shift from their initial taunts and jibes. I bet your players would get a kick out of that, and it might liven up combat beyond a miniatures game.
Looking at my copy, most encounters scale effortlessly to three. Yeah, when it's three monsters of type A and two of type B, you can just use two and one, no sweat.
HS2 is not a good immediate followup for no other reason than it's for level 4, and your PCs won't be there after HS1. I strongly recommend looking into Hammerfast. It's not a complete adventure, but it describes a dwarven town in detail, giving locations and NPCs to inspire plenty of adventures. It even has an outline, level by level, of a campaign that goes from level 2 to level 10, a perfect followup to HS1.
If not Hammerfast, then Chaos Scar does provide a wealth of low-level adventures, all of manageable 3-4 encounters size. Once your party hits level 3, you may even be able to use level-1 adventures out of the box: 500 XP, a level-1 encounter for 5 PCs, is a level-3 encounter for 3 PCs. (DMG2 explicitly recommends using more monsters of lower level for small party sizes.)
My experience has also been that it's easier to convert 3e adventures to 4e for smaller party sizes. The typical published 4e adventure uses much larger combat maps and larger encounters, but scaling things down for 3 PCs brings you closer to the 3e encounter scale. This approach would still require some adaptation, I'm sure, but it could be a good chance to run any 3e adventures you've always wanted to run. So it could be worth it if enthusiasm for a particular adventure outweighs the conversion effort. I'll note that Rise of the Runelords even already has a fan-created 4e adaptation, although I disagree with the design decision to stretch it out to 30 levels by adding many more combats.
Good luck!
DDI is not necessary. As you figured, the Stealth errata is the one most likely to come up. The skill challenge DCs changed too, but HS1 already uses the new numbers. You can pattern your own skill challenges off those.
To encourage role-play, don't announce your skill challenges and give them a list of choices, as the module format encourages. I recommend doing everything narratively, and when your players tell you what they want to do in-game, tell them what skill check to make. Be flexible: skill challenges are more of a loose framework than a tightly balanced game system. (For example, even for the skills listed as "1 success only", it won't break anything to allow your players to do two different things that happen to use the same skill.)
To keep combat short, remind yourself not to fight to the bitter end. Most of the opponents are kobolds and goblins who should totally bolt once the tide turns decisively in the PCs' favor. You could even have the bad guys flee when they still have a good shot at winning, if they've taken heavy losses. Have them role-play their panic as the PCs rough them up, a big shift from their initial taunts and jibes. I bet your players would get a kick out of that, and it might liven up combat beyond a miniatures game.
Looking at my copy, most encounters scale effortlessly to three. Yeah, when it's three monsters of type A and two of type B, you can just use two and one, no sweat.
HS2 is not a good immediate followup for no other reason than it's for level 4, and your PCs won't be there after HS1. I strongly recommend looking into Hammerfast. It's not a complete adventure, but it describes a dwarven town in detail, giving locations and NPCs to inspire plenty of adventures. It even has an outline, level by level, of a campaign that goes from level 2 to level 10, a perfect followup to HS1.
If not Hammerfast, then Chaos Scar does provide a wealth of low-level adventures, all of manageable 3-4 encounters size. Once your party hits level 3, you may even be able to use level-1 adventures out of the box: 500 XP, a level-1 encounter for 5 PCs, is a level-3 encounter for 3 PCs. (DMG2 explicitly recommends using more monsters of lower level for small party sizes.)
My experience has also been that it's easier to convert 3e adventures to 4e for smaller party sizes. The typical published 4e adventure uses much larger combat maps and larger encounters, but scaling things down for 3 PCs brings you closer to the 3e encounter scale. This approach would still require some adaptation, I'm sure, but it could be a good chance to run any 3e adventures you've always wanted to run. So it could be worth it if enthusiasm for a particular adventure outweighs the conversion effort. I'll note that Rise of the Runelords even already has a fan-created 4e adaptation, although I disagree with the design decision to stretch it out to 30 levels by adding many more combats.
Good luck!
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