D&D 4E 1st 4e experience with WotBS - tips?

[AddizAbeba]

Hi,

We finally ended our 3.5e homebrew campaign abnd switched DMs. Our new DM is inexperienced, so we thought to use a published adventure to relieve the burden of full prep. We chose WotBS. We alos chose to only use material we have in posession: the three basic books. No other books as of yet. WotBS special rules are allowed.

Our party is 4 PCs, a Dwarven fighter, a Dragonborn Warlord, a Tiefling warlock and an Elven wizard.

We lack a rogue, the warlock has Thievery trained at 5 (no high dex). So we failed to infiltrate the Warehouse of adv.1 from the 'easier' side. This resulted in going in from the other side and resulted in a near-TPK (Torrent saved us by covering our retreat)

My question: Will we get more trouble like this in the future? Do we need that fifth PC? What can our (inexperienced) DM do to cater for 4 when adv is aimed at 5 PCs?
I haven't read the adventures, of course, and please spoil as little as possible.

Thanks!

 

[OnlineDM]

Hmm. I've been running a group through the 4e version of War of the Burning Sky since last July (currently at 11th level), and we've never run into issues like you describe. Now granted, I drastically changed the first adventure (it starts off the same and then goes in a completely different direction before converging at the end), so I never ran the warehouse encounter, but I don't remember any cases where the party was lacking in a particular skill and that caused a near-TPK.

I've been told that some of the encounters from the first adventure are not well balanced, and I believe I did hear something in particular about that warehouse encounter being a problem for other groups. So, at least you're not alone in that.

I don't think you should have to add a fifth PC. The DM should certainly be scaling the encounters appropriately, although I'll admit that my players usually had too EASY of a time with battles rather than too hard (I've started changing the damage that the monsters deal to post-Monster Manual 3 numbers lately, which has helped).

Scaling an adventure for a smaller party usually just means removing a monster, sometimes two (or a few minions). I tend to just eyeball it, but the DM could add up the experience points for each monster and then see what it equals for a party of 4 PCS and remove monsters as needed to get the math right. It's not usually that hard to do.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Another option would be to introduce a Companion Character, which if you don't have DMG2 amounts to just an NPC drawn up pretty much like a monster. Usually their stats will be drawn up by the DM, perhaps to reflect an NPC adventurer sort of character etc. Typically they will be a bit more of a supporting character than one that does the heavy lifting, but there's no specific rule on what exactly they have to be like. Just the idea is to avoid a Mary Sue type of thing.

 

[RangerWickett]

Torrent actually works pretty perfectly if you need a back-up NPC as a 'companion character.' All she needs to do is make basic attacks, soak up some damage, and occasionally heal the party

I wrote the original 3e version of the first adventure, but I don't have as much familiarity with how it turned out in the conversion to 4e. Since your GM is new, I'd suggest maybe having 2 or 3 sessions of "training wheels," where both the GM and the players understand that if anything gets really out of hand, it's okay to rewind a bit and fix things so that the game can keep going.

Once he gets a better feel for what you guys can take, things go back to normal.

 

[RangerWickett]

Oh, and tell your DM that everyone and their brother thinks the encounter on page 47 is overpowered. Close burst 3 should be, like, close burst 1. He can ask on the EN Publishing forum if he has any questions.

 

[Colmarr]

As a rule of thumb, if your group has 4 PCs instead of 5, then your DM should be removing a monster or monsters from each encounter so that the encounter XP total is 4/5 of what it is as-printed.

Eg. If an encounter is 500xp as printed (even level for five 1st level PCs), he should remove 100xp worth of monsters, making it a balanced encounter for 4 PCs.

Eg2. If an encounter is 700xp as printed (difficult for five 1st level PCs), he should remove 140xp worth of monsters. It'll still be difficult, but it's no longer horrifying for 4 PCs.

This system will quite frequently result in minor problems with the XP, but near enough is good enough. For example, removing a level 1 monster and a level 1 minion from example 2 accounts for 125xp. Don't worry about the other 15. Alternatively, the DM might remove 2 level 1 monsters (200xp) but add 2 level 1 minions (50xp), for a total change of -150xp.

 

[Kzach]

There are two things I can recommend whilst playing through WotBS.

The first and most important of all, is to follow the damn clues. Yes, it's a railroad, but that's not a bad thing. Don't fight it and just go with the flow and everyone will enjoy the story a lot more because it's an enjoyable story.

The second most important thing, is to ALWAYS be prepared to retreat. There are some seriously nasty fights in the module. Your group should ALWAYS treat combat as the least desirable option and always try to roleplay through an encounter. Use all your skills as often as possible and in as unique a way as possible. The skill challenges are some of the best thought out ones I've ever seen and cover a lot of possible scenarios. Don't be afraid to suggest using a skill in some oddball way as you just never know.

 

[S'mon]

I think a companion NPC is the way to go, this saves the DM having to think about rescaling every encounter for 4 PCs. It will still be slightly tougher than having 5 real PCs.