D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] City of the Spider Queen <SPOILERS>

[Melkor]

If you were going to run City of the Spider Queen with 3.5 - What would need to be changed ? I'm primarily asking those that have played CotSQ before, and are now using 3.5.

Obvious things would be dropping in any 3.5 MM monster, MMII, or Fiend Folio monsters (with the updates from the conversion booklet) to replace any listed CotSQ monster that has been updated.

What else would need to be changed ? Will all NPCs need to be created from the ground up ?

What about monsters that were new to CotSQ ? Will they need to be created from scratch, and if so - how does that work ?

Anything else in CotSQ that would require major change ?

Thanks.

 

[gfunk]

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You may want to check out my Story Hour (link below) to see how a lot of the high-level encounters played out.

But to answer your specific concerns,

1) The Balor has probably got to go. It will absolutely annihilate PCs when they walk into Mymidria (sp?) or when they go head to head with Kurgoth Hellspwan. Best to replace them with a CR 18 demon (Marilith sounds good).

2) Most of the classed creatures will be okay, since the PCs have been upgraded as well.

3) The most important thing is to look at CR changes. A lot of the Fiend Folio/MMII monsters (Blood Fiends, Abyssal Ghouls) *should* be alright because their CRs (AFAIK) have not changed.

BTW, I loved you on Conan. Thanks for standing up for RPers!

 

[Dark Dragon]

The demons in Maerimydra will be tougher with 3.5. Forbiddance has been changed and will be no big deal for a high-level party. The spider venom has a slightly decreased save DC, IIRC.

I don't know which NPCs your party will encounter, because our DM has shortened CotSQ drastically: After a failed assault on the city, our group entered the new temple via Find the Path and Wind Walk and concentrated on the four upper stories in three sessions. The ghouls need some rebuilding for 3.5, they were a bit too tough, IMHO (we were seven PCs of level 15 to 16 and had problems to hold our ground against three ghouls...).
Morcane was a one-session encounter, the shadow dragon is deadly when encountered unprepared and definately not at the right CR. Don't know what should had happened at Lich's Mire - we passed it with Wind Walk without problems.

The high-priestess won't need much changes. If you want to be an evil DM, use some spells from Magic of Faerûn: Fortunate Fate (Heal on caster when an attacks brings him below -10 hp) and Holy Star (provides +10 cover bonus).

My 2 cents as a player.

 

[Melkor]

GFunk,

Thanks as always. You posts are always insightful and tend to do a good job of answering my questions.

I finally figured out the references to Vin Diesel and his Melkor character, and I wish I had his money.....There wouldn't be a 3.0 or 3.5 third party product that I didn't own! Sadly, I'm just a regular fan of Tolkien that chose one of his names for my handle.

I will definitely check out your story hour thread. Did you guys convert existing characters to 3.5 after having played CotSQ with your 3.0 characters, or did you run CotSQ after the conversion ?

Anyone else have any other notes on changes ?

What about thos skin-flayed undead drow ?

I'm going to cut and past all of these into a single Word Doc and print it out for reference when I am planning.

 

[gfunk]

BTW, we played CotSQ with 3.0 characters and have recently converted them to 3.5.

Looking over the module and the conversion guide, I've noticed the following issues:

1) DR which was irrelevant in 3.0, has become a major player. Both Blood Fiends and Nycaloths have DR 15/good and 10/good respectively. You should really make sure that you have a cleric that can cast Align Weapon or have a PCs with holy weapons. This is esp. a problem at the beginning of the module -- the Bebeliths can own the PCs!

2) Spell lists will only need minor tweaking. A few spells have changed levels. Buff spells, for the most part, are cast by NPCs right before they enter combat anyway so the modified durations shouldn't be a big problem.

3) Otherwise, it will be a chore to update stat blocks. This adventure uses classed NPCs a whole lot more than straight monsters.

 

[Brekki]

We're playing CotSQ with 3.5 ... the link in my sig should point to our own board ... I'll point the DM to this thread.

 

[Archade]

We're playing CotSQ and I'm converting it to 3.5 on the fly .... couple of things to note...

1. Vampires have DR/10 silver and magic

2. Forbiddance has WAY changed. Read the new spell carefully before they explore House Morcane (it's a lot more dangerous, in my opinion).

 

[Brekki]

What I remember from DM quotes and other things that changed our game:
- lots of enemies have the haste, two spells/round tactic ... that won't work, so give them the quicken spell feat or some other thing to replace it
- the darkness spell isn't dark anymore, a big change around drow
- fly and improved invis have changed, so sneaking and getting around are different

 

[Archade]

Well, obviously the tactics need to be modified.

Was there a change to Black Puddings for doing damage to objects? I found that a very tough encounter for a party of 5 9th-10th level characters, with two 7th level cohorts. Of course, they split the 2 Black Puddings into 5 in one round ...

The later Forbiddance spell keeping out the demons no longer keeps them out. What replacement spell or tactic would Irae use to keep out Kurgoth?

 

[Wraithdrit]

I too am running CotSQ under 3.5. However I ran a prologue under 3.0 that made for some serious modifications of the adventure. Its not been too far of yet...

But anyways! We are talking about 3.5 here. The fiendish gargantuan spider needs reworked (thats where they got to last time...). The Maurezhi worked fine as is, and the drow and the Quth-Maren have seemed about on par. So thats what I got so far.