Help! Need plot Ideas for single character adventure

[Cyclops]

I'm facing a mental block here. Its easy to design an adventure for a party of six-all bases are covered-healing, melee, arcane stuff.

Now I have to run an adventure for a 9th level human sorcerer all by himself in Waterdeep.

I've never run a solo-type adventure before.
A cleric is ballanced for something like this, he can both fight and heal.

But a single class sorcerer?

OK here is the scenario: He has traveled away from the party to Waterdeep to buy an auxillary membership to a mage's guild. He wants to use guild resources to make a magic item.

I need a solo adventure just before of after the item is built. I don't want to interfere with the creation-I don't think thats fair.

Generally, I come up with the caper first. Once I know what the bad guys are doing, then I figure a way for the party to bump into it.

I'm playing with one idea...
A cabal of sorcerers, disinfranchised with the mages guild (looked down upon once to many times) have formed their own guild. They purchased an old boarding house and discovered a secret basement with a closed Portal or gate. Their attempts to open it is disturbing the border ethereal and atracting outsiders into waterdeep. They are quite secretive, and locals seem up to the job of putting down the occasional ethereal marauder that pops up. Of course, when a half fiendish ettin shows up in a nearby alley things start getting out of hand.
By this time, the cabal has been mentally affected by either the energies emanating from the portal, or by something from the other side. The cabal will never stop their attempts to open the portal.

The hooks I see, is this group sells the PC sorcerer some hard to find components. When the pc kills something nearby, he loots it, casts a detect magic, and the whole house glows! (beleieve me, this player is far too inquisitive for his own good.)

But the more I work this, the more it turns into a party adventure!

Maybe I need something simpler.
Has anyone here run a solo adventure for a mage/sorcerer?

 

[gpetruc]

Written like this it seems a bit too dangerous for a single 9th level sorceror (arcane casters tend to have very few hp: if a creature, maybe with SR, is lucky enough to survive to the spells and pass through the magical defenses, she can kill the sorceror in a few hits)

Maybe change a little the adventure path; an idea could be this:
- the attepts to open the portals awakened the magic aura of the portal, that was sleeping for centuries
- the aura collides with the remaints of an ancient netherese magical item: the item is not functional anymore, but it still produces alterations in the Weave.
- because of this, ethereal creatures can enter the material plane as if there was a random portal
- the only ways to stop this is are to permanently destroy the portal (that is far too much for the character's power) or to find that ruined magical item and bring it away.
- as the rumors of the portal are spreading in the ethereal plane, the number and power of the creatures coming is quickly growing, so a solution to the problem must be found quickly
- while some of the town local enforcers (or other, more fighting-like NPC) are desperatly trying to stop the coming invasion the sorceror must find the way to close the portal

In this way there would be more investigation and less heavy combat. Also, you can place magical barriers and traps that can be passed only through a clever use of spells and arcane arts.

I've played some adventures for a lone, low-level wizard using more investigation-oriented plots and they worked fine.

 

[willpax]

It might help to know the sorceror's spells when tailoring a single-person adventure.

If the sorc has some good sneak-type spells, you could always have some kind of investigation or "borrowing" of a needed item for the item creation.

Or, if divination spells are a strength: sorc needs a component, but the shopkeeper won't sell until someone finds his daughter--the sorc then follows a chain of clues to the girl, who has run away with a two-bit hustler in a bad crowd--at first she thought it would be fun, but now she would really like to go home. Too bad boyfriend (L5 rogue) and his dimwit thug friends (many L1–L3 warriors with low wisdom scores) have hatched the idea to hold her for ransom. . . (I assume your sorc took a sleep spell, right? And has some communication skills?) It might make the guy feel good to get into an almost even melee fight for a change.

 

[rln]

To even out the fighting skills of the sorcerer, give him access to a shield guardian (See monster manual).

Idea:

The Cabal kills a rival mage right within the guild. With his dying breath he hands the amulet to the PC sorcerer, telling him to search his quarters for the hidden closet where his final protector is.

If a shield guardian would unbalance the rest of the game, either make sure it is destroyed in the final fight, or that it cannot walk out of the mage's guild/the city limits/whatever suits your story.

A 9th-level NPC-mage of mine successfully held up against a party of 6 level 7 players with just a shield guardian at his side. Only when the players managed to go in and grapple with the mage did the tide turn to their favor - they wrestled the amulet from him after successfully deducing how the thing worked (high spellcraft roll). But it was no easy task.

(The party decided to leave the Shield Guardian in their stronghold, to be used by the caretaker of the place)

 

[Ruavel]

go with your instinct...

I think your initial idea was quite good, but may just need to be toned down a little...

turn the cabal into a duo of mages... if you use Tome & Blood at all, your portal idea would be perfect to make one of them an Alienist (or even both)...

the hook of selling something to the PC is handy, given the obscure things these mages may be getting their hands on from things coming through the portal...

maybe too many deaths related to things coming from the portal has made one of the bad-dudes change his mind and he seeks an ally to stop his now-insane and more powerful former partner...

just some thoughts... happy to help sound them out a little more if you like...