How tough are these modules....

[Oryan77]

Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
Night Below book 2: Perils of the Underdark
Eye to Eye
Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga
Die Vecna Die

Which of these modules converted to 3.5 would you say is easiest and hardest? I've been told that PC's need to be about 12th lvl for the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief.

I understand most of these haven't been converted, so you might not know exactly. But for those who have ran these in any edition (I have never run them before), what lvl would you assume the PC's would need to be to play in these modules in 3.5?

I'm trying to figure out what order to run them in. From my glances through the modules, I see what encounters there are and I know their CR's....but my observations might not be correct. I assumed PC's could be lower lvl for the Steading until someone pointed out why I was wrong (harder encounters I didn't notice while browsing). I don't want to run them prematurely.

 

[Oryan77]

Did I just stump the entire Enworld community with a question?

I know this question is a little harder than a "What will be in D&D 4th Edition" or a "Why are older editions better than 3rd edition" question....but surely someone has played these in 3e & can help me out?

 

[Rhun]

Which of these modules converted to 3.5 would you say is easiest and hardest? I've been told that PC's need to be about 12th lvl for the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief.

I just played the converted Steading through last week. 12th Level characters and possibly lower can complete it, as long as they don't try to tackle the Great Hall. That portion is deadly, even with 12th level characters.

 

[Victim]

Book 2 of Night Below is more tedious than difficult, except for a few trouble spots. One area is like 6th level PCs versus 40! trolls. Pretty dang tough, especially since the last major battle was against like 40 orcs.

 

[foehammerx]

I have player Steading, Night Below, and Die Vecna Die. i agree with has already been said about Steading and night below.

Die Vecna Die is an enirely different venture. It is written for 12th level characters but that just aint gonna happen. Furthermore the game mechanics that have changed as well as Vecna player sheet totally alter the final confrontation in Die Vecna Die. You can alter this arround but basically i would only run Die Vecna Die as an Epic Level Adventure.

 

[SWBaxter]

Steading of the Hill Giant Chief

This one's a tactical challenge, players with good tactics (like impersonating guards and sending fake messages to split up the big groups of giants) will do a lot better than the kick-the-door-down-and-great-cleave crowd. Difficulty varies accordingly. If your players aren't particularly sneaky, then it's probably more like a 14th or 15th level adventure, but if they are cunning types 12th level is good enough, maybe even a level or two less.

Night Below book 2: Perils of the Underdark
Eye to Eye

I have no experience with these.

Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga

Quite possibly I'm thinking of the wrong adventure, the one I'm familiar with was a Dragon module way back in the mists of time. That one has a lot of different monsters that would convert to wildly different power levels, so it's hard to say how tough it'd be without going into the details of the conversion. But from what I recall, the major challenge in first edition was figuring out the interior layout, otherwise a party could end up hopelessly lost and never get out. That part of the challenge isn't likely to change, though quite possibly more players nowadays know what a tesseract is.

Die Vecna Die

Another one that depends entirely on how you convert it. With Vecna being an established deity in 3E, I agree with the poster who said it'd have to be an Epic-level adventure.

 

[Oryan77]

Night Below has 40 trolls & 40 orcs!?!? Sheesh. Would I be safe running that module with 4 PC's at around 8-9th lvl?

I was going to run the Steading before Night Below, but maybe I need to swap those around then.

As for Die Vecna Die, yeah I skimmed through it but I did a thorough read thru of the ending and if my interpretation is correct, it did seem epic level to me too. Can the ending be altered where they aren't actually confronting Vecna, and still make sense with the rest of the adventure? It sounds like a fun module, I just wonder if I can change the end of it so it doesn't require epic status. Or is the whole module pretty much epic? I was concidering using someone weaker to take Iuz's place also...but I'm not completely familiar with the adventure.

Thanks for the responses also!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Quite possibly I'm thinking of the wrong adventure, the one I'm familiar with was a Dragon module way back in the mists of time. That one has a lot of different monsters that would convert to wildly different power levels, so it's hard to say how tough it'd be without going into the details of the conversion. But from what I recall, the major challenge in first edition was figuring out the interior layout, otherwise a party could end up hopelessly lost and never get out. That part of the challenge isn't likely to change, though quite possibly more players nowadays know what a tesseract is.

An' I recall aproper TSR did a bigger version expanding it quite a bit. Checking on RPGNow they did indeed.

The Auld Grump

 

[Victim]

Night Below has 40 trolls & 40 orcs!?!? Sheesh. Would I be safe running that module with 4 PC's at around 8-9th lvl?

I was going to run the Steading before Night Below, but maybe I need to swap those around then.

Well, the 40 Trolls is supposed to teach the PCs about hit and run attacks. Also, redefining the battlefiend was very important - in my group, the PCs often used stoneshape to narrow certain caves so only a few could fight at a time. Trolls were less dangerous back in the day. But in many ways, it's supposed to be a shocker. In book 1, the PCs fight low HD humanoids (including some classed humans) with a few higher level bosses. Then they go from fighting a horde of weak guys to a horde of tough guys. However, you could cut the number of trolls by half and still preserve the feel of the encounter since 3.X trolls are nasty. Might be a good idea to do the same thing in other areas. Plus it makes the game run faster.

The 40 orcs wasn't too bad. It might have been more, although many of the orcs are effectively non-combatants (at least until pressed really hard).

NB is designed for an especially large party.

 

[Oryan77]

Originally Posted by SWBaxter
Quite possibly I'm thinking of the wrong adventure, the one I'm familiar with was a Dragon module way back in the mists of time. That one has a lot of different monsters that would convert to wildly different power levels, so it's hard to say how tough it'd be without going into the details of the conversion. But from what I recall, the major challenge in first edition was figuring out the interior layout, otherwise a party could end up hopelessly lost and never get out. That part of the challenge isn't likely to change, though quite possibly more players nowadays know what a tesseract is.


An' I recall aproper TSR did a bigger version expanding it quite a bit. Checking on RPGNow they did indeed.

Yeah, I have a TSR module that is just named "Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga". I had to get it when I heard about it. I remember that whole scenario from the Quest for Glory part 1 game and didn't realize it was a popular myth.

So I think I can handle Night Below book 2 with an 8th lvl party. It shouldn't be too big a deal to tone down the troll & orc monstrosity if I need to.

I'll plan for lvl 12 then for the Steading of the Hill Giants. I'm still not sure about Eye to Eye though. It looks like there's tons of Beholders, but I'm not sure of what else, or how challenging the beholder encounters will be.

For anyone who is familiar with Die Vecna Die, is it safe to say a group of maybe 13 or 14th lvl PC's could run in that if I just tweak the final encounter so they don't actually fight a god? Maybe I could do some kind of weakened avatar that's still trying to gain it's full powers.