How tough is City of the Spider Queen?

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Ah, sigh, I've already made my opinion known.

Though I do suppose that this module is something of a railroad I hardly feel it. We have a pretty even handed DM.

Sounds pretty nasty. Sorry your DM isn't letting you get away with clever bits such as disguises.

Whenever someone in the city asks us questions we don't know the answers to we run elaborate distraction routines.

The road to the next city has had some nice encounters for us, but I do think you are better off skipping it, walking through a warzone that involves demons is unfun.

 

[WattsHumphrey]

Where is the ring of the darkhidden and blindsight spell?

Ring of the Darkhidden is in the items section of Magic of Faerun (has it's own picture, IIRC)

Blindsight is in several places, I think... the one I used was the cleric one and I think that was also in Magic of Faerun.

 

[rounser]

Calling "you can negotiate with the factions" or "you can disguise yourself" roleplaying features is a big cop-out of a defense for lack of roleplaying content or opportunity for meaningful decision making in a module, IMO.

Why?

You could do both these things in Keep on the Flipping Borderlands for flumphs' sake, it's truly scraping the bottom of the barrel of excuses for module poor design, IMO. RttToEE almost has an excuse because it was simulating the original...other modules have nowhere to hide.

Someone else mentioned that some NPCs had fantastic motivations, well - they're not worth a tinkers damn without hooks to help the DM bring them up in play, and kudos to the DM who works hard to attempt to find a way to do so without straining the bounds of believability. "Intruders, eh? No doubt you are unaware of my long time struggle with the ruling power here, which will be absolved as soon as the Crown of McGuffin is returned and my vengeance is wreaked upon my cousin. But first I must deal with you!"

It's a problem a lot of adventures have - fantastic backstory and/or cool background for NPCs which the DM knows about, but never enter play. Some Dungeon magazine adventures suffer from it - everything that happened makes perfect sense from the DM's point of view because he/she knows the backstory, but seems completely arbitrary to the players because the module doesn't involve a good reason to bring that knowledge to light.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Calling "you can negotiate with the factions" or "you can disguise yourself" roleplaying features is a big cop-out of a defense for lack of roleplaying content or opportunity for meaningful decision making in a module, IMO.

Agreed. Unfortunately, that does appear to be some gamers definition of RPing, LOL.

 

[jmichels`]

I'm gonna talk to him again about CotSQ. He is so stingy with XP and treasure and then wonders why we can't fight tough monsters when most of us don't even have a +1 weapon at 9th level, LOL. Then, we complain, and he hands out like 5,000gp each and a couple nifty magic items each but throws us into a meatgrinder still woefully unprepared. *sigh* Why must all our campaigns self-destruct at around 10th level? Is it D&D's fault? The system really does seem to break down at high levels of play (it always did, even if 3e is a little better at maintaining balance).

As a player I would despise being blatantly railroaded as bad as you folks have been to get you into this adventure. You must get this Rod by a certain time or your all dead? And the DM has killed off all of the stuff relating to your hopes and dreams to force you to go on the adventure? Couple this with the fact that your party is woefully underpowered and likely get slaughtered in mere rounds when you get to Maemaydra. That is far too heavy handed IMO. Well you have three things you could do. Grin and bear it to the bitter end, look for the Total Party Kill, or try everything in your power to flee the adventure.

What I would do is to have all of the PCs have a crisis of faith and swear off this repressive diety. Then I would have the Mind Flayer plane shift you to a Church of Shar, Cyric, Velsharoon etc. and convert to their religion. Or you could approach some insipid good organization like the Harpers and spill the beans about the Zhents plans in exchange for protection and atonement. Then you convert to a diety like Tyr, Torm, or Chauntea that probably won't be so meddlesome. Or you could simply swear off Bane and then teleport to some place far from the reach of the Black Network and start a new life. I would choose either Kara-Tur, Calimshan, or maybe Aglarond since they seem far enough away or have powerful people keeping the Zhents/Baneites out. If the the DM sends a Banite Punishing Squad of overwhelming power (or some other punishment device) to off you take the TPK like a man.

If this happens then start the campaign again from scratch, but build the new PCs with an eye toward combat optimization so you could breeze through the needless combat to get to the juicy RP. Make every combat short and sweet bringing overwhelming force into play then move on to the next thing that advances the plot. Since you don't really want to DM longterm, and you can't find another one to take over, you have to play your DMs game. It pays to be as good at that game as you can be.

 

[Iron_Chef]

Talked to the DM today and he said he was going to enact many of my ideas but that we didn't know he was, lol, and that he was burned out and ashamed that the last few sessions sucked and agreed with most of our complaints. So, I'm gonna take over as DM for a bit and try to straighten this mess out as best I can...

Unfortunately, now I'm stuck running CoTSQ!!!

Too much has happened to hit the magic rewind button, so now I have to clean up the first DM's mess. HELP!!!

 

[Pants]

Too much has happened to hit the magic rewind button, so now I have to clean up the first DM's mess. HELP!!!

Good god. All I can offer is about 1800 pounds of good luck.

 

[Iron_Chef]

The moral of the story is "be careful what you wish for," kiddies.

 

[green slime]

Part of that problem being: The players CHOOSE to slaughter the bad dudes, rather than bring them to justice and "extract" the information.

I'm not much for players constantly slaughtering everything thrown at them. That's why I try to reward players for taking prisoners, even if they escape, most ex-prisoners will remember how they were treated, and act accordingly.

One goblin IMC is convinced the players LET him escape, as they really botched the Use Ropes skill, and is friendly to the PCs, but they seem completely oblivious to this fact

 

[Iron_Chef]

It's not really practical to bring bad guys to justice in most non-urban locations. Far quicker and more sure to put everyone to the sword and let the gods sort 'em out. I just can't see any group trying to capture most opponents to "bring them to justice" as it's simply notpractical, and increases the risk that the enemies will injure or kill the players and/or escape. You can't really tie up hundreds of drow and undead and try to "wagon train" them back to your home town when you're on their turf deep underground and they are "resisting arrest."

Personally, our group tries to charm and/or dominate anything that looks like it might be a useful ally, slave, or information provider, but we kill them once their usefulness/amusement factor expires (or we goof up on an opposed charisma check or they break free after we badmouth their god).