Legendary 1st-level Adventures (inspired by Dawnforge)

[Dunjin]

This is mostly brought up by my desire to run a Dawnforge game, but I suppose it's applicable to any D&D campaign that wants to have a more epic, high-magic feel.

How do you make an adventure legendary for 1st-3rd level characters? I know that part of the reason to start with low level characters is for that feeling of "working your way up" that it gives you, but isn't there a way to bring that epix feeling to new adventurers?

One way might be to introduce small skirmishes on the edges of a greater conflict. Like Lord of the Rings, in which the hobbits face down ringwraiths early in the story. Maybe the heroes stop an invasion by goblin forces that serve as the forward scouting invasion party for a larger force. The problem there is that characters don't advance like they do in tales and stories; 13 encounters might last a whole novel in fiction, but it won't get D&D characters past level 2 in the game.

How do you break up the "humdrum" of low-level life for players seeking a more epic feel? Or do you simply start them at Level 5 or so and let them go? Since I want to run Dawnforge, I'd kinda like the players to be earning the Racial Talents and Transformations and such as they go, and that would necessitate leveling through the low levels. I could curve the XP tables more to make the lower levels faster, but that seems... dirty, somehow.

I'd rather write adventures that feel epic even for level 1 characters. So how do I do that? What have you done in the past?

Thanks!

 

[Hob Marshmallowfoot]

In my experience, the best low level adventures are those that are "personal" in some way to the PCs. Have their home village attacked by a band of desperate humanoids in the dead of winter or something. Have something horrible happen while the characters are out in the woods dealing with a friends lost child etc etc.

Basically, set up a reason for the PCs to really dislike or be personally involved with their first antagonists. Maybe make the PCs presence in their home village a danger to their friends and family for one reason or another.

Example: The scene unfolds with the Barons men riding into town. The Pcs (all friends since childhood) are sitting at the local inn after a hard day of work. The Barons men make a proclamation that one of the PCs is a wanted criminal and will be taken to the nearby large town to be interrogated by the clergymen in charge of examining heresy. So the PCs have to fight or run away or do something other than walk into a dungeon and kill some kobolds...

 

[ConnorSB]

well, my pcs are third level right now. Two of the characters are rogues, and they just stole the accounting records from my worlds equivelent of the Vatican (or at least a smaller mini-vatican). They threw a burning torch into a bishop's face, and then lit the records room on fire.

Getting into the building was pretty epic too. They got a cleric inebriated, stole his cloths, and tied him to a chair. They found a letter in his pocket from a really really high ranking church member who. This letter included with it a paper with the seal of Mephistoficales on it. Not too good when both clerics are part of a legitmate church.

And now that one of the rogues is impersonating the hogtied cleric (as she took the spot on the ship to another city that he was supposed to take), the whole party will get to deal with it when she has to hide from a legitimate church and a demon-cult. And she has potentially war-causing records in her backpack...

And its a swashbuckling campain!

 

[Melan]

You could make your adventures more challenging if you haven't already done that. If the party has to fight and think hard for their victory, and there is a real chance of failure (failure with real and dire consequences!), they will be more focused - and the ever-present danger makes it even more epic!