Lord of the Iron Fortress Questions ***SPOILERS***

[Dinkeldog]

You have 5 players, right?

Let your inexperienced players use the 4 sample characters in back.

Let your experienced player see the 4 sample characters and create a 5th to fit in and complement the group to his liking.

Make sure your experienced player feels comfortable giving advice to the other players. High level characters have new abilities they won't have practiced and might have difficult judging.

Then take it a little easy, but not much.

 

[evileeyore]

The biggest failing I see here was both you and your players underestimated higher level play.

It is much more than 'hey I've got ten extra levels'. There are alot of things to consider in your abilities at that level. Thnigs that the players would hace had the time for whilst advancing to those levels in a slower fashion.

Don't take it too hard though, gets us all. I have consistently had characters make it to about 10th level. Last one just died (relatively speaking time wise) so I made a 9th level Sorceror (9th being what I could have been raised as), never having played a caster before (atleast not a high level one).

I took no real area effect spells. I took no real charm/hold person type spells. Begining to see the effectiveness of those spells. Will definitely have to take them at a higher level...

 

[Frosty]

I for one think the module is tough as nails. We were five but still had major problems with several of the encounters. We managed to flee from the dragons without a fight, for example. Imperagon and his goons were so buffed up it was silly. An improved invisible balor attacked from the rear as we were fighting Imperagon, the planetar and the rest of the pack. We managed to banish the balor (even though it was a longshot) and what happens - ANOTHER ONE ARRIVES! What's up with that?

 

[Uller]

I for one think the module is tough as nails. We were five but still had major problems with several of the encounters. We managed to flee from the dragons without a fight, for example. Imperagon and his goons were so buffed up it was silly. An improved invisible balor attacked from the rear as we were fighting Imperagon, the planetar and the rest of the pack. We managed to banish the balor (even though it was a longshot) and what happens - ANOTHER ONE ARRIVES! What's up with that?

Hrmm...sure it wasn't a Pit Fiend? The second one was probably the same one that got banished...I think the encounter specifically tells the DM how to bring the Pit Fiend back a round or two after being banished.

I think the trick is for the party to get into the fight with Imperagon without him getting all the crazy buffs out of his cohorts.

Fleeing from the Dragons is a good idea...first of all, it is a tough fight that doesn't really advance anything and killing them alerts the Planetar of the presence of the party since it regularly checks in on them.


Here is an idea: If your DM told you to make a 15th level character, what would it be like. My players are operating under the following restrictions:

32 point-buy
Core Rules only.
All DMG magic items are available (with a veto power from me upon review).
Wands and Staves only have 20 charges(but cost the same).

What would kind of character would you produce. Maybe if I could show my players a couple of samples, it would help them out. (I showed them a Rog11/Ftr4 and a Bard15 as examples).

 

[Valmur_Dwur]

I think everyone has got it all about right The players took what they knew from playing low level pc's and then added in the HP and stats but didn't know all the in-n-outs. I think from what I read that they should just go back to playing in your campaign as before and when they get to those levels you can tie LotIF into your campaign and they can have it as a vision of what needs to be done. Perhaps even finding those pc's bones and/or equipment there. Depends on how you work the time angle in the plane

 

[Andy_Collins]

Iron Fortress stories

Wow, it's great to read all these stories about people's experiences in Lord of the Iron Fortress.

It sounds like most of you have hit Valmur's problem on the nail--inexperience at high levels.

I wrote the adventure fully expecting that characters of this level should be able to "pull out all the stops" for encounters, and that if they didn't, they'd likely lose.

It's *hard* to play high-level characters, and particularly hard if you haven't gotten there "the normal way"--that is, by advancing a character through many (if not all) the levels.

Simply tossing together a 15th-level PC from scratch, especially for players used to lower-level play, is a recipe for disaster.

Valmur, I hope your group has better luck in their next time through. It looks like you've gotten a lot of really solid suggestions on how to approach the situation. I encourage you to come over to the message boards at www.andycollins.net and share your experiences!

 

[Hammerhead]

Instead of showing the players a benchmark character, I'd show them a benchmark party. The presence or absence of certain characters - and the abilities they commonly use - can make a huge difference.

For example, our group got up to 12th level. I played the cleric, and we had a fighter rogue, wizard, sorcerer, paladin and ranger. I typically had Greater Magic Weapon spells as most of my 4th level slots, with a Deathward or two and Spell Immunity as a domain slot. I had a bead of karma. Most characters ended up swinging +5 weapon with other abilities by the end because of my spells. The paladin had a +1 Holy flaming bastard sword- so he effectively had a +8 weapon. Ouch. For the most part, our magically buffed weapons served well, since they were more powerful than we'd normally have. Also, spells like Bull's STR, Endurance, fly, and improved invisibility were passed around by our casters.

On the other hand, a group without a cleric or buffing wizard would be toast if they had our weapons.

If a character is counting on great teamwork, but it's not coming through, there will be problems. Fighter Joe might not be able to fly or see invisible, and wields a +1 shocking flaming keen holy weapon, because he counts on the wizard hitting him with fly if enemies take to the skies, counts on cleric buffing his strength and weapon, and relies on the spellcasters to reveal invisible foes. Fighter Stan might wear see invis goggles that also have darkvision, wields a straight up +5 weapon, and has magic items that provide bonuses to darn near everything. When operating with his team, Joe will be really tough, but if the group is caught offguard leaving him without buffs, or if he's cut off, he might be in trouble. Stan doesn't have the same glaring weaknesses as Joe, but will also be less effective as a member of the team.

 

[Simon Magalis]

If you have PCs that want to play fighters with an 8 Con, that's fine. I love players who will take a hit in power for the sake of a story. However, if you have a group more interested in roleplaying than fighting, then modules probably aren't the way to go. I am running the Adventure Path as well. We are only up to Nightfang Spire with 5 pretty powerful characters who are run by experienced players, and we have had several deaths already. Modules are full of combat and are usually pretty dangerous. Maybe you should just come up with some homebrew stuff that lets players play what they want and have more story based, non planer, lower level stuff going on that they can get "into character" with.

 

[Uller]

If you have PCs that want to play fighters with an 8 Con, that's fine. I love players who will take a hit in power for the sake of a story. However, if you have a group more interested in roleplaying than fighting, then modules probably aren't the way to go. I am running the Adventure Path as well. We are only up to Nightfang Spire with 5 pretty powerful characters who are run by experienced players, and we have had several deaths already. Modules are full of combat and are usually pretty dangerous. Maybe you should just come up with some homebrew stuff that lets players play what they want and have more story based, non planer, lower level stuff going on that they can get "into character" with.

Well, this is what we _normally_ do. We normally play a game that is a mix of story and combat encounters that is fairly open ended. We usually start out PCs at first level and level up about once every 3 sessions or so. Hence the low-to-mid level experience of our players.

The whole point of this exercise is so the newbers can experience what those of us with 20 years of gaming under our belts experienced and out grew when we were 13...a pure hack n' slash power gaming dungeon crawl. That is what the newbers _want_ to play. The experienced player (who is still insisting on keeping is Con at 8) I think is just being resistant to this sort of game, which is unfair really since he just wrapped up a long stint of DMing a campaign that was totally his style and we'll return to an RP heavy game as soon as we wrap up the module. I asked him to make his fighter more...errr....survivable, but he said "I like my character just fine the way he is, thank you..." Which right now is dead (no one has been raised or resurrected as of yet). Another encounter with just about anything in the Fortress and he'll be dead again. His loss I guess.

 

[Uller]

Re: Iron Fortress stories

Wow, it's great to read all these stories about people's experiences in Lord of the Iron Fortress.

Thanks for the reply, Andy. It's always great when designers chime in with their $3.50 to help us poor DMs with our travails...

We're going to have another go at it in 4 weeks. Maybe I'll start a story hour to tell you how it goes.