Merric's Erratically Updated Reviews of old D&D adventures

Croesus · Sep 16, 2011

billd91 said:
They play pretty well converted to 3e as well, just with expected levels being a little higher. 9-10 for G1, 11-12 for G2, 13-14 for G3.

Interesting - this doesn't match my group's experience at all. I attempted to run a small (4 character) party through G1 at 12th level and they ended up running for the hills. Just two giants nearly killed one of the main fighters in a single round of attacks. We were using 3.5 rules.

I suspect the only way the levels you list would work in 3.x is if you have a group that is good with builds and tactics, plus a much larger party than the standard four PC's. Dropping the giants down to their original hit dice, e.g., 8 HD for hill giants, would also help. Otherwise, I have no idea how the standard party beats the 20+ giants in the main hall.

And G3 is much tougher (based on my own memories of going through it during the 1E era).

Just my two cents...

billd91 · Sep 16, 2011

Croesus said:
Interesting - this doesn't match my group's experience at all. I attempted to run a small (4 character) party through G1 at 12th level and they ended up running for the hills. Just two giants nearly killed one of the main fighters in a single round of attacks. We were using 3.5 rules.

I suspect the only way the levels you list would work in 3.x is if you have a group that is good with builds and tactics, plus a much larger party than the standard four PC's. Dropping the giants down to their original hit dice, e.g., 8 HD for hill giants, would also help. Otherwise, I have no idea how the standard party beats the 20+ giants in the main hall.

And G3 is much tougher (based on my own memories of going through it during the 1E era).

Just my two cents...

My players aren't all that focused on build. A couple are, a couple aren't. They did, however, do a lot of sneaking and took out a lot of potential opposition before the central party got wise to them. And once the central party got wind of trouble, they made a lot of use of area control spells and avoided going toe to toe with the giants unless they had been softened up first.
The party is also large by 3e standards, much closer to the 1e standards the module expected. I had 6 regular players with a few cohorts several levels lower.