Necromancer Games: Tough Adventures

[SSquirrel]

Dagger,

The reason they don't have magic items is PCs are supposed to be able to hack them down. At least at the low end of the adventure. Just be grateful you didn't go through the meatgrinder that is Rappan Athuk. Now THERE'S something to give Undermountain a run for its money.

I always thought Dragon Mountain was particularly nasty. Maybe it's cuz after a few times fo my WIld Mage using his Wand of WOnder, the kobolds had heard the command word and swarmed him, beat him up, and took his wand. Did I mention the DM rolled the item TWICE in a row before he would let me have it. Nah, he COULDN'T have taken it away in a vindictive manner. *grin*

Hagen

 

[reveal]

I have read a few posts on this board and Necro's that Fane of the Witch King is a "meatgrinder" mod. My party consists of 5 9th level characters. Would they find "Fane" too easy?

 

[Psion]

nevermind - already said this - didn't know this was an old post

 

[DarrenGMiller]

I'm currently going through The Crucible of Freya as a player (please! no spoilers!) and have found it to be challenging but loads of fun. Of course, it could be that the DM has heavily modified it to fit our party. The main bad guy we've fought so far mopped the floor with our dwarven cleric and gnome paladin, took a critical hit from my raging barbarian and then vanished before we could finish him off!

Our party of 5 second level characters finished that encounter with both the paladin and ranger below zero, the cleric and barbarian in the single digits, and our sorcerer with only one spell left. That seems just about right to me considering we went in with a half-baked plan and then got caught out in the open and surrounded by bad guys pretty quickly.

Perhaps I shouldn't be posting here, actually. It occurs to me that the DM could have home brewed the house-cleaning BBEG who disappears before we can loot his body! But my hat's off to somebody; I immediately made it my character's priority to find that guy and lay some more righteous smack down on him!

I ran it a few months ago and the party lost a paladin and a wizard in the encounter and the half-orc fighter was in the negatives. They had to retreat and try again. This time, they lost the wizard again and the half-orc and bard were in the negatives.

Your hat should go to the author. It is not homebrewed (unless your DM just modified it, sounds like what's written).

DM

 

[Rystil Arden]

I haven't used any NG adventures yet, but seeing as my players tend to mop the floor with supposedly "level-appropriate" modules, this thread is actually making me curious to try one against them. If it can get a TPK against my primary group of players thanks to smart tactics, while keeping the encounters on an appropriate EL, it'll be more than I could do in almost a decade (although I have another less-experienced group with some young'uns that gets an occasional TPK), not that I've been particularly trying to kill them off.

I agree with those who post and say that it is better to have smart, well-designed, and intriguing encounters and adventures that are a bit too hard (which can easily be scaled down by having the party wait until higher levels) than those that are easy and require a large amount of DM attention and editing to play smartly.

 

[VirgilCaine]

IIRC, 1e assumed 4-6 PCs and a like number of NPC hirelings/henchmen/etc. Not four lone PCs. So I would guess that Necromancer is serious about their "1e feel."

 

[Nightfall]

Virgil,

Nah I always believed it was because Clark and Bill believe that PCs treat their characters like cars, (extensions of self). And that dungeon crawls become less and less like "Damn I SO don't want to go in there!!" and more like "Hey let's get some treasure!" Adventuring SHOULD be dangerous. That's why I love Necromancer Mods. They bring back that old "Okay I'm SO glad this is only a game!" kind of feel.

But that's just me.

 

[cnath.rm]

Virgil,

Nah I always believed it was because Clark and Bill believe that PCs treat their characters like cars, (extensions of self). And that dungeon crawls become less and less like "Damn I SO don't want to go in there!!" and more like "Hey let's get some treasure!" Adventuring SHOULD be dangerous. That's why I love Necromancer Mods. They bring back that old "Okay I'm SO glad this is only a game!" kind of feel.

But that's just me.

I always like the realism (imho) of the idea that a party won't only run
into things that they can easily defeat. There is a time to fight and a
time to run, and those who don't understand the difference are the
ones who don't come back from the wilderness.
-cnath.rm

 

[S'mon]

I've been running Lost City of Barakus, with no problems so far, but several points:

1. Six player group, at least 2 of the players who are veterans of my last campaign are battle-hardened power-gamers, and all of them seem at least competent.

2. I'm using Conan RPG Fate Points to eliminate arbitrary lethality. Yesterday the party Cleric got 'killed' (dropped to -10) by a Choker, and had to spend a FP to survive. In the same session I rolled a random encounter with 3 Worgs on a 2nd-level party (Wiz 2 Clr 2 Rog 2 Ftr 1, War 1 NPC) - I was worried there'd be a TPK, but the group dispatched this EL 5 encounter rather easily.

3. I edited the module, not to make foes easier - if anything, on average I've beefed them up - but to provide several places to rest, resupply and trade much nearer to the dungeon. I've also heavily cut down on the incidence of random encounters.

With these in place it seems fine - I'd especially recommend use of Fate Points if you want to keep the challenge (FPs won't prevent a TPK) but lessen random PC deaths.

 

[S'mon]

OTOH Necropolis turned out to be a horrible meatgrinder, I recommend it only for the setting, religion & monster info.