talien
Community Supporter
Okay, mini-rant time:
I've since switched our campaign from Living Arcanis to third-party adventures. Living Arcanis had very strictly regulated cash, exp, and equipment flow, but frankly it's starting to irk my players, who hear about everyone else advancing much more quickly in D&D. I didn't mind the slow advancement (the slow advancement in the beginning helped everyone learn how to play 3.5), but I saw their point. So now we're using third party adventures.
And the reward to risk ratio in these adventures are a little ridiculous. I enjoy a lot of the plots and ideas, but I'm seeing some stuff that is simply nonsensical. It's bad enough that there's more than a few adventures that have been written without reference to maps, so that monsters can't possibly fit in the rooms during combat (according to the maps in the adventure). That shows a lack of playtesting, but it's something of an old-school mentality that I can respect...in the old days, one didn't care about if you had enough space to fit the monsters. So I let that slide and just either increase the size of the room or decrease the size of the monsters.
But the magic items being given out are insane. An amulet of the planes, worth 120k gold and thus only appropriate to a 17th-18th level NPC, sitting in the chest of a 4 HD monster?
A ring of elemental command, worth 200k gold and thus only appropriate to a 19th-20th level NPC, on a 12th-level villain?
Powerful magic items that would be of substantial use to a monster, sitting useless in chests?
I'm all for old-school flavor. We recently ran the conversion of Castle Amber and loved it. But these new D&D adventures are indicating to me that nobody's reading page 127 of the DMG, NPC Gear Value. Which is there for a reason.
I'm not really too aggravated about this -- the PCs are now 10th-11th and are finally "feeling their oats" and are enjoying their power level. And I can always deal with the consequences of high level magic items. But I feel a little bit betrayed by the authors of these various adventures, in that I expected them to do the math and all the hard work of balancing an adventure before I played it.
I'm wondering if this is just me, or if anyone else has the same concerns?
I've since switched our campaign from Living Arcanis to third-party adventures. Living Arcanis had very strictly regulated cash, exp, and equipment flow, but frankly it's starting to irk my players, who hear about everyone else advancing much more quickly in D&D. I didn't mind the slow advancement (the slow advancement in the beginning helped everyone learn how to play 3.5), but I saw their point. So now we're using third party adventures.
And the reward to risk ratio in these adventures are a little ridiculous. I enjoy a lot of the plots and ideas, but I'm seeing some stuff that is simply nonsensical. It's bad enough that there's more than a few adventures that have been written without reference to maps, so that monsters can't possibly fit in the rooms during combat (according to the maps in the adventure). That shows a lack of playtesting, but it's something of an old-school mentality that I can respect...in the old days, one didn't care about if you had enough space to fit the monsters. So I let that slide and just either increase the size of the room or decrease the size of the monsters.
But the magic items being given out are insane. An amulet of the planes, worth 120k gold and thus only appropriate to a 17th-18th level NPC, sitting in the chest of a 4 HD monster?
A ring of elemental command, worth 200k gold and thus only appropriate to a 19th-20th level NPC, on a 12th-level villain?
Powerful magic items that would be of substantial use to a monster, sitting useless in chests?
I'm all for old-school flavor. We recently ran the conversion of Castle Amber and loved it. But these new D&D adventures are indicating to me that nobody's reading page 127 of the DMG, NPC Gear Value. Which is there for a reason.
I'm not really too aggravated about this -- the PCs are now 10th-11th and are finally "feeling their oats" and are enjoying their power level. And I can always deal with the consequences of high level magic items. But I feel a little bit betrayed by the authors of these various adventures, in that I expected them to do the math and all the hard work of balancing an adventure before I played it.
I'm wondering if this is just me, or if anyone else has the same concerns?
