Preparing to run Red Hand. Advice?

[Dwimmerlied]

It looks like the party will only be three strong;- half-orc fighter, elf ranger or fighter, and a planned mystic theurge DMPC, whose role is likely to be support.

The adventure looks tough, and probably far more so for a small party, so I'm looking for some good advice!

I'm thinking to have the characters perhaps a level or two higher than the recommended level of 5 or 6.

Edit; any general advice for running the game, or interesting observations would be welcome too.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I ran the module with a party of 6-7 characters and it was pretty tough*, so you probably want to have the characters 2-3 levels above the recommended level. Or just give out some cool magical items and go with 1-2 levels.

The one thing I found best with the module was how easy it was to run. It doesn't have any mind twisting mega dungeons that makes no sense and the set-piece battles are awesome. My players got the hint about making a deal with the Lich without ANY prodding from my side. It was just awesome.

*It was quite some time ago, so I don't quite remember how I changed the encounters around. I might have buffed them a bit.

 

[Mark CMG]

I ran much of it but of the five sections I set aside the big battle section and saved the finale for a whole separate adventure for later. The other three ran well enough as a three-tiered adventure, I thought.

 

[MarkB]

Yes, it's tough. When I ran it, there was a distressingly high turnover of PCs, highlighted about halfway through when we got to a part where an NPC is supposed to congratulate the party on the good job they did in an early quest, and we realised that none of the participants in that earlier quest were still alive.

Over-levelled characters would be good, along with thinning the numbers of the opposition.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

Thanks for the input, guys.
Yeah it seems it will be interesting. The problem is trying to find the sweet spot between challenging and tpk. Sounds like if standard sized parties (and larger) have found it hard to survive, my small party (of new players) are going to have no chance... Over-levelling seems to be the only option from where I stand and the replies so far;- but the major problem will be action economy. I suspect that fixing this with extra levels either doesn’t compensate at all, or over-compensates; there is no in between.
Perhaps there is no way around this…
Another idea that I have been playing around with is using Sons of Gruumsh, perhaps as a prelude. The adventure itself doesn’t look amazing, but I really like some of the NPC bad guys. Do you ever get the feeling that there is some brilliant synergy that could be implemented in a cool way to make this really good, but you just can’t put your finger on it? Anyone have some interesting ideas on how to incorporate this?
@Mark CMG; that inspires me to consider making the adventure kind of episodic. Something I'll need to think about…

 

[RangerWickett]

First off, I recommend this guide on the Giants in the Playground forum: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=171284

Second, I played in a Red Hand game. There was a fair bit of turnover. Our group consisted of:

The Core Four
Jehosophat, fire genasi wizard
Achaea, human knight
Hibiscus, elf duskblade
Grim, human ranger (mounted archer)

Of that group, Grim died twice and came back via DM bargaining shenanigans. I mean, his name was Grim, so the idea of him digging himself out of a shallow grave after the party thought he was dead seemed to fit. The second time he died his horse carried him away from the battle, and eventually we decided that he was a revenant, who'd only stick around long enough to thwart Tiamat.

We also had a couple PCs who replaced Grim for a little bit of time, plus two players who kept churning through PCs.

The Roster of Dead
Figo the gnome dragon shaman (killed by green dragon)
Random half-elf shifter druid (killed by greenspawn razorfiends)
Random human barbarian (killed by a harm spell when we decided to attack the lich)
Steve the dragonborn dragon shaman (killed by hobgoblin archers)
Random halfling cleric (killed by hobgoblin assassin)
Queequeg the half-orc harpoonist (killed by blue dragon)
Random dwarf sorcerer (killed by falling)
Random human ninja (killed the Aspect of Tiamat)


If you want to keep character turnover low, you might want to adopt a "TPKs Only" policy, where PCs can only die if the whole party dies, if the rest of the group abandons them, if they suffer massive damage (50+) that drops them below -10, or if they're coup de graced.

Also, the best advice I saw for tweaking the adventure is to make the Big Red the final dragon they face. Shuffle things around a bit, so that an actual blue dragon guards the lich's sphinx-base, and so a white dragon guards the fortress in the mountains. Then have the order go something more like this:

* Encounter Red Hand, not realizing they're an army yet.
* Sneak into the mountain fortress, kill the white dragon, realize that a whole army marched out of here.
* Head to take out the green dragon at the bridge, destroy bridge to slow army down.
* Go slay the black dragon in the swamp.
* Learn that a lich is aiding the army, so head to the desert and fight a blue dragon to reach him.
* (Decide that liches can go to hell and nearly get the whole party killed by charging an enemy far more powerful than you. Optional. It worked for our party, thanks to a lucky dispel magic on his anti-life shell, followed up by a thwack from a staff of healing.)
* Rush back to Brindol to defend the city and defeat Azarr Khul, mounted atop a red dragon.
* When the big red dies, Tiamat's ritual is complete -- she simply needed sufficient carnage and the deaths of five dragons in a close area, which summons her Avatar to the mortal plane.

Good luck, have fun, and may your players always show up for game night.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Hero points -- give them Hero points:

- PCs start the game with 3 Hero Points, and gain one additional for each level gained.
- A Hero Point can be spent to guarantee success on a roll (treat as a natural 20 for the purposes of special effects like critical hits), OR to guarantee failure on an opponent's roll (treat as a natural 1 where that matters).
- A Hero Point can be expended to stabilize a dying character.

 

[MarkB]

Also, the best advice I saw for tweaking the adventure is to make the Big Red the final dragon they face. Shuffle things around a bit, so that an actual blue dragon guards the lich's sphinx-base, and so a white dragon guards the fortress in the mountains. Then have the order go something more like this:

* Encounter Red Hand, not realizing they're an army yet.
* Sneak into the mountain fortress, kill the white dragon, realize that a whole army marched out of here.
* Head to take out the green dragon at the bridge, destroy bridge to slow army down.
* Go slay the black dragon in the swamp.
* Learn that a lich is aiding the army, so head to the desert and fight a blue dragon to reach him.
* (Decide that liches can go to hell and nearly get the whole party killed by charging an enemy far more powerful than you. Optional. It worked for our party, thanks to a lucky dispel magic on his anti-life shell, followed up by a thwack from a staff of healing.)
* Rush back to Brindol to defend the city and defeat Azarr Khul, mounted atop a red dragon.
* When the big red dies, Tiamat's ritual is complete -- she simply needed sufficient carnage and the deaths of five dragons in a close area, which summons her Avatar to the mortal plane.

I wholeheartedly endorse that suggestion, and wish I'd played it out that way when I ran the game.

It also solves another issue, which is that any of the dragons who survive their initial encounters are supposed to eventually show up back at the mountain lair. I was young and foolish enough when I ran the game to follow that advice, and it resulted in the game foundering on a TPK at the lair entrance as the party faced three dragons.

Done this way round, if there are any dragons who survived prior encounters, they could be added as individual encounters in the Brindol battle.

 

[Empirate]

I DM'ed the campaign until about a year ago, here's some pointers:

My group consisted of a party of three, like yours, so I knew I had to compensate for low numbers. I started everybody at 6th level (actually, I started at 5th, and ran a short homebrew adventure to get the characters invested in Elsir Vale, taking them up to 6th in the process). I also made sure everybody had more or less optimized builds to go with:

1) Half-Orc Lion Totem & Wolf Totem Barbarian/Fighter/Ranger, going into Bear Warrior, then Warshaper (übercharger with tripping options and animal devotion);
2) Aasimar (LA bought off pre-campaign) Cleric going into Ordained Champion (melee-focused, with some divine and devotion feats);
3) Human Focused Conjurer going into Paragnostic Apostle (summoning-focused know-it-all with some reserve feats).

So they had a lot of muscle for a party of three, and the summoner usually added a lot more when he wasn't too busy limiting the enemies' options via battlefield control. I also made sure to allow the conjurer a more-or-less free hand with Lesser Planar Binding later on. The Cleric took Leadership at the earliest opportunity. She actually recruited Jorr Natherson as her first cohort, whom I restatted as a rather effective swift hunter. He died later on, though, and was replaced with a Wildshape Ranger/Master of Many Forms, adding not only muscle, but also versatility.

You see, with a little bit of setup, the relatively small number of PCs can be much inflated. I heartily recommend doing this, if only to give your players more to do: steering your cohort or summonlings is much more fun than just waiting for your turn to come around again while the DM rolls a million Hobgoblins' attacks.


Furthermore, optimized PCs built for power AND versatility can just mop the floor with a lot of the encounters. The Half-Orc basically killed whatever he was able to charge. He took out the green dragon at Skull Gorge single-handedly by jumping on its back during one of its strafing runs, then wrestling it to death. Buffed up beyond all recognition, he also managed to lift a town gate on his own at one point. Two of the cooler stunts I saw PCs perform...
The Aasimar was never out of options, and even just "go there, whack that" was usually a very good one for her. Once her Channeling plus Smiting plus Power Attack plus Divine Power routine was up (around 8th/9th level), she could easily dole out enough damage, and hit reliably enough, to take on every monster in the campaign with a good chance of success. And since she was a Cleric, she usually packed a lot of problem-solving capacity, as well (Water Walking the whole party in Rhest comes to mind, as do some well-placed Divine Insight spells). She died once (Behirs do that), but was resurrected with the Staff of Life found early on.
The Conjurer, however, was the party's real utility asset. He never lacked in surprising and effective options, either via his own spells or by making creative use of his summonlings. It only got worse when he got a constant scout in the Summon Elemental reserve feat, and doubled up on scouting by binding a Xill, who snooped around ethereally all the time. And let's not get started on the teleportation thing.

All in all, the players didn't think the campaign very hard, even though I pulled no punches, involved them in a lot of convoluted sub- and sidequesting to add time pressure, and buffed up some key opponents (with the ultra-weak Hravek Kharn from the module ending up as a Ruby Knight Vindicator doomsday machine, the bland Skather as a deadly Swordsage, pointless Miha as a much better caster and spy [also with a much increased role], and run-off-the-mill Abithriax making heavy use of nasty metabreath feats).

Where am I going with this? I guess how hard the campaign is mostly depends on your PC setup. Optimized PCs with built-in versatility will surprise you and render whole encounters moot.


Your setup of Fighter, Ranger, Mystic Theurge sounds like they will struggle badly. Make very, very sure to drop some nice goodies in their lap, they need all the help they can get. Expect them to do well in simple set-piece battles, but struggle hardcore in the following: Hydra, Skull Gorge, basically all of Rhest, the optional Barghest encounters, Behir, all the incorporeal stuff with the Ghostlord, Ulwai, Abithriax & subsequent fire-fighting, and all of Act 5. Everything with flying stuff, and everything with casters in it will be doubly nasty. I can just see one failed will save cutting the party's DPR in half.
Note that if the PCs manage to make something harder on themselves (like not destroying the hatchery in Rhest, or not breaking the Ghostlord alliance), Act 4 might become unsurvivable - Streets of Blood gets much, much harder in this case. If any of the dragons escape, meeting them again at the Fane's entrance will spell disaster - consider just having the dragons drop out of the campaign after being defeated once, or coming at the PCs singly later on.
Note that some very simple things, like not having a good Search skill in the party, means some excellent (and much-needed) loot will likely be missed in Vraath Keep, the very important Staff of Life among it. Note that the true sanctum in the Fane can also only be found if the party has good Search, or some form of magical detection going.
Some utility magic becomes very important in Rhest, to deal with the unusual terrain. The opposition here have ranged attacks, and the local Wyrmlord rides a friggin' dragon. If the party is not mobile on or beneath the water, or can fly, it's a sitting duck and will simply be stuck full of arrows until it's GG. Terrible way to go.


Concluding thoughts:
If your players are dead-set on playing two of the more limited classes in the game (Fighter and/or Ranger), they'll need help. I can see this help coming from several sides:
a) sending along DMPCs (not a good option, since that may steal the PCs' thunder);
b) over-levelling the PCs (doesn't compensate for the inherent versatility problem, but makes standard encounters boringly easy);
c) giving each player two characters to play (misses the point of a roleplaying game IMO, but can be great fun for more casual play);
d) having both players pick Leadership (careful not to overshadow the actual PC with his cohort...);
e) dropping useful and versatile magic items like candy (can feel like the items are doing the heroes' job for them);
f) having NPCs step in and help a lot of the time in various ways (give helpful advice, offer specific magical services, assist in specific battles or problematic cases... but this is just another case where it's hard to make the PCs feel like the heroes)
g) maybe a minor thing, but I've always felt Rangers ought to have full Animal Companion progression (make sure the Fighter's player is OK with that)
h) and, of course, you'll probably need to rebuild a lot of the module's encounters to fit what your PCs can and can't do (this is a looooot of work...)
etc.

None of these solutions is really great. I'd say different class choices and optimizing the heck out of them would make a world of difference, but maybe your players won't like that? The optimal solution would be to find one or two more players, of course, but it seems that's not an option either? Anyway, I think you'll have to run with several of the options above at the same time, and work hard to make it all fit together: slightly over-levelled PCs with good, flexible gear, helped along by whichever (fittingly restatted) NPCs are in the area, with one or more options to increase party size, and everything on the opposing side carefully reevaluated by a scrutinizing DM.
Could work. But "work" is probably the operative word here.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

great suggestions. I was already considering the hero point things, almost word for word, including 3 points to begin with and one more each level. I'm considering that they can each be traded in for one reroll, or one use of a feat characters otherwise don't have.

I'm thinking of also adding some items that boost saves (to help against save or die) and perhaps some stealth items.

I also like the suggested shake-up. Some of this I was already considering changing, so on your advice, I might end up implementing this completely.

Has anyone played Son's of Gruumsh? How could this mesh? I'm playing around with a few ideas currently.

I'm thinking what if the orcs completed the ritual and were able to unite the orcish clans? They would also present a formiddable force, and an interesting subplot would be to manipulate these guys into opposition to The High Wyrmlord for extra bonus points.

Or perhaps running the adventure more or less as is, but that killing Thrull gives the characters a chance to lead the forces.

Alternatively, the orcs simply represent another branch of the goblinoid forces that must be dealt with.

Any advice?