Preparing to run Red Hand. Advice?

[Dwimmerlied]

@Empirate ; nice analysis. Youv'e touched on some of the stuff I that did concern me, and then some. the mystic theurge is a dmpc who im considering because it has the potential to shore up all the gaps in the party, whilst not outshining. Though the price for this is quite steep with such slow progression. This will definitely require some rethinking.

Getting my new players to optimise may be problematic, tho i see the logic. One advantage i have is plenty of time; the campaign starts tomorrow from first level, so there are many sessions with which to prepare or recruit more gamers.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[RangerWickett]

For the record, a mounted archer ranger with a bad-ass horse animal companion and favored enemy goblins was very handy against hordes of ground-bound goblinoids and against swooping dragons. By contrast, our knight was limited to just yelling at the dragon, challenging it to come closer, and when that failed chugging a potion of fly and readying actions to charge when the thing came within 60 feet.

 

[MarkB]

For the record, a mounted archer ranger with a bad-ass horse animal companion and favored enemy goblins was very handy against hordes of ground-bound goblinoids and against swooping dragons. By contrast, our knight was limited to just yelling at the dragon, challenging it to come closer, and when that failed chugging a potion of fly and readying actions to charge when the thing came within 60 feet.

Yeah, that is one problem with the early dragon encounters - they make best use of the dragons' mobility, which can be a real problem for some party builds. There's also very little to prevent them from retreating once badly injured, which can be frustrating for players as well as making trouble down the road.

 

[the Jester]

I see two fairly easy ways to adjust RHoD for your group:

1. Add henchmen. Keep 'em simple, but give each pc control of a warrior npc henchman of his level, or maybe two of them two levels below. This gives the monsters some additional targets to spread damage between, and helps a lot with the action economy issue. (A variant of this would be to have your DMPC use lots lots lots of summoning, but this is iffy- if the DMPC goes down, so might the party.)

2. Reduce the number of monsters per encounter. Alternatively, you can split encounters into two groups that fight the pcs separately- one group is off hunting or cooking, some are asleep and need a couple of minutes to finish prepping for battle, etc.

Either way, starting the pcs with too many levels above the suggested will overcompensate, while the action economy issue will sometimes overwhelm.

 

[billd91]

Consider having them play pairs of characters instead of single characters - or automatically give the characters a free leadership feat and cohort.

 

[Herobizkit]

How about Gestalt characters? I find those always help beef up a small, low-versatility party.

 

[RangerWickett]

Wands of cure light wounds. My party had no cleric, and we were fine.

Oh, and we ended up with a stupid number of rings of protection +1 and short swords +1 looted from hobgoblins. It got a bit embarrassing having so much magic loot.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) Has anyone played Sons 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. (snip)

Another option with the Sons of Gruumsh is to have the orogs and the Zhents actually be Tiamat-worshippers. They're trying to bring the orcs into the army of the Red Hand but the only way to do that is for them to recover the relic that shows they have Gruumsh's favour... despite the fact that they will end up joining an army dedicated to Tiamat.

This also lets you provide some advance warning to the PCs that the primary threat they will face is an entire army. Of course, for some players that will not be seen as a hook but as an excuse to demand an easier option from their harried DM.