Rappan Athuk Stories or Advice
Twinswords
First Post
Rappan Athuk
Well I`m a player in Rappan Athuk. We are currently somewhere on level 8 or so. I can just on say one thing RAPPAN ATHUK IS HUGE!!!! I think we`re busy for a half year or so and we are looking for enemies to fight because the paladin has had a super geas and will die in 1 1/2 years if he doesn`t destroy some temple or so. We haven`t found it yet.
Two bits of advice: 1 Start at a higher level. The challenges are much to tough to be fought by low level characters.
2 take your time this campiagn will probrably last for very long time.
3. always have empty charactersheets.
advice for characters (not players): Stay away it`s a deathtrap.
I will not tell stories because some players could be reading and that would spoil a lot.
Twinswords
Two swords is better then one
Well I`m a player in Rappan Athuk. We are currently somewhere on level 8 or so. I can just on say one thing RAPPAN ATHUK IS HUGE!!!! I think we`re busy for a half year or so and we are looking for enemies to fight because the paladin has had a super geas and will die in 1 1/2 years if he doesn`t destroy some temple or so. We haven`t found it yet.
Two bits of advice: 1 Start at a higher level. The challenges are much to tough to be fought by low level characters.
2 take your time this campiagn will probrably last for very long time.
3. always have empty charactersheets.
advice for characters (not players): Stay away it`s a deathtrap.
I will not tell stories because some players could be reading and that would spoil a lot.
Twinswords
Two swords is better then one
Akunin
First Post
You might want to use characters a couple levels higher than is recommended, and consider a higher-than-average point-buy total for their attributes.
The adventure is pretty tough, with a few encounters that can crush even well-equipped and well-prepared adventurers (1-9 with its "indestructable" foe, 3A-8's nasty combination of monsters and spells, 4-9 is just plain nasty considering the character level at that point, 7-7 because NOBODY can pass THAT MANY saving throws
, 7-14 (see 7-7, above), 8-13 could be much worse of the scouts engaged in melee, and 9A-2 - good gods, even the treasure wants to kill you).
If your players want a good, old-fashioned dungeon crawl, with lots of traps, deadly monsters, and don't mind losing several characters in the process, go for it. It looks pretty tough to play through, but relatively easy to run.
The adventure is pretty tough, with a few encounters that can crush even well-equipped and well-prepared adventurers (1-9 with its "indestructable" foe, 3A-8's nasty combination of monsters and spells, 4-9 is just plain nasty considering the character level at that point, 7-7 because NOBODY can pass THAT MANY saving throws
, 7-14 (see 7-7, above), 8-13 could be much worse of the scouts engaged in melee, and 9A-2 - good gods, even the treasure wants to kill you).If your players want a good, old-fashioned dungeon crawl, with lots of traps, deadly monsters, and don't mind losing several characters in the process, go for it. It looks pretty tough to play through, but relatively easy to run.
Sir Osis of Liver
Explorer
there's nothing worse than a rampaging crap monster thats for sure!
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buzzard
First Post
Pharaxes said:
I have been running Rappan Athuk roughly since it first came out. There was a large hiatus as I waited for the 2nd part to come out, and now we have yet another wait as part 3 goes through an extended birthing process.
The most important piece of advice I can give- do not start this module until you have all three parts in your grubby little hands. The way that the levels connect is such that you simply cannot progress from level to level working your way down in a linear fashion. Thus, I have the players in part two, but they cannot finish the part because the only way to process without extensive backtracking lies in part three. This is extremely aggravating, especially coupled with the almost continual series of delays which have plagued the releases of the sections. Part two was due out last april. It came out in August. Part three was due in February. I'm not sure what decade it has slipped to by now.
The designers offered a feeble, at best, method of dealing with the separate release schedules - doors which cannot be opened leading to lower levels, to which one can later find a key. By the time anyone is done playing a part of this module you are in search of a whole damn keyring.
As for playing hints, well it is more difficult than as advertised. The level recommendations are fairly suicidal if played as listed. Also a number of the ELs are completely wrong. This was manifest in the first part moreso than the second, but there were still errors.
Now, to keep this from being a complete slam on the module, I have to say it does have some neat stuff. There are a lot of interesting encounters, and some very devious stuff. Also the adventure is a nice epic in scope, without any railroading at all. I do look forward to the third part (which may arrive before I am to senile to run it, just maybe), but I very much regret starting it before I had the whole thing.
Buzzard
WSmith
First Post
Not to hijack people from EN World, there are a lot of great posts about RA in the NG message boards, you can access from www.necromancergames.com
Psion
Adventurer
Re: Re: Rappan Athuk Stories or Advice
One note:
The difficulties they assign to level are not in terms of ELs. They are in terms of the level a party of SIX (vice four) characters should have to challenge the given level. This is confusing and I hit them for deviating from the standard method of assessing challenges in my reviews, but wouldn't recommend changing it for the third module.
What this translates into is if you have the more standard 4 party member, you should add 2 to the recommended levels for each level.
Anyway, I've run it a few times on off-nights. The party had some bad encounters by skipping ahead to lower levels before they were supposed to, once they decied to take it slow and steady, they did alright. Some NPC encounters that other DMs said were challenged for their parties were total pushover for my group... but the real kickers so far were the ogres and the kitty cats... you know the ones.
buzzard said:
One note:
The difficulties they assign to level are not in terms of ELs. They are in terms of the level a party of SIX (vice four) characters should have to challenge the given level. This is confusing and I hit them for deviating from the standard method of assessing challenges in my reviews, but wouldn't recommend changing it for the third module.
What this translates into is if you have the more standard 4 party member, you should add 2 to the recommended levels for each level.
Anyway, I've run it a few times on off-nights. The party had some bad encounters by skipping ahead to lower levels before they were supposed to, once they decied to take it slow and steady, they did alright. Some NPC encounters that other DMs said were challenged for their parties were total pushover for my group... but the real kickers so far were the ogres and the kitty cats... you know the ones.
Eye Tyrant
First Post
I still haven't figured out the Special Product Update Password... Anyone care to help? Is it IN the RA module itself?? Something, a hint a crumb, anything! I feel like an idiot that I don't know the answer!!
Rappan Athuk Advice
Looks like WSmith beat me to the punch here on my advice--which is to check out the Necromancer Games forum, where they have an entire section devoted to Rappan Athuk.
I agree with the above consensus that the party levels mentioned in RA1 (at least six characters of 3rd level or higher) is too feeble; you should have at least six characters, each with a character class of 5th level minimum, in a variety of different classes, in order to stand a good chance of survival. Also, don't be ashamed to run from encounters that are overwhelmingly tough. There are often (though not always) warning signs when you are about to run into one of these.
Finally, unless the players are dungeon-crawling masochists, you might wish to take the occasional break in your Rappan Athuk forays, and do some surface world adventuring, giving you a chance to train and level up; from what I've seen and heard of Rappan Athuk 3, you'll need it!
Looks like WSmith beat me to the punch here on my advice--which is to check out the Necromancer Games forum, where they have an entire section devoted to Rappan Athuk.
I agree with the above consensus that the party levels mentioned in RA1 (at least six characters of 3rd level or higher) is too feeble; you should have at least six characters, each with a character class of 5th level minimum, in a variety of different classes, in order to stand a good chance of survival. Also, don't be ashamed to run from encounters that are overwhelmingly tough. There are often (though not always) warning signs when you are about to run into one of these.
Finally, unless the players are dungeon-crawling masochists, you might wish to take the occasional break in your Rappan Athuk forays, and do some surface world adventuring, giving you a chance to train and level up; from what I've seen and heard of Rappan Athuk 3, you'll need it!
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