RPGA Adventure Emergency -- HELP!

[Castellan]

Hey folks,

This evening I'll be running an RPGA adventure at our local D&D Meetup get-together. I'm running the adventure entitled "Enthralled," which pits six 9th-level characters against roughly 20 Mind Flayers.

Ignoring the fact that this adventure's premise is extraordinarily bad (it's based off of the Elton John song, "Bennie and the Jets"... Ugh!), it's clearly a TPK in the very first encounter (5 Mind Flayers versus the 6 party members, only one of which has a decent Will save to avoid charm and mind blast effects).

So, I'm looking for advice. First, has anyone run this adventure through to the end? I'm likely to be dealing with players who are not particularly advanced or that have a particularly good grasp of more than the basic rules. If you ran it, what did you do and how did it go?

Is it worth the time for me to try to salvage this adventure by toning the number of Mind Flayers way down (I can't abide the thought of avoiding mind blast, but maybe it's the only real solution...)? Should I beef up the PCs so they're more capable of handling the threat?

Or, should I scrap the adventure and use something of my own? Unfortunately, I didn't know how overpowering this scenario would be until I got it, and I don't want players being slain in the very first combat encounter.

Advice and suggestions would be truly appreciated!

 

[Land Outcast]

I didn't run the adventure, but I guess 5 DC 17 Will saves will just get the whole party stunned(ergo braindead)... several times.

 

[IronWolf]

The RPGA adventures I run often contain this at the beginning:

If the PCs are having too hard or too easy of a time, feel free to increase or decrease the level of the challenge. The goal is to challenge PCs, not overwhelm or even underwhelm them."

So I would think you are well within your DM rights to scale accordingly.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

One of the Isle of Woe adventures had a mind flayer in it that had its goals written in it that if the PCs were all stunned at its feet it wouldn't bother with the brain eating and just leave as it had other things in mind and the PCs were just a nuisance.

Does this adventure specify the PCs must be killed? Do the mind flayers have some other goal you coudl use to justify leaving the PCs with their lives but just thoroughly walloped? I dunno, maybe if the PCs have a henchman or cohort that one gets the brain vacuum while the mind flayers then move with their business?

 

[Stormborn]

A logical alteration is to replace most (or even all but 1) of the mindflayers in the first encounter with high level thralls. It wont effect the EL much, but it will give the party opponents better suited to their abilities.

 

[Endur]

Hmmm, I havn't read the adventure, but ...

Usually RPGA adventures will have explanations for what to do if an encounter goes badly, particularly if the encounter seemed overwhelming to the original writer.

If this is a "classic" adventure, its a one shot. So maybe the point is to have fun being enthralled by mind flayers for 4 hours.

If this is a "Living X" adventure, it went through a review process and there are lots of ways around the "supposedly deadly" encounter.

 

[Castellan]

If this is a "classic" adventure, its a one shot. So maybe the point is to have fun being enthralled by mind flayers for 4 hours.

It's a "classic" one-shot adventure. From what I've read, I get the impression that the writer expects the DM to use charm rather than mind blast. However, even the charm DC is 16 (versus a DC 17 for mind blast) so five of the PCs are in deep doo doo.

I ran a rather detailed Mind Flayer based campaign a year ago, and maybe I have a killer-DM outlook on them. I picture them as truly frightening creatures that are absolutely devastating in combat -- especially against the weak-minded.

I think I'll replace a bunch of the Mind Flayers with thralls/Grimlocks as suggested above, and alter the nature of the Mind Flayer community to make it younger and weaker in the mental arts.

As an aside, I've run a few of these one-shot adventures through the RPGA, now. I'm not very impressed with them. They seem fairly poorly written, do way more railroading than even a four-hour *con game should require, and often have gimmicks that are so trite as to be embarrasing (I'm supposed to quote "Bennie and the Jets" lines througout the scenario... I mean, come on! That's one aspect that's already being nixxed from the game.).

If the "living-*" games undergo more scrutiny, I might look into running some of those for our Meetup group. I'm also seriously thinking about rolling my own adventures for these monthly get-togethers. I'm not so sure that folks there really care about the RPGA points as much as they would like to have an enjoyable game to play, to get together with fun folks, and to look for new games to join.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Zappo]

Judging from the adventure title - maybe the party is supposed to be captured?

 

[Castellan]

Judging from the adventure title - maybe the party is supposed to be captured?

Nope... They're supposed to destroy a Mind Flayer city...

 

[wocky]

Try Living Greyhawk... you have a good starting point now, with the "Blight in the Bright Sands" arc that is just getting started. Don't know about that arc, but there are many good "core region" adventures out there (some crappy ones as well, but you can order a couple and run the best one).