Uller
Adventurer
I'm running Murder in Baldur's Gate. We only get to play for a few hours every few weeks so the Encounters style of game is good for us (although MinBG doesn't really fit the standard Encounters adventure, but whatever).
The problem we're having is (and this came up in another thread so it seems it's a problem for others) IMO the story doesn't fit the PC level.
SPOILER WARNING!!!!!
The opening scene has the party fighting one of the Dukes of Baldur's gate (or his assassin), who turns out to be a whopping 3rd level. Other powerful NPCs are similarly week. Guild Kingpins appear to be around 5th level. I assume the wanted this to be suitable for newish players so they scaled down the power curve for low level PCs. One example that came up in RP was the sumptary laws...When I tried to enforce them on the PCs, the players said that none of their PCs would have expensive furs and jewels because their 1st level...the adventure seems to be making an assumption that 1st and 2nd level characters would be wandering about with gaudy riches in full display. Fortunately they have a barbarian who wore furs so I was able to use that to their satisfaction and it made for a good RP moment when the watch was threatening to arrest a barbarian for wearing his traditional clothing.
So, we're at about Stage 5 (we just played the interludes in our last game). But since we're being pretty informal about it and my players, while they like the material and the story, are getting bored with 2nd level characters I'm thinking of scaling it up to a more appropriate level. Maybe 5th-7th. So I want to make a few changes:
1) Scale up the three main NPCs to 9th or 10th level.
2) Scale up the various groups such as guild, flaming fist and the watch so that their low level guys are 3rd level, tougher ones are 5th and middle level leaders are 7th. Various other important NPCs would be around 5th to 7th level and also might have followers and henchmen that are in the 3rd to 5th level range.
I think this would make the adventure feel more like what you would expect a major city to be (although some of these folks I would expect to be even higher level)
I'm not yet sure how to go about this. I like the 4e paradigm (which appears to continue in next) that NPCs are small stat blocks and not full blown characters. So I need to stat out some of these folks in a simple way to make playing them easy for me.
Anyone else do anything similar? Any advice?
The problem we're having is (and this came up in another thread so it seems it's a problem for others) IMO the story doesn't fit the PC level.
SPOILER WARNING!!!!!
The opening scene has the party fighting one of the Dukes of Baldur's gate (or his assassin), who turns out to be a whopping 3rd level. Other powerful NPCs are similarly week. Guild Kingpins appear to be around 5th level. I assume the wanted this to be suitable for newish players so they scaled down the power curve for low level PCs. One example that came up in RP was the sumptary laws...When I tried to enforce them on the PCs, the players said that none of their PCs would have expensive furs and jewels because their 1st level...the adventure seems to be making an assumption that 1st and 2nd level characters would be wandering about with gaudy riches in full display. Fortunately they have a barbarian who wore furs so I was able to use that to their satisfaction and it made for a good RP moment when the watch was threatening to arrest a barbarian for wearing his traditional clothing.
So, we're at about Stage 5 (we just played the interludes in our last game). But since we're being pretty informal about it and my players, while they like the material and the story, are getting bored with 2nd level characters I'm thinking of scaling it up to a more appropriate level. Maybe 5th-7th. So I want to make a few changes:
1) Scale up the three main NPCs to 9th or 10th level.
2) Scale up the various groups such as guild, flaming fist and the watch so that their low level guys are 3rd level, tougher ones are 5th and middle level leaders are 7th. Various other important NPCs would be around 5th to 7th level and also might have followers and henchmen that are in the 3rd to 5th level range.
I think this would make the adventure feel more like what you would expect a major city to be (although some of these folks I would expect to be even higher level)
I'm not yet sure how to go about this. I like the 4e paradigm (which appears to continue in next) that NPCs are small stat blocks and not full blown characters. So I need to stat out some of these folks in a simple way to make playing them easy for me.
Anyone else do anything similar? Any advice?
