Shortening P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens

[Tobold]

I am running an episodic 4E campaign. We are currently finishing Madness at Gardmore Abbey, which gets the group to level 9. I have a self-written adventure after that, which should get them to level 11. And after that I was thinking of running P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens.

Now I try to keep a 50:50 balance between time spent in combat encounters and time spent in role-playing encounters. And looking at the adventure, it appears to me that King of the Trollhaunt Warrens is possibly having too many combat encounters. So I was wondering whether it would be a good idea to shorten the adventure, editing some of the combat encounters out. For example the Great Warren alone has 13 combat encounters, and maybe 7 or so would do. There are 5 combat encounters in the Raid on Moonstair, which I would shorten to 3. And so on. The overall idea is to keep the story and exploration the same, but shorten the time spent in combat. Do you think that would be feasible?

Has anybody here experience with running King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, and could give me some advice on which encounters are great, and which encounters I could edit out without missing much?

P.S. I am aware of the Orcus conversion of P1, which does have a smaller warren.

 

[jodyjohnson]

When we ran HPE I cut the number of encounters in half and only ran the interesting ones related to the story.

Sometimes I would just combine them and cut HP in half, or stagger the encounter.

Sounds like you are on the right track.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I ran Trollhaunt and did not have nearly the same number of fights as listed in the full module for a couple reasons. First was that my group didn't go "full clear". Because there are several different paths within the Warrens themselves... they can easily bypass several encounters just by taking one path in and not backtracking. So my group never hit the troglodyte camps at all, and that removed a good 3 or 4 potential fights from the tally.

Also... because I was moving from Trollhaunt directly into P2 Demon Queen's Enclave... the portal to the Feywild to chase after the Troll King was an unnecessary addition to my plot (which would also remove several encounters). Instead, the group ran into the two drow envoys within the Warrens (after having already dealt with drow previously above-ground to help set things up) and thus I had the tunnels at the rear of the final chamber just head straight down directly into the Underdark, making a much more cohesive bridge into P2. The drow envoys and the Troll King went down that way, and the group followed them.

 

[Prickly]

I ran this module a couple of years ago and I would definitely recommend cutting down on the number of encounters. As jodyjohnson suggested use only the encounters important to the story.

If you don't want a very empty cave, you can replace some encounters with minion only encounters. I find they go very quickly and make the players feel bad ass

 

[Balesir]

Another useful technique I have found is setting up skill challenges (after finding some good guidelines for them!) that allow combats to be by-passed. Talking with the Black Dragon is one example mentioned (but not fleshed out) in the module. I also set up the whole trek into the warrens as an exploration SC: successes got visits to the sites on the map in the module, with chances to get info/treasure, failures got small "wandering monster" encounters.

Other than this, the entrance cave/gate, the cave with the prisoners and hole in the roof and the hags with cages are still clear in my memory (I ran it some time ago).

 

[jamesmanhattan]

You could have the Troglodytes surrender, or attempt to talk and cut a deal right off the bat. Cuz, who the heck wants to fight Troglodytes, they're the worst.

I'd also just like to add: don't run the Black Dragon with the old stats printed in the adventure! Use the updated Black Dragon in the Monster Vault!!!!!!

One of my most memorable fight was the Troll Druid/Shaman with his bear and flaming skulls. Though make sure to give the bear +2 to hit.

The nothics everywhere with the ability to Weaken the strikers really pissed off my min-maxing barbarian. I love nothics. They fit perfectly in this adventure too, they are there to keep an "eye" on things.

 

[fjw70]

I ran this module a couple of years ago and I would definitely recommend cutting down on the number of encounters. As jodyjohnson suggested use only the encounters important to the story.

If you don't want a very empty cave, you can replace some encounters with minion only encounters. I find they go very quickly and make the players feel bad ass

Next time I run 4e I will probably use more minion-only encounters. Not hordes of minions to make it a full fight (well not all the time) but smaller groups of a half-dozen or so minions. In conjunction with this I would probably only allow a short rest after significant battles. So maybe a few small minion battles then a significant (I.e. Regular 4e battle) followed by a short rest. This way the PCs couldn't blow through the minion battles by using encounter powers that they know will recharge right after the battle.

They will still blow through these battles with at-will fast enough so they shouldn't take a long time.

 

[Wrathamon]

The Raid on the town can also be skipped by the players (my group didnt go back) but you dont have to do all of them. Only 2 is needed and let the players decide where they are defending.

I agree the warrens can be a slog ... Trolls dont die very easily. But, ymy players also skipped a ton of encounters. Let the players know that trolls are everywhere and going in full force isnt the smartest idea you could make some of the bypassing skill challenges.

I agree on skipping the feywild part ... just do the big battle as part of the awesome darkelf adventure (p2)