Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zinovia" data-source="post: 5708668" data-attributes="member: 57373">I think a lot of the encounters and creature design needs some polishing in WotBS. Take a look at the Monster Vault if you have it, or MM3 for the newest WotC philosophy on Monster Design. Stun, dominate, and anything else that take away the player's turn is really annoying, and has been reduced in usage in the newest monster design.  There was one encounter with undead in module 1 that is overly challenging for it's purported level, but I never ran that, so can't speak from personal experience. You might also consider how rapidly you want to level the characters up. I stopped rewarding formal experience some time back, and now just level them when it seems appropriate. Because I am doing this, I slowed down the leveling rate compared to the modules. It felt to me like the lower levels were rushed through, and then too long was spent in epic tier. I would actually prefer to end the campaign at a lower level than 30. Stuff gets absolutely crazy at that level. That aside, the translation from 3.5 to 4E kept the bigger spacing between the higher levels, but that doesn't necessarily follow 4E patterns. So there are too many high level mods, and not enough time on the lower levels. My 2 cp only.  I would rather down-level the modules to suit the group at their current level, since I have to fix their design anyway. Relating to the issue of needing to get the group up to a certain level by the start of the next module, there were a lot of encounters added to the 4E version compared to the 3.5 edition. They really add little or nothing to the plot, and just serve to pad out the xp rewards so they are big enough to level the group faster. Cut some of them if you want to see the game progress faster. Following the pathetic example of adventure writing given by WotC, WoBS doesn't list specific treasure or items pretty much anywhere. Just "2 level 13 treasure parcels." Thanks. :/  I understand that magic items need to be optimized for a specific party, but the monetary treasure should be there in the book. It's just another detail that you have to take care of as GM, which I was hoping the module writers would do ahead of time. Blame WotC though for setting the precedent. Bah. There aren't descriptions of a lot of areas in the modules. Plan ahead. It's caught me by surprise any number of times. If I had time enough to go through and write all of it myself, I wouldn't be using a module, but such is life. The story is good, with a nice mix of roleplay and combat encounters. You'll need to work a bit on improving the skill challenges, but that holds true for most of the published modules, including WotC's.  There are a total of 5 PC's that might end up tagging along with the party between modules 1-3. Take a look at that and see if you want to get rid of any of them. There's more in the later modules as well, but you ditch most of them by the time you get to Seaquen. I felt they were unwieldy at best, but used some. The later ones have largely been relegated to non-combat roles, or eliminated by me. Good luck, and have fun!</blockquote>

Verification