Starting an Eberron Campaign - The Forgotten Forge

[jaults]

I am starting an Eberron campaign tomorrow, and plan to run The Forgotten Forge. The PCs are:

* A human cleric of the Silver Flame who's father is a high ranking priest within the church. Out to explore the world and bring flame and righteousness to wrongdoers. (NG)
* A Warforged fighter, bonded to the cleric, sent as a bodyguard.
* A gnome artificer of House Sivis. Good social skills. (CN)
* A changling rogue, friends with the gnome. It/She masquerades as the gnome's many, many girlfriends. They plan to become a thieving team, using the gnome's contacts within Sivis to learn about rich people to rob. (CN)

Should be an interesting party to GM...

Anyway, does anyone have suggestions for running The Forgotten Forge? I plan to follow it up with the Queen with the Burning Eyes, or whatever it is called, from Dungeon. Oh, and I have all three of the Eberron books.

Thanks,
Jason

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

It's rather too strong for the intended level, IMO.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I ran it as a PbP (link), and I inserted some hooks into future adventures and put in an encounter with a harpoon spider (part of an ambush set up by a group opposed to the party's plans). I found that it was a touch of a rough adventure — the fights that were already in it had the potential to be deadly (particularly as you get to the actual forge), and my party had to leave a few times to regroup. That said, my party's a bit nonstandard and is not optimized for combat (during the adventure, I had a Warforged Wiz1, Shifter Brb1, Human Clr1, and Gnome Art1). Things got nasty a few times.

Nick

 

[Desdichado]

It's rather too strong for the intended level, IMO.

I didn't find it so. We blew through it without too much trouble with a 4-member party including a shifter ranger 1, a warforged fighter 1, a human artificer 1 and a kalashtar rogue 1. Of course, I'm not sure exactly what our GM modified to make sure we didn't find it too hard, or maybe we're just good.

For my money, my suggestions are to play up the intrique. Drop lots of hints and foreshadowing and make your players paranoid and unable to trust anyone. That's half the fun of that setting, in Sharn in particular.

 

[toberane]

If it's the same one I played when we were playtesting the Forgotten Realms 3rd Ed, there is one CR10 monster in there that the players will have to watch out for. (Not going to say what it is, in case anyone gets around to playing it.)

The game designers put it in supposedly to show players that there is a time to fight and a time to run. Unfortuantely, by the time we had the opportunity to run, half of our party was unable to do so. Our party of 3rd level characters actually killed it, thanks to some extremely bad dice rolling on the DMs part and some quick thinking on ours, but it was just a fluke of luck. There is no way we should have been able to take this thing down.

I can remember a few other encounters we had difficulty with at 3rd level, one of which (much less potent than the CR10 I mentioned above) nearly ended in a TPK. I think if you are taking 1st level characters through it, some of the encounters will need to be modified or removed.

Certain things in the module may have changed, though, since we played a prerelease version of it.

 

[Desdichado]

Uh, the Forgotten Forge is included in the Eberron Campaign Setting. You couldn't possibly have playtested it with 3.0 FR unless by "playtest" you mean something completely different than most of the rest of us do. There's also no CR 10 creature that I remember facing.

Maybe you mean Forge of Fury or something else instead?

 

[NeuroZombie]

We had one PC get to -4 hp during the last battle, but other than that, no significant problems.

 

[Hatchling Dragon]

Uh, the Forgotten Forge is included in the Eberron Campaign Setting. You couldn't possibly have playtested it with 3.0 FR unless by "playtest" you mean something completely different than most of the rest of us do. There's also no CR 10 creature that I remember facing.

Maybe you mean Forge of Fury or something else instead?

I'm pretty sure he's thinking The Forge of Fury, which would have been teseted back when.

 

[jaults]

Thanks for your input, guys. John Q. Mayhem, Care to share as to why you think it is too powerful as written? The only fight I can see as especially difficult (with a bit of luck and planning, of course) is the last one.

Thanks,
Jason

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

'Cause it nearly killed the PCs I DMed it with

There're other factors to that, though. Bad rolling on theirs, good on "mine;" possibly them being inexperienced character creators, too. I'd have to look at it again, that's just a hazy recollection.