Undermountain

[P0L]

I'm thinking of guiding my 3.5 game into Undermountain. The encounters seem easy to update from what I've read.

I want to ask more experienced dms/players who have already adventured there.

What party size/level would you advice? (I have 4 5th lvl players)

How was your undermountain experience? What did you hate/love?
Was it easy to run? And everything else you care to share.

Saludos: P0L

 

[toberane]

If you are planning on using any of the published Undermountain material, you need to wait until the PCs are higher level. Undermountain is supposed to be deadly, and 5th level adventurers will quickly be the goo that the next group of adventurers has to scrape off their boots on their way through.

 

[P0L]

"supposed"? Did you play it? How did it go?

I just got my hands on "Ruins of Undermountain", that was what I was planning to use, as my pcs are heading towards a major city in my campaign.

 

[Arkham]

Actually, 5th level is the perfect place to start.
There are a lot of encounters which are a breeze for 5th level and under characters.

The real killers are the Attracted Monster encounters.

But they are supposed to be. The PCs need to learn to either fight
quietly, or run often when 2d4 Mind Flayers come calling.

I would heartilly recommend having on hand a healthy selection of
sample statblocks for Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Ogres and Trolls
with class levels.

And don't be afraid to let the PCs keep the Uber-powerful items that
might crop up, it doesn't help. The traps have proven far more deadly
to the PCs than most of the set monster encounters.

Another recommendation would be to pre-determine what doors are locked,
trapped, and at what DCs. Most of them are unspecified, and that card is
of less than optimum use during the session.

 

[Melan]

I only have 2e experiences with Undermountain, but fifth level PCs sound appropriate... as long as they are willing to run in terror instead of stay and fight until they are dead. IMC, I had 6th to 8th level PCs in there. They proceeded with caution, and there weren't too many fatalities.

One time, another DM ran an adventure in the dungeon for us when we had 3rd level characters. That was scary. We got lost when running from mind flayers, encountered an insane low level wizard, almost got "splatted" in one of those gravity wells... But finally found our way back to the entrance. Granted, a bit of metagaming on my part DID help.

 

[Arnwyn]

Starting from 5th - 7th is good.

According to the 2e rules, 5th is a good starting point unless you use the additional "yellow" encounter areas, in which case 7th was given as appropriate.

For my detailed Undermountain, I have it set at 7th level for starting characters (coming down from The Yawning Portal) - higher if they get gated in to a lower level or come through the Sea Caves to Skullport.

 

[Psion]

I tried hand converting all the encounters; it got tedious after a while. I found it easier to just use the book as an index of encounters and run creatures out of the books.

I think the best thing you can do is make a list of all the enounter ELs for the encounter areas and tables, and use that as a guide to which encounters the PCs face.