What is it with these modules on the internet?

[Arkham]

* Always get the mango lassi with the vindaloo.

I absolutely agree with this.

Another useless post by...

 

[Plane Sailing]

First level characters seem less fragile than in previous editions (maximum hit points on that first HD really helps!), but the fact is, they are still extraordinarily vulnerable and fragile.

I agree that it would be pretty much impossible to design a single adventure which would be challenging for 1st-3rd level characters without incorporating specific "scaling" notes. Once characters reach 2nd level most of them can shrug off 1 or perhaps 2 hits, but at 1st level...

How many great character concepts haven't survived to 2nd level?

I think one of the greatest things that 3e has done is to make it possible to move quickly from the fragility of 1st level to the "slightly-better" of 2nd level. At least the party wizard doesn't have to wipe out approx 100 orcs to get to 2nd level now!

(n.b. Karinsdad - I wonder how much more difficult the adventure would have been if you hadn't had a cleric - I imagine that without turning available the zombies would have had a much higher chance of killing some of the party?)

Cheers

 

[Kichwas]

...But, with the Critical Fumble rules of the DM
...
Since we did not know of these rules beforehand...

This is what I consider a seriously bad move for a DM.

If you have a house rule you should always make it very clear ahead of time before it comes up so players can take it into account with their choice of actions.

 

[LostSoul]

In which case it's not an encounter, it's a plot element. I think there are better and less risky ways of introducing plot elements than having encounters that have the potential to wipe out the party. I'm talking about risk in terms of derailing the entire campaign if someone suffers a rush of blood to the head.

Whoever said "if you give stats for it, the players will try to kill it" was quite right.

I guess I consider all encounters as plot elements.

I think it is acceptable to put a creature that the PCs can't defeat in an adventure, as long as the PCs know they can't win and the creature doesn't have a good reason to hunt out and smash the PCs. Or if the PCs have a very easy escape route.

 

[KarinsDad]

(n.b. Karinsdad - I wonder how much more difficult the adventure would have been if you hadn't had a cleric - I imagine that without turning available the zombies would have had a much higher chance of killing some of the party?)

I agree.

On the "same day", we came to the tower. The player of the Monk had never played DND before and was playing it like a first person shooter computer game. So, he had his Monk run into the dark bottom floor of the Tower and almost got killed on the first round.

After that, we took little damage since the Cleric kept making her turn rolls. In fact, we hardly took any damage beyond the first level until we got to the top (seventh) level where the Cleric missed her roll.

So yes, a bunch of lucky rolls by the Cleric had us waltzing through the place with little injury.


This is similar to a "Temple of Elemental Evil" campaign (the original) that I ran many years ago. The PCs get to the Temple and it was as if they had a map of the place. They walked straight down through the Temple without a single directional mistake as if they knew it, went down to the bottom level and ended up in the elemental cold node in very short order. So again, we have a case of the PCs having too easy of a time getting to one of the worse encounters in a module.


The difference this time, though, is that I would think that even third level characters with only one magic weapon in the group (at least based on what we found) would have gotten decimated by the Golem.

C'est la vie.

 

[Broken Fang]

Hello KD. Just wanted to say hi. Didn't realize the board was back...so I'm a bit on the slow side.