What's a good adventure an inexperienced group at 5th level?

[Bulwer]

I'm running the 3rd session of a game today. The first 2 were spent running through Base of Operations, which went very well. All my players are new to the game, and they've been getting steadily more proficient.

Is there a good premade adventure (Dungeon mag or homebrew or wizards.com) that you'd recommend for a 5-7th level group? I could just toss out a plot hook and see what happens, but I had such good luck with a premade module that I'd like to try it again.

 

[Rhun]

Wish I could help, but my selection of 3E adventures is fairly limited. I've taken to instead converting all my old 1E adventures to 3E instead. I'm sure a few people here will have some good advice, though.

 

[Dragonwriter]

While I've never run the pre-made modules, I have downloaded many of the ones from the WotC site. And there are a few that seem to be pretty good for your range. (What classes are they playing and how many players are there? It certainly influences difficulty...)

(All of these are pulled from here: WotC Adventures)
Last Breaths seems like a good pick, especially if you want to go with a creepy vibe.
If your players don't mind a bit of a run-around, Witching Season is probably fine.
Test of the Demonwed could be interesting (though a bit tough).

Other than that, I can't really help.

 

[Animal]

Red Hand of Doom

 

[Amazing Mumford]

Red Hand of Doom is pretty cool, weird in a few parts, but also long. If you are looking for shorter adventures, I could suggest Fane of the Drow (which has a bunch of mini-adventures starting at EL6), or maybe Expedition to Undermountain (again, a bunch of mini-adventures, mostly lower-to-mid-level). Forest of Blood is an EL5 adventure in Dungeon #103. If you're into insects there's always Hive, an EL5 adventure in Dungeon #127 using giant ants and fomorians, or you could spruce up Buzz in the Bridge, an EL3 adventure from Dungeon #110-- easy to convert to 3.5, just use the "bee" or "wasp" stats from the 3.5 Monster Manual and make it a little tougher to raise it up a few EL's (like use wasps instead of bees, or just add more bees!)

Just a few suggestions.

 

[aboyd]

(All of these are pulled from here: WotC Adventures)

Actually, Witching Season and Last Breaths came from the free Dungeon magazine adventures page.

(As a possibly useful bit of info, of all the modules listed there by date, the module "City of Blood" from 05/09/2008 is D&D 3.5 edition, and so is everything earlier.)

Of the three modules you mentioned, it should be noted that all of them are for a level 6 party. So throwing those modules at a group of first-time 5th level players seems... hmm. I'd be sure to soften them first.

Anyway, at the location you pointed to (not the Dungeon modules, but the other free Wizards modules), there are three free fifth level modules. There is Base of Operations, which the OP already did. There is One Last Riddle, which strikes me as a terrible, terrible premise. That is, a super-powerful ghost asks a moderately powerful group to defeat a handful of weak enemies. And the question arises... why doesn't the ghost just kick butt himself?!

However, there is a third fifth-level module there. That is, Fallen Angel. That one is actually pretty fun, but it's really hard to work in a plot hook. There is no treasure map, no long-standing feud, no enslaved city, etc. It's basically "something cool happened in a little town, isn't that nice?" That doesn't really cause players to pipe up and say, "Well, let's solve that!"

I think having a religious person (paladin, cleric) receive a vision from the gods or the angels involved is a decent way to give the plot hook -- especially because you can make it a premonition of the very bad things to come. You could also handle it like traditional horror movie fare, and have a girl in another town (the town the PCs are in) become badly disturbed by horrific visions. Nothing will help -- the town cleric can't find a curse on her (so nothing to dispel) and can't understand what to do to end it. Enter the PCs.

Anyway, once you get past the problem of the plot hook, the adventure itself seems good.

 

[roguerouge]

For paizo adventures, since you like Dungeon, consider the following:

Crown of the Kobold King: Don't be misled by the 2nd level tag: you can run it straight for higher levels. Given that the hook is "rescue kids," resting becomes morally problematic for the party, which means that the adventure scales nicely.

Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale: Set them up as masters of their own domain!

Entombed with the Pharaohs: Excellent pyramid delve with traps and your very own crew of Beloch!

Carnival of Tears: Their best module since the end of Dungeon, bar none. Gross, humorous and terrifying.

River into Darkness: African Queen meets Heart of Darkness.

(http://paizo.com/pathfinder/pathfinderModules)

 

[Dragonwriter]

Actually, Witching Season and Last Breaths came from the free Dungeon magazine adventures page.

(As a possibly useful bit of info, of all the modules listed there by date, the module "City of Blood" from 05/09/2008 is D&D 3.5 edition, and so is everything earlier.)

Ah, hadn't seen that page before (though I downloaded most of those 3.5 adventures already). The only one I knew of for the free adventures was the one I linked earlier. And, yeah, I was suggesting (slightly) higher-level modules. Depending group size and make-up, it could easily work out. Fallen Angel could be a good pick (I just didn't take much of a look at it), like you said. And if none of the adventures level 4-6 catch the OP's eye, you could up the level of some of the encounters in Dry Spell. You can always add a monster or two to a fight to make it a little tougher.

(EDIT: And actually the OP said they were ran from 5th to 7th level, so the higher levels wouldn't have been quite so bad.)