World's Largest Dungeon in actual play [Spoilers!]

[JediSoth]

I've been running WLD since January and my group is in section I right now. They've just fought Madness (they haven't been referring back to their notes, so it's not Dead Dead; it'll reform in 1 day) and I was frankly a little suprised how easy they had it. I've been making it more challenging with the notes provided, but I still have a group that's way bigger than it was written for. I have 7 PCs total, and several of them are totally mix-maxed (Like the Goliath Barbarian/Cleric)

I read through this entire thread once, though I haven't kept up on it, and it seems to me that it's unusual for a group to get this far with NO deaths. They've almost had a few deaths, but no one has actually died yet and their levels range from 7-9. Some of my players are good enough that I can believe they've survived, but some are only alive because they let other players take their lumps for them. As a group, they're not really a cohesive whole; there's almost two factions in the party. One faction plays FOR the party. The other plays to get kills and glory for themselves.

My question is, do I have so many PCs that nothing I can do by following the book will make it more challenging for them, or am I just being too soft? They had more problems with the darkmantles when I was taking it easy on them than they've been having with Madness and the driders after I decided to "let the dice fall where they may," as it were.

Perhaps I've become a victim of power creep.

JediSoth

 

[Xombie Master]

Hey JediSoth, just curious I've begun running WLD for a group of 7. Sadly they lost one of two barbarians to Bragdor in section A (critical hit!). I'm also running the dungeon for a small group (Bragdor killed their barbarian as well coincidentally). I was wondering, a few things (with regards to managing a 7 pc group).
*How much do you find yourself scaling encounters up? As I've said in a different thread, I like using kobolds so I've inserted a few extra here and there mostly to annoy the party.
*How do you award XP? I have a system but since this dungeon equates to something like a "life's pursuit" I'm curious how you've dealt with that snag. Especially since you are pretty far through the book.

 

[JediSoth]

Since I've been getting all 7 players to show up with regularity now, I've been scaling up pretty much every encounter where it would make a difference. I've been scaling them up per the book, though I may need to start going beyond that. One encounter that stands out is the trendriculi(?) in the Room of Green Death in region I. I didn't see how scaling up that encounter could possibly make it more challenging for the PCs, so I didn't do it.

As far as XP goes, I've been awarding it based on the encounter level shown in the book. I don't give extra when I scale it up. I have given extra for particularly good ideas (there was 1 or 2) I generally award it at the end of each session, though I've been known to award it mid-session if several people are within 100 XP or so of levelling. Due to absences, we have a range of levels 7 - 9 and they're about 1/2 finished with region I (assuming they finish the region, lately they've taken to trying to move through areas with the idea of heading towards the exit of the dungeon). So far, the average party level has been spot on with the book's idea of what levels are appropriate for a region.

JediSoth

 

[BlueBlackRed]

I read through this entire thread once, though I haven't kept up on it, and it seems to me that it's unusual for a group to get this far with NO deaths. They've almost had a few deaths, but no one has actually died yet and their levels range from 7-9. Some of my players are good enough that I can believe they've survived, but some are only alive because they let other players take their lumps for them. As a group, they're not really a cohesive whole; there's almost two factions in the party. One faction plays FOR the party. The other plays to get kills and glory for themselves.

My question is, do I have so many PCs that nothing I can do by following the book will make it more challenging for them, or am I just being too soft? They had more problems with the darkmantles when I was taking it easy on them than they've been having with Madness and the driders after I decided to "let the dice fall where they may," as it were.

Region I was the last of the "easy" regions. ("Easy" as in, creatures don't have the potential to deal 100 points of damage on average.)
My group had it easy for combat, so I gave the monsters extra abilities.
The biggest one was to allow certain creatures (gricks and Madness) to travel through the slime for some temporary tactical advantages.
That really added to the freaky/creepiness of the region.
(I think the party liked region I the most so far.)

I had no deaths in region A or I.
1 death in region E & N.
3 deaths in region J.

And every single death was not because of the power of the dungeon. It was because the party or PC did something foolish, so they paid the price.

So I wouldn't worry about them not losing anyone.
What I would worry about is what happens to them when they start losing PCs.

 

[just__al]

I've been running WLD since January and my group is in section I right now. They've just fought Madness (they haven't been referring back to their notes, so it's not Dead Dead; it'll reform in 1 day) and I was frankly a little suprised how easy they had it. I've been making it more challenging with the notes provided, but I still have a group that's way bigger than it was written for. I have 7 PCs total, and several of them are totally mix-maxed (Like the Goliath Barbarian/Cleric)

I read through this entire thread once, though I haven't kept up on it, and it seems to me that it's unusual for a group to get this far with NO deaths. They've almost had a few deaths, but no one has actually died yet and their levels range from 7-9. Some of my players are good enough that I can believe they've survived, but some are only alive because they let other players take their lumps for them. As a group, they're not really a cohesive whole; there's almost two factions in the party. One faction plays FOR the party. The other plays to get kills and glory for themselves.

My question is, do I have so many PCs that nothing I can do by following the book will make it more challenging for them, or am I just being too soft? They had more problems with the darkmantles when I was taking it easy on them than they've been having with Madness and the driders after I decided to "let the dice fall where they may," as it were.

Perhaps I've become a victim of power creep.

JediSoth

With a group that big, I'd be using the scaled encounters at least 50% of the time if not 75 or 90%

That should help. Also increasing the frequency of random encounters should help just a little bit...

 

[just__al]

Region I was the last of the "easy" regions. ("Easy" as in, creatures don't have the potential to deal 100 points of damage on average.)
My group had it easy for combat, so I gave the monsters extra abilities.
The biggest one was to allow certain creatures (gricks and Madness) to travel through the slime for some temporary tactical advantages.
That really added to the freaky/creepiness of the region.
(I think the party liked region I the most so far.)

I had no deaths in region A or I.
1 death in region E & N.
3 deaths in region J.

And every single death was not because of the power of the dungeon. It was because the party or PC did something foolish, so they paid the price.

So I wouldn't worry about them not losing anyone.
What I would worry about is what happens to them when they start losing PCs.

Personally, I found that PC's were in much more danger of dying when I started rolling in front of the screen. I always have to fight the urge to fudge in the players favor.

If I suddenly find myself in <u>need</u> of fudging, monsters start getting extra stupid or suddenly don't have as many hitpoints...

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Personally, I found that PC's were in much more danger of dying when I started rolling in front of the screen. I always have to fight the urge to fudge in the players favor.

If I suddenly find myself in <u>need</u> of fudging, monsters start getting extra stupid or suddenly don't have as many hitpoints...

I warned the players that the moment they left region A, I would no longer do anything in their favor unless I thought there was something imbalancing in the dungeon.

I roll in front of them whenever I can. On nights where I roll tons of 1's they love it. On nights where I roll crit after crit, they know I'm not being vindictive or anything.

But I did give them a single re-roll usable once per PC level that was only usable in situations that were obviously life-or-death. (I also can be bribed for rerolls with bags of Gummi-savers.) I did this because at higher levels there are a lot more save-or-die situations, and it's no fun to play a character for a year and then lose it to a single d20 roll.

And even with all of that, I've killed 2 PC's with save-or-die type traps in region N.
A Wail of the Banshee trap killed the sorcerer, that's with 2 rolls.
A maximized clerical fire trap that did 108 points of damage would have killed 2 clerics in one shot. But the Gummi-saver re-roll saved one of them.
The other cleric failed his first roll, then failed his life-or-death re-roll, and since he's a cleric of luck, he got another re-roll, and failed that too.

If that's not a testimonial to the dangers of higher-level dungeons, I don't know what is.

I'm not about to fudge anything I consider acceptable danger. It cheapens the players accomplishments, and they can get addicted to it and start expecting the DM to tone the danger down. Then after a while they start blaming you for making things too hard when things aren't a cake-walk anymore.

 

[just__al]

I warned the players that the moment they left region A, I would no longer do anything in their favor unless I thought there was something imbalancing in the dungeon.

I roll in front of them whenever I can. On nights where I roll tons of 1's they love it. On nights where I roll crit after crit, they know I'm not being vindictive or anything.

But I did give them a single re-roll usable once per PC level that was only usable in situations that were obviously life-or-death. (I also can be bribed for rerolls with bags of Gummi-savers.) I did this because at higher levels there are a lot more save-or-die situations, and it's no fun to play a character for a year and then lose it to a single d20 roll.

And even with all of that, I've killed 2 PC's with save-or-die type traps in region N.
A Wail of the Banshee trap killed the sorcerer, that's with 2 rolls.
A maximized clerical fire trap that did 108 points of damage would have killed 2 clerics in one shot. But the Gummi-saver re-roll saved one of them.
The other cleric failed his first roll, then failed his life-or-death re-roll, and since he's a cleric of luck, he got another re-roll, and failed that too.

If that's not a testimonial to the dangers of higher-level dungeons, I don't know what is.

I'm not about to fudge anything I consider acceptable danger. It cheapens the players accomplishments, and they can get addicted to it and start expecting the DM to tone the danger down. Then after a while they start blaming you for making things too hard when things aren't a cake-walk anymore.

I'm running two different groups through this now (a monthly game and a 1st,3rd & 5th wednesday game)

I've been reading your blog for a while now, it's excellent and it's nice to see what the players have faced.

 

[Qwillion]

Increasing the mosnters.

I have a group of minmaxers myself and you have to remeber that the wld is not min-maxed

if your dealing with a group of min maxers you best bet is sup up the encounters by min maxing the monsters.

the easiest ways are to get ahold of three books
The Deluxe Book of Templates (silverthrone and goodman games print)
The Advanced Besitary (Green Ronin)
Beast Builder (expeditious retreat press)

if you want to do it the hard way find an online monster stat calculator and rebuild the monster by increasing stats and adding hit dice.


another simple reminder is trap lurkers, monsters lair near traps becasue they provide ready food. anytime the pc trips a trap a monster should show up right away.

 

[Hussar]

It will be interesting to see how my guys fare once the leave region A. They've been taking their time, although the addition of a Crypt Thing was a nice touch, if I do say so myself. Split the party into two. One group got lucky and got bounced into a relatively empty area, the others got bounced into the trog lair. Lots of fun. So far, I've had 1 casualty from the trap in the armor, and several near casualties.

The best answer to increasing lethality I've found is to simply do what others are doing - roll EVERYTHING in front of the party. Makes life so much fun.

Just a question about those who are min/maxers. How? Since the party can't actually buy anything, the only thing they can tweak is their own characters. I really don't see how class combo's (other than some of the truly silly ones) can make that much of a difference.

One other idea is, when you have multiple creatures with more than one door, always send a couple out the other door to attack the party from the rear. Nothing like munched wizzie to make the party nervous.

((Oh, btw, I now have FOUR Dm's on the go in my WLD project. Anyone who is looking for a game, check it out. Yay me.))

One other thing I thought of to increase lethality:

Improved Sunder

Any creature with a DR of X/Magic should be making a sunder attack whenever possible. Since a number of the bigger critters have Power Attack, swapping in improved sunder isn't that big of a change. But it makes a huge difference. A critter that pumps out 15 points of damage in a single attack, breaks that fighter's lovely longsword into useless little pieces. Now the fighter is unarmed and in the reach of the critter. The critter then uses the fighter for a pinjata. A large creature with improved sunder vs a medium creature gets a +8 on his opposed rolls. That's a pretty decent advantage that's going to result in a lot of success. So long as you do 20 points of damage, you'll destroy pretty much any weapon. Not only do you take the fighter out of the fight, but, now your DR steps up to the plate when the fighter yanks out his non-magical other weapon that he's been carrying and never using.

You don't even need to do this all that often to have a huge impact on the party. Losing weapons, shields or other items to sunders is going to really change the balance of power very quickly.

It's what I plan on doing when the party starts facing some of the bigger stuff.