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

[Traevanon]

I guess I dont see what the huge deal is with Sunder. The problem as I remember it can be that there are two different explanations of Hardness and Item Hitpoints (one in the PHB and one in the DMG) between them we wound up where items had pretty good hardness / hitpoints. The +2 sword you mentioned I think would have something like 14 hardness and 30 or 40 hitpoints (cant remember which).

Anyhow Sunder is pretty much the Giant's only trick so I wouldnt worry about it too much. Not many other creatures have it either. As long as you arent *adding* it to stuff I dont think it should be an issue.

Fighters also get "screwed over" by disarmers and trippers but that doesnt mean you shouldnt use the feats if your creatures happen to have it. After all this isnt the World's Largest Dungeon Junior Edition. Being that you are using a pregenerated adventure that says right in it that they will face *every* creature in the SRD, I think you are well within your rights.

 

[erucsbo]

I guess I dont see what the huge deal is with Sunder.
...
Anyhow Sunder is pretty much the Giant's only trick so I wouldnt worry about it too much. Not many other creatures have it either. As long as you arent *adding* it to stuff I dont think it should be an issue.
...
I think you are well within your rights.

thanks.
Next game session is this coming weekend so I'll play it by ear.
If anything it makes the players stop and rethink, which is always good.
Just need to make sure that there is a pay-off that makes up for the sour taste of losing 3 magical weapons.

 

[raynbow]

Disarm and trip are annoying to use, but they don't permanently rob the party of their magical items.

Magical items, which in the WLD are more difficult than normal to replace.

Destroying all their magic weapons is definately a way to ramp the difficulty up, if you need that, but other than that.....

I stay away from it in a NORMAL game, where the players can easily go to town and replace/repair magic items. There's no way I'll be using it in WLD.

But obviously, everyone's playstyle differs.

 

[rvalle]

So my 12th level group has wandered into O trying to find the way out (so close!!!).

Got into a fight with the Bugbears right off. I thought this was going to be a push over for the party but when the Leader Bugbear showed up he trashed the already weakened party killing one character and dropping a 2nd to 1 hp. The party barely made it out with the body in tow.

On the return trip I figured I'd scare them off with some of the Frost Giants. They had a tough fight vs. 6 of them but won in the end and they kept going.

Ok, thinks I... no more holding back...

They finish up the Bugbears in a fairly easy fight (cleric had died during the first fight so no healing up for the Bugbears). The move on to the Frost Worm cave. To my disappointment (and relief) they don't touch the dead Frost Giants in the front of the cave and move back to be attacked by the Worms.

I kind of messed this one up. The first Worm died in 1 round of combat ( I have a Paladin doing about 100 points of damage a round. He did 200+ in one round one time). I missed the part about the Worm exploding and moved up the 2nd one and used his breath weapon vs. the party. 15d6 of damage later and the Sorc is down and the rest of the party is hurt bad. THAT is when I notice the first one should have exploded for 20d6 of damage. Umm... hmmm.... that will kill the party and should have happened before the breath weapon. Well... I guess these are the non-exploding type of Frost Worms. 1 round later and the 2nd Worm is dead.

Next is a fight with a large number of Winter Wolfs. Thought this fight would go poorly for the group but a few well placed Blade Barrier spells to control the battle field and they were able to drop 13 of the 15 wolfs I threw at them (3 groups of 5. There should have been a 4th group but it was getting late, it had already been a long fight and adding 5 more wolfs wouldn't have changed anything other then taking a few more Fireballs from the group's Sorc.).

It helps that the party is 6-7 characters each night but I thought they were going to have a much harder time with it. I'm reluctant to increase the difficultly of the fights as it would be too easy to get either a character kill or TPK.

Character death is going to be become a major issue soon. They don't have enough diamonds for a Raise Dead and I've said the Garrison only has enough material components to do one more Reincarnate (they have done 4 already).

Next fight should beat the party back. The Giants, now aware that 'something is out there' setup a long line of watch fires along the west end of their area and the 16 or so Giants are keeping an eye out for what killed their friends. The party is in the process of chasing the 2 surviving wolfs which will lead them to the 10-15 remaining wolfs and their Druid Frost Giant keeper. The other 15 Frost Giants will hit the party from behind with boulders. I'm pretty sure a hasty retreat will follow.

The party just made 13th level and they are happy about their new found spells. I'm not 100% that the party won't be able to fight their way out of the WLD before hitting 20th level.

rv

 

[erucsbo]

The sundering of the main weapons of the fighter and the eldritch knight proved to make the party very wary of the giants. There was even talk of perhaps negotiating with them - though the dwarf (having lost his holy merciful great-axe) was disinclined to follow any course of action with respect to the giants that did not include killing them. They are still eyeing off the giant's forge though in the hope of fixing their weapons.
Through bad assumptions they think that the giants are responsible for causing the ice to melt around the dragon's prison. While I have not disabused this notion they need only start asking the right questions in order to arrive at the correct answers.
Instead of doing this they opted for scouting out the area containing the wyverns, sending first an arcane eye, then the rogue ventured forth by herself. Evasion proved to be very useful in dodging the effects of the ice-demon prison and with successful disable device and open lock checks found herself trapped alone in the "death of fire" room. Having disabled the fireball traps, she eventually found the box of rings and while a telepathic bond still going with the party determined that lighting the brazier and as many other fire sources as she could it would hopefully "kill" all the air in the room and spring the release of the secret door.
The smoke choked her in to unconsciousness just before the telepathic bond ran out, and perhaps due to luck, she was wearing the ring of regeneration, enabling her to come back to consciousness when the air finally gave out and the door opened.
This was communicated in private - leaving the rest of the party ignorant of her fate.
(they seem to have forgotten that the NPC paladin has a crystal ball (which they have used before)) And then the session ended.

Pretty boring for most of the party except for the rogue, but I can almost guarantee combat will be coming up in the near future - especially if they discover the real force that is trying to free the dragon Tyrus and the gems which can be used to fund the fixing of their weapons.

 

[Hussar]

Guys, the freebie goodies today have a FANTASTIC resourse for the WLD. Check out Bits of Darkness: Dungeons here.

100 effects to add to a dungeon - sounds, sights, smells, etc. Very, very cool. Would jazz up the WLD nicely.

 

[raynbow]

darn, missed a ton of stuff i wanted

i couldn't get it to work this morning, and just figured i'd try again later

i didn't realize they changed it every day at 10 am

ah well.

 

[Qwillion]

I still want to run the whole flooded dungeon since my party got out without going through this area.

 

[rvalle]

I might yank out the huge undead area and run it as a seperate adventure(s). So far it looks like my group is going to miss that area.

rv

 

[erucsbo]

Guys, the freebie goodies today have a FANTASTIC resourse for the WLD. Check out Bits of Darkness: Dungeons here.

100 effects to add to a dungeon - sounds, sights, smells, etc. Very, very cool. Would jazz up the WLD nicely.

thanks Hussar - was completely unaware that this was going on. I snagged it in time.