Hi everyone, well I've started running my wife through the WLD, and we are having an absolute blast! We managed to play 4 nights in a single week and we have finished about 33% of region A, ahhh, marital bliss. She's playing two gestalt characters with insanely high stats, a cleric/sorcerer, and a rogue/barbarian. I have taken some liberties in making her characters a bit more powerful as I wanted to make sure her characters can live through her first few fights without me having to fudge every single roll. The major things I did:
1) Gestalt characters (this was more for party flexibility than for survival).
2) Insane stat rolling method - two sets of 5d6 drop lowest two, pick the best set. (I think this is the one thing I *slightly* regret doing. I think what I should have done was just give her a high point buy in the 30s or 40 at the most.)
3) No arcane spell failure for armor (the NPCs will be using this rule as well, subject to change if it becomes unbalancing).
4) No ECL penalties on race selection (although only up to +2 ECL races, she chose a drow and an aasimar, don't ask, hehe).
5) Maximum hit points at every level (I'm not doing this for NPCs *yet*, although I will if things need rebalancing later).
Other than those minor (hahahaha) changes, everything else is being run as written in the dungeon. I have explained my reasoning to her, and told her if the changes later reveal some horrible balance problems, we'll re-evaluate.
I tried to only make changes that would help her characters survive, not necessarily be overpowering, so far I think I have succeeded. She is having no trouble with the one-sie and two-sie encounters with darkmantles and rat swarms, but she became overconfident against Orghar's clan and had to flee after killing 4 of the orcs. Fortunately, the room description says that they will not pursue past the hallway north of their room. Also fortunate that Orghar himself didn't come to help his fellows, that would have hurt.
I'm starting to think a little about the higher levels when characters can more easily be taken out of fights, because for her, losing one character, even to just a stun or unconsciousness, is a major blow to the party. I'm loathe to control an NPC party member myself or give her a third PC, so if anyone has any experience with high level, small parties, any advice would be useful. I will say that my wife does NOT care if I fudge rolls or change rules, she's very heavily into her characters and character development, and doesn't mind sacrificing game mechanics for storytelling (I'm the same way).
Also, does anyone else keep forgetting to use the encounter conditions in the rooms? It's one of things I love about this dungeon, but I just keep forgetting to check that entry in the room description!!
Woops, sorry about the long rambling post, I'm done now ...
Wait ... more kudos to AEG for this great product!! Ok now I'm done.
1) Gestalt characters (this was more for party flexibility than for survival).
2) Insane stat rolling method - two sets of 5d6 drop lowest two, pick the best set. (I think this is the one thing I *slightly* regret doing. I think what I should have done was just give her a high point buy in the 30s or 40 at the most.)
3) No arcane spell failure for armor (the NPCs will be using this rule as well, subject to change if it becomes unbalancing).
4) No ECL penalties on race selection (although only up to +2 ECL races, she chose a drow and an aasimar, don't ask, hehe).
5) Maximum hit points at every level (I'm not doing this for NPCs *yet*, although I will if things need rebalancing later).
Other than those minor (hahahaha) changes, everything else is being run as written in the dungeon. I have explained my reasoning to her, and told her if the changes later reveal some horrible balance problems, we'll re-evaluate.
I tried to only make changes that would help her characters survive, not necessarily be overpowering, so far I think I have succeeded. She is having no trouble with the one-sie and two-sie encounters with darkmantles and rat swarms, but she became overconfident against Orghar's clan and had to flee after killing 4 of the orcs. Fortunately, the room description says that they will not pursue past the hallway north of their room. Also fortunate that Orghar himself didn't come to help his fellows, that would have hurt.
I'm starting to think a little about the higher levels when characters can more easily be taken out of fights, because for her, losing one character, even to just a stun or unconsciousness, is a major blow to the party. I'm loathe to control an NPC party member myself or give her a third PC, so if anyone has any experience with high level, small parties, any advice would be useful. I will say that my wife does NOT care if I fudge rolls or change rules, she's very heavily into her characters and character development, and doesn't mind sacrificing game mechanics for storytelling (I'm the same way).
Also, does anyone else keep forgetting to use the encounter conditions in the rooms? It's one of things I love about this dungeon, but I just keep forgetting to check that entry in the room description!!
Woops, sorry about the long rambling post, I'm done now ...
Wait ... more kudos to AEG for this great product!! Ok now I'm done.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
