Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Salla 05-19-05, 03:55 PM	As is a danger with all commercially-available adventures, one of my Players informed me that he had played through The Forgotten Forge once before. The only real indication that he had done so was that he clicked to the 'journal opens the trapped door' trap, but that wasn't a particularly difficult thing to figure out (Dirk wanted the journal, and the symbols matched), and he didn't do it before the party rogue checked for traps (and failed). He claimed he was 'doing a good job forgetting everything', but ... However, as he does own the book as well, I'm thinking I should make a few ... alterations in the latter half of the adventure (we stopped after the Door was opened, as it was getting late and one player had tickets to a midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith). Is this wise, or should I play it out?
Solarious 05-19-05, 06:46 PM	Feel free to change or mutilate the adventure as you desire. The beetle swarm is a nasty encounter regardless of wither you have alchemist's fire or not. Ditto for the horrid rats: dire rats they ain't. Foreknowledge about those encounters won't help very much, since they should have been forewarned about bringing fire. However, the puzzle will probably need adjustment. This is a golden opportunity, since there are no real clues about the order of inserting the rods. Put in a riddle, or perhaps a decipherable message, and change what opens the vault. You might want to change the ambush by Sabre to something else, perhaps changing the final villian to another organization. Do what you feel is right. There is no truly right or wrong way of playing DnD... not as long as you and your players have fun anyways. :smirk:
DarkerDreams 05-19-05, 08:05 PM	if you have problems you could do what I did to my party- they sent someone back out too quick for sabre to have arrived so he was sneaking up to the door at the top of the shaft... this definitely changes the dynamic of the encounter (not in the player's favor). if he seems unduly ready this could take some of the wind from his sails.
Salla 05-20-05, 01:56 AM	if you have problems you could do what I did to my party- they sent someone back out too quick for sabre to have arrived so he was sneaking up to the door at the top of the shaft... this definitely changes the dynamic of the encounter (not in the player's favor). if he seems unduly ready this could take some of the wind from his sails. Good points, all. My thought right now is to alter Saber's write-up slightly and give him a level of Cleric on top of two levels of Fighter (or perhaps all cleric ... hmmmm), and give him a 1st or 2nd level Sorcerer sidekick with Repair Light Wounds as a spell. I can feasibly rely on my players being smart enough to beat up the arcanist first, which will rapidly improve their tactical position, so this shouldn't be completely overpowering. Meantime, I write out the Beetle Swarm and possibly the Horrid Rats (they aren't particularly interesting encounters to me). For the record, party composition is: Human Swashbuckler L1 Catfolk Barbarian L1 (ECL 2) Valenar Elf Warmage L1 Human Spirit Shaman L1 Fox Hengeyokai Rogue L1 I opened up a lot of non-core material, as you can see. :) According to the little encounter calculator thingie, it's a very hard, 'pull out all the stops' encounter, which makes for a good finale.
drasticale 05-20-05, 02:00 AM	Meantime, I write out the Beetle Swarm and possibly the Horrid Rats I will give you that. Our party basically defeated these with little trouble, beyond singing my Ranger's eyebrows... Our encounter with Saber was harder, because my Ranger had a high roll on his Spot check from his vantage point... And the only person that was awake and not in the middle of repairing himself was the elven rogue... We did give Saber quite a scare, but we sure were screaming for our WF buddy, and the cleric very shortly... Loved sneaking up on him though, especially because the rogue failed...
DarkerDreams 05-20-05, 12:05 PM	the swarm encounters are aggrivating to parties, but will do some damage simply because they can't miss and cover large areas. Of course my party tended to injure itself because one character's solution to everything (including that) was to make something explode.