I grabbed the "Hangman's Noose" module by Nicholas Logue, to go into my Mysteries of Sharn adventure anthology-ish thing, and I'm running into a bit of an odd sticky wicket. Haunts are kind of like traps, but they're also not. This is significant for me because it's a first level adventure, and My PCs are going to average about 4th level. when they run through it
Does anyone have any advice about how to adjudicate changing the challenge ratings on Haunts?
For example, to make it a CR 4, I've upped the Escape Artist check on the Confessional Chair Haunt (page 15) to 25, which increases the CR by 1 if we assume it's the same as bumping up the Disable Device check, and increased the Bull Rush Modifier from +5 to +9 (as if adding the Improved Bull Rush Feat,) to up the CR by 1 and increased the EHD for turning to 4.
In general, I tend to assume that the number of EL away from the base level of the assumed party level in an adventure tells me how to adjust the EL of rooms when scaling the adventure.
For example, this room was EL 4 for a party of 1st level. That's Party level +3. By that token, it should be Party Level (4)+3=EL 7 for my players.
Just so you know I'm not picking CR 4 for the haunt out of thin air... so to speak.
A minority view here:
My GM ran Hangman's Noose for 4ths and did not modify it significantly, except that the GM did not by preference attack the NPCs rather than the PCs, and added one outdoors zombie encounter. It was fine. It didn't need to be any harder; it beat the PCs up thoroughly and scared them half to death. I personally think it was more enjoyable at that level than it would have been at its written level, and therefore wouldn't advise making it harder for 4th level PCs.
DC25 is pretty severe for 4th level characters. If they don't have the skill it's an auto-fail (unless someone's managed a 20 Dex) and even if they do it's likely no better than +11, so they'll fail 2/3 of the time.
Your mileage may vary, of course. If you're running it as a one-shot you can afford more risk than if you hope to continue the game afterwards, as we did.
I really liked the feel of this adventure--the roleplaying was intense. I didn't think it needed outrageous difficulty in order to get that feel, and I'm glad my GM didn't think so either.
Mary
A minority view here:
snip
I don't disagree with you. The adventure as written is positively lethal for 1st-level characters. It would still probably be challenging for most 4th-level characters, as long as they weren't too optimized. It probably won't kill any of them though.
If you want to make the haunts harder though, I'd aim for increasing the DCs for skill checks by 5, and for saving throws by 3 (that's about how much better people will be at 4th level). I'd double (or so) the amount of damage they do, either just straight up increasing the damage or by giving them some sort of lingering effect (posion, etc.)
Hmmm... thanks for the food for thought...
I admit, I had some apprehension looking over an adventure arguably for 1st level adventurers, and noted that most of the encounters were CR 2 or higher. "Well," I thought to myself, "It got published, they must be sure it'll work right. And it /is/ a nicely mooded Horror-Mystery-ish adventure, other than the scary difficulty misgivings."
But... I have 6 players, two of which are proficient at getting the most out of the system. (I'm not trying to call them power-gamers, but that they do take a certain satisfaction in a character that works well.)
I don't want them to mow the adventure down, like I fear the great-sword-weilding fighter (she's the detective's bodyguard) will with the zombie packs who'll find their DR of no avail.
The one thing I'm not worried about is Mord dying too soon. They don't have magic weapons with them, so they'll have a hard time with him (and solving his mystery may be their only recourse.)
Edit: Maybe I'll just beef up a few of the key points. I have to admit, I like the idea of Patrissa keeping her sorcerer levels. The idea of an enchantment-weaving Gut-Dragging Lurcher feels delightfully sinister to me.
Just did an averaging out of the encounters, and wound up with the average of EL 2.25.
That is a bit scary on four 1st level PCs. Six 4th level (or even five 4th level and one 3rd level, as I expect it to be,) I dunno. How many were in your group, M. Yamato?
Just did an averaging out of the encounters, and wound up with the average of EL 2.25.
That is a bit scary on four 1st level PCs. Six 4th level (or even five 4th level and one 3rd level, as I expect it to be,) I dunno. How many were in your group, M. Yamato?
Six. But a pretty strange group of characters and very suboptimal for the combat parts of this adventure (they were perfect for the detective/social aspects). Their magic's heavily slanted toward illusion and enchantment, and three of the six can't reliably do enough damage to deal with DR5 critters. (The cleric is a pseudodragon, thus relying on poison to do anything in combat, and everything's pretty much immune. The rogue had similar problems with her sneak attack, and the bard was just out of luck.)
The GM added one outdoors zombie encounter, which used up much of the cleric's turning; the PCs then found the indoors stuff quite hard, especially the fight against Patrissa.
Other GMs have commented that this module works fine for 1sts assuming that they use the NPCs as meat shields throughout. We didn't try that so I can't comment on it.
With six optimized characters you might want to add a few more creatures or slightly increase HP of the existing ones. I personally thought the DCs were very high already and probably wouldn't increase them.
Mary
As I'm sure Mary will attest, there's a big difference between an optimized 4th-level party and a non-optimized one.
If your players are the type to get the most out of the rules, you should raise the challenge level some. If you want some ideas to make the undead tougher, check out the dread zombie and dread wight templates in the Advanced Bestiary. Having Patrissa keep her sorcerer levels is another good idea.