While the prevailing wisdom seems to be to drop this one, I can't wait to do it with my group. The party has 6 relatively overpowered characters, and the players are cautious.
From my perspective, it gives the party the chance to shine in service to Cauldron; to show the Stormblades what they can do. Also, I look forward to working them over with either an exceptionally crafty Drathkar-as-written, or an overconfident souped-up sorcerer found here or at rpgenius.
To start the adventure off properly, I loaded the wererats up with alchemical toys, potions of healing, weak poison, and a level of rogue each. Along with good starting positions and an improvised trap on an external stairway, these changes made for a fun and difficult encounter.
While I know this game is supposed to be designed for 6 characters, even when half of the members of this party are staring at the clouds, distracted by shiny objects, and attacking the walls, they seem to muddle through without difficulty. Does this imbalance disappear in later chapters, or is it reasonable to keep 'tweaking' the difficulty level?
Any input would be appreciated.
ps I plan on posting like this is only going to be read by dm's/gm's. (no spoiler warnings)
While I know this game is supposed to be designed for 6 characters, even when half of the members of this party are staring at the clouds, distracted by shiny objects, and attacking the walls, they seem to muddle through without difficulty. Does this imbalance disappear in later chapters, or is it reasonable to keep 'tweaking' the difficulty level?
IMHO it does indeed disappear at the higher levels. Though I think poor tactical mistakes can cause deaths early on as well. There are some VERY deadly encounters in this campaign and I wouldn't feel bad at all having some optimized characters running through it.
Sean Mahoney
thanks for the input...
yeah, my group suffered one death from an early 'wandering off' incident. I fully expected slaughter at the hands of Kazmogen and associates; even had a couple of pages of notes on how I was going to handle their torture, and the vignettes of their rescue by the stormblades.
But the party succeeded while appearing to try to fail, leading to my last post.
Ah well, they have a little extra experience, so Drathkar can go hard on them!
My party of 5 have just started Zenith Trajectory and I've been running the adventures as written. I told them at the start of the campaign that it was a meatgrinder, so expect to see some PC deaths. That certainly hasn't happened though. So far there have only been a couple of times when they've had a difficult fight.
The fight against Triel was a tough one that could have easily have been a TPK. However I had Skaven in the room as well, which made things a little more difficult (the party defeated him earlier and he fled back to Triel's room).
In their previous fight with Skaven he managed to escape after taking 3 PC's into negative hit points with a Sound Burst. Skaven was on his last legs at that point though. 1 more hit would have killed him. The party Fighter failing a Will save and running away due to the Fear spell swung the combat though.
The other fight that was a bit challenging was Drakthar. Drakthar himself wasn't really a problem. He was challenging but not really life-threatning. It took them 3 fights to kill him off for good since he went into mist form and escaped from the party when he hit 0 HP's.
The real problem for the party when facing Drakthar was the Bat Swarms that he summoned. The party has a Conjurer with Evocation as one of his banned schools. That meant he didn't really have any area of effect spells to damage the swarms. Because they were diminuative, weapons were useless against them. The Cleric was able to use Sound Burst on them, but other than that they didn't have a lot that could hurt the bats. In the end I ruled that they could attack the bats with torches for 1 HP damage per hit. The bat fights tended to be long and drawn out as a result.
The one death in the campaign came from a very strange combat. The Hexblade managed to die in a fight against 2 Ogre Zombies (CR3 each - EL5 fight) when they were all 5th level. The Hexblade was down to 3 Hit Points and chose to attack the Ogre Zombie, instead of using a withdraw action to move behind another party member for protection. He hit the Ogre Zombie but didn't kill it. Next turn the Ogre Zombie returned the favour and his skull was smashed in.
It was really odd as the party faced the much more dangerous T-Rex Skeleton the session before and didn't have a problem. They also easily managed to dispatch the Gnoll Tarkilar just before the fight with the Ogre Zombies. I don't think they took more than a couple of points damage total in that fight.
I was expecting the fight against Kazmojen to be tough. He failed his save against a Spell Compendium spell (bad rolling by me) which left him nauseated and unable to attack for 3 rounds. A couple of good rolls by the party tanks in the space of 2 rounds allowed them to take him out soon after.
My PC's have access to most of the splatbooks, which definitely increases their power level. The Conjurer and his use of the Sculpt Spell metamagic feat has proved particularly effective. If your group is the same you may need to use the splatbooks to up the power level of their opponents as well.
The other problem I've found is XP. My group seems to always have too much XP. I've cut back on a lot of their XP but they've still got too much. Last session I told the group that I'll be slowing down XP a lot until they get back to the level they're meant to be at. They are ok with that.
Olaf the Stout
Thanks for the info Olaf!
Sounds like we had similar talks with our respective groups. I had my group start with two characters each, for ease of transition in case of death. Huge mistake for so many reasons.
Our death was pretty straightforward. A half-fey sorcerer stuck his head through the half-open gear door leading from the first room in Jazidrune. The Skulks spitted him down to -8 the first round, causing the tanks to wet their pants while pretending to rummage through their packs.
One of the Skulks stuck around long enough to do the obvious - as a dm i kinda wanted to dismember, but the Skulks only had rapiers and xbows. Could've poked out an eye I suppose. But the death and subsequent raising provided lots of fun gaming.
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My group also had significant difficulty with Drakthar and his bat swarms. Drakthar waited until the party was in the process of crossing the rope bridge, then used the bats to knock their wizard into the pit. He then had the bats nauseate the ranged attackers while he pounded on the tank. No fatalities, but they had to flee for their lives.
If you're worried that they still won't have much trouble with him, just get rid of Drakthar's prejudice that keeps him from fighting alongside his goblins and use them to keep the spellcasters occupied or to hold the PCs in a tight space while Drakthar goes to town.
My group also had significant difficulty with Drakthar and his bat swarms. Drakthar waited until the party was in the process of crossing the rope bridge, then used the bats to knock their wizard into the pit. He then had the bats nauseate the ranged attackers while he pounded on the tank. No fatalities, but they had to flee for their lives.
If you're worried that they still won't have much trouble with him, just get rid of Drakthar's prejudice that keeps him from fighting alongside his goblins and use them to keep the spellcasters occupied or to hold the PCs in a tight space while Drakthar goes to town.
Good advice! I do want Drathkar to be more mobile and to hit the party early and often (I played against the vampire in 'Ravenloft' - while I don't want to be that extreme[ly cruel] I do want the players to have a good 'horror movie' experience)
If I'm playing a 'smarter' Drathkar, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't goose his levels as well. Using the terrain like you suggest should provide enough of an edge. Were not running it until the end of February, but I'll let you know how it turns out.
In my game Drakthar failed to dominate any of the PC's. They all made their will saves when required. If he does dominate a PC then the fight could be a lot different.
Olaf the Stout