Hey all,
First time writer long time reader, here.
So I am running WotR for my group soon and I have a smidge of a predicament. The players in my group, including myself, are part of a larger group that had been previously running WotR but had then been abruptly ended.
So I have a few players who have played up to book 3 and I would like, if at all possible, to make enough tweeks to the game to keep the players on their toes. Nothing huge story-wise (though that would be cool too) but mostly changes to encounters that will prevent the players from accessing their player knowledge from previous games.
Any thoughts?
It might also be as simple as reskinning and repositioning stuff.
For example, in book 1 move an upgraded Millorn to Faxon's house. Put a weak Orithurbo in Millorn's spot. Move an upgraded Faxon to Orithurbo's lab.
That focus would be on minimal work for you (yes there will be some as you give or take away levels), but the players are expecting an alchemist here, and whoops, they get a summoner. Or they thought they were getting a melee fight and suddenly there is a spellcaster in the mix.
Apart from tailoring encounters to the pc's the biggest thing to look at is changing around enough of the expected encounters so that the players will not be able to trust their memory (Of course they will probably be trying not to metagame but...).
In Book 1 I would change around the guards on the Grey Guardhouse, and possibly swap around some of the pc's from the earlier encounters to make them feel different.
In Book 2 I would seriously consider swapping the traitor around to someone else (Possibly one of the characters from book 1 is the traitor), moving the banner or changing the guard on it perhaps one of Deskari's demons as a brute force guardian rather than the relatively subtle Shadow demon .Doing something different with Staunton Vhane maybe make him a cleric or Warpriest rather than an antipaladin or have him be redeemable instead of his cousin, in fact reverse the power levels and make the cousin the power behind the throne. You could also replace the chimera with one of the other bests that died testing the mythic potions.
Thank you for the ideas, they sound like they will work out pretty well! Sounds like we will have a paladin, cleric, fighter, barbarian, and one other undecided (possibly summoner).
Sounds like the easiest thing for now will be to move encounters around or change some up entirely. Though I am intrigued at the Red Mantis assassin idea lol.