
Loki42nd |
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Going back to resting during the adventure it does seem to me as written that it assumes the PCs to 'push through' and potentially do the whole adventure without taking a rest (though part three does mention retreating and coming back, but if they think Martella could potentially be killed at any time...). I realised this was going to be difficult and a little unfair to the prepared caster in my party since they would no opportunity use the new spells they gained at 2nd and 3rd level.
I did a couple of things to mitigate/deal with the issue.
I did want them to do the whole catacombs without resting if possible so as to encourage the feeling of urgency. When the players levelled up I gave them their HP increase to their current HP as well as their max. When the players took an hour to rest and recover some non-lethal damage I let the cleric prepare spells in the additional spell slots she had earned at level 2. They made it all the way through to Daigo but were looking to rest after him. Since they only had a trap and one fight left I nudged them to continue via the nobles and by implying there were more monsters making their way up from the sinkhole. I also had the Sargavan cleric channel positive a couple of times after the nobles made a donation in recognition of the player's deeds up to that point.
Once they left the catacombs I knew I wanted them to rest even though the adventure as written seems to encourage them to rush to the Repository to save Martella ASAP. So I made the note they found on the halfling killers be in code. Told the rogue with Linguistics it would take a couple of of hours to decipher. Similarly I said it would take a few hours of investigation to narrow down the locations in the city that started with "dignif-" from Martella's final message. That way there'd be no way they could rush there straight away. Finally I applied the fatigued condition to all the PCs when they left the catacombs due to everything they had faced and the fact they had probably been up for nearly 24 hours by that point.
It worked and they decided to rest so now we're due to start part 3 with them fresh. Will see if they can do that in one or need to retreat and come back.