I was called out of town on business for 4 weeks recently and one of my players asked if it would be alright to run a short "side trek" type adventure for the others while I was gone. I figured, "What the hey!" This particular group has been playing together almost 5 years and most are veteran players.(Three of us go back to the first printing AD&D days)
This was our experimental group of characters all crafted using Savage Species monster classes. We were just completing an extended adventure and were on our way to establish a home base in a nearby city.
Imagine my surprise when I returned to discover the short side trek had resulted in THREE levels of character advancement(from 7 to 10!), a literal wagon load of gold and magic items far overpowered for the level of the group, and "random encounters" specially equipted to exploit the weaknesses of two members of the party resulting in the primary fighter of the group having his CON reduced to 6 with enough vile damage to make his maximum HP 4 and the arcane caster turned to stone.
I am now faced with several unappealing choices:
1) pretend the whole thing was a dream and reset the characters to their previous levels and gear.
2) try to bring them back in line by throwing out the entire story arc I had planned since they are now able to walk through the encounters without breaking a sweat and writing for the new levels.
3) Abandoning these characters to the sub DM and starting fresh with a new campaign.
I know I should have been more careful in allowing a sub. Any thoughts or suggestions as to where to go now?
