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My players just defeated the umber hulk at the beginning of Zenith Trajectory. One of my players, playing a 5th level ranger, needs to gain a couple levels to be even with the rest of the group who are all level 7. Another player, who is playing the rogue, will be out of town for the next couple weeks and the other players still want to play. My idea is to have the players present run monsters that the player of the ranger could fight/go up against. Possibly members of the Last Laugh? Any ideas?
Personalising the side trek to match the character is the best piece of advice I can give you. Have they made any allies or enemies you could use to spark their interest? Do they have any agendas or passions (ie loaths giants, loves unicorns etc). You menioned they were a Ranger but are they an atypical Ranger who loves the wilderness or more an urban type?
Try and include plenty of clues and plot hooks to future events and important NPCs. Be careful not to give anything too important away but foreshadowing villians is easy to do with Side Treks like you are planning. Having the main villian a follower of one of the Cagewrights or insane from the whispering voice of the Smoking Eye is fun to do.
If you are looking for a few easy ideas to use geared around a typical ranger then here are a few -
1)Vortimax Weer owns the local potion shop is needs a certain component is has run out of. He will reward the adventurer who can retrieve for him the heart of a troll from the nearby jungle with a 50% discount on all his goods for the term of a year. He knows the general location of cave where one such deformed troll is reputed to live.
2)Bolar Westkey is famous for his masterful maps. Unfortunately Bolar has recently had a family heirloom stolen from him - a quill which allows him to create maps that can teleport the user anywhere on the parchment. Bolar has asked the Stormblades to locate the quill which he believes is somewhere still in the city but theie search has proven fruitless up to this point. Bolar has a few clues to the thief's identity including a broken look pick, a piece of half eaten cheese and an small silver hair pin...
3)Skylar Krewis has been given the task of leading a small contingient of gaurds into the Kopru Ruins in the wake of their discovery beneath the town to see if they pose a further threat to the city. Skylar has been instructed by Tereson to seek out your PC to assist in guided them through the ruins. Unbeknowst to Skylar the Ebony Triad have sent a few of their agents from Sasserine with some of their lackies to find out what happened to Triel and her allies.
Anyway just a few ideas off the top of my head. I'm not sure about having your players run the monsters I would just run a seperate session with the player in question.
Delvesdeep
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Another possibility is to have him do a bit of work for the striders, being a ranger and all. This works especially well if the party is on good terms with the striders or if you want to make that faction more involved in the campaign. Meerthan could easily send one of his striders to recruit the character for a single mission.
This would be a good chance for you to introduce any story elements that you want your players to see, but they may have missed otherwise or that you just feel would be out of place without some further introduction. For instance at the point of the story you are in there is alot of big events that are going to soon happen. Next chapter is when the half-orcs begin to move into town. Obviously they have to be stationed somewhere near by at this point. Perhaps the striders come to your character, saying that they themselves are well known to the blue duke and cannot complete the task on their own but they need someone capable who could infiltrate his ranks and find out just what he is up to.
With that sort of mercenary group things such a trials by combat or the like would not be out of the ordinary so you could have the other players enter into an almost arena style duel against him with either half-orcs or whatever other type beneath the blue dukes command you feel would be a reasonable challenge for him.
Once inside the ranks he needn't learn much of what is to come of course, he is a new soldier of course and they aren't going to trust him. But he could learn that they are moving to a city in the region. Whether he takes that as occupation plans or as the guard duty it is, it will give him something to think about when he sneaks back to town and tells the others. It also will make the arrival of the half-orcs much less suprising, but no less worrisome after he has seen their armies brutality.