Hello everyone. Stop me if You've heard this before but I'm a rookie DM who needs some advice.
I'm running "Shut In" w/ intention of leading into "Funeral Procession". Party is starting at first level so I've scaled down the adventure they way it advised me to.
Problem is as a sort of prologue I had a barfight between the Sawfish boys and Party and the Sawfish Boys got CLOBBERED. The wizard and cleric didn't even cast any spells and the Sawfish Boys are supposed to be CR2 each. One of them even got killed, though through the magic of necromancy and DM-ery he'll just have to be killed again.
What I'm asking is; did I just screw up or am I dealing with really powerful PCs? If its the latter should I keep "Shut In" scaled down? Or should I let the Party have it; w/ advanced death dog and all?
Hello everyone. Stop me if You've heard this before but I'm a rookie DM who needs some advice.
I'm running "Shut In" w/ intention of leading into "Funeral Procession". Party is starting at first level so I've scaled down the adventure they way it advised me to.
Problem is as a sort of prologue I had a barfight between the Sawfish boys and Party and the Sawfish Boys got CLOBBERED. The wizard and cleric didn't even cast any spells and the Sawfish Boys are supposed to be CR2 each. One of them even got killed, though through the magic of necromancy and DM-ery he'll just have to be killed again.
What I'm asking is; did I just screw up or am I dealing with really powerful PCs? If its the latter should I keep "Shut In" scaled down? Or should I let the Party have it; w/ advanced death dog and all?
To know if you had really powerful PCs we would have to Know how they generated their stats (and if it was some kind of random method then if they got lucky). That said a 1st level party can often handle a couple of 2nd level characters. In this sort of fight things are likely to be extreme. 1st level characters can often dish out quite a bit of punishment for a short period of time what they usually can't do is take much punishment. An extreme example is if they fight an enemy mage with a sleep spell. If that mage gets the sleep spell off its all over for our intrepid hero's. They are likely all going to fall asleep. If the mage loses inititive however and then his chance of survival is pretty close to nil. In this case it almost all comes down to the inititive rolls.
The wizard and cleric didn't even cast any spells and the Sawfish Boys are supposed to be CR2 each. One of them even got killed, though through the magic of necromancy and DM-ery he'll just have to be killed again.
Ah, but how many more times could your Party have handled that encounter before having to rest and restock? Look at it this way - the NPCs just used up 25% of *their* resources while facing the PCs!
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I'm running "Shut In" w/ intention of leading into "Funeral Procession". Party is starting at first level so I've scaled down the adventure they way it advised me to.
What I'm asking is; did I just screw up or am I dealing with really powerful PCs? If its the latter should I keep "Shut In" scaled down? Or should I let the Party have it; w/ advanced death dog and all?
Even for super-powered PCs, 3 EL 4 encounters is a lot to dish out. I'd probably remove 1-2 HD from the death dog (it is advanced), remove the Wand of Magic Missiles (from the Creepy Bard chic), and possibly her small dog (dire rat stats). That should make the encounters closer to EL 2 (death dog), EL 3 (bard chic), and leave Peck for the final encounter as an EL 4.
If I remember correctly, there is a suggestion at the end of Shut In for scaling the adventure down, too.
~Jaye
Ah, but how many more times could your Party have handled that encounter before having to rest and restock? Look at it this way - the NPCs just used up 25% of *their* resources while facing the PCs!
Congratulations Doc_Outlands, you've completelty flummoxxed a man of wealth and taste. Anyways, to answer the first question we used standard point buy of 25 points and everybody's human.
Are there more than 4 players?
And do any of them have the equivalent of animal companions that do a fair bit of fighting?
I have a group of 6 players, and I regularly have to bump up the CRs by 2-3 levels to make it a challenge, since the rules as written assume a party of 4.
Well, one thing to think about is this - how hard were you *trying* to kill the PCs? The Sawfish Boys struck me as bullies - used to intimidating people into doing things their way and not accustomed to actually having to *fight*! Now, however, they'll have blood in their eye and use normal adventuring party tactics against the party...
IMO, of course...
First of all, Thank you for clearing that up.
Second of all, Sorry for ressurrecting an old topic but I just realized I made a significant error in scaling him down and
forgot to adjust his HP. Can anyone tell me what a "normal" Death Dog should have for Hit Points? (don't have ff w/ me)