I've got two problems with this adventure. First, the setup is too similar to Life's Bazaar; there's a secret entrance to the dungeon under someone's house, someone who is being controlled by the bad guys into doing what they want. The second issue is that the means needed to take down a vampire are too similar to what will be needed to take down Tongueater in Flood Season, meaning that a battle that has taken on legendary proportions on this board becomes a cakewalk since most if not all the party has the ability to slice through Tongueater's defenses thanks to taking down Drathkar.
I'm wondering about options to either heavily modify Drathkar's Way to avoid these issues, or just outright replace it with either a homebrew adventure or another Dungeon adventure. Any suggestions?
I second that thought; Tongueater should be terrifying, but if my party gets hold of silver weapons beforehand, he's just gonna be another monkey chump.
I understand your concerns. However, I didn't really have an issue with it with my PCs. The DR for Tongueeater is 5/silver; at worst it is an annoyance for the PCs. Even then, with 6 PCs, the DR doesn't really hold them up much. Drakthar was much more of a challenge... but he is the boss and he should be crazy difficult.
But, if you want to upgrade Tongueeater, there is a thread on here somewhere about making him more feral.
How about Witch of Serpent's Bridge in Dungeon 95? Has to due with construction of a church and workers being killed. Fits in with the happenings of Cauldron.
Or search the Wyrm's Hoard for a different substitution.
http://www.paladinpgm.com/wyrm/
How about Witch of Serpent's Bridge in Dungeon 95? Has to due with construction of a church and workers being killed. Fits in with the happenings of Cauldron.
Or search the Wyrm's Hoard for a different substitution.
http://www.paladinpgm.com/wyrm/
Dungeon 95 is the one issue I'm missing from the last 3 years of subscribing. I think I hid it so my kids wouldn't be tempted by the "Special Sealed Section" with Vile content, but now I can't find it. I knew my Search and Spot skills weren't strong.
Changes to Part Two of the SCAP is of particular interest to me because I'm using the Magazine version of the Adventure Path, which doesn't have Drathkar like the Hardcover. So although I might substitute anything, I kind of wanted something I could insert a Vampiric Bugbear into, even if the rest was different.
Thanks for the link to Wyrm's Hoard! Browsing is a great help and has given me a couple ideas. My current thought tweaks the recent Home Under the Range from Dungeon 134. The Malachite Fortress has this connection to Underdark that could be explored...