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As my party has progressed through AW, I've begin to notice the adventures have actually become easier for the party. I've seen lots of TPK stories on the boards surrounding HoHR (they are in Zyrxog lair now), but the adventure thusfar has been easy, save the Invisible Stalker encounter.
I suspect the main reason may be is that I have allowed access to WOTC's Complete Splatbook series. This has created some very creative (and effective)character combinations, which I don't think the adventures were designed to handle. In the first few adventures, this wasn't too much of a concern, but now that everyone in the party is entering prestige classes or hitting the meaty benefits of feat trees, it's causing me a lot of extra work.
For EaBK and HoHR, I've had to:
1. Immediately implement the higher level PC adjustments
2. Reselect spells for all casters using the Spell Compendium
3. Reassess all feats and update with something more effective
4. Reassess magic items
I'm a bit concerned with Ch. Belt upcoming - this could be a LOT of work upgrading the other gladiators!
It's a bit late to retcon out the splatbook material, so I would appeciate any thoughts or advice on dealing with this situation. Thanks in advance.
Sorry if this is a repeat topic, but I've been searching for a similar topic on the boards, and other than an occasional mention, I haven't found anything specfic.
I've allowed them in mine as well as some 3rd party books, which I now regret. I have 6 pc's and they are just now getting to SoLS and all have prestige classes. I wouldn't worry about it too much there is plenty of challenge in the encounters to give them a run for their money even with all the new feats and spells. You already have the right idea though by going through the spell compendium and adjusting spells as needed but I seriously doubt you need to do this for every encounter that has a caster in it, nor for every melee encounter and feats. Watch thier tactics and adjust your tactics so that the encounter is still a challenge even though they have a feat that is a bit overpowered for the encounter as written.
A good example is last night we played I hit them with the 6 devil encounter on their way to see Manzorian. I smacked them around pretty badly at first but in the end they pulled through without any deaths. That's 6 pc's 1 npc cohort at 11th level taking on 2 cr 11 barb devils and 4 cr 9 bone devils. I never used the bone devils fear as I had no need. They had all sorts of goodies from those books but it couldn't stop the beat down I gave them for most of the battle. Of course the barb devils were not stupid enough to leave the caster up after he dropped a evard's black tentacles which grappled two of the bone devils, they dropped him right quick after they realized his threat to their attack.
Point is, you don't have to adjust everything because of those books but keep an eye out for encounters you want to be special or toughen up if they keep walking over everything. Every encounter isn't suppose to be a life and death encounter, let them beat down the monsters occasionally because they will get theirs at some point in every adventure.
PS - In CB I didn't adjust the first fight and they walked over it. I adjusted pitch blade to have 3 dwarves and made them 9th barbarian psychic warriors, they walked over it too. They got ass's handed to them by Madtooth (unadjusted). And the final fight start to beat on Auric's band (unadjusted) bad before the Apostle (unadjusted) showed up and ate Auric. The demon under the arena (unadjusted) nearly tpk'd them but I let them live.
As my party has progressed through AW, I've begin to notice the adventures have actually become easier for the party. I've seen lots of TPK stories on the boards surrounding HoHR (they are in Zyrxog lair now), but the adventure thusfar has been easy, save the Invisible Stalker encounter.
I suspect the main reason may be is that I have allowed access to WOTC's Complete Splatbook series. This has created some very creative (and effective)character combinations, which I don't think the adventures were designed to handle. In the first few adventures, this wasn't too much of a concern, but now that everyone in the party is entering prestige classes or hitting the meaty benefits of feat trees, it's causing me a lot of extra work.
For EaBK and HoHR, I've had to:
1. Immediately implement the higher level PC adjustments
2. Reselect spells for all casters using the Spell Compendium
3. Reassess all feats and update with something more effective
4. Reassess magic itemsI'm a bit concerned with Ch. Belt upcoming - this could be a LOT of work upgrading the other gladiators!
It's a bit late to retcon out the splatbook material, so I would appeciate any thoughts or advice on dealing with this situation. Thanks in advance.
Sorry if this is a repeat topic, but I've been searching for a similar topic on the boards, and other than an occasional mention, I haven't found anything specfic.
For EaBK and HoHR, I've had to:
1. Immediately implement the higher level PC adjustments
2. Reselect spells for all casters using the Spell Compendium
3. Reassess all feats and update with something more effective
4. Reassess magic items
I think your solutions are generally spot on though a bit of extra work. The exception is #1. which will just exaberate the problem by giving your PCs to much XP.
One thing that I suggest that I don't see here is adjusting stats. Figure out what your players average point buy is and try giving this to most of the opposition. That will go a long way to evening up the odds.
Also if your not hardcore with 'you roll 'em you keep em' in terms of hps (and many many groups use some kind of kinder gentler method) then figure out some formulaic way of increasing the oppositions hps to compensate the bad guys so that they get some kind of a similar bonus to hps. For example my method generally sees the players get around 75% of max hps so I just always give all opposition 75% of max hps.
Do all of this and you should have pretty much compensated for your players powers – however it is somewhat tedious. Can't see how that can be helped however. This is the nature of the beast when we play in adventures where every group is using a different set of rules beyond core.
Libris Mortis is your friend.
I would second the notion that you don't need to beef up every encounter. Look at the "Biggest Cakewalks" thread and find which encounters have completely lacked challenge for splatted up characters, and focus on the ones of out of that subset that you want to be memorable. Also review the obits thread and see which encounters have been consistently deadly and avoid beefing those up. E.g., I wouldn't beef up Zyrxog in HoHR, or the Alkilith in CB.
A third suggestion: have the dungeon denizens react more dynamically, so that when a party raises a ruckus, have the folks next door come to investigate and join the fun. This makes the individual encounters more challenging without boosting the total amount of XP given out.
Finally, if you find your party blowing through Spire of Long Shadows (which is fairly unlikely, I think, but conceivable), you can reduce or eliminate the story award XP so that they don't level as fast and are facing greater challenges relative to level in the next couple of adventures.
Jeremy MacDonald is right on. Increase hit points and improve ability scores. For important PC race enemies, the so-called "elite array" is anything but. It is a 25 point buy and most of the groups I've seen either use 28 points (or even 32!) or they allow their players to roll dice all day until they get what they want (which is usually right off the chart).
Adding hit points and improving ability scores is also quick and painless. Also, don't underestimate the value of adding extra mooks. Anything that draws fire away from the big hitters keeps the encounter going that much longer and uses that much more resources.
I have tweek a number of encounters for both flavor and to better challenge my group.
In the CB, I let the first battle play out as it is. This encounter is meant to weed out the competition, so what if the players have an easy time here. In the case of Pitchblade, I shortened the arena for the second round of competions (I did the same thing for the final round too). I had Pitchblade go after what they considered the primary threat, which happened to be the warforged knight cohort. They dismantled him in two rounds. This had the party spooked when they saw how much damage they could dish out. After the warforged fell, they both targeted the battle dancer next. By targeting the same person, the part knew these guys were out to kill.
For what its worth, the easiest method I used to advance the creatures to make for a better challenge included one or a combination of the following:
1) more of the same creatures (as long as they arent unique)
2) more hitpoints
3) a few added to the to hit and saves (I rarely needed to do this - AoW monsters usually have great to hit and save numbers)
4) adding companions to solitary BBEG encounters (4 vs. 1 is one thing (4 players vs. 1 NPC) but more PCs vs. the BBEG make it even worse). An excellent case study for this is SoLS BBEG.
We could argue the officiality and legitamacy about arbitrary monster advancement vs. Monster Manual "by the book" methods, but ultimately my players don't know the monster's exact stats, so I am free to do as I feel is necessary.
Your job is a difficult one; once you figure out what is challenging to your party, they level up and gain new abilities and the process starts fresh. Hey, if your players are high-fiving after they mopped the floor with Pitchblade and cant wait to make short work of Auric, you've done your job because your players are happy.
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Thanks everyone. I appreciate your taking time to pass along some advice.
Milak and Peruhain hit on a very key point: Don't adjust everything. Most of the party enjoys a tough campaign, but every encounter shouldn't be the end of the world. (That's later) :)
As for implementing the higher level PC adjustment, I should have qualified that one a bit...I tend to make this adjustment as a quick fix for having a larger party show at different sessions. I have four core players, and two who can attend intermittantly. I make the bump on six player weeks.
Jeremy - excellent thought on the advancing monster stats and hp. I did use a high end point buy for the PC's to help compensate for deadliness of the adventure path. Hp is definitely another area of thought - one of the clerics in the group hasn't rolled lower than a 7 for hp yet (legitimately!). The rest of the party is sitting on above average hp as well (save the rogue) due to a reroll the one's house rule. Of course, the law of averages will come into play eventually...
I've done three things to compensate for the Complete Books in my Age of Worms campaign after the players dominated Shackled City at the end.
1. Use 28 point buy (to keep it even and relatively low)
2. Given all PCs 1/2 HD + 1 hp per level (no rolling)
3. Allow them to take only 1 non-core thing (race, class, feat, spell, magic item) per level
Unfortunately, you can only apply the third one during a campaign (and only to future levels) without retconn pain. However, I definitely planning on sticking with these house rules for Savage Tide. They've worked out great (skipping Encounter at Blackwall Keep and throwing them into Harsh Reflections two levels early - not so great).
In Neverwinter Nights, it is common to bump up the Strength and Constitution of monsters by 4 on the fly to increase their staying power. +2 to attacks, damage, Fort saves, and an bunch of extra hit points are a quick and dirty way to help monsters survive longer and do more damage.