Zenith Trajectory

[Robert Brambley]

I am getting ready to start Zenith. I'm reading the beginning and I cant see where it indicates what level characters should be at for the beginning of this module. (using the HC book).

What is the official level PCs should be for this chapter?

Thanks
Robert

[Gumby]

Robert Brambley wrote:

I am getting ready to start Zenith. I'm reading the beginning and I cant see where it indicates what level characters should be at for the beginning of this module. (using the HC book).

What is the official level PCs should be for this chapter?

Thanks
Robert

It's assumed they're level six, as Leadership is mentioned in the black sidebar. I'd go with that. Won't be easy at that level though.

[Sean Mahoney]

I noticed this was missing from a couple of the adventures as well. Since I don't use XP but instead just level them up at appropriate points it was kind of a necessary thing. So I went through and made my best guess based on the information there in this thread.

For what is worth I felt they should hit 6th at the end of Flood Season and 7th around the time they hit Bhal-Hamatugn. Of course, I am planning on running a bunch of RP in there too (including DD's Flood Festival Ball).

[Hezzrack]

Robert Brambley wrote:

I am getting ready to start Zenith. I'm reading the beginning and I cant see where it indicates what level characters should be at for the beginning of this module. (using the HC book).

What is the official level PCs should be for this chapter?

That's odd. I am running the adventure from the original magazine publication, and it clearly states that the PCs should be 6th level when they start the adventure, and 8th level by the time they complete it.

[Intrepid]

Hezzrack wrote:

That's odd. I am running the adventure from the original magazine publication, and it clearly states that the PCs should be 6th level when they start the adventure, and 8th level by the time they complete it.

It's indeed strange that the level was omitted from that chapter. The black sidebar at the beginning of Demonskar wants the PC's at L8, but there's nothing whatsoever about starting or ending level in Zenith proper.

I had them start at L6 and level up to L7 prior to Bhal-Hamatugn. It worked fine. It isn't easy, and my only char death was in B-H, but it's doable for careful and experienced PC's.

[nib]

My 6 PCs made it (they were lvl 6/7 when they entered BH), but had to resort to drama dice (a variant action point system, I use) to survive the battle with Aushanna, suffering 1 PC death (slightly on purpose due to a player leaving the game) in the process.

I told my players (unfortunately) that this encounter wasn't designed level-appropriate, but they had a shot due to their powerful drama dice options.

In retrospect, I should have used more foreshadowing in this part of the campaign. At this stage, the PCs could realize that they have been set up by Vhalantru, but that needs a good setup to make it perfectly clear to them that Vhalantru knows about Aushanna and sends them to their doom anyway. They should suffer 1-2 casualties and then go figure.

If one doesn't like this course of events, one should make Aushanna much weaker (or provide ample foreknowledge about her) otherwise she is going to fry a 7th level party easily.

If you don't know how she would do this: consider the killer-combo "deeper darkness" (by courtesy of Mangh-Micto) and Aushanna's "true seeing" combined with 4 flaming arrows per round at pretty high attack boni for a 7th level group...

Cheers,
Nib

[Olodrin]

Yeah, she's nasty. In my game, she slaughtered the ranged fighter in the first round, then gorked the wizard in the second.

Then she offered to spare the party in return for their souls, which they heartily embraced, and eventually led to a nice little sidetrek on the outer planes to get their souls back.

Ba'atezu are so reasonable.