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My players have elected to play foppish young members of Korvosa's aristocracy. Right away, this implies to me that they're going to be invited to the party at Carowyn Manor. Additionally, the only player not to choose one of the Houses from the Guide to Korvosa asked me to put him into a House that was known for being ostentatious and proud. I'm tempted to make him Ausio Carowyn's nephew.
Obviously this will radically change the encounter. I'll need to name at least a few of the guests and be prepared to roleplay them, and I'll have to figure out the actual tactics of Jolistina's assault. The PCs will only briefly encounter Ruan (who presumably won't get kidnapped if the PCs are there to stop the attack) and will never meet Deyanira. Hopefully this won't affect the overall plot too much--they need to shut down the temple regardless of whether or not a single Varisian entertainer is in danger.
Anything obvious I'm overlooking?
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My players have elected to play foppish young members of Korvosa's aristocracy. Right away, this implies to me that they're going to be invited to the party at Carowyn Manor. Additionally, the only player not to choose one of the Houses from the Guide to Korvosa asked me to put him into a House that was known for being ostentatious and proud. I'm tempted to make him Ausio Carowyn's nephew.
Obviously this will radically change the encounter. I'll need to name at least a few of the guests and be prepared to roleplay them, and I'll have to figure out the actual tactics of Jolistina's assault. The PCs will only briefly encounter Ruan (who presumably won't get kidnapped if the PCs are there to stop the attack) and will never meet Deyanira. Hopefully this won't affect the overall plot too much--they need to shut down the temple regardless of whether or not a single Varisian entertainer is in danger.
Anything obvious I'm overlooking?
Well it changes quite a few things:
They will also not have the opportunity to save the 500 people that are "saved" by completing the encounter. So it makes the end rewards harder to accomplish.
Personally I would either have them snubbed and not invited(causing them instead to be bitter and go after one of the other hooks first), or have the encounter start while they are there. Introduce something to knock them out using poison or cause them to be in the Back section of the grounds when the attacks go on inside.
By just removing the encounter all together, not only are they not going to get a lot of possible information from Jolistina, but they will also miss all of the exp and references to what may actually be going on as well as the tie to the first adventure through Rolth.
Those are a few things I saw right away.
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My players have elected to play foppish young members of Korvosa's aristocracy.
Out of interest, did (or will) the PCs still meet up at Zellara's home and then proceed to the Old Fishery at the start of EoA? I assume some of the background traits wouldn't really be appropriate for characters like these.
Well it changes quite a few things:
** spoiler omitted **
Those are a few things I saw right away.
I suspect that a guy like Ramoska would get a Varisian subject for his experiments one way or another. It loses the personal aspect as established by the Carowyn encounter, but I can do something about that just by choosing a Varisian acquaintance of one of the PCs.
In terms of saving people, I don't see any real difference in saving them by stopping the undead party guests and preventing the party guests from becoming undead in the first place. If there's no zombie horde then people aren't killed, regardless of the reason for there being no zombie horde.
I could absolutely have them snubbed. What would be the benefit? Isn't this a great opportunity for them? Granted, Jolistina might drop one of them right away (especially since her sneak attack is so nasty) but failing that they should be fine. Presuming that I do the prep work correctly, I think that this should be a fun encounter for them. They even get to save cowardly Uncle Ausio.
I agree that removing the encounter altogether would be the wrong move.
Thanks for the feedback, Heather! I'm not discounting your suggestions; I'm just not sure that they outweigh the fun that the players would have in attending the party.
Out of interest, did (or will) the PCs still meet up at Zellara's home and then proceed to the Old Fishery at the start of EoA? I assume some of the background traits wouldn't really be appropriate for characters like these.
We're not using the background traits. One of the players realized where the initial part of the game was headed and requested that I remove the child abuse elements from the game. I said that I'd rewrite the first encounter to allow for that and to make it fit with their background. Since one of the primary purposes of the background and first encounter was to give the party a reason to be together, I can do away with that sort of redundancy.
I gave the players some character creation guidelines, and among other things I specified that they're all members of the same club for young nobles. They help out their fellow club members as necessary, just because it's the thing to do. I also said that they had to tell me about two contacts each: one commonly known to be someone important to them and one whose relationship to them is rather secret (known only to the other club members). Once these get finalized I'm hoping to use one of them as a way to introduce Zellara and send the PCs off to fight Lamm.
Alternately, I might have the abandoned fishery belong to one of their families and have them sent off to clear it out. That's the sort of job I envision getting dumped on useless young scions. :)