When should my players gain new levels during the Skinsaw Murders - Adventure?
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As I, as the DM, don't calculate the XPs from encounter to encounter, but instead tell my players when their PCs are leveling up, I also miss such information in the APs or other products (NOD from M.Cook, for example).
Would be great to have a littel sentence at the start of a new chapter or part wich says something along the line of:" Before your players leave Foxglove manor to follow the path, they should have reached 5th level." Or something like that...
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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You can generally tell by looking at the bad guys challenge ratings. ;) Other than that, look at the starting level of the next part, and insert dramatically-appropriate points. For Skinsaw, if i wanted to place 3 "level up" situations i would choose before the misgivings, before Magnimar and as a final reward.
For the record: Against putting useless info into the books. :)
You can generally tell by looking at the bad guys challenge ratings. ;) Other than that, look at the starting level of the next part, and insert dramatically-appropriate points. For Skinsaw, if i wanted to place 3 "level up" situations i would choose before the misgivings, before Magnimar and as a final reward.
For the record: Against putting useless info into the books. :)
4-->5 Right after the farmlands, when they discover they ahve to enter the Misgivings.
5-->6 When they survive the Misgivings6-->7 After Xanesha TPKs them...
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As a GM of a six-player group, I'm collecting the encounter information in an excel sheet for adaptation reasons.
If my calculations are correct, then , assuming you did everything in Burnt Offerings, your players would have hit level 5 just before the final encounter.
In this case they would reach level 6 somewhere in the haunted mansion (at the gallery if I'm right) and level 7 just before the Ironbriar encounter.
What I do is calculate all the xp for all the challenges met, then add in the region of +50-80% for roleplaying, non-combat encounters, story awards, ad hoc awards, bookkeeping awards, showing up to play on time awards, etc. Round up and divide by amount of characters.
Can't comment of Skinsaw yet. We've only just started the RotRL AP. We're just through with the upper levels of the glassworks. The character's are now at level 2 with 1950 xp each (fast progression table).
The critical thing is to put the last level-up before Xanesha, rather than after; this encounter has been a TPK for a lot of groups, and the extra level really helps. My player also recruited two 7th level NPC allies, and fought Xanesha on level ground rather than in her lair--and barely won.
I put them after the farm, after Misgivings, and after Ironbriar (I don't give EXP). I like to avoid level-ups in mid scenario, so this seemed logical.
Mary
The critical thing is to put the last level-up before Xanesha, rather than after;
I have 6 PCs, so I'll level them up if they survive. If I had only 4, I would rather stat down Xanesha than level them up before. It makes too much sense to have them level up afetr the fight (story-wise).
thanks for the hints