I just started DMing the campaign this Saturday. Already all the players were saying that it was much more fun than are previous short 4E campaign playing Keep on the Shadowfell. Personally I feel it's mainly a difference in the quality of the adventure and story, not the game edition.
BTW, the PCs LOVED the vault and were masterful in reasoning it out once they got inside the vault. It was fun to watch.
Anyway, my players are 2 swashbucklers, 1 psion, and a favored soul. I am concerned about their ability to do damage. I am glad that there is a divine and an "arcane caster" (psion), but the swashbucklers seem pretty weak. My players are very adept at power-gaming, but I'm still concerned that they are weak dealing damage. Should I be concerned?
Perhaps when you arrive at the monsters with damage reduction and the group does not have the requisite weapon to break through the damage reduction.
I have a group with 6 players, with four of them with either fighter, ranger or barbarian levels, and even they found BWG a tough adventure. It is one of the adventures where some groups give up and therefore miss the important encounters, such as the one with Harliss.
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I just ran my group of 6 players (barbarian, fighter, ranger, wu jen, rogue, warlock) through part of BWG. Decided to throw 5 savage monkeys at them. None of the party has magic weapons yet and they nearly lost 3 members to the monkeys. And that is with the warlock blasting them every round. A party without 2 heavy hitters (and this is meant to be a 3rd level) is really going to find it tough to do Kraken cove without magic weapons.
I'm thinking then that I might need to provide a magic weapon... I do like the idea of some kind of legacy weapon(it'll be a +1 weapon until 3rd level). One of the swashbucklers uses the cutlass. Maybe I'll drop one in the parrot island horde and take away something else.
I'm just thinking that the farther we go in the AP, the worse off they'll be without a raging minotaur warhulk.
I do like the idea of some kind of legacy weapon(it'll be a +1 weapon until 3rd level)Wow ... In all the time I've followed STAP I've never seen this suggestion before, and yet it solves the major complaint about the AP, that ...
This seems a perfect solution to the problem, and I'm shocked I've not read it before (perhaps others have, or I just forgot).
Rez
I'm definately thinking of using some Olman items too. I know someone in my group will love the tooth, even if it's a greater item for roleplaying than powergaming.
As far as the weapons of legacy idea, I will use the main idea of a weapon that scales as you grow in power, but there are two dangers. First, that the weapon will be too powerful. Second, that the PC will want to sell the item. I don't have the Weapons of Legacy book, so I'm not sure how this is handled, but I know I don't want to use the minuses that book often uses to "balance" the pluses.
I was unsuccessful in getting a pc to be Olman. I did describe the campaign to all the players, as far as major themes, and was surprised that no one jumped at the idea of an Olman, a ranger, or even a Druid.
I actually have one Olman PC, and also a half-orc PC who sympathizes with the Olman. He sees himself as an Olman hero and I have given him a weapon that "grows" with him. However, I have decided to use my own system for this, so that I can give the weapon new powers that are useful in the adventure.
Our party has one - he's a Scout that took the Totemic Demon Slayer PrC. He's been pretty useful thus far. :)
I'm hoping that some of my PCs will, how do you say it... "go native" when it comes to this as well! To me it seems like a powerful prestige class.
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Yeah, I mean if nothing else, think of it from a meta-gaming standpoint... if they create a prestige class as part of the adventure path, chances are it's something that's going to be useful during the course of said adventure path.
So yeah, if you really want your players to play one of those, just mention that fact in passing between game sessions sometime. Oh, and be sure you kill off a character or two at some point on the Isle of Dread, so that an Olman/Maztican PC is a natural replacement. That doesn't take any particular effort on the part of the DM either; the Isle of Dread can be pretty effective at killing people off without any "help" whatsoever. :)