Yes, there is too much and too powerful loot in this dungeon. I ran my group through masters of the fallen fortress afterwards and they had barely a scratch by the end. A few lucky rolls for the monsters and some touch attacks occasionally knocked out individual characters but the group was never in any real danger.
That being said, the equipment found in the BB dungeon gives the party a reasonable chance to defeat the end boss (my group did) which is a good way to motivate them to play more.
You should
- use the dungeon as a stand-alone introduction, using the pre-gens. If the group wants to keep playing, have them create their own characters, which resets the loot.
OR
- significantly reduce the amount and quality of the loot (and the reward promised in sandpoint) if you want them to keep using the same characters. This, however will make it almost impossible to actually beat the end boss.
The reduced ruleset doesn't help, either. Valeros with his shield, 15 dex and the armor you find at the end of the dungeon will easily result in an AC of 21+ because there's no max dex bonus in the BB. If you add the ring of protection or an armor spell, he becomes almost untouchable for the first few levels.
I ended up attacking anyone else whenever I had the chance in the fallen fortress, but the frequent chokepoints in that adventure meant my monsters often didn't have any other chance than to attack him (and fail utterly).
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Well lets take a step back and look a bit further than total value of the treasure here:
First off how many encounters are there in the adventure? Be sure to include traps or anything else with a CR listed -- role playing past something offers experience too.
Hitting level 2 takes 2,000 exp. Each CR 1 encounter should award 135 exp per character and 260gp on the medium advancement track.
That's 14.81 encounters for a level (or 15) approximately. 260gpx15 encounters = 3,900gp per character total.
That's right going from level 1 to level 2 you should gain about 4 times the amount of wealth by level you should have.
"That's crazy! Why does this happen! Do they suck at math?" You think -- but hold on a minute, and think a little farther.
Wealth by level counts all those cure light wounds potions and wands they use up. It counts the scrolls that get broken down into the wizard's spell book. It counts things that will be sold for half price, and alchemical items that are used on the enemies.
In fact at level 1 it's highly likely that you PC's will use up more of their wealth by level per encounter than they will at any other point in their career because they lack the spells, skills, abilities and other fun stuff to avoid needing the disposable wealth.
As such all this extra wealth is supposed to disappear in play through usage, loss, destruction and sales.
Huh... when we did it we totally ignored the treasure, figuring it was just for fluff. We just did the scenarios in a row and totally forgot about the BB.
I would actually just run things as written. What we are doing is adding one or two Core Rules each session. We've added flat-footed AC, attacks of opportunity, ddelayed and readied actions, and combat maneuvers. By slowly adding them, our new players are able to learn as they go. Even the 11 year old can keep up.
I didn't read the adventures so I don't know if they have the XP already divided or not. Generally you divide the XP by the number of characters.
For us, we started with Flat Footed AC. We added based on needs and complexity. Combat maneuvers were the last thing we added because it gets challenging.
Also the fallen fortress quest is for lvl 1 players, so if you are lvl 2 it makes sense that it is pretty easy, add a few tougher opponents if you find things too easy
They still were level 1 since:
1. Black fang is not even 1000 xp per hero for a 4 player party.
2. I didn't want them to level up a character without ever having created one. I figure leveling up should go much smoother if they know the creation rules.
So yeah, the low difficulty of the fortress was pretty much only because of their equipment. And it's not even only the stuff you find in the cave but also the 1000 gold promised by the mayor. I.e. everyone had a better armor and masterwork weapons.
I was a little concerned by the amount of treasure on offer here also. However, I have only two players at this point, so I kept the loot in to help bolster them up a bit. On future adventures, magic items will be a lot rarer and I have a few ideas of how to do this, what to substitute for them and so on. I'm also wondering if the XP rate is too high, as Level 5 should take a long time to reach ... in my campaign it will make you Top Dog, Superhero, Hero of Myth and Legend.
Yes you will need to recalibrate for your campaign then, as your campaign doesn't match with the base line assumptions of the game.
Which is fine by the way -- don't feel that you must do it according to the assumptions in the book... just be sure to realize you are deviating from them and plan accordingly.
There is lots of advice in these forums for running lower level and lower magic campaigns in pathfinder specifically.
Unless they kill the goblins (possibly missing out on the +2 to attacks on Blackfang), all they end up with is a dragonbane sword (basically a +1 sword, because what are the chances of them fighting another dragon at this level?) a +1 dagger, some magic armor, and some scrolls. Most of the potions they get are going to get used during the adventure itself. Even the dragonbane sword is basically there so that the players can drive him off before he straight-up murders them.
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Having the large amount of treasure is part of what drew my players in and has not let go. I have kept up the same feel as I continued their adventures by giving more treasure than normal. Not Monty H style so much but far more than this range level would normally get and I have warned them next time (non-pregens) it will be a lot less treasure, and there is a snowballs chance in h*ll of finding a magic sword of any type, let alone a dragon slaying one, before level 3 or 4.
They laughed and said that's fine but they liked feeling "rich" while young and really what economy does it break? These characters could have 125k Gold by level 5 but if they stop playing them to make new ones.... who cares? They had fun and they keep coming back, so I call it a win.
I don't see any problem with the occasional loot-rich dungeon. My players were kicking themselves when they cleared the dungeon, got all the treasure, then right at the end the dragon ate 3/4 of them, including the party treasurer! >:) The lone survivor was left with just a masterwork dagger and a few gp that had been shared out already.
Having the large amount of treasure is part of what drew my players in and has not let go. I have kept up the same feel as I continued their adventures by giving more treasure than normal. Not Monty H style so much but far more than this range level would normally get and I have warned them next time (non-pregens) it will be a lot less treasure, and there is a snowballs chance in h*ll of finding a magic sword of any type, let alone a dragon slaying one, before level 3 or 4.
They laughed and said that's fine but they liked feeling "rich" while young and really what economy does it break? These characters could have 125k Gold by level 5 but if they stop playing them to make new ones.... who cares? They had fun and they keep coming back, so I call it a win.
I agree strongly. If you're just playing levels 1-5, you can easily give out (PCs can acquire) twice or more the standard wealth-by-level, without ill effects. Nothing wrong with a world where Level 5 characters are ultimate badasses bedecked in (Beginner Box) magic items! :)
It's a very common problem mentioned elsewhere on the board where GMs have padded their players with too much gold/items and subsequently all their appropriately leveled encounters are reduced to one sided fights with monsters being incapable of even hitting them.
I calculated a 27,000gp value worth of treasure from this dungeon but we'll step it back a few notches to show how over the top this is.
To put into perspective 5000gp will buy
A level 1 wizard: 4500gp Wand of Scorching Ray - 4d6 fire damage to one target with 50 shots. Ranged touch attack that does more damage than the dragon's breath!
Level 1 Warrior: 4730gp Full Plate +1, Tower Shield +1, Ring +1. You now have 26 AC, not including other bonuses and cannot be hit by anything level 3 or below unless they crit.
Level 1 Bard: 4500gp Circlet of Persuasion +3 to all your charisma based checks. Bluff, Diplomacy, handle animal, intimidate, perform, use magic device are now around 7 points high total NOT including your CHA mod.
Level 1 Cleric: 4500gp Wand of Spiritual Weapon an unkillable 1d8+1 weapon unaffected by DR flies around attacking with your Wisdom as it's attack mod. With 50 charges you can summon multiple a battle and chase down even flying monsters with ease.
Level 1 Rogue: 3300gp Ring of feather fall, Potion of fire breath. It's now impossible for the Rogue to take falling damage and can breath 4d6 fire breath on multiple targets three times in a fight.
Even 1000 gp will buy a wand of True strike and allow a player to get +20 on their next attack roll.
Or wand of enlarge person changing players 1d6 roll into a 1d8 roll. Maybe even a 2d6 roll into a 2d8 attack.
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In order to challenge your players you'll need to set them up to monsters that are significantly higher than them to even chance hitting them (assuming the monster survives first round) which creates a problem where monsters who can hit them, are capable of 1 hit killing your under leveled players.
Run heavily modified or a once off but no way include vanilla in a campaign.
You can never have too much treasure or too much loot.
"You can never have too much treasure or too much loot".
Agreed, but only on low levels.
I probe BB scenario in several times with lone-hero:
1) human wiz, generated by BB players book, he had killed by goblins' King at 1st, I recalled him and then he'd fried in a dragon's flame, other encounters was too easy for him.
2) drow ranger, he'd killed by the dragon.
3) drow wiz, dragon win.
4) one tengus ranger, and... dragon won again.
No one did not return to Santpoint for trade new stuff, so I conclude, I need two or three PCs to hit the dragon, and as GM I must take much more goblins in 1st room, two spiders instead one, reefclaw + goblins (who seek his lost its female with toy), 5-6 skeletons (and one bloody skeleton which regeneate his hp past hour after PC's win - hmmm, it's the same skeleton who was in Solo Adventure, so Black Fang's adventure is the logical sequel). In such case given XP and Treasure looks more tenable.
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remember just because the treasures there does not mean the players will get it.
1)I know in early adventure paths there were many instances where killing things is not enough to get you the loot. Therefore 150% of the expected loot was included in many books.
2)Also I think dragons themselves are supposed to have a higher amount of treasure than 'normal' encounters.
Its been a while since I read these scenarios, but this may be part of it
Since the Mayor of Sandpoint offered 1000gp to the party (as written), I made it conditional... $700 gold if the players ended the terror of Black Fang, 1000 if they bring back his head. They're only getting 700gp.
As to all the loot in the dungeon - well, they cleaned the place out and were leaving to head back to Sandpoint when they realized they were surrounded. "See, I told you boys all we had to do was wait for someone to come along and do the heavy lifting for us..." a party of 12 ruffians steals them blind and feling lucky to be left alive. Plus it sets up a later adventure when they meet the ruffians again after they leveled up and are stronger.
i am little confused when people talk that after this adventure you are lvl 2... we got 4 pc on play and divided the xp we only get 935 per PC
That's about what I got. However, there are also smaller adventures available for free download in the BB Resources part of the site that if played before Black Fang will come close to bumping the party another level.