Ok, so, lots of people consider City of Seven Spears and Vaults of Madness should be run as one adventure, and not one after the other.
My question id, how do you deal with the difficulty level of VoM if you do this? It is, after all, written for characters several levels higher than CoSS.
I would not recommend doing that.
The vaults can be QUITE deadly if found too soon. Most of them can be avoided in book 3 due to the not moderately remote locations of the entrances. I would not necessarily even recommend that they find all the vault locations on the map at once. This allows you to fully prepare for what is to come a little better in the next game day or 2. I split them up with the players finding only he locations to the flooded vault and the impenetrable redoubt at first finding later clues to in D4s quick sand as to the locations too all others except Vault of the Body Thief.
Doing this allows you to direct your players and helps move the story along buy limiting their options. I think many struggle with books 3 and 4 because there is just so much to do, where do you start...
Do not feel like finishing everything in book 3 is a must before going on to book 4 but I would recommend that they at least have reached lvl 12 or close to it and that they have already encountered the tribe in the Artisan district. You will find yourself hopping BACK into book 3 from book 4 from time to time but I DO NOT RECOMMEND hopping FORWARD into book 4 from book 3.
I tried ad hok for book 3 to deal with this issue of overlapping books so they didn't advance too fast..... my players hated it but it did the trick. Looking back I would have let them lvl normally advance to VoM sooner and just gone back into Co7S a few more times.
Oh and remember the mobs and traps are not necessarily the most dangerous things in the vaults.... the madness can be far more devastating
In a lot of ways it seems like there's no avoiding this. Once the PCs reach level 10 then they meet Juliver, which will naturally lead them to bits of VoM. They'll almost certainly do bits of CoSS between VoM encounters, won't they?
Or are you suggesting that they meet Juliver as soon as they reach Saventh-Yhi?
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Or are you suggesting that they meet Juliver as soon as they reach Saventh-Yhi?
No, I think what he's suggesting is letting the PCs move into the vaults early IF they find them before Juliver's arrival. As DJCherryPie said, most of them are off the beaten track and/or well hidden, but with some high perception rolls or extensive searching, the PCs could find the vaults.
Now, as for the challenge level that DJ brought up, I completely agree. I handled this by just warning the party: "The city is a complete sandbox for you to move around and explore at your choice, but just know you're gonna here for about the next 4 levels. There are things you might not want to mess with yet. Mark and avoid or attack. It's all up to you."
Really, this is kind of the nature of sandboxes. The PCs (completely within the bounds of CoSS) could walk into the city, head straight for the Farm District and attack the Green God. Level 7 vs CR 13? Good luck.
If you're going to run VoM with CoSS (as I'm doing), the key to remember is always give the PCs a CHANCE to run away from an encounter IF they play smart. My PCs are careful to scout and cautiously test out new areas before charging in... ya know, kinda like explorers. :) But they're always ready to run away faster than you can say "inappropriately tiered encounter." Of course, this is part of any sandbox where you can, say, be level 2 and run into trolls (Kingmaker, I am staring at thee...)
Now just from personal experience, my PCs are finishing up their second district and have already stumbled on the muddy vault (the something Redoubt? Don't have my books with me...). They peered inside made some good Knowledge checks about what might be in the first room and fell back to come back later. Of course they did the same thing with the rakshasha (DR and SR can be brutal on a heavy ranged/caster party). Tangled with him, got curb stomped and launched a hasty tactical retreat. Of course an intelligent opponent like the rakshasha isn't going to just sit around and wait for them to return... but that's another story. :)
My PCs have just arrived at Tazion, so we'll be in Saventh-Yhi soon. I'm going to be very aware of where the Vault entrances are and allow them to be found if the PCs press. They've shown a lot of caution so far, and I think that's better than later having them say something like, "But we searched there and found nothing!"
For people running the two chapters as one adventure, what did you do about having two random encounter tables?