You should probably post this in the Curse of the Crimson Throne forum. You'll get advice from DMs who have run or are running the specific AP, and you won't have to spoiler-tag everything.
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Hi,
I'm going to be running some friends through The Curse of the Crimson Throne and I want to tweak some of the things from the second book: Seven Days to the Grave.
Looking for insight from any players or GM's who have been through the adventure - I'm concerned about the domino effect... If I change one thing - how much more do I have to change???
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You're making what is already a very grim situation much, much worse. So much worse that I personally don't see how Korvosa could possibly survive. That may not bother your players but it would bother mine. Be prepared for the PCs to decide its time to run :-).
This isn't a bad idea. It's actually mentioned in the desciptive text of area G5 as something that is being actively worked on. It's actually too bad the plague zombie angle wasn't explored further in the module and only gets mentioned when the party is on the cusp of the thrilling climax of SDttG.
As for how to implement it? Just do it. Im having a hard time stressing just how hamstrung the Korvosan Guard and Sable Company are with crowd control and losses due to plague. Throw zombies at em. Let the party come across regular folk being pursued by blood veil zombies and rescue them. Let them find another lair that belongs to Rolth where theze things were made and grow his mystique even more before they actually meet him.
Honestly not much needs changed plotwise. You'll just need to craft a few of your own encounters. Go for it.
I didn't necessarily create a zombie horde, but I made a few appearances of plague zombies in the chapter, and tied them to Rolth. So instead of run-of-the-mill zombies, I made exploding, plague-infested ones. Too bad only 2 of my PCs were susceptible....
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Thanks for moving the thread and thanks for the responses thus far.
I didn't necessarily create a zombie horde, but I made a few appearances of plague zombies in the chapter, and tied them to Rolth. So instead of run-of-the-mill zombies, I made exploding, plague-infested ones. Too bad only 2 of my PCs were susceptible....
This is pretty much what I'm thinking I will do.
To foreshadow Rolth a bit more, I added a sidequest where they received a note from a 'citizen' telling them that they had heard of the party's deeds and wanted to repay them for their heroism. It gave an address, and when they arrived, they found several plague zombies and a necrophidius (with Lamm's head, even). They were thoroughly confused (too bad Rolth didn't get to really expand on that when they encountered him later).
Later in the Temple, all those weak zombies in the creepy hall were plagued, and then only a few in Carowyn, but enough to make them nervous. I mostly made it that normal deaths from the Blood Veil didn't make them rise as zombies, but that Rolth was carefully experimenting to try to make it a reality. He was close, too! ;-)
Sounds fun! Did you also get the paper minis for Seven Days? A lot of work was done dressing them up at Carowyn to look like they were at a party. It was awesome and I was so sad we ran through it without them.
One ramification I'd like to point out depends on how heroic your PCs are. If they are heavily invested in Korvosa and determined on saving it then you're good to go with the potential zombie apocalypse.
However, if your PCs are less heroic and you play up the apocalypse plague angle too strongly there's a risk that the may feel the city is lost or has no chance. In that case, they may end up trying to flee the city and rely on zombie-genre metagaming which could alienate their characters from the rest of the module or AP.