There's no merchants, but the book gives the players more than enough equipment, including expensive items that would normally never be found at this stage of the game. You should change a few items to better fit your group, though (like the type of a weapon, or a pearl of power to a runestone). The theme of the first few books is *survival* horror, after all.
Merchants become available after book 2/beginning of book 3 for a little while, then if they have teleport they might be able to make a trip to a merchant before starting book 4. Merchants are easily available throughout book 5 and they could teleport again in book 6, although they won't really have time to have expensive items made at that point.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
How are you all handling the "no merchants" aspect of the first book? Does the problem persist after book one? (I'm kind of broke right now, just moved, so couldn't splurge on all the books).
Do I tell the PCs that the residents of Roslars Coffer are too unwell to handle buying/selling? Even if they were able to do it, it wouldn't work because the items wouldn't be of the material plane anymore, right?
Does it get addressed in the AP book, and I just missed it?
My problem is ... the pc find themselves in an abandoned cities, twice. While the first book is without a merchant option, this is in the spirit of the "survival horror genre" i suppose. What I fear it's a problem is that, both in Roslars Coffer and Vigil, once the cities are destroyed, all the LOOT inside the shops should become free loot. Radiant fire do not strip magical proprieties. In a city of 450 people around, if you know where to look you can find thousands upon thousands of gold pieces and non perishable goods. Heck, in Vigil, you could make a point that the pcs may think to look around for survivors AND weapons to fight the WW. All those weapons or spells that they may have wanted to buy before the city got nuked are still in the shops, while their owners are unfortunately dead.
Now, the adventure gives you narratively something "else" to do, namely protect people or escape from undead horrors. But I think, if your characters decide they want to quest around in ruined Vigil, after they helped people escape, possibly to loot or to recover relics of Lastwall, you should not punish them, but create a sidequest around it.
Whether loot is undamaged or recoverable are reasonable questions to ask. The Radiant Fire does a lot of structural damage in areas with rampant growth. In the case of Roslar's Coffer, there's not a lot to be snagged because it's a smaller-ish town. I let my players scrounge some interesting gear that ended up being used as a crafting base for quite some time.
Regarding shopping at established stores, the PCs really only have 2 sections of the game where it's an option: early book 3 and the entirety of book 5. You can use the traveling merchants section from book 2 if things are particularly dire, or just allow the PCs to scrounge for some things. Carrying capacity is a major concern for a long time - with no market in sight, it's hard to justify lugging around a spare full plate.
I allowed my party to transact (at reduced prices) with the shops in the post-mortem Roslar's Coffer. After all, a version of the town exists there and its real and tangible.
I also let them loot Roslar's Coffer when they got back, but the WT's minions got there first and picked the town pretty clean ahead of time, so there wasn't much.
With respect to Vigil, I told the PCs they could 'go wild' with the shopping when they get there. They effectively spent a day doing just that. (spread out over several). As for them looting the town after the blast. My party won't have the free time to do so, nor are they likely to venture out indiscriminately into a city where pretty much everything from a skeleton to a lich (and all in-between) have just spontaneously risen up. Vigil post-blast should be EXTREMELY dangerous. Have lots of undead ready to discourage random looting.
|
I am making them deal with it, mostly.
Fortunately, you have a few advantages:
1 - in the Boneyard, your characters don't have to eat or drink.
2 - the player's guide told them that there's limited opportunities for shopping early on. You can always re-inforce that. If they have an issue, then honestly, it's on them.
3 - You can always add key gear. Our archer was almost out of arrows... there's one npc with arrows in Dead Roads, and fortunately, he's intended to be friendly and can appear at any time. I had him have an archery contest with the archer for arrows - and without pulling punches, our PC won some arrows.
4 - When they get to Roslar's Coffer most of the town should be destroyed. There's some stuff, but I would suspect that in the week or so that the town's been sitting there, you know who should have looted all the good stuff. But you can always add a cache.
I think it's best that they have to struggle a bit, but your game, your call.