Posted by elmonster on Wed Jun 4 11:13:24 2003: IP Address: 80.145.25.118
In Reply to: Just bought Night Below posted by Ragnar Deerslayer on Fri May 23 19:45:16 2003:
true, "capture them alive" can be dangerous when you have only 4-6 pc. on the other hand itīs a great way to "open the campaign with a big bang": if your player know they just started a huge campaign, they will wonder what comes next and you have them on their toes for quite some time.
but as dm, i donīt think that the encounter is a real problem: enemies can miss their attacks or fail their morale checks if the pc donīt act like expected. just throw your dice behind the screen and slightly tilt the chances when your pc need it (but donīt do it too often or your player will realize it...)
btw: there are quite some 1st level spells that can turn the whole combat around. play a short adventure before the original opening and give your magic users some usefuel spells (and maybe one healing potion).
in retrospect, i think it is very important to flesh out haranshire before the pc come in. after book one there is almost no storybackground aboveground, so all that work is up to the dm! my player have just finished the quaggoth&hookhorrors, found finslayer who told them something about the prehistory of the haranshier & the lands below. they found the outpost of the drow, where i placed jelenneth. having found her in book three is imo far too late: at this time there is not really hope anymore to find her alive, so why in the bloodqueens name should they coming back below (where itīs cold and dark and dealdly, when itīs summer outside and when they have found enough treasure to retire for some years)? my players had given up hope, the mood of the party was at the bottom. if itīs important to find someone down there in book three, i can let someone be kidnapped later (they have made many dear friends, connections and een lovers above ground), let a mindflayer wiggle itīs slimy tentacle and let them both vanish (planeshift). THAT will be a far stronger motivation to go back down than finding a mage they never knew...
one more idea: one of our mages bought one of the abandoned farms in the patchwork hills from carman and spent some coin to renovate it. he belongs to a trading coster and plans to invest some of his money to establish a "branch office" in harlaton. in some weeks (perhaps after they cleared the slime temple and/or dealt with the great reptiles?) they will get a nasty experience when a quater of the village topples into a cave (dug out from illithid- controlled derro). mindflayers and aboleth are highly intelligent- it is not realistic to let them wait without response to the pcīs actions!
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