D&D 3E: What a big, messy, lovely box of tinker-toys!

Galahad

This is not a 4E vs. 3E thread. Different games, different feel, both valid, both what you make of them. I just haven’t seen any 3E discussion in here, and its sorta kinda starting to dry up in general, so I figured I’d be proactive for once.

I’m planning to use this thread to document the major surgery that I am currently performing on an Eberron module: The Eyes of the Lich Queen; just posting reworked stats and strategies for the crunchy bits, but no plot. Hopefully this is kosher. I’m just hoping for some feedback on encounter design.

It’s a module for fifth level players, my group is fifteenth and I’m hoping to retire them at twentieth level after concluding the module, so it’s going to be a pretty extensive tune-up.

Anything else 3E (or even Pathfinder?) is fine and fair game for discussion. I am, and expect to continue to be a fairly slow poster. I’m going to throw up the before and after for a few critters later today, I think I’ve got enough worked out to get me through my first session.

Galahad

Allright, didn’t say it in the opening post, but if you live in Houston, and you are playing in a Sharn based Eberron game, this might be YOUR GAME so shoo, get out.

I’m very much NOT an adversarial GM. I get my kicks facilitating fun, and watching the players break my modules in creative ways (and then scrambling to patch up the resultant plot holes). This is good, ‘cause my group is a clever bunch, and they are never happier than when they see my face freeze and they get to sing the “We broke it again!” song.

That said, we are in the final stages of this campaign, and I would like the people around the table to have the sense that their characters ARE in very real danger, that any given encounter might be the one that could TPK and prematurely put an end to the story. I don’t particularly enjoy running combat though, so my focus in bringing the CR up to the party’s level is going to be relatively fragile but very hard hitting enemies. Make each fight a do or die kind of thing. One thing I will do to help this along is drop Con scores to 10 when appropriate, and move the dropped points to dex/str. I’m not particularly worried about “Monty Haul” since the characters will be retiring after the adventure, so I’ve got quite a bit of flexibility equiping the baddies.

Party has no primary caster-type, most damage output is melee. There are two fighter-types, two rogue-types, and an artificer. The artificer is more interested in Dragonmarked politics than blowing stuff up, and pretty much plays like a steampunk bard. When I feel like it is necessary I have an NPC cleric that I’ll throw in to the mix, and if she’s going to be around for a bit I usually hand her to the warforged fighter with instructions to play her as pacifist as can be. She’ll probably be along for all of the following.

Scenario One:

Location: Jungle clearing. Ambush.

Enemies: Originally two lizardfolk ranger 2, one lizardfolk ranger 4.
Now: two lizard folk ranger 11, one lizardfolk ranger 13.

1 favored enemy(human), Point Blank Shot

2 combat style(bow), Rapid shot

3

4 Animal Companion (Viper)

5 favored enemy(elf)

6 combat style(manyshot), Stealthy

7 Woodland Stride

8

9 Improved Critical (bow)

10 favored enemy(doesn’t matter)

11 combat style(Improved precise shot)

----

12 weapon focus (bow)

13

Racial: Chamelion (+5 to hide)

Ranger spells: Entangle, Snare, Cure Moderate

Equipment of note: (parenthesis means only the lvl 13 has it)

+1 composit longbow (of speed)

Gloves of dex +2 (4)

Amulet of natural armor +1 (2)

Ring of Protection (+2)

Bracers of Archery

2x Tanglefoot bags

Vial of “concentrated” spotted toad venom, dc26, 1d6str, 1d6con (originally much lower dc)


These guys are going to be hiding out around the edges of the clearing. Snare will be pre-cast. I expect the PCs to spot the snares, but not the lizardfolk. The jungle surrounding the clearing counts as rough terrain, and the lizardfolk will use their tanglefoot bags and Entangle to slow down pursuit as much as possible. I’m hoping for at least two rounds of shooting before they are forced to deal with melee. Feats and equipment give these guys a ton of attacks, and they hit pretty decent numbers with a possibility of poison each time. Once people start failing poison saves I think this has the potential to get scary fast. They only have 40-50hp, so once someone gets within swinging range they will drop, barring bad dice luck for my players.

Flaws? Did I set the poison DC too high?



Scenario Two later unless I get feedback that this really isn't the right place for this sort of thing.