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Modules and fixing a bad one...
Doc
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
...as a player.
I generally hate modules. While I'm not a fan of Monty Hall campaigns, modules usually go way too far in the other direction.
We've been playing for five sessions in a group that is 1 person larger than the module (the Sunless Citadel) suggests. Each session has lasted at least four hours and has been rife with combat.
We are all still level 1.
None of us have enough gold to even rent a room for a night.
I am a Cleric of Anubis - a Lawful Neutral god who focuses on respect for death. Due to the amount of defiling bodies and the lack of roleplaying on everyone else's part, I've just started witholding healing spells (I just keep a tally of how many ridiculously offensive things they do in terms of disrespecting death. Then I work that into a percent chance of spell failure when attempting to heal them). My character is on the verge of offing another one of the party. Other characters dying won't help the situation.
Our DM is normally pretty good, and he wanted to run a module to see how it goes, since making up game worlds is not his strong point. Every time we complain about how ridiculous the module is, he just says "it's not me," even though by definition it's the DM's job.
What do I do?
I generally hate modules. While I'm not a fan of Monty Hall campaigns, modules usually go way too far in the other direction.
We've been playing for five sessions in a group that is 1 person larger than the module (the Sunless Citadel) suggests. Each session has lasted at least four hours and has been rife with combat.
We are all still level 1.
None of us have enough gold to even rent a room for a night.
I am a Cleric of Anubis - a Lawful Neutral god who focuses on respect for death. Due to the amount of defiling bodies and the lack of roleplaying on everyone else's part, I've just started witholding healing spells (I just keep a tally of how many ridiculously offensive things they do in terms of disrespecting death. Then I work that into a percent chance of spell failure when attempting to heal them). My character is on the verge of offing another one of the party. Other characters dying won't help the situation.
Our DM is normally pretty good, and he wanted to run a module to see how it goes, since making up game worlds is not his strong point. Every time we complain about how ridiculous the module is, he just says "it's not me," even though by definition it's the DM's job.
What do I do?
Doc on
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It's also possible that there is some very large reward coming in the near-future.
As for the "disrespecting death" thing, is that a result of the module, or a result of your fellow players being asses?
Being asses. If it were just part of the module and was unavoidable, I'd let it slide.
For example, they used expired human bodies as shields when mounting an assault on some javelin-throwing goblins.
One thing to note is that (at least that way that my group plays) if your diety wouldn't like how you would use a spell, they won't grant you the ability to use it at all and the spell outright fizzles. You're sort of doing that with the % chance of the spell failing, but I would think that after a while, Anubis would stop granting you spells until you atoned. That would be a valid reason to withold all healing from your party-mates until they got their act together.
I'm confused about the leveling issue. In theory, with a party of 4 equally-leveled characters, four encounters whose APL equalled your party's average level should give enough XP so that you gain a level (not taking into acount roleplaying rewards, story rewards, etc.). Is this wrong?
It's not Doc who has to atone, it's his buddies.
I see what you mean, but if Doc keeps healing these folks who are disrespecting the doctrine of Anubis, I would think Anubis would be pissed at Doc, not the other guys. He's the follower of Anubis and should be spreading the doctrine, not helping them out.
I dunno. We've fought a bunch of level 1 encounters. His logic is that we are a level 1 party, and it gives 300xp on the table. 300/5 = 60xp per person.
It takes a long fucking time to get to level 2, 60xp at a time.
or is your dm withholding loot and xp until you get to a certain spot?
Thanks for the advice. Our DM has enough to worry about with the other players. I'll just wake up without spells for a few days in a row, then atone and not heal them at all if they keep it up.
He does realize that two CR 1 creatures is a CR 2 encounter, too, right?
It's higher than a CR2 encounter, I think. The module gives him the CRs of the encounters, so it's not that.
the 300 xp is divided up by the number of party members, actually.
Remember, in 3e, noncombat encounters also should be earning XP.
If you're getting 60 exp for an entire battle (several opponents of equal or higher level), something is deffinately wrong here.
I can't recall off the top of my head, but I have played the Sunless Citadel. Isn't it meant for level 2 characters, and to progress them to level 3 or 4? Or something like that? I recall there being plenty of action, but that the 'kobolds throwing javelins' run out fairly fast, and then you get into far more dangerous opposition.
I think he was doing it right...
Famous last words:
"It's just one kobold!"
Also, it doesn't sound like you are receiving appropriate material rewards for your encounters, averaged out. You should have at least enough money for a room to stay, and then some. Is it that you are spending money as quickly as it comes in, or is there just a large lack of wealth available in the scenario itself? If it is the latter, tell it to your DM, make an earnest point about the fact, and ask him to increase the rewards a bit. It talks about the appririate rewards in the DM's guide for each level.
Are you fighting lots of non-humanoid creatures with no loot? If you are fighting humanoids, your tank should be able to carry all of their equipment and clothing, if nothing else, to resell in the next town to afford you some sort of wealth.
But I may be mistaken. The last time I played 3rd edition was a good two years ago.
The bigger the stuff you fight, the more XP you get. Modules make you fight rats and other stupid CR1 (or even less) encounters.
Seems like in almost every recent campaign I've been in, we've gotten past level 1 in a single 4-hour session, maybe a little more. Granted, we typically get 300ish xp for a character background and noncombat XP rewards as well, so YMMV. (But then again, seems like we were usually fighting stuff around CR 2-3 at level 1 as well)
d20srd.org also has an excellent encounter calculator.
When I ran my group through City of the Spider Queen, we had both more players (7) that were of a higher level (12) than the module called for. In either one of these cases, it should be the DM's job to adjust encounters appropriately and proportionally so that they are still just as challenging just as rewarding as they would for the recommended party size and level.
With five players, this isn't too hard - especially at level 1. Throw in a few extra dire rats, kobolds, goblins, whatever and call it done. Generally, I found that as they level up, it goes to about 1 extra CR per person involved, with the difficult and "boss" fights starting, at least, an equal CR to the party, and being adjusted as needed on an individual basis. The important thing to remember is to keep it proportional, and if the fight is supposed to be a higher CR than the party, boost it up in the same fashion. I learned that the hard way when the entire group nearly died in every fight on the first dungeon.
More or less.
Be careful with making adjustments, and be honest with how involved you're willing to be with them.
Adjusting an encounter slightly (treasure, difficulty, level, etc) isn't a big deal. Adjusting several isn't too taxing, but can begin to harm the party (if made too easy/removing too much of "the good stuff" can hinder them heavily down the road, whereas increasing the difficulty early, if they overcome it, can make them more powerful than they ought to be early on, which means you end up in a pattern of needing to adjust almost every encounter beyond, to keep that difficulty level up.
Of course, this was with a 200 or so page monster of a module (and it's a damn fine read, with lots of role playing, strategic and humour potential), but I think the basic idea stands that much of 3rd edition and beyond is self correcting.
Even with the Sunless Citadel issue noted above, eventually they should all hit level 2, and hopefully soon, and that will significantly beef up their party. As long as they don't hit anything too rough, they should then overpower similar foes for a while, leading to slightly worse exp for much easier fights, and prepping them for the next decent hurdle.
That said... maybe the module is just poorly designed/written. I dunno, having started dozens of Rifts and D&D characters from level 1, I always kind of preferred starting at 2. More variety immediately available, and while it's not a big deal, it's also nice not to be "the greenhorn newbie" every time you start up a game. Like Cecil starting at level 9 or so in FF IV, which at the time I thought was just eight shades of pure awesome.
"Wait, you mean I don't get violated by a single imp? YES OH GOD YES!"
I was incorrect before, by the way. There are 5 people plus me making 6, and he is not adjusting the encounters. That explains a lot of it, too.
In any case, our group consists of:
2 Fighters (both on their second campaign)
1 Monk (first time player)
1 Cleric (me, lots of RPG background)
1 Ranger (second campaign)
1 Rogue (first time player)
Had I not gone with the cleric, the ranger would have been the most powerful healer in the group. There are no arcane casters at all.
I may have deprived my group of a major chunk of loot when I refused to let them steal everything out of some tombs. I'd forgotten about that.
Also, if the GM isn't compensating the group in some manner (exp for role playing, a little adjustment elsewhere to keep the rough 'gold/gear' count right for the level, etc), this kind of thing early on can deffinately hurt a group.
Similar to the suggestion that a party recieve experience for creatively bypassing/disabling opponents rather than just killing them; if you don't, you can negatively influence how the party works, and cripple them in the long term in forms of gear/levels.
At least, that's in my opinion/experience. I love D&D 3 / 3.5 for the balance it can inspire, even with the munchkin antics it can lead to. Modules can be just as bad, if not worse, but especially for DM's under time constraints, they can be an excellent way to get and keep a game hopping.
I know I've meandered from the original topic of the thread, but as a DM, I admit to being a big fan of modules, as long as you keep detailed notes on people/places/things that you have or wish to alter, in order to keep the flow going.
So what can I do, as a player, to keep things interesting? I'm pretty much the only one who makes even a small amount of effort to roleplay my character, which makes some things a bit difficult.
I was hesitant to straight-up kill another PC (it's crossed my mind a few times with some of the stuff they do), but that would kill two birds with one stone: I'd get XP from it and it would be in the name of roleplaying.
In the case of PKing, the XP shouldn't even really enter into the formula of whether or not you should do it, in most campaigns. It should only be done if it's very in-character. It can really be a fun-killer for the person you kill, especially if they're not experienced.
The XP thing was a joke.
People my character had met no more than a week prior were using a human body as a puppet, in addition to mutilating it, just to piss him off.
Like I said:
>>
Depending on the GM and the players, it could be a good way to get them to change their ways.
You may have figured out that these guys don't exactly put the "RP" in "RPG."
So far, they have suffered no ill consequence for it. If the DM won't step up, I guess I will.
Unless you're making them with a scythe. While they're sleeping.
Eh, whacking other PC's generally leads to bad feelings. If that person rolls up another character to replace their dead one, in the end they'll come gunning for you one way or another.
Sadly, it's sort of up to your DM to keep people in-line. I would just talk to your DM, express your concerns, and see what they have to say. If you don't want to look like the bad guy in the healing issue, tell the DM to make sure to announce your spells fizzle when you try to cast them on the party members, but not on yourself, and then explain why.
In the meantime, if you're playing with your buddies, talk with one (or more) of them on the side and see about working together for some side mischief. Come up with ways that you two can roleplay together, and eventually everyone else will join in.
Your DM could also use to add a few more non-combat encounters to give you all some more XP. Traps, puzzles, etc. should all be giving XP to the party, including if you manage to bypass them rather than defeat them head-on. Since they generally don't take as long to beat, the XP comes a bit faster. I'm just amazed that a first level party hasn't leveled at least once after more than 2 or 3 sessions. I've had level 14 parties level in 2-3 sessions of action while following the DMG guidelines of XP distribution. Is your DM giving out any sort of roleplay or story XP rewards at the end of sessions? If not, you may want to ask about that. If you are doing a good job of roleplaying, your character should be getting rewarded for it.
Finally, first level just sucks. Your party is weak, you don't have a lot of resources, and it takes awhile for combats to conclude because no one can hit anyone else, so the simplest of tasks can take forever.
I don't think this was hugely useful, but it's worth a shot.
The greater of the two will just get pissy and do it again later.
I don't care so much about fixing the progression thing anymore. I just need something somewhat drastic to set the RP tone. Thusfar the DM has been reluctant to try to get them to change, even though it's his job. I'll just stop with the heals first and see if that gets the point across.
Eh, I've seen/used some mechanics where you can use Diplomacy vs. PC's. I've used a Diplomacy check vs. either a Will Save or Sense Motive check, depending on the situation. If the Diplomacy check wins, it works like Charm Person lite. The DM can give modifiers as they see fit either way.
Of course, this depends on the players being willing to roleplay a bit (i.e. their character will be doing something they as the player may not agree with) and the DM being willing to enforce it.
1) Fizzle the healing spells, due to their disrespect for the dead.
2) Apply liberal use of divine retribution on their asses (DM might even "lend" you one of Anubis underlings to teach them a lesson).
3) Talk to them about this and hope for a change for the better.
4)Try to find another group.
1. We levelled up finally.
2. Also, half the group wiped due to 12 goblins and 2 bugbears or something.
3. I'm now convinced that my DM is bad. As a level 1 party, we captured a dragon wyrmling (through subdual damage) and returned it to the Kobolds who had lost it. Quest XP for the task that we though would be nearly impossible: 100. If I ever thought the module was bad, it was because our DM was doing a poor job of running it.