I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden and I came across the small conundrum of leveling in Chapter 1. It says the party levels after completing 1, 3 and 5 quests, but doesn't really specify what the quests are. Now, the obvious are the 2 starting quests, and the single quest each Town has, but Easthaven is different. It has Toil and trouble, very clearly a quest in setup and size, but also the Townhall Capers. 2, much smaller, events triggered by the party doing something else. They're setup to look like a quest in the book, but seem very short. The cauldron caper CAN be deep and intricate if the thieves make off with the cauldron, but if the party intercepts them before they get it (as it happened in my game), it's basically a single fight and that's it.
So, the big question, should it count as a full quest in terms of advancement? Should it only count if they do BOTH capers? Should they not count at all?
I think that's for the individual DM to decide. If one's group "skipped" a fight, by befriending the baby yeti, or reasoning with the plesiosaur, or you think they require a little more to put them over the top, you can add toil and trouble on. Or if you really like this halfling bard character and have an idea for how to murder him in a super-gruesome way, you can add it in as a little extra before you move to Chapter 2.
So, I just finished playing RotFM. We nearly TPK'd about 4 times before level 4, and then almost TPK'd a couple more times until we hit level 7. The advancement and pacing of that adventure is absolutely bonkers (spend forever as a low-level character until you hit the Island of Solstice, then hand out levels like candy? Who does that?).
My DM and all of us players agreed that advancement should have been much faster in the beginning. As players, we felt like we were hopelessly outclassed basically until after the dragon attacked. It was not enjoyable, and we did more running away than fighting because the things we were up against that were supposedly rated for our level were manifestly not. Sunblight in particular was horrendous, and we were level 5 when we attempted that. Multiple times.
My advice is to let them level up sooner. If they breeze through the encounters, you can always increase the difficulty on the fly.
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I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden and I came across the small conundrum of leveling in Chapter 1. It says the party levels after completing 1, 3 and 5 quests, but doesn't really specify what the quests are. Now, the obvious are the 2 starting quests, and the single quest each Town has, but Easthaven is different. It has Toil and trouble, very clearly a quest in setup and size, but also the Townhall Capers. 2, much smaller, events triggered by the party doing something else. They're setup to look like a quest in the book, but seem very short. The cauldron caper CAN be deep and intricate if the thieves make off with the cauldron, but if the party intercepts them before they get it (as it happened in my game), it's basically a single fight and that's it.
So, the big question, should it count as a full quest in terms of advancement? Should it only count if they do BOTH capers? Should they not count at all?
I think that's for the individual DM to decide. If one's group "skipped" a fight, by befriending the baby yeti, or reasoning with the plesiosaur, or you think they require a little more to put them over the top, you can add toil and trouble on. Or if you really like this halfling bard character and have an idea for how to murder him in a super-gruesome way, you can add it in as a little extra before you move to Chapter 2.
So, I just finished playing RotFM. We nearly TPK'd about 4 times before level 4, and then almost TPK'd a couple more times until we hit level 7. The advancement and pacing of that adventure is absolutely bonkers (spend forever as a low-level character until you hit the Island of Solstice, then hand out levels like candy? Who does that?).
My DM and all of us players agreed that advancement should have been much faster in the beginning. As players, we felt like we were hopelessly outclassed basically until after the dragon attacked. It was not enjoyable, and we did more running away than fighting because the things we were up against that were supposedly rated for our level were manifestly not. Sunblight in particular was horrendous, and we were level 5 when we attempted that. Multiple times.
My advice is to let them level up sooner. If they breeze through the encounters, you can always increase the difficulty on the fly.