I have just finished a campaign with my group having them level up to 5 and they would like to keep the characters - but I would love to play the "Out of the Abyss" campaign with them. Can I do that with initial Lvl 5 Players? What would you suggest?
I am in the middle of OotA right now and I don't think it would be a problem. They will start with no equipment and I would suggest not giving them a chance to get their equipment back. The first part is all encounters and they should be easy to make tougher.
Hm... the fear I would have is that if I tough the encounters up they go up the levels too fast to have even the slightest problem with the things happening in the Adventure. But thinking of that... the players are a tactical pile of badgers... :D
It details a few places in the Underdark, plus has a lot of details on different types of fungi. Not sure if that if is important to you ;) I added all the different fungi types as magic items in d&d beyond so the party could add them to their character sheets.
Note that the book also has guidelines for starting the adventure at a higher level, I believe it specifically tells you when to start leveling them again, if I'm not mistaken.
I've run Out of the Abyss for a group of tactical players (who started at level 1) and I would say that In terms of the encounters that are expected to be attacked head on (as compared to, say, attacking all the drow while naked), there was already room for increasing the difficulty in the early areas. This is especially true if you don't kill off "enough" NPCs with the escape from the drow since several of them are the equivalent of level 3-5 players.
My group of 6 players got out of the initial area with four reasonably competent combat NPCs (Quaggoth and three svirfneblin), plus the Koatoa, the Myconid, and the orc. That made a lot of the encounters (as written) too easy. So I bumped them up. Added mobs. Made a creature a solo monster. Etc. Your players being higher level would have a similar effect and could be handled similarly.
BTW, on the topic of the NPCs, I would strongly advise you to kill off a very large number of the combat NPCs (Shushar and Stool are fun and have minimal effect on combat). Either that or plan on coming up with a solution where you don't have them participate in combat. The reason is that I found the players really liked the NPCs personalities, but found the combats a bit frustrating with the extra bodies (even though I had them run the characters), because they wanted their characters to be the stars (and fair enough).
So find a few NPCs you really like and want to RP and kill off the others.
I have to say... after reading the Adventure over the weekend... the story seems a bit odd. Even absurd in many places. I mean... D&D shouldn't be too serious, but come on... a whole city of fish people who dance around everyone while speaking with names the players will not be able to keep their faces straight... which leads to a demon from the abyss.. oh man.
I feel, that for my party I will have to alter many things to be able to lead this campaign with them...
Obviously you're the expert on your own group and making changes to a module is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in order to produce the best experience. I certainly did.
That said, I found the Kuo-Toa city worked really well for my group and the sacrifice leading to a demon rising was a really good moment for the campaign. The campaign is certainly designed to have a strange/otherworldly quality to it. I think they call out Through the Looking Glass (Alice/wonderland) as something they were inspired by. Basically the idea of being transported to an alien world where nothing is as you expect it to be.
I'm running this currently too, but as my party were level 7 I've skipped the narrative and dumped them straight into Sloobludop and the encounter with Demogorgon. I still had them bump into the NPCs from the earlier chapters though. At the moment their mission is to get Stool back to Neverlight Grove. Obviously, the enemies and encounters they are facing are no match for them, but keeping the NPCs alive is the challenge.
@Dracen That is a good point. When I am thinking of Wonderland this all makes "sense"... and I think I can work with it.. but I have to build that narrative from the beginning I guess... thanks for the thought!
@mightybrain: I have the same "problem". My Party will start on this weekend with their Characters beeing level 5 from the former Campaign. I will have to tweak the encounters quite a bit - or avoid giving them too much XP to get the curve back to normal with the narrative. I plan to not work with too many of these NPCs but we will see what the PCs are doing ;)
My thinking was that tweaking the encounters would provide additional XP so it would take longer to get back on the track. Instead I'm giving them a whirlwind tour of the first few chapters. The only real danger is to the NPCs at the moment. Although one PC did nearly lose an eye in the Oozing Temple.
But isn't this first part basically the greatest part of the whole adventure? I mean... the charakters are taken to an unhospitable surrounding and have to survive... taking this with a whirlwind approach would take away the fascination of this new environment?
There are a lot of really cool bits in the adventure. Here are some of mine:
- the modron march and the machine they're looking for which essentially is a giant RNG machine that, among other things, can reset time and send the characters back to the beginning of the adventure. Modrons are wacky and weird and I found the idea of their giant logic engine having run amok amusing
- the library with the weird time interaction where you can meet past versions of characters you've seen elsewhere
- the myconids. Stool was hugely popular among my characters and when they met up with the myconids in the spiral paths in the Duergar city (which were themselves pretty cool), they accepted the gift of the cursed spores and then got super confused when they started having to take will saves to avoid dancing (they associated it with a random encounter with grimlocks which was spectacular). And the myconid grove builds on that.
It's certainly true that some of the early stuff can set the scene though. But, like most things, it can be modified. If you like a particular portion, scale it up. If you find another portion uninspiring, cut it. There's plenty of weirdness to go around no matter what portion of the story you're using.
But isn't this first part basically the greatest part of the whole adventure?
I had a brief look at the prison break and it seemed uninspiring. It's basically a railroad until you hit Sloobludop. There's a play through by the Wizards team:
Technically you can go to a different location than Sloobludoop after the escape, but I agree it's probably the preferable location so that's somewhat railroady.
My group had fun with the escape and I'm not sure I'd consider the escape itself a railroad. The goal is fixed, but I'd say there are several ways to solve it: all the reasonable ways you planned for, plus whatever the players come up with. Of course, I had to insert a new PC in session 2 so I was already modifying stuff at this point which could have an affect on how flexible I feel it is.
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Hey,
I have just finished a campaign with my group having them level up to 5 and they would like to keep the characters - but I would love to play the "Out of the Abyss" campaign with them. Can I do that with initial Lvl 5 Players? What would you suggest?
Cheers
Tim
I am in the middle of OotA right now and I don't think it would be a problem. They will start with no equipment and I would suggest not giving them a chance to get their equipment back. The first part is all encounters and they should be easy to make tougher.
Hm... the fear I would have is that if I tough the encounters up they go up the levels too fast to have even the slightest problem with the things happening in the Adventure. But thinking of that... the players are a tactical pile of badgers... :D
A lot of the first part involves exhaustion and madness so it is not really level specific.
Sounds good. :) Thank you very much. I guess the Adventure Book investment is also worth it because of all the bits regarding the Underdark?
It details a few places in the Underdark, plus has a lot of details on different types of fungi. Not sure if that if is important to you ;) I added all the different fungi types as magic items in d&d beyond so the party could add them to their character sheets.
:D It seems I will have fun reading about Funghi when getting the book on friday...
Note that the book also has guidelines for starting the adventure at a higher level, I believe it specifically tells you when to start leveling them again, if I'm not mistaken.
oh, that would be awesome! Thank you very much
I've run Out of the Abyss for a group of tactical players (who started at level 1) and I would say that In terms of the encounters that are expected to be attacked head on (as compared to, say, attacking all the drow while naked), there was already room for increasing the difficulty in the early areas. This is especially true if you don't kill off "enough" NPCs with the escape from the drow since several of them are the equivalent of level 3-5 players.
My group of 6 players got out of the initial area with four reasonably competent combat NPCs (Quaggoth and three svirfneblin), plus the Koatoa, the Myconid, and the orc. That made a lot of the encounters (as written) too easy. So I bumped them up. Added mobs. Made a creature a solo monster. Etc. Your players being higher level would have a similar effect and could be handled similarly.
BTW, on the topic of the NPCs, I would strongly advise you to kill off a very large number of the combat NPCs (Shushar and Stool are fun and have minimal effect on combat). Either that or plan on coming up with a solution where you don't have them participate in combat. The reason is that I found the players really liked the NPCs personalities, but found the combats a bit frustrating with the extra bodies (even though I had them run the characters), because they wanted their characters to be the stars (and fair enough).
So find a few NPCs you really like and want to RP and kill off the others.
Thank you for that advice. As I have not read the book - it is still in shipping - I will then know what you were talking about ;)
I have to say... after reading the Adventure over the weekend... the story seems a bit odd. Even absurd in many places. I mean... D&D shouldn't be too serious, but come on... a whole city of fish people who dance around everyone while speaking with names the players will not be able to keep their faces straight... which leads to a demon from the abyss.. oh man.
I feel, that for my party I will have to alter many things to be able to lead this campaign with them...
Obviously you're the expert on your own group and making changes to a module is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in order to produce the best experience. I certainly did.
That said, I found the Kuo-Toa city worked really well for my group and the sacrifice leading to a demon rising was a really good moment for the campaign. The campaign is certainly designed to have a strange/otherworldly quality to it. I think they call out Through the Looking Glass (Alice/wonderland) as something they were inspired by. Basically the idea of being transported to an alien world where nothing is as you expect it to be.
I'm running this currently too, but as my party were level 7 I've skipped the narrative and dumped them straight into Sloobludop and the encounter with Demogorgon. I still had them bump into the NPCs from the earlier chapters though. At the moment their mission is to get Stool back to Neverlight Grove. Obviously, the enemies and encounters they are facing are no match for them, but keeping the NPCs alive is the challenge.
@Dracen That is a good point. When I am thinking of Wonderland this all makes "sense"... and I think I can work with it.. but I have to build that narrative from the beginning I guess... thanks for the thought!
@mightybrain: I have the same "problem". My Party will start on this weekend with their Characters beeing level 5 from the former Campaign. I will have to tweak the encounters quite a bit - or avoid giving them too much XP to get the curve back to normal with the narrative. I plan to not work with too many of these NPCs but we will see what the PCs are doing ;)
My thinking was that tweaking the encounters would provide additional XP so it would take longer to get back on the track. Instead I'm giving them a whirlwind tour of the first few chapters. The only real danger is to the NPCs at the moment. Although one PC did nearly lose an eye in the Oozing Temple.
But isn't this first part basically the greatest part of the whole adventure? I mean... the charakters are taken to an unhospitable surrounding and have to survive... taking this with a whirlwind approach would take away the fascination of this new environment?
There are a lot of really cool bits in the adventure. Here are some of mine:
- the modron march and the machine they're looking for which essentially is a giant RNG machine that, among other things, can reset time and send the characters back to the beginning of the adventure. Modrons are wacky and weird and I found the idea of their giant logic engine having run amok amusing
- the library with the weird time interaction where you can meet past versions of characters you've seen elsewhere
- the myconids. Stool was hugely popular among my characters and when they met up with the myconids in the spiral paths in the Duergar city (which were themselves pretty cool), they accepted the gift of the cursed spores and then got super confused when they started having to take will saves to avoid dancing (they associated it with a random encounter with grimlocks which was spectacular). And the myconid grove builds on that.
It's certainly true that some of the early stuff can set the scene though. But, like most things, it can be modified. If you like a particular portion, scale it up. If you find another portion uninspiring, cut it. There's plenty of weirdness to go around no matter what portion of the story you're using.
Technically you can go to a different location than Sloobludoop after the escape, but I agree it's probably the preferable location so that's somewhat railroady.
My group had fun with the escape and I'm not sure I'd consider the escape itself a railroad. The goal is fixed, but I'd say there are several ways to solve it: all the reasonable ways you planned for, plus whatever the players come up with. Of course, I had to insert a new PC in session 2 so I was already modifying stuff at this point which could have an affect on how flexible I feel it is.