Vale of Dolls portion of DCC 28 ***SPOILERS****

[The Incredible Kid]

Hello all,

The group of adventurers I'm DMing has just mopped up the "Cabal of the Dark Rider" portion of DCC 28 and are outside the stockade of the savage raiders. With they NPC they are 4 third-level characters: Barbarian, Cleric, Ranger, Wizard. I thought long and hard about scaling upwards in the Dark Rider portion. I ended up only adjusting the Drow and Half-Orc levels by one, with no adjustments to numbers in the other encounters. The players breezed through it, with some injuries. Kos got taken down without hitting anyone, even after getting the first two attacks. The Drow was hacked up swiftly, after her attempts to heal Kos proved futile. Even the players commented on how much easier it was to get their key, compared to Azubal's.
So now they are outside of the savage stockade, having gotten a little roughed-up on some traps. This portion of the module reads much tougher to me than the other two encounter areas. The party has encountered wandering raiders twice and gotten good and smacked up, until the raiders got the samples they were looking for, with only one raider vanquished in two encounters. I feel like all the encounters in the Doll Vale are plenty tough, and can't imagine adjusting them upwards. There is a suggestion to up the Witchdoctor 3 levels!!!! Can any DMs out there give me any tips on how this went for their party? I don't want the area to be too easy, but I also don't want an undeserved bloodbath.

Thanks,

IK

PS Things are off the rail. The players showed off charred bits of maps and plans at the crowded Mug and Blade for Ancilith to see, and handed over everything to the Regent. Hmmm. Where will things go from here?

[Jezza]

When I ran this part, I went with the suggestions in the module. You can read my recap, it's currently on the 2nd page. For that session there was a Wizard 4, a Ninja 4 and a Cleric 1/Barbarian 1/Ranger 1. The CBR got killed by the berserkers in the hall though, and the others had to retreat. When they came back with some reinforcements (Fighter 3 and Cleric 2, if memory serves) they were able to fight their way through and kill the (6th level) witchdoctor without too much effort. I think the ninja and the wizard might well have gone up to 5th level too by that point though.
Dunno if this helps you at all, but a climactic villain probably shouldn't be the same CR as the party's level, and the dolls didn't really make it that much harder in my experience.

[Ogrepuppy]

Personally, I had three 3rd level players--so, approx. a tough 2nd level average party, or a very weak 3rd level average party--and a healer NPC (which I ran, and didn't allow into the combat). I maxed out all of the enemies' HPs, bumped up their ACs by one or two when I could justify it, and even added a few warriors for fun.

My players basically breezed through this, mostly because they snuck their way over to the stable at the east and freed all the wild horses almost immediately, which caused utter chaos throughout the village.

For Wilds, luckily my players chose to go to the gobbos hideout first then to the raider village second. They've well earned enough XP to go to 4th level, and are about to head over to the dwarven halls tonight.

I just spend this past weekend eTooling the whole dwarven hall section so that the CRs are around 3 or higher, which should provide quite the challenge for my players.

[The Incredible Kid]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I'm surprised that the Witchdoctor, even at 6th level, didn't prove that difficult. I'll be curious to see if my players do much sneaking, or just hack their way through.

Thanks,

IK