City of the Spider Queen 3.5

[andrew_kenrick]

Hey guys, I need a little advice and I guess this is the best place for it!

I'm about to start running City of the Spider Queen at my monthly rp get together for a group of new 10th level PCs. I'm going to run a brief intro adventure to get them working together as a group, and then launch into it as described in the module. I'll probably play it as written, with the introduction of the Dungeon adventure, Spiral of Mezzadine (sp?).

So, any advice for running it? I can see its a veritable campaign in itself, and fully expect it to take a good year to run. My group like monster bashing to a degree, but also like a good bit of roleplaying - does the module need tweaking to fit this? How much NPC interaction is there (beyond killing them and stealing their treasure)?

And how about that really big issue - converting it to 3.5? There are a lot of stats in the book, not to mention the new spells and monsters. Is there any sort of conversion guide anywhere, or is it simply a case of getting on with it myself?

I've already trawled the boards but haven't quite found what I'm looking for Jeremy's recent threads had some good suggestions, but seemed to focus on the use of haste by the villains.

Any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated - I'll let you know how I get on, although its a good month away before we begin (talk about being prepared!).

 

[Eccles]

Haste is a pretty big issue, to be honest. A lot of the villains are spellcasters, and a lot of them are designed to take advantage of the "cast haste and blast away with spells" tactic.

I'm not sure what you could to to balance this. Obviously you shouldn't really have to, but you're going to find that there's a lot of very shortlived mages in very small rooms, who would otherwise have hasted and then blasted the enemy into oblivion.

Probably the best thing you can do is give those who could cast it Dimension Door, and let them run away before returning with the requisite fighter backup. Others will be lucky to get one spell off before being swatted by over-equipped front line fighters who open a door to find a wizard just inside.

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Turning to the roleplaying side of things... This is a massive failing in the book. It is a long dungeon crawl, with no resupply points. Later on, when healing becomes difficult, this really becomes an issue. There is absolutely nobody to talk to at several points, and unless your PCs divert from the plot of the book, they're as likely to violently slaughter the conversation-making NPCs than actually talk to them.

Also, the book doesn't allow for a lot of 'creative' behaviour by the PCs. Going "off plot" will give you a lot of problems if you try to be prepared.

I counteres the roleplaying to an extent by having a full 10 levels of backstory, and giving the PCs flashes of what was happening on the surface. In hindsight, I'd like to have given them moments of playing other characters on the surface for 5 minute at a time "segments" of conversation or significant combat.

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All in all, expect deaths from the party if they don't munchkin up from day 1. After a few weeks, you're going to have to come up with some imaginative ways to introduce new characters whilst 2 miles underground. Oh, and the huge travelling element is tricky and repetitive.

That said, it's an imaginative enough scenario, and fun if you cplayers want a good long session of tearing it up. Truly creative and resourceful players may find one of several ways to make life terribly hard for you as DM in the latter stages, mind you!

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Oh, and copy the Appendices from the back of the book. Too darn many of them over too darn many different pages!

 

[BlackFalconKY]

Ran CotSQ During 3.0 to 3.5 Conversion

I ran the City of the Spider Queen module for my players from November 2002 up through December 2003. During this time, D&D went from 3.0 to 3.5, so I had the conversion of players and NPCs going on at the same time. What I found was it was not that big of a deal. However, here is why.

When we started the campaign, my players were level 13. Right out of the gate, I had to tweak NPCs to increase their CR and ELs. I found out early on that a lot of the NPCs had some errors in them. Saves would be wrong here, BAB wrong there, etc. It was not a big deal really, but I ended up re-writing every NPC in the book. Since I had to adjust their CR anyway, it didn't bother me.

For the minor NPCs, I'm not sure I would worry about converting them if you are running it at the recommended level. Important NPCs I would do, but guards and sentries and such it really isn't worth your time. You'll find a lot of monsters that you can pull right out of the SRD. Some of the monsters presented in the book do not have a converted 3.5 version (arachnoid template, etc.). You can get the latest Abyssal Ghoul and Quth-Maren stats from Fiend Folio. Still 3.0 but closer to 3.5 than the ones in CotSQ.

Keep in mind monster changes that can have an impact. There are several beholders in CotSQ. Note that in 3.5 they cannot aim all eyes straight up. In my campaign, we were still playing 3.0 when a character jumped on top of a beholder (in his defense, the player had never fought one before). The outcome may be different nowadays.

I would recommend you download the CotSQ web enhancement from WotC's site. It has some good encounters in it. The black dracolisk really ruined my party's day. Also, be careful how you run the encounter with the fiendish kraken. If you are ruling that the party is too deep underground to easily teleport to safety, recovering characters who are eaten is tricky at best. The party paladin was eaten whole by the kraken, and it escaped to the depths of the Lake. I then had to deal with several game sessions where half the party continued on toward the city of Maerimydra and the other half returned to the surface to purchase a true resurrection. The kraken is very tough and can easily destroy several PCs, if not the whole party.

I would HIGHLY recommend you buy the FR Underdark book as well. It came out just when we were wrapping up our Underdark travels. I really, really wish I had that book at the beginning. One of the biggest problems I found (and Underdark can help with this) is making the PCs feel they were underground, in the dark, in a cave, all the time. Travel really became a chore at times, and there is a tremendous amount of travel in this adventure. Now, my players were all first year players, so they walked the entire distance. They never used speedy transportation spells. They bought some lizards from the drow and away they went.

Early on role-playing can be tough. Most of the time the party is alone in the dark. Nasty Underdark monsters try to eat them from time to time. RP chances come from drow and duergar encounters and whatnot. My party is mostly a smash-and-grab style group, but even they had to do some RP to deal with the drow. Once the party arrives in Maerimydra, there is a lot of RP potential. In fact, I had to add in an entire sub-plot after the PCs got captured by the fire giants. They fought for some time in arena matches until released by the giants and pressed into service of Kurgoth. After that, they were off to try and get into Castle Maerimydra.

Finding safe places to rest is difficult. Once inside the castle, it is all out war, and the party is going to take a beating. The NPCs will intelligently defend the castle, and it is filled with very high level clerics, sorcerers, and wizards. It is very hard for the PCs to maintain a hold within the castle, especially with the ghosts able to come and go as they please. You may have to dish some DM leniency to get them through. I am sure more than one party has met their end at the castle.

The only real problem we had in the whole adventure was the layout of the Undying Temple. Study the map, study the map, study the map. If you are not very prepared, it will confuse the crap out of you and your players. Playing on a battlemat with the temple existing in two planes is arduous. If I had to do it over, I'd use Tact-Tiles.

Anyway, embarking on this adventure is going to require a tremendous investment of time. By the end of the adventure (which is only about two months or so in game time), the players (and their characters) were begging for sunlight and trees. A year plus is a very long time for your players to be underground. It wears on them. In the end, we really enjoyed the adventure, and I'd run it for another group in a heartbeat. If you are up for the challenge, it is worth playing.

 

[ruleslawyer]

In addition, there's some conversion info here:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=255217

 

[Eccles]

Oh, I probably should've mentioned that I created the Great Revenance. Details are in my story hour, and there are a couple of downloads at the end, one of which should prove useful.

 

[andrew_kenrick]

Thanks for the great advice guys! I can see I'm going to have to be prepared to run this one. Luckily (i guess) I'll have about a month between adventures so can prep it in sections, updating npc stats as I go.

How did most of you introduce the PCs to the adventure? I'm caught between using the standard set up suggested in the book, and using my own lead-in.

I may try to introduce a few more roleplaying encounters into the mix, and probably find my PCs steamroller past them too!

I'll post updates as I have them.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Right out of the gate, I had to tweak NPCs to increase their CR and ELs. I found out early on that a lot of the NPCs had some errors in them. Saves would be wrong here, BAB wrong there, etc. It was not a big deal really, but I ended up re-writing every NPC in the book. Since I had to adjust their CR anyway, it didn't bother me.

I had the same problem. Almsot every NPC I wanted to power up had incorrect stat blocks. The Skill points seemed especially bad. Drove me nuts.