High Sewers Pacing (spoilers)

by **jms123** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 7:20 am

Just a few suggestions to consider for this module and/or future module design. I feel like certain pacing/sequences in the high sewers can get a bit broken. One is resting. After the cult fight in the fire room, you don't get any new resting spots (aside from if you haven't used the lamp or the one in the water passage yet) until you defeat the snare, and then you get another one right before leaving. I did the snare almost last of the entire high sewers. So I got almost no rest until I had completed the whole area, then I got 2 rests very quickly and really didn't even need 1 of them. One possible solution is to just place a 2-rest camp somewhere in one of the rooms and then the player decide when to use them, rather than giving them out right after those 2 specific fights that the player may happen to do in quick succession depending on how they play the level. As far as I can tell there isn't any information provided about any order that should be followed for doing the left side of the high sewers, nor when rests will be made available.

The second is the witches, if you choose to fight them (I think you may have to fight them to get that rod of reversal if you cannot create a fake tome). You obviously don't want to kill off a potential source for trade and magic scrolls prematurely, so it makes sense to decide to fight them at the end of the sewers when you won't need them anymore. But by then the fight is a cakewalk. That's not really a big deal since it was nice to finally get an easy fight for a change. However, the Paladin is then way under-leveled compared to the rest of the party which is a bit of a nuisance. Maybe consider scaling the XP of joining companions to the current average XP of the party, or something like that. Let the player level them up though.

by **Hesmah** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 9:59 am

About the witches: I just gave them the real book right after Pizarra fight and recruited the paladin, and she was at good level. I killed them off much later and took the book off their dead bodies. You can do this even if you don't create a fake book.

I do agree about the pacing though, if you are playing through it the first time, finding the rests at the right moment can be tough. I think one of the later campfires could be removed, like the one at the death snare, and the campfire at beginning could have an extra charge.

by **jms123** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 8:01 pm

Hesmah wrote:About the witches: I just gave them the real book right after Pizarra fight and recruited the paladin, and she was at good level. I killed them off much later and took the book off their dead bodies. You can do this even if you don't create a fake book.

Interesting, I think I either missed or forgot about that dialog option by the time I had completed the Pizarra fight. Still, that is one aspect of the game that is non-linear, as the timing is not fixed. For example, you may also choose not to free the statues due to wanting to save your magic diamonds. Or you may not want to give the tome to the witches because you're not sure if you'll be able to get it back. Or maybe you are role playing and don't want to make deals with evil NPCs, so you plan to kill them, but decide to come back when you are more powerful. If you're playing without spoilers and don't know there is a companion there (with fixed XP), you'd have no reason to rush that regardless. So you could still end up with an under-leveled companion, as I did.