Gathering Storm with Rank 2 Characters

[Pedro Lunaris 11]

Hi all!

Did anyone run GS with Rank 2 Characters? The PCs in my group will achieve it next session, the last of an interlude I'm running between An Eye for an Eye and GS (using it to set the scene and crearing some ties that will hopefully lead the game to both EoN and Horror in Hugeldal afterwards).

If anyone can share some opinions in how the adventure went with Rank 2 characters, what was changed in the part of the GM (if something) and anything that you think could help running it.

Much appreciated!

[Pedro Lunaris 11]

Seriously no one has ran Gathering Storm with Rank 2 characters? No adaptation suggested?

[GoblynKing 23]

Pedro Lunaris said:

Seriously no one has ran Gathering Storm with Rank 2 characters? No adaptation suggested?

Just beef up your baddies a bit. Replace the Beastmen with slightly stronger versions (just beef up their stats). Replace the goblins in the last chapter with Orcs and Black Orcs, and give Lazuraus Mourn some more spells. Also, if the PCs are slightly more well known in the area due to their previous exploits, give'em some fortune dice when interacting with those that had heard of them.

[Pedro Lunaris 11]

Thanks for the ideas, GoblynKing!

[Angelic Despot 7]

I would assume that you need to change very little for rank 2 characters.   The adventure assumes that it's likely that the characters have completed 'Eye for an eye', and so are likely to have a bunch of advances already.   The Gathering Storm is quite a long adventure all told, so it's very likely that characters will be rank 2 by the end, even if they didn't start it at rank 2.   So I think the power level should be about right.   I really think party composition is more important than rank.   If they've got several good fighters, it'll be much easier.   If the party has no dedicated fighters, they'll find it very hard, even if they start out at rank 2.

Most of the combats are pretty easy to scale up as well.   The 3 main combat encounters feature more baddies than the PCs can hope to defeat if their strategy is just 'fight until we kill them all' - at almost any rank.   They'll have to come up with some sort of a plan.   if you find they're hacking their way through the bad guys too easily, you can easily, and without changing the scenario at all, just double the number of bad guys.