Need 4e Sellswords of Punjar Advice

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oldschooldm
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Need 4e Sellswords of Punjar Advice

Post by oldschooldm »

I'm about to run the Sellswords of Punjar in D&D 4e - for those who have already run this, I have a question or two...

1 - How did you assemble a party? What did you do for a preamble to get the party to Cutthroat Alley?

2 - As laid out, it looks pretty sequential - go through the gate, enter the beggars bazaar and follow the stairs, ladders and secret doors. I'm completely fine with this, as most of my party has never played an RPG before, let alone D&D 4e. My question is this:
Given the serial nature of this adventure, how did you handle extended rests (restoring healing surges and daily powers)? It might be possible to leave between the west and east portions of the surface, but underground looks to be one-way until the very end...

Thanks for your experience and insight.
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GnomeBoy
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Re: Need 4e Sellswords of Punjar Advice

Post by GnomeBoy »

As to Q1: I played on the otherworldly nature of the threat to get the characters drawn in; a "disturbance in the Force", to coin a phrase. It was part of an ongoing campaign, so I already had them together, just had to give them a compelling lead to investigate. I had The Sisters (from the Punjar Gaz) contact them and explain that something terrible was brewing there in the Beggar King's fortress. She felt they were worthy, since a running thread of the campaign was the incursion of outside forces on the world, and they had all had contact with it in one form or other, and all carried the traces of it... They were even thereby just starting to see things that normal folk couldn't perceive at all...

And, sorry, but I can't help you with Q2, since I retro-fitted the adventure to 3.5 and a different level of characters.
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oldschooldm
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Re: Need 4e Sellswords of Punjar Advice

Post by oldschooldm »

My game starts this Saturday, and I'm still looking for advice about the extended rests problem - note that the module calls this out right away...
This presents an unusual challenge to both players and the GM, as urban combat can be distinctly different from battles held in the close confines of a traditional dungeon. Here, crossbowmen can make attacks from second-story windows, assassins appear from any shadow, and no area is safe to rest unless every entrance is guarded and warded. Once alerted, the defenders will not passively sit by, waiting for the heroes to attack at their leisure. Rather, the beggars will launch repeated assaults on the heroes in an effort to wear them down, denying PCs the chance of an extended rest.
I'm probably going to house-rule that leveling up provides an extended rest ( just like video games! :-P )

I think I've come up with my setup sequence:
The PCs haven't all met yet (except if they have pre-existing non-party relationships as part of character creation) but are all in the main market square of town when there is a ruckus as several beggar-children are kidnapped from the market! Most folks just run the opposite direction from the danger, but our heroes give chase... [I'll use Paizo's Chase deck as a skill-challenge for this] this ends in a dead-end alley combat. If the players did better in the kidnappers, they found a way to cut them off and get to set up last and act first (representing advantage) otherwise they set up first and act last. In the end, one of the kidnappers (Black Shet) escapes over the rooftops.

If the party doesn't get any information (by interrogation) or by their investigation, the party rogue is approached by the Theives guild, who saw them act and wants them to follow up...
Any suggestions to improve my setup?
oldschooldm
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Re: Need 4e Sellswords of Punjar Advice

Post by oldschooldm »

I submitted my question about extended rests to rpg.stackexchange.com...

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... nded-rests

The party started with at least one relationship to another member - so when the beggar children were kidnapped from the market square, they recognized each other as they started the chase...
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