From: adair@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Jonathan Edward Adair)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Temple of Elemental Evil
Date: 26 Jan 93 20:46:17 GMT
Organization: Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow
NNTP-Posting-Host: hal.ai.mit.edu

In article <1993Jan22.202712.1978@cc.gatech.edu> kali@cc.gatech.edu (Khaled S. Ali) writes:
>About how powerful a group is needed to attempt the module set T1-T4 "The Temple of 
>Elemental Evil".  Such as, how many characters,  what average level?  My players do 
>not have super scores, and I rarely give magic items.  So, keep this in mind when
>determining the power level of the group.
>Thanks.
>-- 

I wish I'd just posted the reply I sent to the original poster (I didn't 
realize there was such a demand for information on T1-4).

T1-4 says it is for levels 1-8.  When I played this, our party of moderately
powerful characters around 6-10th levels retreated from the Temple after
fumbling around in the upper two levels for several hours.  We came back
two days later and managed to make our way down to the bottom via some
trial and error on a puzzle.  The encounter with the head meanie was
relatively painless (compared with what came later), thanks mostly to a
pair of javelins of lightning and our fully healed status.  

In fact, I remember being afraid that we hadn't finished her off because
it seemed too easy.  If the PC's don't have to work their way down through
the upper dungeon levels of the temple, a party of 8th level characters
might not have too hard of a time finishing off the head villian.
(I don't want to mention her name, since I think that is part of the
puzzle.  Unfortunately, I and several other players knew the story of 
the Temple of Elemental Evil forwards and backwards when we got to
it, since we'd all been through T1 (and had read it) five years before
T1-4 came out.

If our party had left then and came back later, we might have been ok.  We
had lost two or three party members in the major fight, and most of the
rest of us were hurting.  But we decided to look for the mother load of 
treasure that I was sure would be nearby.  I did manage to find some
of the traps on the treasure chamber the hard way.  The poison killed
off most of what was left of our party, leaving me and two others
to discover that that wasn't the last trap...  The lightning bolt
finished off everyone else besides me (one very surprised halfling).

I actually wised up then and beat feet out of there.  It just about
broke me, but I managed to get most of our party raised eventually.
We never did go back for that treasure, despite my nearly constant
pleading for weeks.


My opinion of T1-4 is (like many other people's) that it is a very
good product.  The Village of Hommlet was great and I based most
of my campaigns there for years.  The Temple itself is pretty good.
It tends to have the feel of a Gygax product, in that there seem
to be a lot of clusters of rooms that serve no real purpose with
hordes of creatures there for no good reason, and the maps make
neat little figures when you look at them (like the E.G.G in S3)

I would have to say that the Temple is a death trap for most parties
of 8th level characters without many magic items, especially if
they just won't retreat when they're overmatched.  If they're willing
to back off and come back later, talk their way through some
encounters, etc., then they should be pretty challenged.  They'll 
probably loose a few members before they're done.  I would suggest
letting them adventure somewhere else for a little while (get the
I3-5 series--those were also pretty good, almost better than T1-4)
and get to around 9th-10th level.  A few extra spells, cures,
an extra attack, etc. will make a big difference in the Temple.


--
Jonathan E. Adair  -  Programmer at Large                          /\
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