Then they added the Bravery Bonus. Well crap. We are brave adventures, so we just couldn't pass up the challenge.
We started Korthos' first adventure, Heyton's Rest, in on ELITE. That fat +80% Elite first time bonus, and +20% bravery bonus was very tempting. And it's Korthos... these quests are all cake. We've run them a million times.
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| Pausing in the Heyton Family Crypt |
OMG the XP! The Cannith Crystal, The Storehouse's Secret, and The Collaborator all first time on Elite. Then the rest of Korthos Island. After one pass though all Korthos Quests we were getting off the boat to Stormreach at level 3, with no repeats.
Not bad, and now we were hooked. How long can we keep this going? With no real gear trades, no past life TR cache, no AH... just the loot we find.
So we did night 2 in the Harbor, again always on Elite. Again, all went well, and we continued to pile on the experience. We are close to level 4, and are not slowing down. This got me thinking, "If we keep this up, we are going to be too high to get the BB streak in some of the starter areas." We were just getting too much experience too quickly.
Our rules state we cannot move past an area until we have done all the quests in that area. Some of the areas may cause us issues if we start them around the level they start. Take Tangleroot Gorge for example. The first quest in this chain is level 3. The last is level 7. That means lvls 5-9 on elite. If we cannot leave to level (as per the rules) we would need to start this at level 5 to get the BB Streak for the first part, and attempt to do a lvl 9 quest at level 5 for the end of the chain.
This would be an issue.
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| Math is hard. |
So I started a spreadsheet to calculate possible XP totals for quests, as well as what level we would be when we finished them. Since there's a random level 4 here, a level 7 there, we end up with a few that, if we do not jump to it sooner then later, will not allow us to get a bonus. Not a big deal for some of these, as long as it does not mess with the rest of our streak.
A little rearranging and we can still do most quests in order of location. There are a few that we would need to jump out of an area to do. Some, like Sorrowdusk Isle we may have to start, do one half, and finish later. These chains do give us outs for this, since they are often broken into two or three parts.
So I propose this... a chain is until a reward. If the chain giver awards you, that part of the chain is over. You are free to leave the area, travel to another zone, level, shop... whatever. This still follows the spirit of D&D, since oven in PnP you are giving time to do these things "between episodes" or sessions.
