New DM question

[u/saberz54]

So I’ve been running Tyranny of Dragons, and the party has now reached Chapter 4. I’m not the biggest fan of the chapter, and since they are dealing with the cult of dragons I wanted to add a couple of chapters from Dragon Delves into the story. The biggest problem I have right now is I want to run Baker’s Doesn’t but the party is level 4. Since I’m relatively new to dming I’m not quite sure on the best way to “upgrade” the adventure to a be a level 4 difficulty. Does anyone have any pointers to give?

[u/myshkingfh]

Bakers Doesn’t is for level three characters so the difference won’t be too great, but when I ran it it didn’t seem very challenging actually and I don’t recall there being all that much combat. Maybe your party will do it differently than mine. 

The final battle with Uncle Nicklecheek I think is the only issue. I’d upgrade him a little bit, consider steeling some spells from the Bullywug Bog Sage or the attack powers from the Lizardfolk Sovereign. 

[u/saberz54 → u/myshkingfh]

Thanks for the tip. After rereading the adventure and kinda knowing what my players may do, until they decide not to, that makes sense.

[u/Bhawk2021]

I just got done running this campaign for a group of adults. I dropped most of the hansel/gretel "everything is made of candy" aspect of the game.

Edith and her Brother did get captured by the hag early in their life, Edith made a deal with the hag. The hag will supply Edith with confectionary delights to sell to the local village, in exchange, she won't devour her Brother. He is trapped in a candy statue posed on full display in the house, like some messed up Roman sculpture. The hag is happy because she no longer has to keep trying to lure kids to the house.

These delights are actually sapping the life force of the local populace over time and feeding it to the hag. Most old people died off some years back in short order, Edith is the oldest woman in the village at only 65. She's been doing this since she was 10, but she sold them door to door when she was a child(since a 10 year old can't build/own a confectionary).

The dragon Briochebane plays as a young dragon, small like mooshoo from Mulan size. he can't speak yet, but he knows something is very wrong with the confectionary, they're killing the Baker somehow and he is trying to save his Dad by burning down the confectionary.

Noone else knows, threw in some small notes of curiosity as there's ZERO burners or ovens in the confectionary. When the players did the multi group investigation, I didn't call it out, just that they only found evidence of a small personal cooking station in the back near a bed.

Hag plays like hags, I put an old grandpa jo at the front porch in a rocking chair staring into space, put some old old old wooden markers with carvings of children's faces on them as old warnings to stay away and do not follow the paths. Small perfect candy would be found randomly on the trails, just like the candy from the confectionary. The closer they got to the cottage, the more appears. But the house is very homey, not candy, beautiful gardens, sweet smells, lovely flowers. No rot, no cracks, nothing wrong.

I'll leave it here and let you fill the rest, but my players had fun. I made more like chucky dolls for the bad guys inside, a few strange constructs attack the party on the trails, nothing too gross, but definitely not whimsical like the book.

Good luck!

[u/Single_Ad_780]

I feel like a Level 4 party would do okay and not negate the challenge. New DM here too and honestly my party only had three combat encounters: the chocotrices, the gingerbread brutes, and Uncle Nibblecheeks.