I'm starting up a new campaign, with rank 1 characters. To get warmed up I considered running the adventure from the Game Master's kit as a starter, before going onto something else.

I read through it yesterday, and was struck but the fact that up until the final showdown, the resistance is weak and trivial, and then all of a sudden the PCs run into up to 3 extremely hard opponents, possibly all at once.

Has anyone GM'd this adventure with rank one characters, and what was the outcome, if you played it as written?

I mean, how are rank one characters supposed to be able to kill something that has a load of wounds, soaks up to 13 and regenerates? Full auto is the answer to everything, I suppose, but most characters would hardly be able to inflict a single wound without getting a righteous fury off.

What I've considered is either having one creature with original stats, or possibly more, but without unnatural toughness and/or regenerate.

I'm not very experienced as a GM, and as such I'm having trouble gauging the difficulty of an opponent or group of opponents from a glance at the stats, but this just seems very hard.

Any input is appreciated, thanks in advance!

Double topic post, please delete.

Maggots in the Meat is probably not survivable for a typical first-level party. I haven't run it yet, but my guesstimate is that it probably works best for a 3rd-4th level party.

Indeed, rank three is probably about the lowest it can be survived. 4 would make it less chancy.

If it's the one I believe you're talking about. When we came to the Windmill (two of us, our other friend couldn't make it), my character a priest who was having a horrible day kicks in the door and throws in a grenade. After it goes off, we bust in and start shootin' up the place which is a bit wrecked, has small fires everywhere.

Saddly I didn't know that there was a second level that enemies could simply fire down upon us. So as to avoid getting murdered, the psyker, and myself dive into a pile of human bodies to escape most of it. After we get out, the psyker gets critically wounded, and my wounds drop fast. So I ended up grabbing his body, running out the door and lobbing a second grenade in.

After asking the DM, and a successful roll just to see if it would work, my grenade finished off the main beam, and another wall. The windmill came crashing down, and we won *Spoiler?* without having to fight the aliens he said were up there. And after hearing what they were geared with...I'm glad.

Note, that's the 3rd adventure/boss fight I've won thanks to grenades...praise the Emperor.

I ran it with 5 level 1 acolyts. I decrease the END by 1. It was tough, but managable (it depends on the weapons they have). Full auto with penetrating armour bullet, can do the trick. OK, I was particularly unlucky (and the stats of the beast is quite low.). Fear was their worst ennemy.

But if I have to run it again, I'll wait for level 2-3.