Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Salla 06-23-05, 03:04 AM	I wrapped up running The Forgotten Forge tonight, but I think I may have gone a bit rough on my poor PCs. Over the course of the adventure, everybody but one PC was dropped to negatives at least once (one poor slob 3 times!), but no fatalities. 3 of the 5 PCs spent all their AP, the remaining two having only 2 left. I did adjust the adventure slightly to allow for the PCs (5 rather than 4, 1 with a LA +1, and a 38 point buy), but I'm wondering if I overcompensated. Was this typical for anybody else who ran/went through the adventure?
daedalusaf 06-23-05, 03:15 AM	I ran the adventure for 2 PCs. The fighter got whomped easily by Cutter and the 2 horrid rats. Surprisingly, his barbarian friend didn't get a scratch. I didn't adjust the level because I thought that it was suitable enough for 2 PCs
Twinblades 06-23-05, 03:30 AM	I DM'd it for 4 PCs and found the balance about right. The 'forged rogue dropped the party Psion to negative HPs in one sneak attack in the sewers, and the monk had an embarrasing brush with unconsciousness after falling off the Forge roof, but all in all it worked quite well for our party. The swarm posed the most problems as nobody had heeded the advice about oil but they saw it off in the end with the couple of flasks they did have and the Psion's Energy Rays. To summarise - as written it seemed about right for 4 PCs, provided the party has a good mix of abilities. (We had a human monk, human artificer, 'forged barbarian and kalashtar psion, all 1st level).
Salla 06-23-05, 03:59 AM	To summarise - as written it seemed about right for 4 PCs, provided the party has a good mix of abilities. (We had a human monk, human artificer, 'forged barbarian and kalashtar psion, all 1st level). I failed to drop the hint about the oil, so I eliminated the beetle swarm encounter, but compensated by throwing in a third Horrid Rat. I threw in a lot of stuff from other books when building 'my' Eberron, so we had: Valenar Elf Warmage (I'm really sick of Magic Missile right about now ...) Human Spirit Shaman Human Swashbuckler Fox Hengeyokai Rogue Catfolk Barbarian (UA Whirling Frenzy variant) The group lacks a major damage-dealer (the Barbarian just uses a Scimitar and 'only' goes up to a 16 STR in rage), which I think was part of the problem; the number of 2 and 3 damage hits was almost depressing.
Kid SixXx 06-23-05, 09:19 AM	I ran FF for six players and parts of the adventure were challenging even for them. Some encounters I indeed had to scale upwards. Party consisted of: Kalashtar Psion (Telepath) Human Artificer (Dragonmarked: House Cannith) Warforged Fighter Shifter Ranger (Wildhunt) Half-Elf Cleric (Silver Flame) Changeling Rogue The Artificer spent most of her infusions buffing the WF fighter and then retreating to use her crossbow. Oddly, the telepath was the primary "blaster" of the party, although the Artificer did manage to always have a scroll prepared as time allowed for her to scribe one.
N-|) 06-23-05, 09:58 AM	The group lacks a major damage-dealer (the Barbarian just uses a Scimitar and 'only' goes up to a 16 STR in rage), which I think was part of the problem; the number of 2 and 3 damage hits was almost depressing. Why did your player choose to be a barbarian when he only gets a 16 on strength while in rage???
Salla 06-24-05, 08:07 PM	Why did your player choose to be a barbarian when he only gets a 16 on strength while in rage??? Two reasons: 1. He's using the Whirling Frenzy variant from Unearthed Arcana, which is a bit more Dex-oriented, and 2. It was a 100 percent roleplaying-oriented decision. He took Barbarian because, well, he was a barbarian (in the more literal sense of being a somewhat primitive tribal warrior). Third possible reason: 3. He's very much a 'pure roleplayer', in some senses, and often creates suboptimal characters because (I suspect) he thinks that a well-built character can't be a well-played character. He also just generally prefers Dextrous characters to Strong ones.
anarco_rata 06-24-05, 10:03 PM	Fox Hengeyokai Rogue I can understand all the others, but why would you allow an hengeyokai in eberron? where did he come from and why? besides, he was far stronger than the rest of the party, because since i recall, they're ECL +1, because they have very big advantages
crinos43 06-24-05, 10:37 PM	I ran the Forge for six PCs as well, and a couple were dropped to negs. The party consisted of: Human cleric Human Fighter Elf Barbarian Elf Rogue 2 Human Wizards And yes, hengeyokai do get +1 Level Adjustment, but I see no reason why they'd be in Eberron.
Salla 06-24-05, 10:46 PM	I can understand all the others, but why would you allow an hengeyokai in eberron? where did he come from and why? besides, he was far stronger than the rest of the party, because since i recall, they're ECL +1, because they have very big advantages The ECL was removed in the Dragon 318 update to 3.5, so that wasn't a problem. ;) The catfolk actually has a Level Adjustment, but I was willing to deal with just a +1. i basically cordoned off the top sliver of Argonnessen (from about the equator and north) with a steep mountain range to put the OA stuff in. Not that the mountains would actually stop the dragons, of course, but it makes them feel safer.
anarco_rata 06-24-05, 11:22 PM	The ECL was removed in the Dragon 318 update to 3.5, so that wasn't a problem. ;) The catfolk actually has a Level Adjustment, but I was willing to deal with just a +1. i basically cordoned off the top sliver of Argonnessen (from about the equator and north) with a steep mountain range to put the OA stuff in. Not that the mountains would actually stop the dragons, of course, but it makes them feel safer. 1) i didn't know that ^^ im actually still converting to 3.5 (in a week or so i should get mha' new books!), what did they change? because they can't remove that ECl and leave them with all those special abilities! :tantrum: 2) i liked the argonessen idea, ^-^ sorry, i thought you were one of those DMs that allowed everything and ruined the setting, but i think your explanation is not bad at all, altought i wouldn't use them in eberron, but every DM with his thing ^^
Chiyo 06-24-05, 11:29 PM	5 PCs here (1 wizard, 1 sorcerer, 1 cleric, 1 fighter, 1 artificer) and felt like it was a bit too easy. One person went into negative hp for 1 round during the final fight. Maybe we didn't trigger some things - hard to say I'm not the DM - but we didn't even need to rest thru the whole thing. Used a 32 point buy system for chars so everyone's a bit stronger than average but still.
Raven Dark 06-25-05, 12:39 PM	We had the following in our group: - NE M Kenku Transmuter - N F Changling Rogue - CN M Warforged Fighter - CN M Human Fighter The changeling, the kenku, and the human were all dropped into negatives against the swarm. After camping out in the dungeon for two days with a little non-magical healing, the kenku and the warforged were womped by Cutter leaving only the changeling and the human to fight him alone. They locked themselves in the forge and were trying to think of a plan to deal with Cutter outside but couldn't because they were panicking the whole while (they each had less than 2 HP left). Meanwhile, Cutter was busy delivering a coup de grace to my disabled kenku character outside (that rat bastard!). Eventually Cutter climbed up the building and jumped inside. In a panicked frenzy the two survivors rushed him and with a few lucky critical hits, dropped him to negatives before he could react. If they didn't get those criticals, it would have been a TPK. So in the end, the kenku was killed, and everyone else was knocked out and dying at least once by the time we finished the adventure. The party gave up ALL of thier monetary rewards and sold ALL of their treasure and gave up ALL hope of future favors from House Cannith in order to get a scroll of Raise Dead for my kenku (bless them all). Being 1st level, my kenku lost 2 points of constitution, but that sure beats dissolving in Dohluur. Make no mistake, this adventure for 1st level characters is easily as hard as any of the following modules.
Glauron 06-26-05, 02:53 AM	I took 6 through FF some time back: Warforged Fighter (Adamantine Body) Valenar ranger, cleric, aristocrat, artificer, and wizard. I didn't change any monster stats, but since there were 50% more PCs, I threw in an extra horrid rat, and a shifter in the sewer encounter. At some time during the adventure, every single character went down unconscious at least once, but none died. The beetle swarm gave them hell, even though they did have 2 vials of alchemist's fire. The guy carrying them was bitten and sickened. He kept moving away with a single move action. The warforged blocked as beetle bait til another character got the vials and threw them at the swarm. Pretty funny actually. The warforged went down too, but the artificer patched him up.
Save-vs-DM 06-26-05, 07:54 AM	I took 5 players through the FF a long while back for fun. Had me: Human Ranger (Dragonmarked: Tharashk) Changeling Psion (Telepath) Shifter Ranger Valenar Elf Wizard Human Artificer Errrm spoilers and such I very, very nearly had a TPK. I had to pull punches. They heeded the warning on the beetle swarm and the artificer made a lot of alchemists fire. The artificer rolled two 1's in a row thowing them, hit the elf and did max damage, then hit himself for 5 damage. The two ranges got hit by the swarm and the rest of the party never rolled above a 6 the entire combat. The next encounter I critted on the first rat, dropped the ranger (my wife, bad news there) to -9, the other ray this the psion and dropped him to -4. The only one standing after the rats was the shifter. THe managed to find the pool (which I let work a lot better, as I felt sorry for the players). the rest went all right, but the party had blown all of their action points against the beetle swarm. Cutter dropped all but the psion to negatives, the psion finally finishing him off with a very lucky mind blast. It was.....aweful. Completely and horribly aweful for them. I felt so bad. It didn't help that I kept rolling in the high teens.... Cheers, Save vs DM
mafiel 06-26-05, 11:53 AM	I had a hafling barbarian (20 strenght while raging), a hafling rogue/wizard (house Jorasco) a shifter ranger and an elf druid , plus a Changeling Bard. They where all level 2. There was only one part where i really changed things, i decided that if the vault was not opened corectly the first time ( with the combination of keys) the whole complex started filling up with water to the roof level of the forge. This made for an interesting fight with the warforged and allowd him to to jump in the water to get away ( my players hate forged because of that adventure :D they always get away at when there about to go down ) In all they had a dood enough chalange, they whrer badly injured a couple of times and had a sense taht they could die, they got trough it but used all spells and per day abilities they had .
CelestialBarbarian 06-26-05, 03:20 PM	I ran the adventure with four PCs: a warforged favored soul, a kobold ninja, an Aerenal elf ranger, and a human fighter. The party had relatively little problem with the swarm, and indeed a had another swarm attack the party when it decided to rest for the night in the forge after retrieving the schema. I'd say that the party fared better in the adventure than the PCs in my homebrew usually do against the challenges they encounter there. I think I never had more than one party member unconscious at any one time. :D In my homebrew I like to say that if all but one of the characters aren't unconscious at the end of the fight, and if that one character has only one hit point remaining, I haven't done my job as a DM. :D I'm actually exaggerating a bit, but in any case I found the PCs in Forgotten Forge had an easier time than the PCs in my homebrew. The party actually had a bad time trying to climb to the roof of the forge. The human fighter managed to get up there after falling once or twice, and then held a rope for the others. The kobold scampered up first without any trouble climbing, but the human nearly dropped the rope even with only the kobold's weight on it. When the elf tried to climb the rope, he pulled the human right over the side and fell to the floor of the cavern. The human managed to grap onto the edge of the roof. The kobold rolled so poorly trying to aid the human in climbing back onto the roof that I joked that it looked like the kobold was trying to make the human fall. Then the warforged, with his -5 armor check penalty for Adamantine Body, climbed right up the side of the wall with two really high (i.e. lucky) rolls. He helped the elf get up, and then lowered the elf into the hole--whereupon the mechanical dogs nearly killed him. Both the human and the warforged jumped into the hole and managed to take out the dogs. Later, when they wanted to get out, they tried tossing the kobold up through the hole, but didn't quite manage to get him out, and he fell back to the floor. On the second try they succeeded. Cutter waited until the kobold was climbing down the outside to unleash his attacks, hitting his then-dex-less AC. The human and elf managed to get down and fight with Cutter, and he fled up the nearest corridor, but the kobold managed to nail him with an arrow and take him out. It was great really. I will say that the warforged rogue in the sewers, whom I had hide under the water, managed never to hit the last party member, who at the time was the warforged favored soul. Darned Adamantine Body! :D The shifters, on the other hand, managed to slash up the elf and fighter pretty well up in the front. One horrid rat managed to elude the favored soul, ranger and fighter for many rounds, while the silly little kobold with his silly little bow managed to nail the other horrid rat round after round while it never managed to sink its horrid little teeth into his leather skin. When that rat had had enough, it fled, but she nailed it as it fled and took it out. What has the nasty kobold got in its pocketsess, we asks! :D I'm now running the next adventure in the series, and I'd have to say that they're doing even better against the challenges there than they did in Forgotten Forge. All in all, it seems to be working out well. :)
Salla 06-27-05, 05:49 PM	I ran the adventure with four PCs: a warforged favored soul, a kobold ninja, I just have to say, 1000 points apiece to these two for those character concepts!
greatfrito 06-28-05, 12:23 AM	Our party was, at the time, a Human Monk, Warforged Artificer (weee!), Kalashtar Telepath, Half-Orc Druid, and Human Monk. We did pretty well. I think our fighter-types crashed down quite a bit. And our bard nearly died (okay, but understand that player -always- almost dies). But the uh... yeah, okay, the Telepath and I were fine. The whole thing is pretty difficult, but parties seem to live through it, somehow (I blame action points!)
MartM 06-29-05, 05:57 PM	Three character a Changeling bard, a Kalshtar Soulknife and a Unarmored 'forged Monk. The monk dropped a few times in the negative. Since the Monk was the front line fighter, i downgraded a few treasure here and there to include a used rod of repair damage (6 charges) in the rat market. Cutter have left with the soulknife and the Bard in the negative... The players was stresses a lot... So they had fun.
CelestialBarbarian 06-30-05, 11:18 PM	I just have to say, 1000 points apiece to these two for those character concepts! Heh. I've been sick all week, so I had to cancel the game, but I'll try to remember next week to tell them you said so. :)
AlDaRoN Arg 07-01-05, 09:45 AM	Im running it with 5 players, a shifter ranger, a Kalashtar Rogue, a Kalashtar Psithief, a human paladin (of the silver flame) and a elf wizard. We didnt finish it yet, but so far they didnt have any trouble, mostly thanks to the paladin, who had his lucky day and rolled super stats (we used the 4d6 sistem and he rolled 18, 17, 16, 15, 14 and 10, anyway the elf wasnt so lucky and his stats reallyyyyyy suck :D ), his luck go on, he heard the warforged barbarian tried to talk to him, and when the warfoged was going to hit him... critical miss, the paladin then strike him for 11 points the rest of the group finished him. Then he rolled a natural 20 on diplomacy when the guard arrived. So im going to upgrade de monsters a little. Anyway im pretty sure that the swarm will make them sweat. Their problem right now is the lack of magical healing and the fact that the wizard has 2 hp (6 con).
NSTR 07-01-05, 12:32 PM	Ran this one back in July of last year. Warforged Fighter, Halfling Rogue, Half-Elf Sorcerer, and a Shifter Ranger. Most of the adventure was easy for them except for the swarm and Cutter at the end. In fact Cutter was able to cut down three of them while the shifter was able to escape back up into the city. The party decided to flee from Cutter has he picked them off one by one. There was also good rolling on the DMs part and poor rolling on the PCs part. They told the shifter to flee with the item while they covered her. When the shifter came back down to see if she could revive the rest of the party Cutter had coup de grace all of them. :devil:
Salla 07-01-05, 05:08 PM	Their problem right now is the lack of magical healing and the fact that the wizard has 2 hp (6 con). That poor schmuck.
CelestialBarbarian 07-01-05, 08:09 PM	Ran this one back in July of last year. Warforged Fighter, Halfling Rogue, Half-Elf Sorcerer, and a Shifter Ranger. Most of the adventure was easy for them except for the swarm and Cutter at the end. In fact Cutter was able to cut down three of them while the shifter was able to escape back up into the city. The party decided to flee from Cutter has he picked them off one by one. There was also good rolling on the DMs part and poor rolling on the PCs part. They told the shifter to flee with the item while they covered her. When the shifter came back down to see if she could revive the rest of the party Cutter had coup de grace all of them. :devil: Wow. You killed every single member of the party?! Did Cutter at least try to interrogate the shifter to find out what he'd done with the schema?
Missekat 07-08-05, 10:05 AM	Dang.. i think i must have done something wrong when i ran the adventure. I had four players, an elven ranger, a shifter druid, a shifter fighter and a human sorcerer.. no one died, no one dropped below zero, and they smacked the h*** outta everything they encountered. Needless to say, i was almost reduced to tears when the party looked at me when Cutter was nailed and asked: Was that all? They were all lvl 1 btw :weep:
CelestialBarbarian 07-08-05, 10:22 AM	Dang.. i think i must have done something wrong when i ran the adventure. I had four players, an elven ranger, a shifter druid, a shifter fighter and a human sorcerer.. no one died, no one dropped below zero, and they smacked the h*** outta everything they encountered. Needless to say, i was almost reduced to tears when the party looked at me when Cutter was nailed and asked: Was that all? They were all lvl 1 btw :weep: Did they all roll remarkably well and did you roll poorly? Do the party members have rather high ability scores? Did your NPCs take advantage of things like cover, concealment, and opportunities to surprise the party?
cmanos 07-08-05, 11:42 AM	I am waiting patiently to run this adventure. I have the castle molds from hirstarts.com and I am making all the scenery. Yeah I could run it on the plexiglass covered gridpaper we normall y use, but I want this to be a WOW game. Will post pics when done. C
Brastan 07-08-05, 12:24 PM	The second time I ran forgotten forge for a party of 3. Now mind you my gaming group is very aggressive and team oriented, probably the most dangerous combination. It was some time ago, I think the party consisted of humans a fighter, wizard, and rouge. No healer as usual. The wizard got smacked around quite a bit during the adventure as he was unfortunately the one holding the journal during the first encounter. During the sewer encounter the wizard was again injured but the other two finished the encounter quickly. They did have to rest in the church after the fight with swarm and rats but this was likely due to not having a cleric otherwise they would have pushed on. The fight with Cutter was over before it began really. My group has a slightly depressing habit of capping BBEGs before they finish the first sentence of gloating dialogue. He did mess up the fighter but after taking half damage and trying to run, cutter was cut down. They don't let them go :nonono:. As long as one one died during the adventure I'd say you did it right. By the time you finish it your supposed to be 2nd level. That is a large jump and should push a party to the limit. For some reason the Forge has a habit of picking on one character. This happened the first time I ran it as well with 3 2nd level adventures. I don't know what its. Must have something to do with party marching order or something.
Hola 07-08-05, 06:02 PM	I dmed a party of two a razorclaw shifter soulknife super hero(17 17 18 14 14 14) and a changeling psion, I included a crazed npc cleric they met in the sewers who jioned them after they took care of his Xoriat problem. Over all the psion dropped into the negitves on many ocations but this was off set by the fact that they had asoulknife who was liberal with action points and who loved up the walls to creat cool swashbuckling type moves that I just had to give bonuses to(I mean I try to encourage cool situations). In the end they got by, by the skin of their teeth, witch is how a dungeon should be.
Raziel_Brokodar 07-09-05, 09:43 AM	I ran FF for six players and parts of the adventure were challenging even for them. Some encounters I indeed had to scale upwards. Party consisted of: Kalashtar Psion (Telepath) Human Artificer (Dragonmarked: House Cannith) Warforged Fighter Shifter Ranger (Wildhunt) Half-Elf Cleric (Silver Flame) Changeling Rogue The Artificer spent most of her infusions buffing the WF fighter and then retreating to use her crossbow. Oddly, the telepath was the primary "blaster" of the party, although the Artificer did manage to always have a scroll prepared as time allowed for her to scribe one. DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now that's my kind of party.... Do they RP well?
LugWrench 07-10-05, 06:25 PM	I ran the FF mission for a group of 4 people. A .5 cleric/ .5 rogue shifter (its starting out as multiclassing, look it up in the DMG), a warforged fighter, an elf wizard, and a gnome artifacer. The opening battle went very well for the PCs, some high dice rolls got nearly everyone acting before the Warforged on the bridge. Afterwards, the gnome lipped off to the Watch seargant that arrived and did a night in jail. As the PCs entered the stairwell to the Valve Chamber, they found and were attacked by the Warforged rogue. The Cler-rogue wet toe-to-toe with the warforged and managed to drop him (Hey, a starting Dex mod of +6, and feats to use Dex mods for melee attacks is impressive). As they entered the Valve chamber proper, the two shifter mercs quite literally cut the cler-rogue in half. He was dropped to negative HP and had to burn an AP to avoid bleeding out. After some successful Heal checks, and some Fort saves (hey, its a SEWER), the party was up and running again. In the Ruins of Dorasharn, the PC's handled the beetle swarm quite easily, but had a tougher time with the Horrid Rats. The Gnome took a few nasy hits and the party had to rest in the chapel for a bit. The Iron Defenders in the Forge nearly claimed the wizard, but some nice dice rolls from the fighter and cler-rogue saved the day. On the way out, the Fighter took two critical hits (failed the Light Fortification rolls) from Saber's flaming crossbow bolts and was disabled before combat even got going. The cler-rogue filled in quite nicely, but Saber still managed to inflict serious casualties before going down. The party managed to escape, burning nearly every AP they had to modify rolls to avoid the disease from the Horrid Rats and to avoid bleeding out. The fighter was a bit put out that he missed the last battle, but thanked his lucky stars that warforged dont bleed out. He burned all of his AP to put down the Iron Defenders.
davethebrave371 12-16-05, 04:10 PM	I ran the Forgotten Forge after an intro adventure which was a foray into Xen'drik. My party for FF was: A dragonmarked Phiarlan rogue, embedded in deep cover as a Thuranni An ex-Phiarlan aberrant marked warlock A dragonmarked Lyrandar bard, Perform (oratory), which meant rousing speeches! A human rogue, Skyway noble and student at Morgrave A shifter barbarian A human cleric of the Silver Flame (a placeholder between chars for one player) A halfling ranger (also a placeholder) A human wizard (a guy who kind of burst into our place of gaming and forced himself upon the group) Yeah, a lot of people. I ran it as normal, since the exp would be less as a result. I don't mind running them through less challenging adventures to start, to build a bit of a bond. They've just completed Shadows of the Last War, and all of the marked ones are dead...though of their own intrigue and politiking, rather than actual enemies. I absolutely LOVE my group. To the hilt RPers, save one, and very much into intrigue and in the shadows wheeling and dealing. The new chars for the three dead are (respectively), a changeling becomer with the Wizard and Psion substitution levels from RoE, plans on classing up to Cabinet Trickster, currently works for the Nightswift (Kenku spy organization) and the Tyrants. A human fighter, uses a swordcatcher for a weapon, focuses on tactics like disarming, sundering, tripping, etc. Brelish nobleman with ogre blood way back there (took the Jotunblood feat from that FR book), used to be in an elite unit of the Brelish army that captured and converted warforged. And finally, a changeling reality seeker Gatekeeper druid, likes feline animals, no familiar, plans to get a tiger eventually.
MrFilthyIke 12-16-05, 08:47 PM	2. It was a 100 percent roleplaying-oriented decision. He took Barbarian because, well, he was a barbarian (in the more literal sense of being a somewhat primitive type. The group I run in Eberron only has one "fighter type"...a Changeling Barbarian. Has Str 14, Dex 10, Con 15, Int 14, Wis 12, Cha 10. He's smarter than MANY of the other characters. He wanted a wiry and hardy character, not muscular. We described that when he rages, he loses control of his shapechanging and starts to warp and twist freakily (the player wanted a Slaine style of Berserker). So, I understand completely. :)
Korhal_IV 12-19-05, 03:45 PM	I ran an Adamantine-Body warforged cleric through Forgotten Forge. My teammates were a shifter monk (very good stats - a starting 19 in Dex, 17 in Wis after racial adjustments), a half-elf bard, and a gnome rogue. The rogue went unconscious a lot, due to low AC (he picked poor armor to avoid skill check penalties) but after we got him the MW chain shirt in the Forge his survivability increased drastically. The fountain of curing was reusable for us - don't know if that's standard, but it helped so much. The monk and bard went down once or twice (esp. against Saber and the shifters in the sewer), but I never did (partly because my party valued healing, and so strove to keep me on my feet). :) We did get lucky against the rats - the monk ran up and critted one for an insta-kill.
davethebrave371 12-19-05, 04:19 PM	That fountain became a cash cow for my group. Our resident Warforged Artificer, Cogs, our group "leader" Fharion ir'Maldren, and Skakan, the goblin merchant in the Rat's Market, struck a deal to have the party's Thuranni "bard" (actually a Phiarlan rogue) go into the sewers regularily, fight off any rats, and bring back as much water in waterskins and jugs and bottles for Skakan to sell, and also Cogs to sell, as he cold carry. However, I placed another adventure in there where the western tunnel out of the main area led down twisting passageways to a cult led by a kobold wilder with the half-illithid template, and when the Gatekeeper in our group found out, he informed the Gatehouse in Upper...Central? I think it's Upper Central. Anyway, informed them, and now it's being sealed. Ha! I let the players screw themselves out of situations.
(Psi)SeveredHead 12-20-05, 11:39 AM	I was playing that adventure, not running it. I was a shifter rogue with the Longstrider ability. I was hoping to get Shifter Defense, but it takes so many levels. Only shifter fighters get enough feats to make a shifter worthwhile. One player was a warforged artificer. Artificers aren't so powerful at 1st-level, but this one had Adamantium Body, effectively giving himself medium armor and DR for only one feat and, oh yeah, there's no ASF for artificers as well. It's actually worse than psion armor abuse. One player was a psion of some kind, but she had no experience with psionics and didn't follow advice. Guess who was the first to get smacked down? One player is an elven Dex paladin, and the only original character to remain in the group. One player was a monk - either a dwarf or half-orc. Not suprisingly, she was ineffective. (Another inexperienced player.) We also had a wizard and a cleric. Note the lack of a heavy fighter. We kicked the warforged barbarian's butt easily. In fact, it rolled bad on Init, and didn't even get the chance to rage before it died. We didn't have any trouble with the warforged rogue - I think it missed on its sneak attack. (Before 3rd-level, rogues are wimps.) We kicked its butt. We didn't hear or see any warning about bringing fire into the deeps with us, so we were reamed by the swarm. Our artificer sat in the swarm and slowly burned it to death with a torch, which did 1d3 fire damage per round. (The DM said he didn't have to make attack rolls vs the swarm, either.) The horrid rats were dealt with fairly easily. However, our psion didn't know to stay out of melee, and got dropped. Our artificer complained of the damage, but I pointed out a 1st-level fighter with a greatsword is a more dangerous threat. (Those rats do 2d6 damage, half of it acid, per hit.) After those last two encounter we found a room we could defend for the night, that just happened to have a healing font in it. (Our DM took pity on us.) Finally, we had to enter the final area, where those clockwork beasts roamed. There was some slipping and sliding before we killed them. (We didn't have enough arrows to just waste them from above.) Now we were all virtually at full health, and there was no way the final boss could just charge in and cut us up. We left watched for the night. Cutter (or whatever his name is) climbed in by using a pearl of silence, so we didn't notice him until too late. A nasty fight ensued, and I think that day we only had five players. Nonetheless, we killed him without too much trouble. End result: if our group had more experienced players, only the swarm would seriously challenge us. Mind you, I don't really know how nasty the adventure is, as the DM went easy on us.
Rechan 12-20-05, 09:45 PM	I can understand all the others, but why would you allow an hengeyokai in eberron? where did he come from and why? besides, he was far stronger than the rest of the party, because since i recall, they're ECL +1, because they have very big advantages Eberron was made to have room for Every D&D product. I believe that there is room for OA material in Eberron, it just takes some working. One of the PCs in our Eberron group starting up is a kitsune sorcerer. I think there's room for them.