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The trap in the 4 encounter. They trigger a rolling boulder that turns at right angles around the center chamber seemingly endlessly? Now I'm all for suspension of disbelief, but this just seems to be pushing it. Any ideas on making this trap more believable?
1) The area around the centre room, the path the boulder follows, is a sort of bowl.
2) There are outcroppings in the floor that deflect the boulder onto the next part of its path.
3) It's just, well, a magical boulder.
To be honest though, if I can't think of anything better, I'd be tempted to move the central room 10' North (putting it against the wall) and squishing the room vertically by 10'; then just have the boulder roll in a straight line from East to West when the players are in the midpoint of the (now a) corridor.
Any suggestions on doing that without overdoing treasure for the party?
The best way that I would suggest to integrate the two might be to have the area right behind the waterfall to be the start of Kobold Hall.
I may actually do that myself tonight as my party will likely be down at least one player.
I would then consider doing a couple of things with A3.
You could move it to the back of the caves and
a> Replace the final room with A3.
b> Provide a branch before the final room with one way leading to the final rooma and one way leading to A3.
c> Use the room map of A3 for the final room of Kobold Hall with the final boss for the room. You could then rename the final boss of Kobold Hall as Irontooth to mesh up with the encounter of A2 and the person stating they need to warn Irontooth. A solo fight on the A3 battle map should be an interesting final encounter.
Hopefully my players are too lazy to read these boards. O_O
Instead of a trap, the last room will be the kobold's living area, with a large firepit and bedding and such. I replaced the trap with an equal xp amount in minions, as I felt that the kobold tribe as a whole lacked in that respect (15 level 1+ kobolds vs. 4 minions as written). I actually swapped out one of the normal kobolds as well from an earlier encounter for more minions as well to give the adventure a little more of an old D&D feel where mass amounts of kobolds die in one hit
Overall, I'm running Kobold Hall as a beginning to Keep on the Shadowfell. Running the two adventures together adds extra experience, magic items, and gold, so I'll be adjusting those downwards in places to still get the PCs to 4th level at the end of the adventure with the appropriate amount of treasure and money. So similar to Krysis, I'll be starting my PCs in Fallcrest and planting some quests and leads to lead them to Winterhaven.
Numbers-wise, the adventures combined (as written, and assuming PCs find and sell all the treasure) will provide the PCs with 5325 gold piece, 51 magic item levels, and 29653 experience. Recommended numbers (from the DMG) are 3120 gold, 54 item levels, and 18750 experience (totals for treasure/experience for levels 1-3, and just reaching level 4). Interestingly enough, the adventures combined are slightly low on magic items, but heavy on gold and experience. Some of the experience can be pared by slightly reducing the difficulty on a couple of the potential TPK encounters (like Irontooth), and treasure of course is even easier to pare down some.
Overall experience flow for the combined adventures will be hitting level 2 after the Irontooth encounter (it'll still be tough, as I'll use it as the capstone to level 1, but not quite as tough as written), level 3 around the time of clearing the 1st level of the dungeon/the graveyard encounter, and hitting level 4 right at the end of the adventure after confronting the final encounter.
Maybe a handful of old and badly mauled kobalds have been assigned the task of bravely defending a couple of dozen cowering kobald females clutching pups and stuff.
Maybe the females and pups howl and wail in fear and terror as the adventurers stomp in after slaughtering every last able bodied male in the tribe. Maybe make it a sort of morality challenge. Ok so...you've done what you were raised to do as a human warrior..charged in a killed all the kobalds and stuff and now you realize you've raided the warren of an intelligent creature...maybe not one you like but still.
Or maybe just change it into a group of minions armed with bags of marbles they can throw onto the ground to create movement obstacles and places where characters can trip. Maybe they've soaked the floor in oil in places as well and are waiting to throw nearby torches onto those spots when a character moves into the area.
I would think they'd be very likely to hail the Dragonborn or attempt to converse with it. I mean dragonborn are dragons of a sort after all are they not?
Maybe in the end the women and children and old kobalds plead with the dragonborn character to promise to raise one of their pups in the name of the great dragon.
I'll avoid any morality plays. For some groups that would be more appropriate, but I feel D&D is more of a good vs evil struggle, with less grey areas. In other gaming systems I would provide more moral decisions, but this is D&D, kill the kobolds, take their phat lewts and move on :D
Also, we successfully squished a kobald with it. Not sure if it was KILLED, but it WAS run over.
However, I like the idea of adding a lair in that room. Replace the trap with minions and then the kobold tribe takes on a more realistic aspect. I'd also recommend redrawing the map so it seems more like a real place. All the same rooms and encounters should be there but there should be more so it doesn't play like a series of one room after another... which it is.
At the end there's some advice for linking the adventure to Keep on the Shadowfell. I considered running Kobold Hall to give some much needed xp to the party before jumping into the lethal beginning of Keep on the Shadowfell.
Now I'm a first time player who is DMing for this group of other noobs. So I wasn't 100% sure how to handle this. I ended up having the rogue make an athletics check (DC15) to leap onto the oncoming boulder, then once he was on it, I gave him combat advantage to his ranged attacks for the higher ground. At the start of his round I also had him make a saving throw to see if he remained on the boulder. When he failed the roll - It made sense to make him fall backwards and just take damage from the fall (1d10).
Now I'm running the Kobold Hall for another group of never-played-before friends this weekend. I really do hope somebody thinks of trying this again. And I'd love for you guys to let me know what you think is the best way to handle a player who wants to ride the boulder.
Did any players from any groups attempt to ride the boulder? The center room has a thick 10ft high wall that the PC's can climb and the boulder rolls directly past it. My groups rogue got up there and wanted to attempt jumping onto the boulder.
Well the boulder has a move of 8 if I recall. Even if a PC managed to get on top of it and not fall off, I'd have them take two move actions just to keep up with it. So the chance of them getting an attack in while on it would be slim to none.
Inevitably something needs to be moving it, I'm thinking gears, that pop up and give the boulder a push, it also gives the PC's a way to disable it if desired.
I'm modifying the keep by removing the dragon and the trap in room 4. Room 4 will be a group of Minions guarding a creche. The dragon room will simply vanish. I want to leave Irontooth in charge, plus many have complained about the dragon being a little overpowered. Rather than an additional threat, Irontooth will have been slowly recruiting the Keep's Kobolds.
After they clear the keep, the Kobold Ambush outside of town will look like revenge attacks for the keep, initially. The only initial clue will be finding a note in the first ambush that was a recruiting notice to the keep's Kobolds, written in Draconic.
Thoughts? any better suggestions?
I was wondering, if a player wanted to grab the skull - how would I handle that?
Someone mentioned something about players being able to "Prepare an action". Can anyone explain what this is and how it can resolve this next epic feat?
One more for you, in the Skull-Skull encounter - the Kobolds swing a skull connected to a rope down at the players that hits them and swings back to another kobold.
I was wondering, if a player wanted to grab the skull - how would I handle that?
I'd suggest an Athletics Skill roll, because its like playing dodgeball and trying to grab the ball. Success, you grab it, no damage, failure, it clonks you for its normal damage and bounces over to another Kobold. The athletics check will replace the normal AC/Reflex defense.
I think about changing the boulder so it moves 8 squares in the
first round, 7 squares in the second and so on.
This would make more sense to me since the boulder should
lose it´s momentum at some point as you already mentioned,
and would stop it to roll infinitly around the room.
What do you think about this idea?
About the warchief room with the boulder trap.
I think about changing the boulder so it moves 8 squares in the
first round, 7 squares in the second and so on.
This would make more sense to me since the boulder should
lose it´s momentum at some point as you already mentioned,
and would stop it to roll infinitly around the room.
What do you think about this idea?
A comination of that and the round room modification TiwazTyrsfist suggested would work. But fluff-wise, what is the trap even there for? The round room would have been designed specifically for the boulder trap so it's unlikely the kobolds built the room and trap.