I was going through this adventure in preparation for running it in a week and a half and started listing things that seemed off... if anyone knows if any of these are addressed somewhere, or if someone staffy or writery could weigh in on the top two, I'd appreciate it. Also, the scaling aside at the end I thought was interesting. I haven't looked at other adventures to see how those scale, but are things intentionally being scaled so that it's easier for 6 person parties and harder for 4 person parties?
Encounter 4 - So Much Blood
High Tier is 2500xp, but contains only 2100xp of creatures (Low Tier is correct). The XP for the Will o Wisps is incorrectly listed at 500, when it's actually 400. If they were 10th level, the encounter would still only have 2300XP worth of creatures. If you made all of the creatures 10th level, the xp would work out.
Encounter 5b - Angry Souls
The Ghost Legionnaires are lacking Insubstantial, but have reduced hp (76 instead of 106) and are, well, _ghosts_ so presumably should have it. Also don't have phasing, which might be desirable.
Really minor:
Encounter 3 - Boulder countermeasures refers to a burst, but should be a blast.
Encounter 8 - Text refers to eladrin soldier but should refer to knight or champion
Scaling:
While it's not a mistake like the above, the scaling appears to be insufficient for the number of players than I'd expect, greatly disfavoring 4 players and favoring 6 players.
Encounter 4 - the scaling removes only 100 XP for having only 4 people (in theory, should be 350 less at low, 500 less at high) and adds only 100 XP at low (should be 350) and 200 XP at high (should be 500). I haven't really looked at scaling that much in the past, but that seems excessively off.
Encounter 8 - 4 players get 100 XP less at low tier (should be 400) and 200 less at high tier (should be 600), and 6 players get 200 XP more (should be 400 or 600).
Encounter 9 - 4 players get 200 XP less (should be 520 low, 720 high) and 6 players get 200 more (520, 720).
Encounter 5b was +/-300 for 360/500 which seems totally close enough, just listing it for completeness.
Encounter 3 gives everything +/-1 to attack, which is also close enough. Though in both cases the rounding is still disfavoring parties of 4 (who you'd think would need the help more) and favoring parties of 6.
Overall for the adventure's 4 combat encounters with xp differences in scaling, 4 PCs face 930/1520 more xp as a group than they would in an mathematically 'each PC faces N XP' correct world and 6 PCs face 930/1420 less than they would.
Some of your post is minutae that doesn't really impact the adventure, while some of it is errata that was submitted to HQ pre-Gen Con for updating. Hopefully this is addressed soonish.
Some of it (Ghost Legionnaires) is exactly as written in Open Grave/MM2 (can't remember which). Remember that they spread the hp among the three of them, so focusing fire as a tactic doesn't work as it usually does...
It's probably inaccurate to say I favoured six player tables, but I was aware of time restraints and the burden on the DM with six players and a complicated adventure.
Certainly, many of those who have run it as written have provided some very flattering feedback, so my advice would be to do just that.
Cheers,
Joe Fitzgerald (author)
Excellent, thanks! And yeah, I listed a few things (like the entire minor section) purely because if I were listing things that might go into errata I might as well list all of it.
The Ghosts actually have an odd interaction on focused fire. You can't reduce their damage via focused fire, but you can layer on attack and damage bonuses on one of them (Inspired Belligerence and Warlord Strike for example) to maximize damage to all of them very rapidly.
The Ghosts actually have an odd interaction on focused fire. You can't reduce their damage via focused fire, but you can layer on attack and damage bonuses on one of them (Inspired Belligerence and Warlord Strike for example) to maximize damage to all of them very rapidly.
Also provides one of the best distinctions between "nailed the Religion knowledge check" and "flubbed the Religion knowledge check" that I've seen lately.
Encounter 9 - Gluttonous Cube should be a Massive Gelatinous Cube. Not that I'm sure why it's Massive since it's normal sized - perhaps it was originally a single Huge G. Cube?
Neither version of the cube is from the Monster Manual. The Massive Gelatinous Cube is from the Dungeon Delve book, and the Gluttonous Cube is from Dungeon #164.
... and yet they're both just basically scaled versions of the Gelatinous Cube. Though scaled in odd ways. Like they didn't up the attack bonus of Engulf on the gluttonous cube.
That's amusing. I guess the Compendium lets us do some stupid human tricks with adventures sometimes.
One more I missed before of the not-minor / aside nature:
Encounter 9:
Voice of Solemnity lacks its range, as a ranged attack. Also, it immobilizes but his tactic indicates he uses it to order people to walk into the cubes or into area effects.
I'm going to assume the range is intended to be 20, given his two other ranged abilities are 20, and just ignore that bit of the tactics. Though I might reduce it to 10 just to be safer. It would be nice to know the official word either way since someone I'm running it for will be running it himself a week later.
I remember seeing that during playtest, and not being able to find any official range in Open Grave or Rules Compendium at the time.
One more I missed before of the not-minor / aside nature:
Encounter 9:
Voice of Solemnity lacks its range, as a ranged attack. Also, it immobilizes but his tactic indicates he uses it to order people to walk into the cubes or into area effects.I'm going to assume the range is intended to be 20, given his two other ranged abilities are 20, and just ignore that bit of the tactics. Though I might reduce it to 10 just to be safer. It would be nice to know the official word either way since someone I'm running it for will be running it himself a week later.
There is no range provided in either. As loathe as I am to invoke logic in a rules discussion, the power is "voice" related, implying the baelnorn talks to the target, so the range should be more than enough to cover the whole of the encounter map.
Just my two cents as the author, not that it means anything in this particular instance.
Joe
Huh. Now there's a downside of using official stat blocks. Thank you both very much for the response!
Went fantastically. They actually started off down the weeping side, wrapped up every single encounter, then banged out the legionnaires after since we still had a little time left.
Probably the big thing I got back was that they expected to be able to identify and exploit the method of death from the skill challenge before the legionnaires, so I impromptu allowed them to also use Heal, Insight, Perception to help identify the method for each spirit and made it automatic for the one who got possessed. I might not have done so if we weren't just doing the encounter as a quick wrapup for the full experience, but it still felt a little more right than, for example, not getting a chance to find the vulnerabilities for the ones on the ledge (who they never went up towards)
Also that I wish the Baelnorn's projection was a minor action and that the dominate didn't immobilize, but ah well.
Hey Joe,
Quick question -
Why not a skill challenge for the boulder etc? It seems the sort of thing tailor made for a skill challenge.
Not that the "combat" didn't work well as writen (better boulder than the DMG2 one IMO), just curious as to the choice of "combat" over "skill challenge".
Joe, I don't think there is an official answer to this question, but...
How do you feel the cubes engulf power should work? Since it is described as a grab, should forced movement end the grab, or since engulf states, "the cube can move normally while creatures are engulfed within it," do creatures move with it when it is forced to move? Also, if the cube becomes dazed or stunned do creatures engulfed by it automatically escape? Or is grabbed to engulf like daze is to dominate?
I have played it once and judged it three times. The first time I ruled that forced movement and daze / stun didn't end the engulf, because that's the way the judge ran it when I played it, but that seemed to be too difficult and made the encounter last way to long. The second and third time I ruled that they ended the engulf. It worked well for the second group, but a Wizard in the third group cast Grasp of the Grave which the cubes couldn't escape from which made the engulf power useless.
My first thought is to rule that forced movement on the cube does not work (they move with the cube) but that forced movement on the player does work. So if you have a 'slide an ally' power (for example) you can slide them out, but if you have a 'slide an enemy' power it does not.
I'm also tempted to rule (although it is not RAW) that the cube can sustain its grab as a free action. You're inside of it and (imho) the grab is just being used mechanically to describe how one can escape (acrobatics or athletics). So stunning the cube doesn't suddenly move you to the outside (although I might allow an automatic success to escape a stunned cube).
Carl
Fwiw, I used that exact ruling (player yes, enemy no) on forced movement to break out.
Thankfully, the wizard at my table used his zone of IWin (Grasp of the Grave) on the Lich instead of the Cubes - it was still problematic, of course, but it was easy for the Lich to get out and stay out.