I enjoyed it a lot myself. Not only was it my first RPGA game, but it was also my first in-person game (as opposed to playing online). I liked how it took the "save the princess" story and gave it the twist of first trying to save the princess from her supposed lover (I personally thought the note was a fake). Then it turned into attack the princess. Then it turned into ally with the princess, only to have her turn into a complete flake instead of an NPC ally.
I also liked at the end that Thraven did in fact go to the guards. I personally think it would have made a more interesting story had he become a big-bad-guy in the Forgotten Realms as his motives turned out to be something much more sinister. But it was also nice to have him actually turn himself in at the end. It was a nice reward to showing him some faith (although I was sorely tempted to take all his gold as a "fine" for his behaviour ;)).
Our DM attempted to run the 3 games in 1 day in 3 hour blocks. We had to skip two battles. One trap we could have quite possibly skipped even without the DM simply declaring we didn't set off the trap. But the last fight after the Dark Creepers we had to skip entirely due to time.
All in all a good game, although I wouldn't have minded a bit more roleplaying and/or puzzles. I was convinced that the room with the two portals blocking one entrance and the fire blocking another had a secret way to stop the encounter early. I thought one way might be to open the door past the portals. It would have been nice had there been some puzzle to it.
I do have some questions though. Was the warrant against the princess genuine? One of our players got a good insight roll on it and it turned out there was something dodgy about it, but no-one was 100% sure.
Also was there any way to stop the princess from completing her ritual at the end of game 2?
So what did others think? Did anyone succeed in stopping the princess from entering the Haunted Halls? Our DM took 2 rounds to get the princess inside the HH, and I was very close to putting a flaming sphere in front of the HH entrance to stop Thraven from fleeing into them. While technically someone could have walked past it without any trouble, the DM may have roleplayed the princess to avoid the fire. So I would have been interested to see what would have happened had the princess been stopped at that stage.
We did have some pretty big problems with time. And had to cut some things to get done in the 9 hours. We had a table of 4 players, all with brand new 1st level characters, and half of the players were new to 4e as well. Each role was covered with a Swordmage, a Warlord, a Rouge and a Wizard.
We didn’t come close to stopping the Princess at the end of Part 1 or Part 2. And she fled from us through a Portal to the Feywild at the end of Part 3. We didn’t get any of the story awards from Part 2, or Part 3. We missed out on 2 treasure bundles, 1 each from both part 2 and part 3 -AND- we failed to get the Quest XP reward. So although we had a heck of a lot of fun, we weren’t all that successful.
We had 4 games going on and we had TPKs in the first encounter at 2 of them, and another TPK at another. I think each table had at least one death, and it was almost one per encounter. The only reason that 2 tables did fine was: one had a level 4 Warlock with pimped out gear who did all the work, and the other got to see everyone else do their encounter and had a nice DM.
Seriously, everyone at the FLGS was ****** off at the mod and a few commented on just leaving in the middle of it.
I'm almost convinced that the writer of the mod (Matt Ser something) works for White Wolf and devised a super unfriendly mod for new gamers just to make sure they would never buy WotC products and go for a diff RPG line. I mean even with my pimped out character and a very friendly DM (who forgot to send out a few monsters although at the same time forgot to keep damaging enemies for ongoing stuff), I had an insane time staying alive (which I did, but it was close at least 3 or 4 times).
By the way, you can't stop the Princess because no matter what you do you go into the Shadowfell -- basically because the mod had a ton of loose ends and non-variable paths which left it feeling like a connect the dots dungeon crawl.
So in a rating of 1 to 10 for difficulty, I'd give it over a 9... THOUSAND. The basic story premise was good, it was just horribly executed (or maybe was intentionally impossible for a group of 4 or 5 level 1 / 2 heroes).
Ok, rant over.
EDIT: Also, by what I mean in the difficulty, I ment if it was run CORRECTLY and followed all the rules and stipulations (such as the souls spawning each and every round). A big problem 2 or 3 of the tables faced was that one or two heroes would try to stop the Princess while the others would try to get the minions or guys coming from behind, but when it shifted over to the Shadowfell the team would get split up into 2 different encounters that would normally be average for a full group -- making it next to impossible to win without help. Not to mention if you got shifted over INTO the giant sphere of souls or next to a group of enemies... there are a lot more problems with the mod, but I think I'm done for now.
And she fled from us through a Portal to the Feywild at the end of Part 3.
When did she do that? As I said we skipped at least half of Part 3 so I'm curious when that would have happened. What we did was we took out the room with the spectral portal thing (where you start), moved to the west room after killing the wall of hands. Took out the dark creepers, 2 of us got trapped in the cage (it was me that did it the second time). Then we all went to the portal and we skipped through everything else.
We didn’t get any of the story awards from Part 2, or Part 3.
Dang. We only missed out on Rainia's Dark Realm because we skipped too much of Part 3. All of us in the Giant Room with the food was amusing. Our Rogue (who had the cantrip gloves) prestidigated the food to smell like mold so we'd all forgo the temptation to eat it. Despite that one did, and when he got the stat boost we all chowed down.
we had a heck of a lot of fun
That's the main thing
We had 4 games going on and we had TPKs in the first encounter at 2 of them, and another TPK at another.
What was the encounter level for that? We initially failed our skill challenge, but on the very next turn one of our players pretty much critted an intimidate check (if there was such a thing as a crit for intimidate. He was a Darkpack Warlock and he readied one of his daily powers, having a green gobule appear and bellowed at the elves before rolling extremely high) which persuaded our DM to re-initiate the skill check. We succeeded the second time but I do not doubt we would have had a TPK had we lost.
I think each table had at least one death, and it was almost one per encounter.
Wow. I don't think our DM incorrectly played or fudged the dice to any large degree and we had none of that problem. We did get to unconscious a few times, but that was it.
you can't stop the Princess because no matter what you do you go into the Shadowfel
Bummer. I figured as much, but I was kinda hoping there was a chance at it not happening.
A big problem 2 or 3 of the tables faced was that one or two heroes would try to stop the Princess
Aaah. We ignored our princess, although not by choice. We were hemmed in so tight we couldn't get to her if we wanted to.
but when it shifted over to the Shadowfell the team would get split up into 2 different encounters that would normally be average for a full group
Yes we managed to avoid that (although unfortunately due to some meta gaming
). I personally think it a mistake to have even the chance of throwing 2 difficult encounters at the players at the same time.Anyway sorry you didn't enjoy it.
That was a group of 1 2nd level Dragonborn inspiring Warlord, and 5 1st level characters; elven ranger, gnoll rogue, genasi swordmage, tiefling wizard, and a human ranger. Genasi and the tiefling both went down once, other than that, we played the module out in about 7 hours (started around 1030-11, finished between 830 and 9 at night). I had fun but it was frustrating as well (I think I commented that the writer of the module should be shot).
I feel that you just need an entire party that knows what to do, and make the right moves most of the time. Our DM was not forgiving when it comes to stupid mistakes on our part. Also, the insane amount of crits he rolled were mind boggling. Rolling double crits in a double attack is a moment that I will never forget.
It was HORRIBLE. The mod was freaking impossible if played correctly. I mean the story was OK, but there were almost no roleplaying parts or real skill challenges for the non-combative types.
We had 4 games going on and we had TPKs in the first encounter at 2 of them, and another TPK at another. I think each table had at least one death, and it was almost one per encounter. The only reason that 2 tables did fine was: one had a level 4 Warlock with pimped out gear who did all the work, and the other got to see everyone else do their encounter and had a nice DM.
Seriously, everyone at the FLGS was ****** off at the mod and a few commented on just leaving in the middle of it.
I'm almost convinced that the writer of the mod (Matt Ser something) works for White Wolf and devised a super unfriendly mod for new gamers just to make sure they would never buy WotC products and go for a diff RPG line. I mean even with my pimped out character and a very friendly DM (who forgot to send out a few monsters although at the same time forgot to keep damaging enemies for ongoing stuff), I had an insane time staying alive (which I did, but it was close at least 3 or 4 times).
By the way, you can't stop the Princess because no matter what you do you go into the Shadowfell -- basically because the mod had a ton of loose ends and non-variable paths which left it feeling like a connect the dots dungeon crawl.
So in a rating of 1 to 10 for difficulty, I'd give it over a 9... THOUSAND. The basic story premise was good, it was just horribly executed (or maybe was intentionally impossible for a group of 4 or 5 level 1 / 2 heroes).
Ok, rant over.
EDIT: Also, by what I mean in the difficulty, I ment if it was run CORRECTLY and followed all the rules and stipulations (such as the souls spawning each and every round). A big problem 2 or 3 of the tables faced was that one or two heroes would try to stop the Princess while the others would try to get the minions or guys coming from behind, but when it shifted over to the Shadowfell the team would get split up into 2 different encounters that would normally be average for a full group -- making it next to impossible to win without help. Not to mention if you got shifted over INTO the giant sphere of souls or next to a group of enemies... there are a lot more problems with the mod, but I think I'm done for now.
Just out of curiosity, how many of your players were new to 4th Edition?
Tales of these kinds of death, while not completely unlikely for "veterans", are typically reserved for parties who aren't that familiar with 4E, or for groups with bad party makeup.
Common mistakes are:
- Strikers going off on their own and then getting swarmed for it (leftover from the 3.5 when a rogue could face off against 2 or 3 NPCs and be okay)
- The party not focusing fire on one or two NPCs at a time (Spreading damage everywhere will-nilly is a simply not effective in 4E)
- Splitting the party (granted, the third part can start this way, depending on actions at the end of part two - but the mod does warn the GM this can be very difficult and to play it by ear. Personally, I'd have used the planar shift as an excuse to hand-wave everyone into the same room)
- Poor party makeup - always a risk in an RPGA setting where you don't know who you'll be sitting with. However not having at least one Leader, or a lack of Defenders will see strikers and controllers downed quickly by NPCs.
In short, I'm wondering if at least *some* of the difficulties you faced weren't due to lack of familiarity with 4E.
As for the end of part 2 being a "railroad" - the other option is to let people stop the "train" and then not play part 3.
Given the choices I, for one, am happy to accept the railroad.
The party not focusing fire on one or two NPCs at a time (Spreading damage everywhere will-nilly is a simply not effective in 4E)
We actually split ourselves up a couple of times and we didn't get any deaths (some of the unconsciousness may have been because of it though).
We did have a pretty good party make-up though. For the first game we had:
* Dwarven Fighter
* Human (I assume) Warlock
* Halfling Warlord
* Genasi Wizard
* Drow Rogue
The only one to ever go unconscious was our Dwarven Fighter.
For the last 2 games we had all the above as well as a Genasi SOMETHING (I'm not 100% sure he was, but it was melee and I'm pretty sure it was either a Defender or Ranger). No-one went unconscious again, although many did get bloodied and I had to give the Dwarven fighter my potion of healing.
Good Points - I really like the dynamic nature of the Toad Statue room, and the lightning pillar room encounters. The overall plot was fine as well.
Bad Points -
I despise "there is nothing you can do it happens anyway" plot nonsense, especially when the set up leads you to believe otherwise. Yes I realise you needed to have the ritual go off to have part 3, but if a party (like us) manages to get to the shield that should be the "it all goes bad" point where she completes the ritual. Not "you fight her to near death for 3 rounds and the ritual happens anyway because there is nothing you can do to stop it" Heck as it is it would have taken only a minor tactical change and we could have had the Princess out of the room anyway....
Putting a significant treasure item in an entirely optional path was a pain. (Yes I took the Obsidian Dog, and I love it.)
I despise "all the monsters hate the PCs but like each other" situations. So ending up fighting Kruthik and the Souls, along with the Cats, Wights, and Magma-hurlers was just bad. The Souls should attack everything equally, and the Toad Room monsters should be busy fighting each other, or they should ignore the PCs unless attacked (if the later is intended it needs to be clearer because we opened the door and got nuked)
The Teleportation circle reward - arrgh why put a way home before a way home, when the later way home is a reward for doing the module? Just so you can go "suck it up fan boy you missed out"? This falls into the same boat as putting 2 treasure items in an entirely optional path of the adventure.
The last issue is one of clarity, especially with regards the translator story reward. "Mercy" should be clearly defined as "you let him go" or "you hand him over to the authorities alive" or some other thing. Not just a vague thing. Reading responses I see parties that got this award for doing the same thing we did (hand him over to the law), while our DM didn't award it for that. Its not a bad DM call imo its a bad writing call.
I do have some questions though. Was the warrant against the princess genuine? One of our players got a good insight roll on it and it turned out there was something dodgy about it, but no-one was 100% sure.
I don't know about a warrant, but I found the whole premise that the princess had to live in Cormyr strange. When Tesh (my paladin of Tempus) learned the motives of the princess (after beating the snot out of her, and yes I was miffed that this didn't end the ritual), she decided the princess was a prisoner of war. Which ment it was her duty to escape - and therefor shouldn't be punished for it (though she should take a wollop for being mindbogglingly stupid. As did Thraven, the moron. And the elves that even *thought* of attacking us based on a bloody stupid note that screamed forgery to anyone with some smittering of reason).
We didn't had a lot of time for roleplaying, unfortunately, since people crammed the adventure in 9 hours. But Tesh's stance at the end was that while she was obliged to fullfill her own duty, and turn in the princess in, she was not actually comfortable with it, and felt that the Princess had a right to escape.
Still, she did talk to the princess and explained her that sometimes, people need to do their duty even if they didn't ike it - for Tesh, that means going back home and face the husband her parents have picked out for her. For the princess, that means spending the next decade in Cormyr. I think the message was put across. But part of Tesh just wanted to tell the princess to run for the woods... oh, yeah - Cormur and Myrh Drannor would risk war if she did... did I mention she worships Tempus? Our DM skipped the last encounter (with the portals). In retrospect I think that was a bad move, as it migth have changed the outcome - Tesh may have chosen to not stop the Princess had she wanted to run for the Feywild. At the least it woudl have been nice had she bene given the choice.
Anyway, it was a nice dungeon crawl, but not much more than that due to the severe limits in time we had. It was marred slightly by having incredibly stupid NPCs (though not incapable - the Princess did fairly ok once we told her what to do).
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No. In interrupted her, and actually almost knocked her out, but the riual could not be interrupted. I fund that pretty annoying, really, as it had me spend actions hoping to stop her (which seemed the most logical to do) while they could have been used whacking monsters.
As to deadlyness: we had no deaths, but we could easily had a TPK in part 1 (with the ettercaps/spiders), or part 3 (when Tesh was locked in with the princess and could not see or hear the others - let alone help them, until she had beaten herself through the wall).
And i am unsure if yous houdl include orpional dungeons (which we ran though, but which contained nothing else except treasure and a cert favor I didn't take - honestly, who eats a meal in a dungeon?) or optional portals (which we entirely missed as the DM skipped that part), in such a game.
Gomez
I have many more beefs with the mod, but they seem to have been well covered by previous posts.
There was some clever and not so clever moments in the mod by the party
a couple of well timed rolls of 20 (one as I sprinted across the room and pulled the lever).
The last encount was brutal but I was super glad there was a pit where we started to make a collection of monsters inside and blast away at them...
I think for an all level 1 party I am not sure how well it went. You really needed a mix level party especially for the third part.
One more thing I think halfling agility was the savior to the party...
My overall thoughts this was a tough but fun mod requiring some solid teamwork... If you didn't have teamwork lesson learned. The first mod had some interesting roleplaying as we were able to stop the battle through diplomacy. The rest was pretty much a dungeon crawl.
When did she do that? As I said we skipped at least half of Part 3 so I'm curious when that would have happened. What we did was we took out the room with the spectral portal thing (where you start), moved to the west room after killing the wall of hands. Took out the dark creepers, 2 of us got trapped in the cage (it was me that did it the second time). Then we all went to the portal and we skipped through everything else.
...
For us, there was a room after the Dark Creepers and cages that had a big statue with a Wight, some kind of Panthers and some Magma Hurlers. Every so often in that room a portal would appear at a random location, with a random destination. We almost had a TPK in that room, as our both our Striker and our Leader went down in that fight, due to both poor tactics and poor execution.
In the chaos of that battle the Princess ran into the portal, and got away to the Fey Wild.
We were running late, and that battle was going so bad for us, we had to drag the unconscious Warlord and Rouge (both having failed at least 1 death saving throw) into the portal home. This was a few rounds after the Princess ran through; it just happened to pop up near our 2 unconscious teammates. We took the BIG hint and ran. I think at that point the DM was just being nice about where the portal took us.
The Teleportation circle reward - arrgh why put a way home before a way home, when the later way home is a reward for doing the module? Just so you can go "suck it up fan boy you missed out"? This falls into the same boat as putting 2 treasure items in an entirely optional path of the adventure.
If you're referring to the reward described in WEEK5, that is not a portal home (to Faerûn) -- it simply allows you to 'port to that area of the Shadowfell version of the Haunted Halls (if you are already in the Shadowfell).
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No. In interrupted her, and actually almost knocked her out, but the riual could not be interrupted. I fund that pretty annoying, really, as it had me spend actions hoping to stop her (which seemed the most logical to do) while they could have been used whacking monsters.
The reason the ritual continues even after taking out the princess is the same reason the ritual takes you to the Shadowfell instead of the Feywild -- the magic that was imbued in the place was corrupted by the Spellplague...
Just out of curiosity, how many of your players were new to 4th Edition?
Tales of these kinds of death, while not completely unlikely for "veterans", are typically reserved for parties who aren't that familiar with 4E, or for groups with bad party makeup.
Common mistakes are:
- Strikers going off on their own and then getting swarmed for it (leftover from the 3.5 when a rogue could face off against 2 or 3 NPCs and be okay)
- The party not focusing fire on one or two NPCs at a time (Spreading damage everywhere will-nilly is a simply not effective in 4E)
- Splitting the party (granted, the third part can start this way, depending on actions at the end of part two - but the mod does warn the GM this can be very difficult and to play it by ear. Personally, I'd have used the planar shift as an excuse to hand-wave everyone into the same room)
- Poor party makeup - always a risk in an RPGA setting where you don't know who you'll be sitting with. However not having at least one Leader, or a lack of Defenders will see strikers and controllers downed quickly by NPCs.
In short, I'm wondering if at least *some* of the difficulties you faced weren't due to lack of familiarity with 4E.
As for the end of part 2 being a "railroad" - the other option is to let people stop the "train" and then not play part 3.
Given the choices I, for one, am happy to accept the railroad.
My question to you then is why should people have to be familiar with a game, if they are NEW to the game, in order to enjoy it and have a reasonable chance to succeed without "Divine Intervention"?
Also, railroading is always bad design when it is pitifully obvious! When designing mods, the lowest common denominator needs to be considered in all encounter design, with increasing difficulty levels being added based upon how well the DM feels the party can handle challenges. The way the mod assumes that a party is of the correct "experience" or "makeup" is garbage for an RPGA event. At the very least there should be a warning to players added at the beginning so that players don't get blindsided when nearly every monster/npc that the pc's fight has a ridiculously high attack bonus against level 1 pc's...
No. In interrupted her, and actually almost knocked her out, but the riual could not be interrupted. I fund that pretty annoying, really, as it had me spend actions hoping to stop her (which seemed the most logical to do) while they could have been used whacking monsters.
Here's what the module actually says:
"Princess Eldara continues the process of the ritual, a complex chant and dance. If interrupted, Princess Eldara is delighted to find the ritual seems to have a life of its own. She uses whatever means she must to escape interrupting PCs and continue the countdown." and
"Starting with the first round of combat, there are 6 rounds before the ritual is completed. Rounds during which Princess Eldara is forced to react to the PCs do not count toward this countdown. When the 6 rounds elapse, every creature in HH 8 and 9 are [sic] transported to the Shadowfell reflection of this area."
Basically, if she doesn't manage to spend 6 (not necessarily consecutive) rounds on the ritual (and not attacking the PCs), it isn't completed, so if you can manage to knock her unconscious before she does that, you don't get transported, absent judge empowerment.
And, of course, if you manage to do that, you get the reward of missing out entirely on Part 3 of the module.
And the princess only leaves if you were rough with her as well. If you beat her down like many did, yes she is going to take off if her portal opens.
I was kind of disappointed with the adventure not having a low/high level option. Our table ended up being: Human Wizard 4, Dragonborn Fighter 2 (leveled to 3rd after part 1), Tiefling Cleric 1 (leveled to 2nd after part 2), Dwarf Ranger 1, and Tiefling Swordmage 4 (Me!). I had expected to play the high-level version of the adventure at a table of 3's and 4's, but I was pleased that I ended up playing at a table with all party roles covered, and with people who all knew how to play 4e well. I still feel a bit swindled in that my swordmage basically just played low tier for 3 mods in order to level to 5, but I still would rather play the adventure than not.
Part 1 was a complete joke for this party. Our wizard was able to spot the elves before they "ambushed" us, and thanks to some quick diplomacy/intimidate from myself and the cleric, we were able to succeed at the skill challenge. To my knowledge, every table in the store fought the elves save ours. The spider/ettercap fight was pretty easy too, with my swordmage slashing through the webs with his flaming sword and charging the ettercap, only to be subsequently stunned by the ettercap on its turn (which I think was better to happen to the level 4 defender anyway than another, potentially squishier target). The only character who got hindered by the webs at all was the wizard, and then he was content to just hang back in his new hammock while dropping ranged AoE on the remaining monsters :P . The last fight with Thraven and the wolves, we dropped one wolf on the first round and then took two more rounds to drop the other one (only because of some horrible rolling on my part) Thraven was down on round 3.
Part 2 was very interesting but not necessarily bad. Setting off the trap, disarming it, and then running away as fast as possible seems to be the MO for this dungeon (but our DM was kind enough to give us full XP for the rooms we bypassed this way) My tiefling was the only one willing to brave the radiant fire to pick the lock on the door in the first trap room (and he doesn't even have Thievery!), and we were able to get the door open and scram before too many beasties showed up. In the portal hall, we correctly guessed which portal lead to the princess and went to the pillar room. The way our DM played this trap was that the skeleton's didn't show up until after everyone had moved through the room. Basically every square that didnt have a PC in it or was not adjacent to a pillar had a skeleton minion in it at the end of round 1. The good part was that by then we already had three pc's next to the lever. On round 2, we pull the lever and start mopping up the skellies. While my warlock with 2 certain rods could have done much better here, we handled ourselves pretty well. The ranger managed to take out a few with dire wolverine strike, and the fighter added to the kill total with a Spinning Sweep. Unfortunately the wizard was caught on the other side of the room surrounded by skeletons and got owned in the face before fleeing thru the portal. The cleric's turn undead and a couple swings of greenflame blade from me ended the fight, and we patched up before getting to the next room. In the fight with the princess, I was the only one to get thru the wall at first. I was able to take out a few minions, and the ranger got thru the wall at the end of the round, tying up a lot of kruthiks. This left a free path for the fighter to move up to the princess's barrier and charge straight thru it. Unfortunately for him, she walked straight out again, leaving him trapped inside the bubble for the rest of the fight. The wizard and the cleric were unable to just step through the wall, and decided to spend 2 rounds blasting through it. Meanwhile, the ranger and I hacked our way thru the kruthik hatchlings, and then the princess eyebit(?) the ranger, dropping him. I charged the princess and foesnared her. By then the wizard and cleric were thru, and the wizard's flaming sphere wiped up the remaining kruthiks. I was able to grab the diadem from the princess' hand as the vengeful ranger knocked her out, but unfortunately we were boxed-text'd into part 3 despite having stopped the ritual with 4 rounds to go.
I had a few sticklers with part 2.
Firstly, if the ritual is completely unstoppable, you should at least let the PC's know ahead of time so they don't feel like their actions were meaningless. I'd certainly rather go on to part 3 than just stop the ritual and that's it, mod over. But maybe something like when she drops, the diadem hits the floor and starts to glow, and the resulting wave of arcane power causes the planar shift. Just having her magically complete the ritual in half the time it's supposed to take at the instant of her death makes the party feel completely worthless, since that would have happened either way. In short I was unhappy with the conclusion of part 2 because the mod basically plays itself.
Also, if you're going to include optional rooms, please don't make those optional encounters the only way to get story awards for a mod. If there'd been just one additional story award from the optional rooms I'd have been satisfied. But lumping all of a mod's story awards and the better part of its treasure bundles into areas that the party may not even visit if they play the mod correctly is just unfair in my thinking. As I said, I'd rather that part 2 had 2 story awards, one for the optional rooms and one for the rest of the dungeon (even something generic, like "Explored the Haunted Halls") The onyx dog was the only good item here, and I didn't get access to it because of the arbitrary way the mod is written (ie, if you go straight to the princess, you can't go back later and get the stuff from the optional rooms, even after you escape from the shadowfell version.)
Anyways, on to part 3:
The worst part of the mod in my opinion. I've already addressed the railroading issues involved in getting the party here, so enough on that. We were lucky enough to not have anyone get dropped right into the spirit vortex, so that was good. The main problem with this fight is the crime against monsters that is the afflicted soul. We were lucky enough to have only 2 spawn, but still. An invulnerable monster that inflicts attack penalties and necrotic damage, even with speed 1, is too much in a very small room with a significant amount of other creatures in it. Both the ranger and myself dropped in this fight, and then we were out of healing for the dark creeper fight immediately after it. The creepers were easily trapped within their own room by the wizard's flaming sphere, and coupled with the help of the fighter and a last ditch effort by yours truly, we were able to get through ok, although the ranger was then out of healing surges. My problem with this mostly comes from the utter crap of the afflicted souls, which basically means that you are required to do two fights back to back. This was hard for our experienced party, so I can't even begin to imagine the horrors that this could inflict on a party of 4e noobs. I think it reflects bad design at best, or a malicious writer at worst, but I can say that nobody died, it was just really really challenging. I don't think it was total ****** mind you, I just think that it's questionable to put in a situation like that in a mod that is, for all intents and purposes, supposed to encourage people to play LFR.
Anyways, the last fight, the room with hurlers and wights and fey panthers, was easy for us, owing to a hefty degree of luck in our DM's rolls. We only had to fight 1 wight, 2 magma hurlers, and 2 panthers before snagging the portal out of there. Another great and easy fight, with only one character having difficulty crossing the pit (me, in a rather unglorious toss of the dice)
All in all, I was impressed with the adventure. Like I said, some things could have been done better/differently, but overall I feel like my day was not wasted going there.
On a related note, can any admins give me some inkling as to what is being done with the survey that was taken? I'd really like to see some of those options get fleshed out in the coming year!
Enjoy!
Just out of curiosity, how many of your players were new to 4th Edition?
Tales of these kinds of death, while not completely unlikely for "veterans", are typically reserved for parties who aren't that familiar with 4E, or for groups with bad party makeup.
Common mistakes are:
- Strikers going off on their own and then getting swarmed for it (leftover from the 3.5 when a rogue could face off against 2 or 3 NPCs and be okay)
- The party not focusing fire on one or two NPCs at a time (Spreading damage everywhere will-nilly is a simply not effective in 4E)
- Splitting the party (granted, the third part can start this way, depending on actions at the end of part two - but the mod does warn the GM this can be very difficult and to play it by ear. Personally, I'd have used the planar shift as an excuse to hand-wave everyone into the same room)
- Poor party makeup - always a risk in an RPGA setting where you don't know who you'll be sitting with. However not having at least one Leader, or a lack of Defenders will see strikers and controllers downed quickly by NPCs.
In short, I'm wondering if at least *some* of the difficulties you faced weren't due to lack of familiarity with 4E.
As for the end of part 2 being a "railroad" - the other option is to let people stop the "train" and then not play part 3.
Given the choices I, for one, am happy to accept the railroad.
Only one person had not played 4E before. Most people there had played at least 2 or 3 mods before and were big LG fans.
I think most of you got off easy because you either ran from encounters, or had a nice DM who helped you. Like in the first encounter the Elves are suppost to shoot first and ONLY if you stop and talk to them does the skill challenge start (who would think to talk after they already almost killed half of your party).
The room with the spawning skeletons was pretty nasty for one group, who kept moving non-stop and caused the entire room to spawn skeletons. Especially considering they had no AoE attacks. By the time they got to figuring out to flip the switch, they had at least 2 or 3 skeletons between them and it and could do nothing but slowly stand still and wack one by one.
We didn't make any huge mistakes that we could have stopped. Besides the Rogue running off to fight the ettercaps by himself, getting knocked down, and then having the spider jump and attack our Wizard in the back (which killed him) -- we didn't mess much up. A few of our DMs had amazing dice rolls (5 or 6 crits in a battle), but it wasn't that which made it hard.
The last room wasn't so hard, as one of our teammates got hit and then we spent the next two rounds or so making Arcane checks to figure out what happened. I'd also say it was getting late and our DM wanted to go home, but the last encounter was probably the easiest.
Part 1: The initial encounter is fairly confusing as written, with lots of options based on what gets wiped out and what actions are taken. Could be edited a bit better. I read it a few times before we played, and was able to comfortably handle it. My party attacked for a round or two before anyone spoke up, then just narrowly beat the skill challenge. In terms of me having a good grasp of what was going on and where things were going, this was the most confusing, just because of how the encounter is put together.
The encounter with the spiders, and then the next one with Thraven both went very easy for the party. We had 3 rangers, and they were rolling massive dmg each round. A few people got stuck, and one almost got beaten to death by the Ettercap, but managed to drop it just in time. The Deathjump went after the wizard by virtue of positioning, and smacked him around a bit, but it didn't really amount to anything.
Part 2: The random portal room wasn't too bad. They were able to take out each beastie within a round or two, so it never really got unbearable. I didn't like that there was no way to stop the trap, and since it seemed to be magical and our Wizard was trying to figure out how it worked, I let a DC 17 Arcana check drop one round off of how long the trap went. Otherwise the party was chewing through the bad guys too quickly to even give the Wizard anything to do, and that's no fun.
We were short on time, so I hand-waived the extra encounter, and told them that I would let them run it after part 3 if they wanted.
The party figured out the Lightning pillar room pretty quickly. The tank walked through the pillars, while the rest of the party blasted the skeles from range. A few of the skeletons managed to trigger the trap themselves, but there were never more than 7 or 8 on the map at the same time, so it never got overwhelming.
In the final room, the PCs managed to get to Eldara JUST as the ritual concluded. They were very upset with her, and made it known that they would have LIKED to beat the tar out of her, but I built the tension at part 3 enough that they focused on the other threats.
Part 3: This part was my favorite from a descriptive standpoint... I really enjoyed painting the scene as the Vortex of Souls spirals through the room, Eldara colapsing to her knees screaming, and building increasing tension. The party decided early to take a run 'n gun approach to the encounter, which turned out to be a very good thing.
The parties die-luck had changed, and they had a hard time moping up the last of the enemies that came along for the ride, let alone the new stuff the vortex was spitting out. They hacked their way through the zombie wall just as some of the area attks fired, and I got very close to having 4 PCs fall all from the same attk. They darted through the shadow cage room, the wizard forcing the dark creepers to the corners of the room, while the rest of the party ran past the statue and let the cage gobble them up.
In the last portal room they managed to get the door open quietly and observe the room for long enough to have a general idea of what was happening (although by chance a portal back home didn't open during the time they were watching). Two people vaulted the pit and drew the enemies to the corner, so the rest of the group could jump and run. We were late on time by this point, so once they got into the entrance hall and noticed the runes, I let them hold the doors while Eldara sent them all back home.
The third part was fairly wicked, and I did wind up pulling a few punches in places. Normally I would have let one or two people drop, but where they had decided to make a break for it that only would have resulted in bringing the whole party to a stop and quite possibly have resulted in a TPK. Tactically they had made sound decisions, but they just wern't quite getting the die rolls to support it.
In talking with the players afterward they were pretty happy with the story and the encounter setup. It was definitely a little railroadish, but by keeping the tension high and tweaking things just right they were mostly too busy running to catch Eldara or running for their lives to care!
As far as the module, there were a few obvious editing mistakes, and a few situations where sections could have been re-written to make things clearer, but between reading through the stickied thread here to find out what questions people had and what problems the slot-0's had run into, as well as reviewing the module a couple times, I think I was able to present an experience that was quite enjoyable for myself and my players.
I would have liked to see a bit more story and opportunity for extra-party roleplaying (only really had it at the beginning, and end of part 2/start of part 3). I really don't care for the separate room descriptions and tactical encounter sections, and I really would have liked a tile listing for each encounter instead of having to pull out my sets and try figure out what tiles were needed for each encounter.
Final word: Overall fun, but there could have been some changes to make it easier for the DM's, and in our case at least, part 3 was SUBSTANTIALLY harder than 1 and 2.
Human warrior. Dragonborn Paladin. Half-elf Cleric/Warlock/Wizard. Drow Rogue.
I generally used to the scaling notes (forgot in a couple of encounters)
enc 1.1) It started poorly, with the party spotting the elves and the elves winning init and opening up with longbows. This was a damn long fight due to the -2 rain and bad rolls being abundant (three archers fought the paladin for 4 rounds alone. 12 arrows. 1 hit!).
when two elves where left (one on 4hp, the 1st ed HP of an elf) The three people with intimidate trained all cow the last elves into submission.
The party got a few answers from the prisoners, somehow got the idea that Bozul is evil (Is his title 'grand vizer?') but relented a bit and accepted his mission to track down the princess and diadem.
enc 1.2) The spider got two nat 20s for maximum face-biting. a nasty fight, mostly due to bad luck.
enc 1.3) A push over, although the wolves won init and totally fenced in the party at the bottom of the map/gorge. Thraven went down pretty quickly and wasn't spared.
enc 2.1) Players where not impressed with using combat mapping/timing in an area with no maps. The monsters got smacked down pretty hard and I forgot the doorway-traps for when people went to open the door-lock. A push over.
the players checked the east portal first and where confused by the fresh food, then they tried the west portal and decided that the food was a better bet. no one touched it of course, as if you eat fresh food you find a disused dungeon you get what you deserve!
enc 2.?)
Four clay scouts (the tileset library tile has four shelves) that's insane! I dropped it to three (by exp-calculation rules) and they still barely survived. Good tactics though, separating them and keeping only one person in melee range, where possible.
enc 2.2)
The lighting puzzle. They hated it, so i was concerned about how they would cope with the 'souls' later on. Their first idea involved spotting a path that you would walk that was adjacent to TWO pillars at all times, thinking that the effects might cancel out (an interesting idea) this resulted in 8 minions and a slightly fried rogue. The minions where put down fast and a new plan was formed. Run really fast!
The fighter got into a position where he would only trip 2-3 squares, so the rest readied some AoEs and the fight made his athletics check (for sprinting so the minions would appear behind him)... nat 1! However wit a cleave and a action point he made it through. I made it so the lever would shut down the pillars at the end of the round, to make it last a little longer.
enc 2.3) I upped the barrier HP to 50hp, which worked great as the last shield was dropped at the end of round five and the princess managed to mostly keep away for one round. The cleric remained behind the silver-wall line until their last action, which was to shift over it. Close call there.
enc 3.1-2) Ouch, who the hell put infinitely-spawning, un-killable monsters in here? I mean WTF? not even attack-able with radiant damage or turn undead?
well, the princess surrendered in the first round (possibly the first action) and the party got hit pretty bad by the undead but they liked the zombie-wall. Then they killed it (50hp again) I had one section 'die' and had the rest 'rot away, one part at a time.
Once past the zombie-wall, the players had worse luck. The cages where not actually a problem. The cleric fell in one and proceeded to lockpick her way out (as you do) but after that people just diagonally moved and avoided them. The dark creepers, err, crept well, flanking the fighter in a heap, twice, they where made more scary by the slow advance of the souls. One person spent one round searching the crates and failed their roll, thus denying the party of some really nice things.
Once through the portal, the party was able to get the princess's side of the story
enc 3.3) If I put respawning monsters and random removed-from-play effects in an adventure I wrote, I would get beaten with sticks!
tallies:
extra monsters: 3
characters ported away: 0
characters for portal-damage: 0
times the PCs are bleeding out: 5
times the wight passed it's climb check for the pit: 9
times the wight actually got to drag someone into the pit: 1
why couldn't the magic gemstone have stopped/controlled the portals?
RPGA rules:
We where all first-timers with RPGA rules, so the limited magic item/bundle thing was a bit confusing.
plot holes:
where was the diadem kept? (the princess carriage? Bozul's Carriage? was it given to Myth-Draynor earlier)
when was it stolen? (If it was sent to Myth-Dranyor, how the hell did Thraven get hold of it?)
How did the elves get the note?
how do the party on foot (speed 5-7), catch up with the princess who is riding a direwolf(speed 8)? (And the players will be slowed by having to track)
NPCs who are incorrectly informed in this adventure: All of them!
Synopsis:
A limited dungeon-crawling adventure. It does it's job as a pure dungeon, but is hardly a flagship for the hobby (although the players are trying to organise more LFR games)
random:
We used the suggested dungeon tiles (a shop copy from the shop where we played). These damn things need to come in a box!
notable quotes:
rogue: I hold on to her face with dagger.
GM: well, it would give you more traction.
rogue: I think we should torture them all to death, because they are evil.
paladin: SMASH! wait, mark first, then SMASH!
GM: these damn things should come in a box!
rogue: I'll try to intimidate her, if it fails I'll just have to kill her! damnit!
GM: taking one longbow from the fallen, to better fight the threat both sides face, is respectful... taking all their weapons and armour to sell at market is not respectful.
cleric: So how much is the gold-cat-statue worth?
GM: err, 75gp each
rogue: How convenient.
rouge: why did this happen?
GM: probably the passage of time and a spellplague
paladin: ah, the spellplague! It's an explanation for everything. failed rituals, warforged, what happened to Klingon's faces.
Just out of curiosity, how many of your players were new to 4th Edition?
Tales of these kinds of death, while not completely unlikely for "veterans", are typically reserved for parties who aren't that familiar with 4E, or for groups with bad party makeup.
Out of curiosity, do you really lay TPKs of tables that are unfamiliar with the game playing *at an intro game* at the feet of new players? Or at the feet of the writer? Or the GM?
Personally, as a GM if it was a table of new or relatively new players, I would have softballed it, or at least warned against all of the things you said. But if the mod makes the assumption that all players will do the "right thing (tm)", I still call that a badly written module. Or at least a cut-throat one.
Of course, I do make the assumption that this was intended to be an introductory adventure.
regarding the various encounters. Encounters 7, the first part of the 3rd mod ... the infinitely spawning and unkillable creatures only move one square a turn and only one appears per turn after the last spectre appears. So you really could avoid these things if you wanted to. If your party managed to trigger this encounter and then ran into the next room and got the dark creepers involved too, yeah, that could get painful fast.
As for the encounter with the portals: None of the portals could remove a character from play unless they wanted to. The only two portals that would take players anywhere were the portal back to the Haunted Halls or the one to the Feywild and that one could only take you if you were Fey, and you had a choice not to.
So, I think perhaps you might have misread some of the encounters. Not that some of them weren't dangerous, they were, but the specific problems you mentioned weren't nearly as bad.
regarding the various encounters. Encounters 7, the first part of the 3rd mod ... the infinitely spawning and unkillable creatures only move one square a turn and only one appears per turn after the last spectre appears. So you really could avoid these things if you wanted to. If your party managed to trigger this encounter and then ran into the next room and got the dark creepers involved too, yeah, that could get painful fast.
There is no way to avoid fighting the Dark Creepers and souls at the same time. They only move 1 per round but there where 10 in play by the time the PC got into room 8.
As for the encounter with the portals: None of the portals could remove a character from play unless they wanted to. The only two portals that would take players anywhere were the portal back to the Haunted Halls or the one to the Feywild and that one could only take you if you were Fey, and you had a choice not to.
So, I think perhaps you might have misread some of the encounters. Not that some of them weren't dangerous, they were, but the specific problems you mentioned weren't nearly as bad.
Actually I did do this one wrong, running the portals in the same way as they worked in the original version of the room, hitting individual squares as opposed to lines. Still, the haunted halls portal can remove players from the fight early if the reflex attack hits.
There is no way to avoid fighting the Dark Creepers and souls at the same time. They only move 1 per round but there where 10 in play by the time the PC got into room 8.
Careful with absolutes. Our table did in fact manage this. I'm sure that part of this was due to the fact that all of us are experienced players and so we managed our tactics well; don't split the party, concentrate fire, don't trigger multiple encounters, manage the battlefield, manage your enemies (if possible), etc. We didn't open the door to the next encounter until we absolutely had to, especially since we assumed something along the lines of "there'll be more lightning rods in the next room with tons of spawning undead". Turns out we were wrong on that count but you get the point.
Careful with absolutes. Our table did in fact manage this. I'm sure that part of this was due to the fact that all of us are experienced players and so we managed our tactics well; don't split the party, concentrate fire, don't trigger multiple encounters, manage the battlefield, manage your enemies (if possible), etc. We didn't open the door to the next encounter until we absolutely had to, especially since we assumed something along the lines of "there'll be more lightning rods in the next room with tons of spawning undead". Turns out we were wrong on that count but you get the point.
That does not allow you to avoid fighting the Dark Creepers whilst the Tortured Souls are still in play - quite the reverse, in fact. Going by the module, those souls keep right on spawning at a rate of one per round indefinitely and are utterly invulnerable to anything, so the longer you wait before opening the next door, the more of them are in the room with you.
If you get pinned down in any way whatsoever once you do open the door to the Dark Creepers, then you have to contend with the fact that those souls are creeping up behind you at a rate of one square per round - which isn't much if you've got room to move, but starts feeling pretty darn zombie-horde-inexorable if you don't.
Let's say that up until the point where you decide to enter the next room you've been fighting in the corner where the Princess was in Part 2. ie - the far corner from the door you'll go to next. Let's say that the little bits of necrotic energy all spawn in the square most optimal for attacking the party, ie - nearest the party member closest to the vortex. There's actually nothing in the mod that says they have to, and in fact for parties having a problem with this, your GM could probably have randomized their spawn point. But that is neither here nor there.
Now, for the rounds you spend fighting the kruthiks and the specters in the big room, the little bits (they don't appear for the first 3-4 rounds) end up all aiming for the far corner, where your party is currently fighting. Thus they aren't trying to get to the next room at all. This can result, at one square of movement per round, in them being many rounds away from that door when you do head there. This gives you a lot of leeway.
"But," you say, "that as soon as you enter the next room, they come after you." Yep, sure. And they have a minimum of 4 rounds before they are even in that room and 5 or 6 rounds before they can attack anything in there. That assumes that either they appear in the closest square to the door, or that there was a little bit of necro-spawn near the door.
If you had been fighting near the door, yeah, there would be a problem that they'd be near it too. And we had one of those because someone had to open the door and we kind of bunched up near the door. But we still had 3 rounds before it or the rest were inside the next room, and by then we'd managed to deal with most of the creepers. We never took damage from the necro-spawn once we entered the creeper room.
Btw, if you play WoW, this is also known as "kiting".
I did like the third part with the challenge of new monsters spawning and pushing us through the encounter. I wasn't too keen on the respawning of odd creatures that just knew to attack us and not each other...it didn't feel right having undead, fey panthers and magmamen all on the same side fighting us.
The treasure could have been abit more thought out and tiers would have been nicer but we were impressed with the time and effort that Wizards and the RPGA went through to put on this event. I hope they do more in the future.
A very satisfied customer.
Basically, if she doesn't manage to spend 6 (not necessarily consecutive) rounds on the ritual (and not attacking the PCs), it isn't completed, so if you can manage to knock her unconscious before she does that, you don't get transported, absent judge empowerment.
And, of course, if you manage to do that, you get the reward of missing out entirely on Part 3 of the module.
HA! Well I'm glad there is a way to stop her, although I don't blame DMs for ignoring this so they can run Part 3.
And the princess only leaves if you were rough with her as well. If you beat her down like many did, yes she is going to take off if her portal opens.
Huh. Our princess managed to evade evade attack. And then when did her "I'm a wimp" routine a couple of us were inclined to beat her up (myself included) but managed to restrain ourselves. I don't feel so bad our DM had to skip Toad Hall then
Our wizard was able to spot the elves before they "ambushed" us
We had to use our passive perceptions!
(who would think to talk after they already almost killed half of your party).
We did actually. They got 2 rounds off and shot my wizard and our rogue only once each, which bloodied us both. After we saw their power we were desperate to do anything but fight ;) I'm confident this would have TPK'd us.
Human Rogue pretty much killed all the BBGs in a few rounds, doing around 20-30 points of damage. Pretty much every combat was the warlock taking care of minions with the other three setting up the same 'trap'. The swordmage and Rogue would flank with the Paladin on one side. The swordmage would lightening lure in each enemy and it took about a round or two to kill the non-minion enemies.
The first portal room didn't take them long, they had it each enemy killed in about 2 rounds. The rogue stealthed the goods from the library and bedroom. The end of part 2 took all of 30 seconds. There was one young bug and the rest were minions (per the scaling rules). Dark Pact burned a daily, the head person failed the save, spreading the auto 5 damage to everyone else...
Beginning of part three they just ran to the zombie wall and escaped through the portal in about 3 rounds, taking out the creepers with their 'trap'.
The last portal room basically had them waiting for the right portal and fending off the attacks. Pretty easy for them. It wasn't easy for them. I hit them pretty hard most of the time, and the paladin was the healer.
Basically, if she doesn't manage to spend 6 (not necessarily consecutive) rounds on the ritual (and not attacking the PCs), it isn't completed, so if you can manage to knock her unconscious before she does that, you don't get transported, absent judge empowerment.
In that case, ouras she spent at least two rounds reacting (and attacking my character), I *would* have had plenty of opportunity to knock her out before the ritual ended.
And, of course, if you manage to do that, you get the reward of missing out entirely on Part 3 of the module.
Well, we didn't knew that, did we? And I don't think I would have minded, given that the 3rd part for us was 'fight', 'fight', skip everything else since we ran out of time.
If you're referring to the reward described in WEEK5, that is not a portal home (to Faerûn) -- it simply allows you to 'port to that area of the Shadowfell version of the Haunted Halls (if you are already in the Shadowfell)...
You say that like such a thing might not actually come to be a useful thing over 30 levels of play.... (ie yes I know what it is, it says it right there on the cert, that doesn't make the unlikelihood of getting it any better)
Here's what the module actually says:
"Princess Eldara continues the process of the ritual, a complex chant and dance. If interrupted, Princess Eldara is delighted to find the ritual seems to have a life of its own. She uses whatever means she must to escape interrupting PCs and continue the countdown." and
"Starting with the first round of combat, there are 6 rounds before the ritual is completed. Rounds during which Princess Eldara is forced to react to the PCs do not count toward this countdown. When the 6 rounds elapse, every creature in HH 8 and 9 are [sic] transported to the Shadowfell reflection of this area."
Basically, if she doesn't manage to spend 6 (not necessarily consecutive) rounds on the ritual (and not attacking the PCs), it isn't completed, so if you can manage to knock her unconscious before she does that, you don't get transported, absent judge empowerment.
And, of course, if you manage to do that, you get the reward of missing out entirely on Part 3 of the module.
Ah re-affirming my faith in my DM (who used his discretion) and my disappointment with the module. Our party interrupted the princess on round 3, and fought the princess for 3 rounds killing all but 2 Kruthik in the same time frame. If the DM had followed the module as explained here we would not have gotten to do the third part, that's extremely bad writing. (Which based on the latest Dragon article, is even more disappointing as Mr Sernett can write well.)
Frankly imo both are bad writing, and below the author's apparent ability.
However, I will say that we recognized that the difficulty level of the adventure was considerably higher than most. I personally find that to be a good thing, given that it was a special event - but I am surprised at the fact that it was announced as a "great introduction to LFR." I would expect most parties of new players playing new characters to get TPKed at some point in the adventure.
We were fortunate enough to have a DM that recognized his right to "DM empowerment" and adjusted the module in such a way as to force us to enter the library and retrieve the treasure found therein (afterall, players don't have as much fun when they miss out on treasure and fun is what this game is all about).
While I thought that the adventure was interesting and had some creative encounters, I'm pretty disappointed in Matt Sernett overall. Here's where I think he dropped the ball:
1. The module was far too eladrin-friendly. The lightning room was essentially negated by a single eladrin whereas other parties had to waste an hour fighting minions. Furthermore, spawning a handful of minions with each step is a major time-sink. It really slows down the game and players stop having fun. None of us found the room challenging - just boring.
2. Players shouldn't miss out on treasure if they make no mistakes. Simple as that. You should never be penalized for making a random decision when faced with no other option. Thank goodness for DM empowerment.
3. Final encounter - good idea but a few issues. First of all, an encounter that removes PCs from the fight permanently is never good. Second of all, the players need a little bit more of a hint as to what they should be trying to do. Once we figured out that there will always be two of each type of bad guy in the room, we ran through the room, figuring we could teleport out elsewhere. Then we had to come back and jump through the portals. Had we been given some sort of a hint (or an opportunity to receive one), we might have had fun readying actions to jump through the portals when we were in the room the first time (rather than our DM saying "I won't run this again, now that you know what to do" which no one blames him for after spending an hour in there).
Overall, it had potential, but I expect more from a WotC designer.
The module was far too eladrin-friendly. The lightning room was essentially negated by a single eladrin whereas other parties had to waste an hour fighting minions. Furthermore, spawning a handful of minions with each step is a major time-sink. It really slows down the game and players stop having fun. None of us found the room challenging - just boring.
I'll point out that the switch could be thrown with Mage Hand -- and Hedge Wizard's Gloves were provided in the module.
On the whole, though, I agree that this adventure was disappointing, especially for something that was touted to be an introduction to the Realms for new players. Almost all fighting, and almost no roleplaying. People who want miniatures combat (and nothing but) have a perfectly good miniatures game to play -- lets put the "RP" back in "RPGA"!
I'll point out that the switch could be thrown with Mage Hand -- and Hedge Wizard's Gloves were provided in the module.
On the whole, though, I agree that this adventure was disappointing, especially for something that was touted to be an introduction to the Realms for new players. Almost all fighting, and almost no roleplaying. People who want miniatures combat (and nothing but) have a perfectly good miniatures game to play -- lets put the "RP" back in "RPGA"!
It's been ruled elsewhere that Mage Hand doesn't have a Strength Score, and therefore can't make a Strength Check.
I'll point out that the switch could be thrown with Mage Hand -- and Hedge Wizard's Gloves were provided in the module.
Mage Hand is not strong enough to move the lever, IMHO -- Mage Hand can manipulate up to 20 lbs., which is way less than what would be exerted by a DC 15 Strength check.
If you're referring to the reward described in WEEK5, that is not a portal home (to Faerûn) -- it simply allows you to 'port to that area of the Shadowfell version of the Haunted Halls (if you are already in the Shadowfell).
You say that like such a thing might not actually come to be a useful thing over 30 levels of play.... (ie yes I know what it is, it says it right there on the cert, that doesn't make the unlikelihood of getting it any better)
I don't believe I suggested that it was not useful to have; on the contrary, it is extremely useful, as you will always have a way home if you ever get shunted to the Shadowfell (as long as someone in your party has the Linked Portal ritual).
The poster to whom I was responding, however, suggested that the inscribed area was also a portal back to the "original" Haunted Halls (in Faerûn), when in fact the only way back was the "traveling" portals in the Toad Hall.
It's been ruled elsewhere that Mage Hand doesn't have a Strength Score, and therefore can't make a Strength Check.
My thoughts exactly.
I played through it twice this weekend at different venues with basically a completely different set of people.
On Saturday we had a fairly high powered group:
Eladrin Swordmage 4
Elf Rogue 1
Dwarf Artificer 2
Warforged Warlock (melee) 2
Human Fighter 3
Show
Day 1 Summary:
1-1
The elven ambush at the beginning looked scary as it bloodied 2 people in the surprise round but then defenders got into position and the rest of the encounter was quite easy.
The Ettercapps were engaged by the 2 defenders while the Warlock and the rogue took on the spider. Artificer kept people from taking too much damage and provided occasional bonuses.
The Wolves were slaughtered. Thraven was captured and brought back to the caravan. Where we rested before continuing into the halls. We received both story rewards.
1-2
We get a 2nd level cleric joining us.
the first thing or 2 out of the portal gets critted and then most of the party has readied actions from then on out and most of the monsters don't even get an action.
We get to the split and spend some time examining the portals, one seems slightly electrical so we go through the other first. We spend some time examining the stuff, slaughter the monsters and about half the party eats the food, the other half doesn't even after seeing the beneficial effect.
We see the lever and the suspicious pillars so our eladrin swordmage teleports over and takes 20 on the str check to pull the lever (although we did try the mage hand gloves first) We still manage to trigger a pillar as we don't wait from them all to power down. 6 skeletons are no problem and we move onto the final encounter.
A couple characters teleport through the barrier and the fighter and rogue push their way through fairly quickly. The poor artificer pound his head against the wall repeatedly. We manage to knock the princess out before the ritual is complete but "it appears to take a life of it's own" and continues anyway. We're in the process of fleeing (half of us in the pillar room and the other half in the ritual room) when the world goes kaboom.
1-3
We start exactly where we ended part 2 (although with an extended rest)
So the artificer and the cleric are in the well of souls room while the fighter, warlock and astara are in one cage, the swordmage is free and the rogue is in another cage. (also as soon as we try to start attack through the cages the gm corrects himself that they are walls instead)
This fight is brutal on us. I think we used all our dailies surviving, but eventually we got the party back together and continued into the next part (this combined fight took us 2 and a half hours)
The cells were very frustrating, The rogue picks his lock after a couple tries and walks out only to be sucked back in as he steps outside. Same thing happens to the fighter after damaging his way out so he get's a little pissy and goes action point daily smack it for another ~30. GM realizes it's really obnoxious at this point and lets the extra damage disable it. On the rogue's next turn he uses tumble to get by the door quickly and the GM has the door not grab him in that case.
The last fight was fairly easy for us, we beat up the monsters, convinced the Princess to come with us and figured out that we needed ready actions to escape. Monsters started respawning but we weren't in serious danger from them and since it was late the GM fiated that eventually we got a portal home instead of wasting time rolling dice to see how many rounds the monsters got to beat on us.
Day 1 Summary:
1-1
The elven ambush at the beginning looked scary as it bloodied 2 people in the surprise round but then defenders got into position and the rest of the encounter was quite easy.
The Ettercapps were engaged by the 2 defenders while the Warlock and the rogue took on the spider. Artificer kept people from taking too much damage and provided occasional bonuses.
The Wolves were slaughtered. Thraven was captured and brought back to the caravan. Where we rested before continuing into the halls. We received both story rewards.
1-2
We get a 2nd level cleric joining us.
the first thing or 2 out of the portal gets critted and then most of the party has readied actions from then on out and most of the monsters don't even get an action.
We get to the split and spend some time examining the portals, one seems slightly electrical so we go through the other first. We spend some time examining the stuff, slaughter the monsters and about half the party eats the food, the other half doesn't even after seeing the beneficial effect.
We see the lever and the suspicious pillars so our eladrin swordmage teleports over and takes 20 on the str check to pull the lever (although we did try the mage hand gloves first) We still manage to trigger a pillar as we don't wait from them all to power down. 6 skeletons are no problem and we move onto the final encounter.
A couple characters teleport through the barrier and the fighter and rogue push their way through fairly quickly. The poor artificer pound his head against the wall repeatedly. We manage to knock the princess out before the ritual is complete but "it appears to take a life of it's own" and continues anyway. We're in the process of fleeing (half of us in the pillar room and the other half in the ritual room) when the world goes kaboom.
1-3
We start exactly where we ended part 2 (although with an extended rest)
So the artificer and the cleric are in the well of souls room while the fighter, warlock and astara are in one cage, the swordmage is free and the rogue is in another cage. (also as soon as we try to start attack through the cages the gm corrects himself that they are walls instead)
This fight is brutal on us. I think we used all our dailies surviving, but eventually we got the party back together and continued into the next part (this combined fight took us 2 and a half hours)
The cells were very frustrating, The rogue picks his lock after a couple tries and walks out only to be sucked back in as he steps outside. Same thing happens to the fighter after damaging his way out so he get's a little pissy and goes action point daily smack it for another ~30. GM realizes it's really obnoxious at this point and lets the extra damage disable it. On the rogue's next turn he uses tumble to get by the door quickly and the GM has the door not grab him in that case.
The last fight was fairly easy for us, we beat up the monsters, convinced the Princess to come with us and figured out that we needed ready actions to escape. Monsters started respawning but we weren't in serious danger from them and since it was late the GM fiated that eventually we got a portal home instead of wasting time rolling dice to see how many rounds the monsters got to beat on us.
When I was DM with 5 PCs (2 strikers, 2 defenders, 1 leader):
1.The elven fight was brutal, and I was rolling poorly. I didn't focus fire, but if they do then one PC will go down in the suprise round and likely the archers will go before the PCs in the regular round.
2.Ettercap web and the other ettercap's stunning bite plus a very mobile spider that knocks people prone and poisons them knocked out the rogue before he even got to go. The rest of the battle was similar to this and took a long time because of their big hp, even with two rogues.
3.This battle turned out much better, as the damage output from the monsters was less. Also, Thraven missed with his daily.
The second part was not bad. However, my group had a mess in the skeleton, lightning pillars encounter. By the time they got to the lever, the entire room was nearly packed with skeletons. The sheer number of them meant people were getting hit and going down. I guess the results of this encounter vary greatly from table to table, depending on how they plan to get to the lever.
The third part really tested my PCs:
1. The fight with the undead was okay, but the indestructable soul vestiges meant they could not rest, which resulted in the party running to into the second battle without a short rest.
2.By this time, the party had exhausted their healing, so they were easy to knock out with the dark creepers, who had little problems avoiding the OAs with their shadow move. The PCs decided to just run for the exit.
3.A difficult battle even with a short rest, with 5 monsters and all of them having around 50 hp each. By this time my tactics were pretty poor due to exhaustion, but the magma hurlers and the panthers brought the defender down even with 21 AC (with bad reflex). The wight dropped people to zero surges ( staying alive due to its shift ability). Overall, the PCs were very lucky, because they figured out the portals early and were able to escape with Eldara before a very likely TPK.
This can be a difficult module, and definitely not one use to introduce new players to 4e.
My question to you then is why should people have to be familiar with a game, if they are NEW to the game, in order to enjoy it and have a reasonable chance to succeed without "Divine Intervention"?
Also, railroading is always bad design when it is pitifully obvious! When designing mods, the lowest common denominator needs to be considered in all encounter design, with increasing difficulty levels being added based upon how well the DM feels the party can handle challenges. The way the mod assumes that a party is of the correct "experience" or "makeup" is garbage for an RPGA event. At the very least there should be a warning to players added at the beginning so that players don't get blindsided when nearly every monster/npc that the pc's fight has a ridiculously high attack bonus against level 1 pc's...
I see that you joined in 2005.....did you actually play RPGA events under 3.5 rules? It's not my favorite writing hook either, and neither was this module, far from it. But railroading is writing to the lowest common denominator....At least I thought it was..."follow the breadcrumbs and you'll find the next encounter" If this is what you mean by railroading...with no alternate paths on how to get to the end. .
The one thing I've learned about 4.0. And something that everyone here should take to heart. This is NOT 3.5. D&D 4.0 is a team sport. IF you are not a team player then this edition is not for you. Go out on your own at your own risk. (or know that you can take it ) Stay within 5 of your cleric/warlord and dont forget your freaking healing potions. This will prevent over half of the deaths that I've read about so far. Being familiar with the rules will help, IF your DM won't tell you the nuances of what you're doing is wrong. (Tactically speaking) Even newbies need to know...minor, move and standard actions and what you can do in each. The move and then charge action at +1 to attack even it is a basic melee attack is something a lot of people don't remember and that you don't have to charge in a straight line anymore. (Just an example and a big change from a previous edition)
and if this post is old hat....then you are free to ignore it. change the channel so to speak.
Tired of hearing of people die in a edition that makes exceedingly hard to die.
Lynn
and if this post is old hat....then you are free to ignore it. change the channel so to speak.
Tired of hearing of people die in a edition that makes exceedingly hard to die.
Lynn
Someone made similar statements in another thread. The problem is that LFR and RPGA and 4e play are not old hat to everyone. There are plenty of folks who have just started out in one or more of these three "areas". In fact, this was supposed to be an introduction to LFR and thus it was not unlikely you'd get complete "newbs" playing this game.
So, feel free to assume that everyone knows all the "right" tactics. But you'd be wrong.
Someone made similar statements in another thread. The problem is that LFR and RPGA and 4e play are not old hat to everyone. There are plenty of folks who have just started out in one or more of these three "areas". In fact, this was supposed to be an introduction to LFR and thus it was not unlikely you'd get complete "newbs" playing this game.
So, feel free to assume that everyone knows all the "right" tactics. But you'd be wrong.
Heh...Of course...that's why they die. (tongue obviously in cheek)...
I responded to the first post and then noticed later on that his DM rolled 5 or 6 crits...now he didn't say whether or not they were in the same combat or througout the day.
But the best tactics can't save you from natural 20's. And wizards with no con are especially vulnerable to crits but you still have to do 1.5xHP damage to outright kill them. Anything less and then you're rolling 3 death saves.
DM's that go after downed characters, well that's another issue....that's a fun vs challenge issue and very player specific.
YMMV
Lynn
Mage Hand is not strong enough to move the lever, IMHO -- Mage Hand can manipulate up to 20 lbs., which is way less than what would be exerted by a DC 15 Strength check.
The Mage Hand has the equivalent of Strength 2, so -4 penalty to Strength checks. So, 19 or 20 on the die roll needed to pass a DC 15 Strength check. Although you might have to work at it a while, it's definitely doable.
The Mage Hand has the equivalent of Strength 2, so -4 penalty to Strength checks. So, 19 or 20 on the die roll needed to pass a DC 15 Strength check. Although you might have to work at it a while, it's definitely doable.
It's actually easier to carry a looped (non conductive) rope over to the lever and as long as the DM allows that the rope doesn't "occupy a space" to trigger the lightning and make skeletons appear you can use poles to help you apply enough force to pull the lever without ever leaving the safe zone. The rope doesn't exceed the 20lb limit of the mage hand power (especially if you have the gloves and a wizard to boot.)
The DM thought it was an inventive method and we got it on the first or second try....I forget.
Just a thought.
It's actually easier to carry a looped (non conductive) rope over to the lever
That's a nifty solution. Our warlock used his Armor-of-A power, and just made sure to only take one step at a time. Step, wait for 8 minions to die. Repeat.
The Mage Hand has the equivalent of Strength 2, so -4 penalty to Strength checks. So, 19 or 20 on the die roll needed to pass a DC 15 Strength check. Although you might have to work at it a while, it's definitely doable.
You're assuming it has equivalent strength, there's nothing in the rules to really allow it, barring DM Empowerment - not that there's anything wrong with that.
I'd just be wary of passing it off as a "rule".
You're assuming it has equivalent strength, there's nothing in the rules to really allow it, barring DM Empowerment - not that there's anything wrong with that.
I'd just be wary of passing it off as a "rule".
It _IS_ an assumption. But characters get to carry 10 x their strength in pounds. 20 / 10 = 2 strength. (at least this is how the number is being achieved)
4E + DM empowerment = Good....at least thats what we've been told...but then that's what you said. :D
That's a nifty solution. Our warlock used his Armor-of-A power, and just made sure to only take one step at a time. Step, wait for 8 minions to die. Repeat.
In the group I DMed, the ranger started charging across and triggered two sets of skeletons, which in turn triggered two more sets, leaving the room about 1/3rd full of skellies - then the rogue, in a really cool move, wiped out all but two of them using the daily power of his Lightning dagger.
After that, I let them figure out, through Perception checks of what had happened, the fact that the pillars trigger as an Opportunity action - so providing a character moved through only one pillar's field, he'd trigger only one set of skeletons on his turn.
With that known, they figured out a solution: Send the strongest character around one side, where he only has to trigger a single pillar, and have the rest of the party Ready actions to blast the skellies as fast as they appeared.
It worked perfectly. A bit of a metagame solution, but basically the equivalent of the characters figuring out how to beat the timing of the trap and provide covering fire whilst their ally runs through a hail of exploding skeletons.
some background. 5 players in all, 4 of them its their 2nd 4ed game my 5th. all of them 1st/2nd(after 1st part)level with the exception of me (rogue)2nd/3rd(after the 1st part)level. 1 Defender, 4 strickers lol.
1 fighter, 1 rogue(me), 1 warlock, 1 wizard, and 1 bow ranger.
First encounter, we spot 1 of the ambushers in the woods to our left, our warlock,or wiz i forget which opens up, our fighter goes in to engage him, then (we all rolled low ini except those 2 lol) the archers start steping out and since our fighter is the only one without cover and standing in the open, they naturally target her, by the end of round 1 we have one dying fighter and the rest of us with open mouths.
we managed to work them out with me running in and stabilizing the fighter so she dosn't die, and the others shooting back and forth, in the end, it was me, at about 10hp, 1 ambushing elf at about the same(though him with that blasted long bow and me way out of my range LOL) when our warlock manages to roll a 20 on his deathsave( did i mention everyone else was down:D ) when i manage to get a parlay going, which i then managed to fail with three bad rollls in a row, even with the warlock assisting me. (rolled a 3,1,4
) so our talks broke down, and our warlock got his shot off before the elf lol we win.next the etercaps/spider, our fighter died on this one, had some bad rolls and some lucky ones for the bugs, allmost lost the others but our ranger managed to shoot them out at a distance, with the warlock, and me trying to keep the wiazrd alive with the spider. poison sucks lol, luckilly the wiz managed to save before he went down (poison is what killed the fighter after she went down) and we end up winning.
Now the wolves/thavin(sp), 4 strikers, no healing = run for your lives hehe, we ended up winning but our warlock insisted on killing thavin ( he was a little miffed lol) and slit his throat despite what my please to let him live (and after i went to the trouble of capturing him), aw well.
Into the halls!
1st room not bad, we lived, (got the fighter back at this point btw)
next, we went to the room with the food/bookcase.
this one was pretty fun, i ate some cake, why? because its dungeon cake, if it still looks/smells that good in the bottom of a dungeon it's GOT to be good lol.
our wiz went over and removed the book of alchemy from the shelf and poof, became the center of atention. HOW he didn't die is beyond me, with 3 of the little statues attacking him for 2-3 rounds before he could get help, the mobs just rolled low and he lived, quite amazing, had him sweating lol.
next the lightning pillers, not bad managed to get our wiz and lock over there (feystep) and togather they managed to pull the lever, one had an 8 strength the other a 10 lol it took both.
portal room, we got most of the party through the wall, i kept geting dazed (didn't think to attack it lol) in the end i make it through, and am halfway across the room, the others are at the second barier when we get ported,.....and im now standing in the swirling pool of death, crap, lol
we fight, manage to not die but by this time (we did attack the zombie wall to get out) there were like 10-15 of those souls on our heals, and our warlock decides to kicke the other dorr in and run in after the princess(who was kind enough to close the door behind her lol) thus we are half dead for the next encounter. we managed to get the creapers dead, not easy with -2 to your rolls do to being surounded by souls and we start running for the portal in the far cage, now problem. the souls have gathered around the portal cage(had someone in there) and it does 5 dmg to pass through them, i only have 9 hp and no healing or 2nd wind, ah ha 1 spot where i can go in a diaganal and only cross 1 lol, unfortunatly we didnt have a chance to seach the room so no treasure for us.
toad room
hear we had a bit of trouble. the pit was a problem, well our warlock nearly got himself killed by kicking the doors open and jumping into the room....right into a pit. he managed to waste his teleports and still winded up back in the pit. with a panther. not good. our fighter jumped the pit, no problem, portal comes along and zap, failed her ref save and poof, she is gone. crap.
once again, no fighter, warlock next to death, had to use his action point to get out of the pit, he kept fail;ing lol. he manages to get up and i closed and bared the doors, we took a short rest to use some surges and regroup/think.
note: by this point we are on a serious time crunch as the store we are playing in closes in about 25-30 minutes, so we had 15 min. to finish the encounter, we ended up jumping/climbing across and readying our action to jump into the portal that took out fighter when it showed up again. and we did, of course we lost the princess as she took the fey portal but we lived.
lol
not a bad mod, we suffered from nubieness/ party makeup more than anything i think, but we all had fun regaurdless.
It _IS_ an assumption. But characters get to carry 10 x their strength in pounds. 20 / 10 = 2 strength. (at least this is how the number is being achieved)
4E + DM empowerment = Good....at least thats what we've been told...but then that's what you said. :D
Yes, characters do. Conjurations tho? ;)
Still, we agree on the DM Empowerment - I think if it made the party have fun, then it was the right answer. I'd just hate to have people run into a similar situation at a future table, get shot down by the GM, and get upset because "that stupid GM doesn't know the rules".
1. Part-1. Was very cool. The fights wer tough (not impossible) the story set up was confusing but was fine once we got the gist of it. I like the story. High stakes. Possible war if mission fails. Cormyr royalty involved. Epic stuff. I was hooked. The bit with the 1/2 elf being charmed and the princess wanting to use the diadem for her own selfish purposes was a nice plot twist. We did it in about 3 hours (as did most groups).
2. Part-2. The game begins to fall apart. It turns into standard dungeon crawl with no real realms flavor. The epicness and coolness factor from the set up in part 1 are gone. The treasures seem randomly placed (not on the critical path, which I guess is ok, but have an air of "we found this book in a pile in a random side room" instead of "we defeated this challenge (or bad guy) and got this from his treasures). The DM begins complaining about the module format (something about rooms/encounters not being together). I had this same complaint from when I read through Scepter Tower. We have to go back and do an encounter over because he missed something (he said there was no map). The lightning pillar room was neat. One MAJOR complaint was the seemingly infinate spawns in the room with the statue (or lightning room for that matter)...we burned A LOT of time there as the fading glows seemed to indicate that we were wearing something down but the critter kept comming. As level 1 newbs we had a tough time on some of the encouters here...This part seemed not so good as an introductory game. This part took us 5 hours (some groups took 6+ hours).
3. Part 3. This part of the adventure sucked. The writing seems to be completely thrown out the window. The encouters seem designed to kill the entire party. And the length seems way long for a 3-4 hour introductory mod. The DM beings cutting encounters out so that we can finish before our location closes (a comic store). The first encouter nearly wipes out the party. Those sucking balls....suck...and they are apparently impossible to kill. Most of the critisms from part 2 are worse here. No flavor, infinate spawns (should be baned...even if only from a time sink perspective), treasure bundles seem randomly placed. In the end, we got no xp for the princess quest as we could not convince her to come with us (we tried). We got no treasures from the last room, because of a bad room description....combined with time constraints...we didn't know there was more to explore. You could claim that this was not modules fault, but I think it is because the pacing was off. We did no roleplaying...and If we were to complete all the encouters it would have taken us 6+ hours (others spent 6+ on this part).
All in all. The adventure turned out to be TOO LONG and poorly designed. I was very disapointed as it started with so much potential. It did NOT seem oriented to new players....so from that perspective I give it a FAIL. As a fun afternoon to try out 4E and RPGA I give it an very adequate C. With the right adventure it could have been so much better.
We had, and my paladin pushed through both of them (which led to her being cut of from the rest when we were transported).
Also confusing was whether you could look or hear through the walls - we definitely couldn't when we had the wall of zombies (though it took me a while to realize that my character didn't know anything about the furious combat going on outside the undead-walled globe she was in with the princess).
Well, at least she had plenty of time to tell the girl he uncensored opinion about her actions while we cut our way to freedom...
I think that if they could have done so this would have been better served as a 2 part module to take around 8 hours or so.
And i guess you were missing the flavor of the module then. Some of the Eladrin in Faerun were put there when the Feywild rubbed against the Prime Material Plane (or whatever we call it now). They are not native to Faerun but are native to the Feywild. Hence the Eladrin princess sees an opportunity to find a way back home by using the Diadem. And had it worked it would have opened up a way for all transposed Eladrin a way to get back home. Unfortunately her ritual is all wrong and instead of the Feywild you end up in the Shadowfell.
Maybe that will help ya a little on the flavor of the module.
I got all of that just from the reading of the module and the tone.
Hmmm. Just checking: did anyone else have TWO walls between them and the princess (the other beign a wall that surrounded her like a globe)?
We had, and my paladin pushed through both of them (which led to her being cut of from the rest when we were transported).
Also confusing was whether you could look or hear through the walls - we definitely couldn't when we had the wall of zombies (though it took me a while to realize that my character didn't know anything about the furious combat going on outside the undead-walled globe she was in with the princess).
Well, at least she had plenty of time to tell the girl he uncensored opinion about her actions while we cut our way to freedom...
Yes in part 2 there is the shimmering barrier that keeps you from entering the room and there is one around her as well when she is doing the ritual. In part 3 they are gone but the one by the entrance is now a zombie wall.
Well, I was a new player to 4e and new to RPGA (this was my first game for either) so I guess I am in the target audience of the event this weekend. Here are my thoughts:
1. Part-1. Was very cool. [...]
2. Part-2. The game begins to fall apart. It turns into standard dungeon crawl with no real realms flavor. [...]
3. Part 3. This part of the adventure sucked. [...] The DM beings cutting encounters out so that we can finish before our location closes (a comic store). [...] Those sucking balls....suck...and they are apparently impossible to kill. Most of the critisms from part 2 are worse here. No flavor, infinate spawns (should be baned...even if only from a time sink perspective) [...]
All in all. The adventure turned out to be TOO LONG and poorly designed.
This.
Part 1 was fine. Part 2 was ... meh. (I hate monster boxes, and the first one showed up here). Part 3 was horrible. Frustrating. Not Fun. My party did very well, and had no problems from the tactical side. We just didn't know when we were supposed to run, and when we were supposed to fight. And there seemed to be remarkable little flavor.
And I really hate monster boxes (infinitely respawning monsters). I dislike auto-fail, and the two monster boxes (the souls from the vortex, and the respawning monsters from the portals) were both auto-fail situations, with no clear clues to point out that winning is not an option.
In part 3 they are gone but the one by the entrance is now a zombie wall.
Ah. In our game, in part 3 the one around her had also turned into a zombie wall. Without that wall, some stuff that happened would have made a lot more sense... and it would have made the combat a degree easier if I hadn't had to chop my way through that wall...
Ah well, it turned out ok in the end.
Hmmm. Just checking: did anyone else have TWO walls between them and the princess (the other beign a wall that surrounded her like a globe)?
We had, and my paladin pushed through both of them (which led to her being cut of from the rest when we were transported).
Hmm, reality check here: How many DMs interpreted the text for the magical barriers at the end of Part 2 as allowing characters to push through them? There was mention of a Wisdom or Charisma check to move through them, but to me, that was clearly linked to the preceding text on teleportation - it would be possible, but difficult, to teleport through, since the walls switched randomly between transparent and mirrored. Other than teleportation, I treated those barriers as impenetrable until destroyed.
Was that wrong? Did you (or your DM) do otherwise?
Jonathan
The icing on the cake was the final encounter, where the party was randomly able to escape the Shadowfell Halls depending solely on their position in the room and the dice rolls of the DM, all while being attacked by wights, magma hurlers, and fey panthers. Most of our table was so bothered by the one-sidedness of the encounter that they lost interest in the game and wandered around the LGS when it wasn't their character's turn.
We completed the mod, including getting both story awards for Part 3, but only because our DM moderated the non-sensical parts of the adventure once we started to have extreme difficulty with them.
I'd like to have more WitR events, but only if more time is spent developing an adventure that will provide entertainment for new and experienced players alike, not bog down play or bend encounter formats in ways that put players at a disadvantage.
I think it could have been a little shorter, with more roleplaying elements (not *too* many more) and maybe a mandatory skill challenge (the optional thing at the start is a joke). That would have probably shortened it by a good 30 to 45 minutes.
Finally, and most importantly, we need less mods with "on rails" stuff. I mean that is how it was with Living Greyhawk, but those rules were MUCH more restrictive. This is LFR, we need to be open. As long as the party isn't gaining more EXP or GOLD or access to weird items (or any lasting thing) than any other mod, I say pretty much anything should go (as long as it is up to the DM). I'd like to see mods written with this in mind and have multiple paths and multiple outcomes. I know there was a way to report said outcomes and the majority of the reported outcomes could become the official one. Or even just have one outcome, but multiple ways there.
Why did there have to be 2 portals with one being an optional path (and no indication thereof)? Why couldn't each of them had different encounters but still led you to the Princess?
What did you guys put on the questionare that you were suppost to fill out? I think there are too many mods coming out (60 - 70 a year). I wish they cut that in half but spent double the time working on them. Quality over quantity any day of the week.
Thank you Wizards. My kid is still talking about it. A couple of his buddies that couldn't make it are super jealous.
I see that you joined in 2005.....did you actually play RPGA events under 3.5 rules? It's not my favorite writing hook either, and neither was this module, far from it. But railroading is writing to the lowest common denominator....At least I thought it was..."follow the breadcrumbs and you'll find the next encounter" If this is what you mean by railroading...with no alternate paths on how to get to the end. .
Actually, I've been around alot longer than 2005 (more like since 3rd ed was announced), but for some reason during the switch over, my join date was altered...
The one thing I've learned about 4.0. And something that everyone here should take to heart. This is NOT 3.5. D&D 4.0 is a team sport. IF you are not a team player then this edition is not for you. Go out on your own at your own risk. (or know that you can take it ) Stay within 5 of your cleric/warlord and dont forget your freaking healing potions. This will prevent over half of the deaths that I've read about so far. Being familiar with the rules will help, IF your DM won't tell you the nuances of what you're doing is wrong. (Tactically speaking) Even newbies need to know...minor, move and standard actions and what you can do in each. The move and then charge action at +1 to attack even it is a basic melee attack is something a lot of people don't remember and that you don't have to charge in a straight line anymore. (Just an example and a big change from a previous edition)
Tactics were not a problem for us, the problem was that monsters/npc's were ridiculously overpowered for level 1's! Seriously, +8 to +10 or more to hit against level 1's who at best could get a 20-22 AC? You are talking about monsters/npc's routinely hitting on rolls of 7+, whereas pc's barely getting a hit on rolls of 12+ This is supposed to be balanced? For important monsters/npc's ok, I can see this, but for scrubs to be doing this routinely is a complete joke. Then there is the damage output of the monsters/npc's...
I don't know what it's like at your RPGA meeting place but at ours we don't get the same group every time. It is always a collection of whoever shows up, mixing and matching to create the most balanced groups we can. We don't always get well rounded groups either...
Tired of hearing of people die in a edition that makes exceedingly hard to die.
Lynn
If you don't like hearing the truth about poorly conceived adventures and the public's negative experiences playing them, then just ignore them...
--I'm not sure how much of this is due to GMs adjusting or fudging though; I have fudged a few things but not an awful lot. Then again I've mostly played and run for groups of experienced players with fairly-to-very 'optimised' characters that were never all level 1 together.
Doing this in a module designed to draw in new players is crazy however ...as is making it just/primarily a dungeon crawl.
I'd have much preferred to have players find the combats too easy and be able to assure them that the normal (non-Intro) modules were tougher.
* Excluding the PREV TPKs and a double-death in KotS.
We had no eladrin in my party so my swordmage decided to try and "crawl under the arcing lighting." Bad idea, as they went off based on being next to them and not by getting hit. We ended up killing around 50-75 skeletons over the course of the pillar room as they continually set off the trap themselves and my swordmage took about 5 rounds to roll a 13 on a strength check to switch off the pillars.
Our DM was nice and put a small place for a short rest before the cage room, which ended up being pretty easy.
I don't know how any party made it through the pillar room in a timely fashion as the chance of a portal spawning both on a square near you and leading to the right place was pretty slim, as there was no way to predict which square would get hit next or where it would go. We killed about 3 versions of each spawn before getting bored and fleeing through the other side only to find a portal which led nowhere useful (but somehow they decided would be a story award despite the fact that if you did the right thing you wouldn't find it? I don't like this new trend...). Jumping through a portal would've seemed like a more viable option if we had any way of telling where the next portal lead or where it would go, but as it was it seemed like the whole party would inevitably be killed while waiting for the very low statistical chance of a portal appearing where we would need to be, plus the portal leading home only appeared once in the entire fight so that made waiting for it seem like an even worse option. We were stuck at this point so our DM gave us some slack as it was 3 am and we were all alive but didn't think the portal room was a good option for escape. I really resented the fact that there was no arcana skill challenge or method to control the portals at all. It seemed impossible for the whole party to get out with the princess as written, as there was like a 3% chance of the right portal appearing in the right place (.25x.125).
The story of this mod was okay but the encounter implementation and the poor ending made this mod no fun. This seemed like a pretty impossible mod to complete without anyone dying if the dm didn't fudge things at all. If we had played the last encounter as intended, it probably would've taken at least another 3 hours and someone probably would've died as the party reasources depleted in the face of endless monsters. The only correct escape route appearing randomly or not at all seems really lame.
My party only ended up having to fight like a dozen or so because everyone else was like "freeze in place and let the lightning resistant guy shut the trap room off"
-karma
As a note, I played the whole thing twice with two very different parties, although I didn't GM. I've played a reasonable amount of LFR before these games, so am quite familiar with the rules and setting. Game one we were APL 2, game two we were APL 1.
General:
1: A number of people have raised the concern that the mod was a very generic and plot-light dungeoncrawl, and as such not a good introduction to the specific setting of the LFR campaign.
2: There was little opportunity to roleplay or demonstrate skill challenges in 4e.
3: The mod was very tough, especially for players who were new to 4e.
4: The plot, as revealed from the box text, was confusing and not terribly compelling.
Part 1:
Encounter 1: Consensus seems to be not a good start, especially for players for whom this could be their first encounter not just in LFR but in 4e. DC 24 to spot the elves is absurd, the rain makes stealth and perception rules come into play which over-complicates things for new players, and if the Elves get a surprise round the chances are that one or two characters will be bloodied if not down, which is also not a fun way to begin your first LFR turn.
Encounters 2 & 3 have been generally well received.
Part 2:
Encounter 1: The randomness of the monster drops has been the cause for some minor criticism.
Aside section: The possibility of a 50/50 chance of missing both story awards and the best bit of treasure in the mod has drawn understandable ire. While it may be fair to penalise players for doing something wrong if they had the evidence available, penalising them for effectively losing a coin-toss is unfair.
Encounter 2: Perhaps too party dependant, as any party with a teleporter walks through it in 2 minutes. I've read about some creative solutions involving readied actions and the fact that the skeletons appear as an opportunity action, but that requires knowledge of the timing of events that will be lost on new players. An interesting trap, but its potential to initiate a positive feedback loop should have been checked.
Encounter 3: Many parties had no problems at all defeating the monsters and knocking out the princess long before the ritual completed; to have the ritual continue and no benefit for so doing was frustrating. Perhaps defeating the princess could have led to an additional treasure reward? Alternatively, given how critical it was for the ritual to complete from the point of view of getting to play the next mod, it should have been harder to stop her.
Part 3:
Encounters 1 & 2: In and of themselves, these encounters have drawn few complaints. The issues were however the potential for the party to be split up, and the inability to take a short rest between the encounters. The infinitely spawning souls annoyed some players, although personally I liked the clock they added.
Encounter 3: Has drawn the most criticism by far. It appears it was confusing for GMs to run, and the random pattern of portals and infinite respawns based on the luck of the dice means that in theory a party may never get home. The trick to get home is hard to figure out without some hints from the GM, and difficult to execute when you have got it. Consensus seems to be an interesting idea, but poorly executed. Encounter 3 has also been criticised for running long - the last encounter of a 12 hour 3-part game should not run potentially infinitely.
I think there were some interesting ideas in this mod, and I enjoyed both plays, but the overall design and execution made them somewhat lacking for an intro event.
I'm glad some people had fun all weekend long and some DMs fixed problems in the mod (well covered in many previous posts) so seamlessly that their players didn't even notice. We played with a very seasoned core of players (5 regular players) and added one newcomer. The 5 of us have been playing 4th Ed since it came out and were very familiar with the rules. We stuck together. We attempted to alpha strike the severest threat. We were penalized in Part 2 for going left instead of right, we fought till we dropped in the infinite spawning soul room, and we dropped some more in the creeper room. We didn't run through the creeper room b/c we needed to extricate our one caged comrade from the trap. Even with an extended rest before the last encounter, Toad Hall rocked us--in a bad way.
I am one of the people who had to continually walk away from our gaming table in order not to act out in inappropriate ways. I consider myself a mature adult, but my level of frustration grew exponentially with each encounter in the 3rd part of the mod. I don't need to be able to walk over every challenge I face while D&Ding to have fun, but I don't consider it fun to have to face challenges that are overwhelming and confusing for even an expert DM to run. I appreciate the randomness of dice rolls, but believe a few bad rolls shouldn't nearly kill off a higher than average level of characters run by experienced players (like our bad rolls nearly TPKed us in this mod, part 3).
My suggestions for improving this mod:
--A big hint the final encounter is the final encounter (In part 2). Ornate door, cheesey warning written in Elven--something. Then parties who went left instead of right could decide whether or not they wanted to double back and explore the rest of the complex or just keep going. We triggered the final encounter and couldn't go back, thus loosing both story awards. This made me VERY cranky.
--No undamagable monsters. Especially no undamagable monsters that spawn every round with damaging auras. These souls should've been minions so that some characters wouldn't have had to take 15 necro damage for starting a turn sandwiched between a wall of souls and the zombie wall.
--No pit and portalling in monsters and random portal out all at once. I understand the desire to design unique, dynamic, and threatening challenges for players, but sometimes too much is too much. I liked the old entrance to the temple not being the exit from the Shadowfell--in theory. In practice, by the time our party got here, opened the door, and found out it only led to more Shadowfell, I was ready to go home. Or stab someone. And since I was surrounded by friends I like, trying to play a game I usually enjoy, I instead got up from the table and walked off some of my frustration.
I appreciate WotC for putting this event together. I appreciate Matt Senrett for writing this mod. But it seems like in an attempt to put too much cool stuff into 9-12 hours of time, this mod was made more difficult and less fun than it could've been. Mostly I appreciate my DM who listened to us when we all expressed our frustration at the difficulty of the mod as written, and I am in awe of his ability to patch on the fly. He maintained a terrifying threat level while mercifully allowing us to escape even though I believe his random rolls were better than ours. Significantly better. And finally I appreciate my fellow gamers who dealt with my frustration in a much more mature manner than I was able to on day 3--thank you for your patience. I look forward to gaming with you all again--soon!
Gomez
Am I the only one to beeline for the lever, ignoring any skellies that weren't directly in my way and just taking the OAs?
My party only ended up having to fight like a dozen or so because everyone else was like "freeze in place and let the lightning resistant guy shut the trap room off"
-karma
That is what we did. Our two Eladrin teleported while I (a Swordmage with a ton of AoE) took out the skeletons without moving. We only fought about 6 to 9 of them before we turned off the traps.
But, some of that was due to party composition (dragonborn paladin 1, human warlord 2, dwarf cleric 3, human rogue 3, and elven ranger 3). The paladin was run by a newer player who had terrible luck. 90% (or more!) of his dice rolls were less than 10. Everyone other than the paladin leveled after part two.
The party didn't see the elven ambush in the first encounter. We got to the far side of the map and the elves attacked the caravan (not sure if it was supposed to run that way). After that, we ran up and beat them down, easily.
Our party faced two ettercaps and two deathjump spiders. The archer ranger was at the front of the group (tracking) and had to fight his way free, taking an OA, before he could let loose with his bow. He took a beating the first round from the ettercaps. The rogue got crit'd by one spider and the second jumped into flanking, dropping him on the second round. The warlord followed up on this by healing the rogue, using knight's move to get him standing, attacked a spider with wolf pack tactics (hitting and getting the rogue into flanking) and using an action point to give the rogue a sneak attack via commander's strike. Later, the warlord crit'd the other spider with his daily 3[w] power. The second ettercap tried to flee but, the paladin used his challenge to prevent this and the rest of the group came to the paladin's assistance. Tough encounter, but not too bad. The cleric was stuck in a bad position and had to depend upon melee attacks most of the time (lazer cleric).
In the third encounter, Thraven moved up to help his wolves. The ranger took him out in one round due to a crit. Easy fight.
The pillar trap wasn't exceptionally difficult. The large number of skeletons made it time consuming. We'd tried to lasso the lever and let the rogue tightwalk over to it. But, the DM decided the rogue was occupying a space and set off the traps.
In the third encounter, only the paladin (level 1!) managed to walk through the barrier on the first attempt. He had to face the kruthik alone for two rounds. The paladin did one of his smarter moves and used his dragonbreath. But, of seven targets, he only hit once! The cleric made it through the second round, the warlord on the second (using an action point), the rogue on the second or third and the ranger beat down the barrier on the third round. The entire party was taking damage from the kruthik auras and attacks.
The rogue managed to break free from the starting mass of kruthik only to be swarmed by reinforcements. When he did evade this second group, he found that the princess had another barrier up, which the rogue damaged and the ranger destroyed. This caused another wave or reinforcements that encircled the ranger and added to those attacking the rogue. Despite all of this, the rogue did knock the princess prone and we did get her bloodied. Our DM did imply that the circle of runes was reducing the damage we were doing to her. Not sure if that's the way the mod is written or if he was just ensuring that we'd fail.
At the end, we were almost out of healing and everyone was damaged. We'd been playing that each kruthik did 2 damage to anyone next to it. So, being next to 2-4 of them would cause 4-8 damage to the target. In hindsight, it should have been a flat 2 damage as the auras shouldn't stack. Overall, this was a pretty brutal encounter, partly through a mistake in how the auras worked and partly through the sheer number of attackers.
When we got to part three, the ranger asked how he could get more arrows. He was down to eight.
The DM let the ranger do a perception check to see magic arrows held by the zombie wall. But, this lead to a discussion of whether or not there were even magic arrows in 4.0 and other stuff with the result of the DM saying that each part of the series was really and individual adventure and you should be able to buy more arrows in-between them. The first encounter was a hassle. The DM was getting tired and decided to skip the lost souls. The dark creepers were another pain. The auto-blindness when you kill them causing problems. The warlord went down due to not remembering to heal himself (two chances).
In the final encounter, there was no pit for us. The portals zipped across, sometimes running into people, doing damage. Sometimes they pulled critters off to other planes and sometimes they brought in new foes. We started with two of each type. The wights sucked. One was killed and another was brought in. One fey panther was finished off with a thrown dagger. The paladin was sent home and had to fight a wight that was sent there too! Level 1 paladin vs a level 5 wight! It took a couple rounds before he had any help and he was down when the cleric and rogue popped in.
When we figured out that we could have two of each type in the room, we dropped opponents unconscious instead of killing them. With just one magma hurler left, the last of the group ignored it for two rounds and readied actions to jump into the portal home.
All-in-all, the adventure was poorly suited for encouraging new players to join LFR. The encounters are much too difficult for players new to 4.0 and the creatures are difficult for level one PCs to handle, even if the players have experience and use good tactics. There's also that whole lack of RP and skills not getting used a whole lot that's been mentioned before. Some aspects of the story were decent or even good. It took a very long time to finish. Our DM had been saying he could do it in 6 hours. Later, he even said it could be as few as 4. Then, he found the encounters for part two.
I didn't like the seemingly high attack bonuses of many monsters, but the defenders were able to withstand the hits. The pillar room was made simple by having teleporting PCs. The module wasn't run consistently by the two judges, particularly the first encounter of the third round.
red tanker,
regarding the various encounters. Encounters 7, the first part of the 3rd mod ... the infinitely spawning and unkillable creatures only move one square a turn and only one appears per turn after the last spectre appears. So you really could avoid these things if you wanted to. If your party managed to trigger this encounter and then ran into the next room and got the dark creepers involved too, yeah, that could get painful fast.
As for the encounter with the portals: None of the portals could remove a character from play unless they wanted to. The only two portals that would take players anywhere were the portal back to the Haunted Halls or the one to the Feywild and that one could only take you if you were Fey, and you had a choice not to.
So, I think perhaps you might have misread some of the encounters. Not that some of them weren't dangerous, they were, but the specific problems you mentioned weren't nearly as bad.
I don't know. When I played it, it was far worse than he described. We succeeded at stopping the princess one round early. My fighter grabbed the unconscious princess and ran at the end of the second to last. The artificer and cleric moseyed halfway across the room in the last round. The rogue, swordmage, and warlock ran into the portal room and my fighter followed. Then we shifted.
My fighter, the warlock, and the princess were stuck in a cage. The rogue was stuck in a different cage. The swordmage was immediately attacked by a trap that would have stuck him in a cage if it had hit. As it was, he was attacked by dark creepers. The door was shut and the artificer and the cleric were stuck in the soul vortex room by themselves.
It took my fighter two rounds to break through the cage door and escape but all that got him was attacked by the trap again (I thought I broke it--obviously not) and sucked back in. The warlock teleported out and fought the dark creepers. Meanwhile the rogue picked the lock on his cage door. The swordmage tried for three rounds to open the door between the rooms and failed every time. Then my fighter took over trying to open the door, but due to an inexplicable inability to roll above an 8 on a d20, the cleric and artificer were stuck in the soul vortex room by themselves until we had two or three of the tormented soul monsters in there. We had five or six of them in the room by the time the warlock, swordmage and rogue were able to kill the dark creepers and we were finally able to evacuate the leaders from the soul vortex room and the only reason they weren't all on top of us was that there was not enough space for them. Fortunately, our DM thought they did not have phasing (maybe they don't) so we were able to close the door on them and take a breather in the dark creeper room before jumping through the portal into the unknown.
You're assuming it has equivalent strength, there's nothing in the rules to really allow it, barring DM Empowerment - not that there's anything wrong with that.
I'd just be wary of passing it off as a "rule".
I didn't mean to suggest it was a *rule*. But it would take a pretty mean-spirited DM not to allow it -- the 4e mantra is "say 'yes' to the players", and it's not even a stretch to reverse engineer the carrying capacity rules to come up with a Strength 2 for a Mage Hand even though it's not explicitly stated.
The original complaint I was responding to was that this room was a snap for a party with an Eladrin on their team, but very tough for anyone without. I can't help but feel that the Hedge Wizard Gloves were not just random loot but deliberately placed to give this possibility to a group without an Eladrin (or Wizard) in their party.
Pretty cool, actually. The complex was built by Eladrin, for Eladrin - it makes sense that they would make it easier for Eladrin to traverse than non-Eladrin. But a tool is placed so that PCs without an Eladrin on their team still have a chance to get through relatively painlessly.
Overall, I was very disappointed with this uninspired dungeon crawl, and even more so that it was touted as "an introduction to the Realms" for new players. But I thought this bit was well done, and want to give credit where credit is due.
I miss my "consistency of play" and the WitR mods felt like a step in the right direction. I would much prefer the mods start out as hard and be brought down to a difficulty the group can handle rather than the other way around.
'Challenging' is not the same as 'hackfest in every encounter'.
We should not write mods for the powermongers, but for the average player.
Nor should we cough out dungeon crawls at every turn.
I don't know what you mean with 'consistency of play', but if you expect WotR to become the norm for LFR, you are likely going to be disappointed.
Gomez
You're assuming it has equivalent strength, there's nothing in the rules to really allow it, barring DM Empowerment - not that there's anything wrong with that.
I'd just be wary of passing it off as a "rule".
The player has a power. The power says what it can do. The DM adjudicates. The power says it can manipulate an object of 20lbs or less.
1) Is the lever 20lbs or less?
2) If yes, then adjudicate what happens.
The player has a power. The power says what it can do. The DM adjudicates. The power says it can manipulate an object of 20lbs or less.
1) Is the lever 20lbs or less?
2) If yes, then adjudicate what happens.
Given that it takes a DC of 20 (or so, I don't have the mod in front of me) it obviously requires more than 20 lbs of pressure to manipulate (using the earlier logic of 10xstrength = amount manipulated).
The hand STILL has no strength score, it still can't (by RAW) make a check.
DM Empowerment may allow it, but the rules don't.
Given that it takes a DC of 20 (or so, I don't have the mod in front of me) it obviously requires more than 20 lbs of pressure to manipulate (using the earlier logic of 10xstrength = amount manipulated).
The hand STILL has no strength score, it still can't (by RAW) make a check.
DM Empowerment may allow it, but the rules don't.
Its actually DC 15.
When it came up on one of the tables I ran I said the lever was too stiff to move with mage hand however I had no problems with the party using mage hand to tie a rope around the lever and use one of the pillars as a makeshift pulley to try to pull it. It would have worked for them if a party memeber hadn't gotten impatient with people making poor roles and triggered the trap.
Kithran
Luruar POC
The hand STILL has no strength score, it still can't (by RAW) make a check.
I have a problem with this statement that I believe perpetuates misinformation. I'm sending you a PM - to take this offline as it isn't the topic of the thread.
Animals apply variable force depending on how they use their muscles and things like adrenaline -there's nothing to suggest that the Mage Hand can ever exert more than enough to lift a 20lb mass (which is clearly not enough to move the lever even though a Str2 creature would get it eventually)
I used Mage Hand to oil the lever (not enough to let the hand move the lever) but sadly didn't think of using a rope.
I'm with Wolfstar on that so let me know if you have anything convincing to say.
Animals apply variable force depending on how they use their muscles and things like adrenaline -there's nothing to suggest that the Mage Hand can ever exert more than enough to lift a 20lb mass (which is clearly not enough to move the lever even though a Str2 creature would get it eventually)
I used Mage Hand to oil the lever (not enough to let the hand move the lever) but sadly didn't think of using a rope.
Wolfstar and I have PMd. If Wolfstar doesn't object you can PM me if you want the dialog. Bottom line for me is: mage hand allows you to manipulate an object 20lbs or less (RAW p.158 PHB).
So again, I'll go back to my original post:
1) Is the lever 20lbs or less?
2) If yes, then adjudicate what happens.
* The module doesn't give the weight of the lever giving the DM easy option to either deal with having to adjudicate the use of mage hand or not. If the DM does not want to adjudicate simply describe the lever as " a big rusted lever looking to weight 25lbs or so" ending the use of mage hand to directly manipulate it - in which case the PC might try using mage hand to indirectly allow them to manipulate it. Otherwise as a DM come up with something! If your solution happens to be mage hand can't manipulate objects requiring ability checks - fine - but it isn't RAW. If your solution is to assign a STR 2 - fine - but it isn't RAW. If your solution is to assign the wizards intellect as a bonus to the mage hand - fine - but it isn't RAW.
The RAW for mage hand is clear about what it can do - manipulate objects 20lbs or less. It doesn't say that these must require an ability check to manipulate or that they can't require an ability check to manipulate, that it is good at knots, that it can't tie knots, etc. etc. Simply - must weigh 20lbs or less!
My issue here is not so much whether it can be done or not but rather the claim that RAW supports it can't! If it does by all means start quoting the page numbers and source books so the community can get to work analyzing the RAW and eventually ending up at more consistent rulings as to what mage hand can / can't do.
PS - personally adjudicating the use of mage hand bringing a rope over, tying it (how good is mage hand at doing this?) / looping around it (how do we determine ideal versus bad placement?) / how much force, leverage required / is the lever positioned to be pulled left or right or perhaps towards the wall the door is on, what strength circumstance penalties if any should be used, etc. etc. seems more nightmarish to me then ruling the lever is 20lbs or less and mage hand eventually is able to move the lever. Bottom line in both these cases the use of mage hand will allow the lever to eventually be pulled via direct manipulation or indirectly by using rope!
Or a DM can say lever is more than 20lbs, needs to be pulled towards the wall with the door, slick handle causing rope to fall towards the bottom by the gear mechanism it gets jammed all the time - bottom line can't use rope technique! i.e. the DM wants the trap encounter unless teleport is available.
Personally, I would have liked to see the lever as a "false" lever (trap) and the real shut off to the trap around the corner out of site by the door (push block in the wall, easily seen when standing next to the door only). Pulling the false lever would have 2 closest columns shoot lightning bolt at the false lever square (which also affects adjacent squares with d6 lightning damage) while not shutting down the trap. A DC 15 Perception check from the lever square determine false lever etc. etc.
Ah well, to each his own madness.
But it was primarily our problem, since you should have at least 30 mins between sessions, just to catch a breath, decide about rewards and so on.
We did not have to skip anything, but the pillar encounter is almost certain doom for an inexperienced party without a wizard.
Fortunately we had one very good player who made the day, otherwise the encounter would have probably ended in a TPK - at one instance I guess at least half of the room was filled with skelettons.
Our other table did better - the Eladrin just teleported to the lever before much happened.
The first encounter started with a real fight, but finally ended with a truce before everybody got killed on our table. I think the other table managed to end the fight after a few turns.
I would really recommend to make adventures which are supposed to introduce new players into the game less challenging and with a few more RP encounters.
Sure some of that may come from the fact that RPGA events are my only chance to play (I DM the non-RPGA group I am in) so I always like being the player.
The fact this was the only time to play this made it feel special so that helped also.
I agree with others that there was too much combat and not enough RP / skill challenges. I think that though should be enhanced by the DM in question. If there's no RPing? Make some RP then, even if it's in the middle of combat.
Our group had 5 defenders (one of which was a Paladin) and 1 striker. I played a Swordmage.
The first encounter I hit two archers with a Flame Cyclone, then as a free action demanded a surrender, and (with an Intimidate roll) ended the encounter there (which was awesome).
We triggered the pillar room, twice, and survived (hilarious).
The last room was a little broken. We were low on surges, and the DM felt the multiple portals would have been overkill. I understand the need to make that room difficult, however it seemed to promote splitting the party than it did promoting a puzzle+combat scenario (frustrating).
Overall I had a good time, and more importantly so did my teenage daughter (who played a Dragonborn Fighter).
The other group in our story died in the first encounter. Apparently it took 3 hours, many horrible rolls, and no controller or leader in sight.
YMMV
Firstly, if the ritual is completely unstoppable, you should at least let the PC's know ahead of time so they don't feel like their actions were meaningless.
Well, to us it was pretty clear that it was the unstoppable railroaded way to go from part 2 to part 3 even without the DM confirming it or merely hinting at it.
This didn't stop us from having much fun doing out best to disturb the ritual. First the fighter and the warlock brought down the shield around the princess, then the swordmage pulled her out from her circle with lightning lure and on the princess' turn knocked her unconscious when she tried to retaliate for being pulled out of her circle and he simply interrupted her attack with a frost backslah. After this we simply picked up her unconscious body and carried her as far away as we could. We got almost two rooms away when we all just were teleported to shadowfell. We had no hard feelings against it, we fully expected to be powerless to influence the set course of the plot anyway (at the end of part 1 our warlord actually managed to grap the princess shortly before she could enter the halls, however she just feysteped out of his grapple and into the halls anyway)
1. The module was far too eladrin-friendly. The lightning room was essentially negated by a single eladrin whereas other parties had to waste an hour fighting minions. Furthermore, spawning a handful of minions with each step is a major time-sink. It really slows down the game and players stop having fun. None of us found the room challenging - just boring.
We had a blast with this room. The most difficult part for us was to resiste the temptation to deliberately set off more and more pillars. We summoned app. 50 of the minions and only 5 of them actually survived long enought to have a chance to attack. We were cutting/blasting them down as fast as they spawned.
Best thing was our eladrin finally teleporting over to the switch, only to have his summoned onyx dog happily running after him and triggering even more pillars (thaks to being boosted with temp. hp by his owner)
Hey what city is the princess from? I thought it was Myth Drannor, but the city that has the tension with Cormyr (from memory) is in the Kings Forest, but that is nowhere near Myth Drannor.
The princess was not from a city, per se. She was part of a group of Eladrin dropped through a rogue portal from the Feywild into the King's Forest, who tried to setup their colony there.
Because of the events going on between Cormyr's government and the Feywild Eladrin, there was also a build-up of tension between Cormyr and Myth Drannor, an Eladrin kingdom. Myth Drannor provided a small group of diplomats/translators to help resolve the issue.
As a result of the diplomats, it was resolved that the Eladrin dropped into the King's Forest would be given the right to travel from the forest to Myth Drannor, where they would take up residence. As a surety of the peacefulness of the relationship, both during the move and afterward, the princess was setup as a hostage in Cormyr for the behavior of her people, under the guise of her staying in the court to learn the ways of the Human world...
As a sop to Myth Drannor and the Eladrin, Cormyr gave them the diadem of dreams, which had been captured during a civil war in Cormyr some centuries before.
The events of the module begin after the PCs have been volunteered (drafted) into serving as caravan guards for the caravan that is, presumably, coming back from Myth Drannor with the princess, having already dropped off the diadem of dreams with the court at Myth Drannor.
Recent off-screen but relevant events: The half-elf translator, who is traveling back to Cormyr to serve the princess until she learns Common, fell in love with the princess, and, as a result of careful manipulation by the princess, was convinced to steal the diadem of dreams, give it to the princess, and leave a gloating note in th ediadem's place.
Concerns for the PCs: While the current issue between Cormyr and Myth Drannor has been resolved, the current peace is very fragile, and the theft of the diadem and the disappearance of the princess could very well lead to renewed conflict.
Both Cormyr and Myth Drannor border on a third kingdom, Netheril, which is run by an evil aristocracy, which is held in check by the, normally undivided, attention given the Netheril borders by both Cormyr and Myth Drannor. If war does, indeed, break out between Cormyr and Myth Drannor, there will both be effects in both kingdoms (undoubtedly reflected in future CORM modules), and the potential for Netheril to go back to their old tricks, with world conquest the goal. Not good, basically.
Sorry for writing a mini-novel to your request, instead of just the first few lines....
As a sop to Myth Drannor and the Eladrin, Cormyr gave them the diadem of dreams, which had been captured during a civil war in Cormyr some centuries before.
There's no mention of the motives behind giving the Diadem to the elves beyond simple gratitude and good will. The module just says that it is "a gift" for Myth Drannor's "for their aid in reaching a peaceful result".
The events of the module begin after the PCs have been volunteered (drafted) into serving as caravan guards for the caravan that is, presumably, coming back from Myth Drannor with the princess, having already dropped off the diadem of dreams with the court at Myth Drannor.
"It’s traveling from the northern reaches of the forest along the High Road to Eveningstar, where she is due to receive a royal welcome and escort to Suzail." So the caravan hasn't been to Myth Drannor and isn't planning to. However, some of the negotiators are presummedly part of the caravan. "King Foril bestowed upon the moon elf negotiators a gift for Myth Drannor."
Recent off-screen but relevant events: The half-elf translator, who is traveling back to Cormyr to serve the princess until she learns Common, fell in love with the princess, and, as a result of careful manipulation by the princess, was convinced to steal the diadem of dreams, give it to the princess, and leave a gloating note in th ediadem's place.
It's never said in the module that Theron actually stole the diadem or was the true author of the note (and these don't actually make any sense). My theory is that Eldara stole the diadem and manufactured the note.
Both Cormyr and Myth Drannor border on a third kingdom, Netheril, which is run by an evil aristocracy, which is held in check by the, normally undivided, attention given the Netheril borders by both Cormyr and Myth Drannor. If war does, indeed, break out between Cormyr and Myth Drannor, there will both be effects in both kingdoms (undoubtedly reflected in future CORM modules), and the potential for Netheril to go back to their old tricks, with world conquest the goal. Not good, basically.
Agreed, though I think this could have been stressed in the module, maybe with a paragraph in the front or an appendix. It will be interesting if it turns out that Netheril caused the Fey shift in the High Forest.
We had a 5-player group, all level 1s (human paladin, half-elf cleric, human wizard, human ranger) except for my lv 2 human swordmage. Kinda weird to have all humans, but this ended up working to our advantage in the story when we got to the skill challenge in Enc. 1. We called for the princess to bring the diadem out to show our ambushers, only to discover she had ditched us. Typical.
So we go traipsing after her, get through the ettercap & spider easily enough, and then BIG DOGS LANDING IN MY FACE! I played the swordmage's role to the hilt, marking the wolves and making myself the target to hit. The aegis of assault really came in handy here; teleporting to flank on a Large creature was really helpful in getting to Thraven. So princess runs inside, dogs eat it, and we are faced with letting Thraven live. Boo… but yay afterwards.
Part 2: This is where our party really shined. Lots of good Arcana scores, so we had a general idea of what was going on. I was the only one to chow down; I was metagaming a bit that the designer put beneficial food to challenge the perception that magical food in a dungeon was always bad. Woohoo! After pilfering the Alchemy book and the dog, we dashed for the portal, making it out without too much damage from the various constructs.
In the electric pillar room, we actually tried the Mage Hand gambit earlier mentioned, to no avail. After figuring out that we would have to fight through minions, I shifted forward and prepped Sword Burst for each trigger. Not too many problems getting into the princess' ritual room. We try to talk her down; she is having none of it. We bust through the barriers; the paladin and I take care of the various denizens while the other three go to restrain the princess. The wizard ended up thunderbursting through the wall after the burrowing minions jumped in; classic.
Part 3: Bleh. Our DM had apparently playtested the mod, and adjusted the ridiculous factor down a bit for us lowbies. Yay for the paladin who made Level 2 right after part 2; woohoo radiant damage! After screwing around with the dazing/blinding undead nonsense, we stumble into the backwards pillar room. Stupid sniping goblins. The party does a good job using terrain to its advantage, bullrushing one goblin into the well. We jump in the circle and head for the last room.
This should have been a TPK for us. Our DM was kind enough to remove the pit trap getting into the main room, but after two crits from the magma throwers, I was down and -3 AC (no more Warding). The DM also added a bit of useful flavor and mentioned that just before a portal appeared, we could see a brief flash of a gem in the statue. We didn't get the chance to test out the flavor; when the paladin finally got over there, he was picked up by a Feywild portal. The DM finally broke down and had the princess help out, since we had subdued and healed her before the planeshift. There were two of us left when the room was finally empty; with an Arcana check, we grabbed the princess and went for the Faerûn portal.
We got all the loot & story awards, but only with a generous bit of DM softballing. The general sentiment of the adventure's quality declining as it goes on was echoed from the table members before we broke up. My swordmage was very happy to pick up some +2 magic hide for his trouble, pumping his AC to 24. Woohoo!
And thanks for all the info on the module everyone
I'm interested in the lore so I did like it.It's never said in the module that Theron actually stole the diadem or was the true author of the note (and these don't actually make any sense). My theory is that Eldara stole the diadem and manufactured the note.
"My dearest Theron, please steal the diadem and leave a note so that, when the elves attack the caravan, we can slip away in the confusion."
Could make perfect sense - Theron was "in on it" to that point, as his wolves were following the caravan to help make their escape.
Whichever of the two of them actually stole the diadem / wrote the note is moot, but there's certainly a reasonable explanation for either event.