I definitely agree that in-combat skill challenges need scaling factors. I ran this twice - a near TPK at a 4 person table was practically a cake-walk for the 6 person table. Some of that was just random dice, but mostly it was the extra actions available to the 6 person table.
Also, the 6 person table effectively used the NPC (passing him the keys, etc) and if you dice go cold on a solo monster there's just not much you can do.
I found the MINI 2-2 end fight quite frustrating, mainly because I died, and died quite ungallantly to the dragon's forst aura when someone slowed it then ran away. We were a party member down, and one who does good fire damage at that. But the DM said that the most expedient way to beat the scenario was simply to break open the box. We probably could have done it inside a round, if we all just hit it with an encounter or daily. Then it's a minor to switch off the trap and dragon, and you win. But when we first tried, we inferred from the DM's reaction that breaking open the box would stuff up the whole encounter and make us lose (it would blow up, or something) so instead of trying to do all the skill checks (only 2 party members with sufficient thievery) we elected to beat up the worm and got hammered. DM got lucky with some damage rolls, hence my dwarf paladin got whomped.
Overall (it could just be the DM, but I doubt it) I found the whole mod to be a bit of a railroad. Imaginatively written, but the shifting magical maze thing just means that it's a schroedinger's situation - no matter what choices you make, you get the same set of encounters/skill challenges. I would have liked some overall way to use perception, insight, dungeoneering, history, religion, arcana (inside a magical dungeon that is composed of an ancient temple) to guage the best ways through, and avoid some of the more costly skill challenges (the party as a whole had pretty pathetic acro, thievery and athletics, so the traps tended to screw us a bit, and as far as we could tell there was little choice to try to disable them, break them, or find another way round. Every time I tried to use my dungeoneering to find secret doors or better ways, it was a 'no, nothing, keep going' more or less.
I felt kind of similar about the 2-3, actually. Forcing us to either split the party or (apparently) get the hostage killed is kind of difficult. Encounters were fun though, especially the hostage, whose reveal made our shaman MAAAD. He rolled lowest on intiative, but all of the rest of us rolled higher than all the monsters. We pasted the two wereboars and two of the warlocks, and the shaman got hit by two death strikes. Then we freed the 'hostage' who promptly ran over, charged and (thankfully) missed the shaman. Given that he got KO'd twice in the first encounter, and spent most of the second encounter on the floor having fallen off the cliff, in order that he could use his spirit companion powers at range and not waste actions standing up, he was a little miffed by that stage. Still having fun, but more in a WTFery kind of a way.
I quite liked 2-1, I have to say (bar the flying enemies at the end, which were kind of awkward for the paladins to do any defending against, since we couldn't guarantee maintaining divine challenge on them without sheathing melee weapons and chucking rocks/improvised RBA. I rectified that tactical irritant with a treasure bundle, but still >.<. The strikers ended up dragging them down with forced movement). Possibly in part, that enjoyment was because we are a new group, and spent so long on it we really had to split it over two sessions. I suspect part of the forced-ness of the other two mods was in cramming them into one 2 1/2 to 3 hour session each, rather than a full 4 hours.
But overall, i felt a little railroaded through the latter two mods in this series. Had a lot of fun with all of them though. It's my first time DMing next week - core 1-13. Any hints?
I found the MINI 2-2 end fight quite frustrating, mainly because I died, and died quite ungallantly to the dragon's forst aura when someone slowed it then ran away. We were a party member down, and one who does good fire damage at that. But the DM said that the most expedient way to beat the scenario was simply to break open the box. We probably could have done it inside a round, if we all just hit it with an encounter or daily. Then it's a minor to switch off the trap and dragon, and you win. But when we first tried, we inferred from the DM's reaction that breaking open the box would stuff up the whole encounter and make us lose (it would blow up, or something) so instead of trying to do all the skill checks (only 2 party members with sufficient thievery) we elected to beat up the worm and got hammered. DM got lucky with some damage rolls, hence my dwarf paladin got whomped.
A four-man party just doesnt have the actions available to win this fight. A five man is a 50-50 and a 6-man can trash the SC or the dragon without much problem. Partys of 1-2 level chars will get trashed by the aura more than the Beast itself. Its definitely not a well designed encounter.
We won, with only one loss, too (well, two if you count the NPC guide, who did manage to heal-check the second wind out of me the first time I fell unconscious) - and I lost mainly due to the DM getting a little bit lucky to hit my AC on one or two occasions, but partly also due to a slightly poorly optimised character. I also have the feeling I may have forgotten some defence bonuses from second wind which might have kept me alive, too.
One of our characters managed to get through without even being targetted or clipping the aura, whilst another managed to avoid getting hit, and only took I think one round of aura damage.
My apologies for the thread necromancy, but I just recently completed this series with my LFR group. We ran into a few issues, due to the way the adventure was presented, and how our party reacted to it.
The first battle was somewhat bothersome, as my character (a hybrid bard/wizard) had no powers that could be used beyond a ten-square range, and the pirates had ranged weapons. During at least two turns of the encounter, the enemies were out of range of me, so I didn't get to contribute much.
We had an Archer Warlord and a Ranger, and they did all the heavy lifting- our poor Cavalier actually tried to swing to the other ship, and failed rather spectacularly, falling into the sea!
But that's ok, sometimes encounters will give some characters the ability to shine more than others.
We took a strange route in our investigations, since my character was able to provide a great deal of information about Netheril and Sembia. Our encounter with the Shadar-kai was interesting- the first few turns were scary, but once I unpacked my Daily, things got a lot easier, leaving the DM muttering about "overpowered controllers", lol.
The dungeon crawl in the next chapter didn't go so well, as several characters (including myself) lacked key skills to get beyond the traps. The encounter with the Frostwyrm left a bad taste in my mouth as well- we had an Illusionist Mage with us this time, and thanks to our control powers, we were able to keep the Frostwyrm locked down. This left it up to the rest of the party to get the keys, and for whatever reason, nobody thought that opening the chest would get rid of the Frostwyrm!
I finally ran out of ways to keep the 'wyrm off of the party, and, annoyed at my efforts, it decided my Tiefling would make for a tasty snack. I went from full hit points to negative bloodied in a single attack, and the next round, someone opened the chest!
And we were pretty close to beating the thing too!
Luckily, the Cavalier used one of his boons to get me raised, and we were off to the next adventure.
The final chapter was particularly frustrating- the Sembians decided to have us use our Cavalier to deliver the Cup to them. Being an honorable sort, he was repeatedly annoyed at our attempts to use guile and follow him around. This came to a head in the graveyard- we saved him from an ambush, but once we were shown the severed human finger, the Cavalier gave us quite the tongue-lashing.
I, for one, wasn't sure what to do about it. If we didn't follow the Cavalier, he'd just get ambushed- the Sembians weren't playing fair at all. But if we followed him, they'd keep lopping off the Lady's body parts!
The DM didn't quite follow my line of reasoning at first, although he admitted it was logical after the game. In the end, the group decided to follow the Cavalier (using Stealth to hide from him!) anyways. At the cave, we once again were forced to save him from the ambush...and once again were yelled at.
"You are endangering the lady's life, and I will not tolerate it any further!"
Much like in the first post, coming across the battered servant threw us for a little bit of a loop as well. Our Cleric got very confused about all this talk of twin sisters and shapeshifters, and it took a good five minutes to sort things out.
As things turned out, the Cavalier showed up for the final encounter "alone". The minute he was ambushed, however, we showed up at the edge of the map. I locked down the melee enemies with Phantom Chasm, and our ranged characters started taking out the archers. We were careful to stay out of the line of fire, so pretty much only the Cavalier and the Cleric took damage (we almost lost the Cleric, because he didn't have the good sense to stay in the back, running closer to the Cavalier. He got focus-fired by the archers and came within 1 point of death).
We did luck out and manage to keep the Cup though. When the high muckety-mucks asked us what we were going to do with the cup, my character suggested that it should rightfully be returned to the City, for use against the Sembians and the Netherese, who had made such a mockery of law and order.
The nobles then started arguing about who should keep the cup, and I presented them with the option of sharing control of it. They were skeptical, until I cashed in all my favors!
(I admit I was disappointed that there was no story reward for this, but c'est lavie).
Then the rewards were handed out- unfortunately, we didn't get much, since a few players had made a bad impression previously. I think we managed to wring a recommendation for joining the Order of the Golden Rooster out of the DM, but we're not sure how to get another one.
I can see a lot of hard work went into this series, but as a whole, the adventure looked like it could have used a good 'troubleshooting' section, since there were a few areas where the party could end up staring at each other going "well, uh, now what?".
Still, getting some intrigue into my dungeon-crawling is always a good thing. This was one of those rare adventures that really made us feel like we'd made a difference in the world!
"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." -The Doctor, Remembrance of the Daleks
