4E - KoTS - Combining Encounters

Session 6 - Keep on the Shadowfell

Tonight's session moves the party from Loudwater and the "intro" encounters into the Keep on the Shadowfell. They are 3rd level, already, so I had to tweak the encounters in the first level.

I thought it would make sense to combine the first five encounters for the goblin encampment. Pit Trap+Rat Swarm, Balgron the fat, the Hobgoblin Torturer, 7 Goblin Warriors, and 7 Goblin Sharpshooters. I laid out all the dungeon tiles for the entire set of encounters, to kick things off. The PC's really enjoyed this fight. This was their "level+3" fight, and it was a real challenge, taking two players to zero hit points, and knocking two other players to bloodied. I was also pleased to start of the night with the party's most difficult encounter, which would test their willingness to use their daily powers. Once things started to unfold, they didn't hold back. This worked out really well, especially with the goblin's effective tactics of "attack and move" as well as hiding to obtain combat advantage from range. The PC's fought very well tactically, and they're really starting to play together better. The encounter did last longer than usual (around 1:15), but we accomplished a great deal in that time, and they got a big haul of treasure.

Lighting was a weird issue. Sunrods (cheap) have a light radius of 20 hexes, and the light spell is only 4 hexes?

Next was the zombie encounter, and the party had no problem avoiding the terror runes, so this turned into a pretty easy cakewalk. Again, two fighters in a 2-by-2 hallway fight is EXTREMELY effective against a party with artillery fire. The fighters and cleric could easily have dispatched thousands of these zombies.

The party enjoyed the skeletal legion room, with skeleton generators. The skill challenge that followed, with Sir Keegan was nice to have scripted, but it seemed a little bit too railroad oriented compared to other skill challenges we've had.