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I love the location, I like the individual fights and how you go to different halls and explore. The plot needed some tweaking but there's more there than KotS imho.
Here's what I did Spoilers To add some social encounters and an overarching storyline I decided to make Szarrthraxx from Kobold Hall the leader of a group seeking to kill human-settlements in the Nentir Vale and retake it. The players began with Kobold Hall and overheard Kalarel and Szarrthraxx discussing their individual plans and such and Kalarel left to go do his dark deed and the players took out the dragon.
Later, they find evidence that Balgron the Fat has taken the money side of things from his benefactor and is now funding the operation to get various kobolds, goblins, orcs, gnolls, etc. in the area to attack. The players find Linora in the dungeon badly injured and being taken by Balgron to sell to the Bloodreavers as a slave. She says she overheard about a big attack by a group of kobolds on the town and runs off to warn them. Kalarel suspects that Balgron isn't going to play nice with him, so that's why he sealed the second level of the keep and instituted a password in case Balgron tried to come get him and his group of cult loyalists.
The players finally killed Balgron and found a letter on him from Hasifir, one of the mages of Saruun who claims to be behind it. Hasifir says that he wants to establish rule in the Nentir and use an army of creatures to go take other places. He knows of a dark place of power he hopes to use to make them all powerful & rich. He says the other mages don't know quite yet.
Only thing is... Hasifir isn't really the guy, it's Paldemar with the hopes that when Balgron fails whoever will come provide the letter and cause trouble in the seven pillar hall with accusations that one of the mages is interfereing outside the hall. In reality Paldemar is running the whole show from behind the scenes and working to create as many distractions as possible as he searches for the keys to power.
I hope it'll make some good story and social encounters in the seven pillared hall. I'm going to shift it to a clues situation as the players try to prove/disprove/whatever what is going on that leads them to the various locations in the mountain... but we'll see how that goes once they get there. :-)
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I've been running this for a several sessions now. My players just cleaned out the Chamber of Eyes.
I've got a group of 6 players (with two clerics!) so they are pretty much mopping up the place. I'm thinking about beefing up the encounters with extra bad guys, but I don't want the encounters to drag on. I'd be interested to hear how others are dealing with larger parties.
Has anyone run/played through this module? Any thoughts/recommendations?
My group is 1/2 through KoTS and I'm wondering if this is a decent second adventure.
I have run it, and it is (much) better than KotS. My suggestion would be to expand a bit on the Seven Pillared Hall, and thus make it more living, more interesting (it has a good base, but its still a base), perhaps making it their new base of operations. Lots of possibilities in that place.
Also, tell your players to "remember to snare, 'cause runners can be a bitch" Well, I guess that counts for every dungeon, but for some reason, my players had many fights that encompassed several encounters, due to runners.
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Gnoguh, human fighter/cleric (kensei->adamantine soldier)
Carric, elf cleric/ranger (radiant servant->saint)
Torn, tiefling wizard/cleric (divine oracle->sages of ages)
Truxas, human feylock/bard (feytouched->feyliege)
Tagron, human rogue (daggermaster->deadly trickster) 21th level Musings of an Epic Virgin
I am milking the random encounters for all they're worth. When one is encountered, I replace it with another one of the same level. Each random encounter has a story seed and I've been using those (more accurately, the players have decided to follow up on a few of them).
The PCs are higher level than they "should" be (6th level now, just cleared the Chamber of Eyes!) but I don't care. Tonight I think they are going to hit the Horned Hold - after they deal with the Mages of Saruun in the Seven Pillared Hall trying to arrest them for wiping out House Azaer.
Here is a link to the thread where we start off in Thunderspire, after finishing Keep on the Shadowfell.
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
The PCs are higher level than they "should" be (6th level now, just cleared the Chamber of Eyes!) but I don't care. Tonight I think they are going to hit the Horned Hold - after they deal with the Mages of Saruun in the Seven Pillared Hall trying to arrest them for wiping out House Azaer.
Frankly, the Duergar are way tougher than their levels would indicate, so Level 6 sounds about right. They are nasty, nasty little guys with high defenses and dirty tricks.
(0) All duergar have those nasty beard quills. Minor action, decent damage, ongoing poison damage, and a lingering effect. Ewww...
(1) The Duergar Scouts will, generally, be able to use their Sneak Attack every other round or more. Their invisibility refreshes on, IIRC, They are damage machines.
(2) The Duergar Soldiers (Guards, maybe?) have really high defenses, hit a lot, and hit hard. Their ability to ignite is just icing on the cake.
(3) Theurges are insane... Their area attacks are huge; their allies are mostly immune to them; and the PCs will spend probably half the encounter blind, prone, or both.
(4) Shock Troopers are really the only somewhat overrated Duergar, although they hit insanely hard after growing to Large size.
Exercise caution. Also, a lot of the Duergar will retreat back with their buddies when they're losing. This makes future fights very, very difficult.... My group had to barricade themselves into a cleared Tower to get a quick night's rest, and escaped through a chimney when the Duergar started trying to smoke them out.
I concur with the general consensus - TL is much better than KotS. I'm running one group through it pretty much straight up, and they enjoyed the Seven Pillared Hall as a base much more than they liked Winterhaven. I also peeled out the Well of Demons section and re-skinned it as an extra-planar dungeon for my home brew campaign. I think the Well of Demons is the best published one level dungeon I've ever seen - the combinations of traps and monsters are brilliant, and I love the big set piece encounter (and the players did too).
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I am enjoying it. The party are just about to set off the big rolling bowling ball
Anyway it is better than KotSF but still got a lot of contrived 'you kill the bad guys and find letters from the next bad guy up telling you where to go' bits. Because we are not huge RPers and more H&Sers (well we are wargamers as well and don't know better) that is the only thing I have changed.... I got embarrassed after handing out the fifth or whatever letter on a body with the next plot section on it! (running back into KotSF).
However there are lots of potential plot hooks and it would be really easy to mix it up some IMO. The whole TSL is miles across so there is space.....and yes random encounters FTW, exp just before the PC's are going to do a extended rest mwa hahhahaha!
Frankly, the Duergar are way tougher than their levels would indicate, so Level 6 sounds about right. They are nasty, nasty little guys with high defenses and dirty tricks.
That sounds about right. The fight in the Trading Post (for some reason I thought that was House Azaer) was a lot harder on the PCs than most other encounters of the same level, and not all the Duergar were able to act on the first couple of rounds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Obryn
Exercise caution. Also, a lot of the Duergar will retreat back with their buddies when they're losing. This makes future fights very, very difficult.... My group had to barricade themselves into a cleared Tower to get a quick night's rest, and escaped through a chimney when the Duergar started trying to smoke them out.
Sounds awesome!
Since the Horned Hold is aware of the PCs in my game (they let a goblin escape from the Chamber of Eyes and he ran for the Horned Hold - made it there after a failed roll in the skill challenge to track him down turned into a hard random encounter), I have worked up a response for any PC incursion. Their goal is to get the PCs trapped on the far bridge and hit them from three sides.
We'll see how it goes tonight! (The player who seems most tactically astute can't make it to this session, so that might hit the PCs hard.)
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
Since the Horned Hold is aware of the PCs in my game (they let a goblin escape from the Chamber of Eyes and he ran for the Horned Hold - made it there after a failed roll in the skill challenge to track him down turned into a hard random encounter), I have worked up a response for any PC incursion. Their goal is to get the PCs trapped on the far bridge and hit them from three sides.
We'll see how it goes tonight! (The player who seems most tactically astute can't make it to this session, so that might hit the PCs hard.)
The whole scenario encouraged a lot of good creative thinking from my players, and it was one of the best sessions, I think. One of their good ideas was carrying one of the big, heavy tables in front of them across the bridge, blocking shots from the Arbalesters & Scouts very effectively.
I also had to really stay on my toes more than normal... I mean, I'd assume all those fireplaces had to have chimneys, right? And ... well, the Keep probably has to have a roof of some kind...
The end result was that they got behind the Duergar, and had freed the slaves, dealt with the Orcs & Ogre, and looted Murkelmor's room before the whole mass of remaining enemies hit them - fortunately in two waves, the second of which ended up retreating rather than face an obviously overpowering foe.
They may show back up later. I haven't decided if Framarth would seek greener pastures elsewhere, take his revenge, or else try to build the Horned Hold back up after a short retreat.
Im running it for a three man group - but moved the adventure under a human city. I also planted a lot of hooks before getting near the hall. The PCs cleared the chamber of eyes, presenting the grand Duke with evidence of the Bloodreavers misdeeds. (Although for politcal reasons he has to ignore it.) They got a map to horned hold, but instead took off for the cisterns accompanied by a proffesional guide and a fanatic Dragonborn. There they are investigating the arrival of a gnoll tribe (from a forest PCs were responsible for burning down). Blackfang tribal gear and a few dead gnolls were found when a friend disappeared. Recently they heard gnoll barking echoing through the hallways. Not sure if they are checking the houses of silence or well of the demons next.
Warned by Enworld I created a lot of alternate links between sites, unfortunatly this means they are on edge of fighting the gnolls at 5th level.
The party's response to solving the cistern problem "Crap we did a good deed and no one is going to pay us. If we threaten to finish the job, maybe we can get blackmail money."
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This is a good adventure. I feel it's a bit more open to explore than KotSF. If the PC's feel like exploring there are plenty of sites and random encounters to use (especially if you use the DDI supplement like I did). You don't have to run it linearly either. For example, my PC's found a way to bypass the duergar and go straight for the gnolls.
As someone else posted the gnoll area is a really nice 1-level dungeon.
One quirk about this adventure is there are surprisingly few minion encounters. THis kinda threw-off my group because they assumed rooms where they were outnumbered had minions. Not so!
Frankly, the Duergar are way tougher than their levels would indicate, so Level 6 sounds about right. They are nasty, nasty little guys with high defenses and dirty tricks.
(0) All duergar have those nasty beard quills. Minor action, decent damage, ongoing poison damage, and a lingering effect. Ewww...
(1) The Duergar Scouts will, generally, be able to use their Sneak Attack every other round or more. Their invisibility refreshes on, IIRC, They are damage machines.
(2) The Duergar Soldiers (Guards, maybe?) have really high defenses, hit a lot, and hit hard. Their ability to ignite is just icing on the cake.
(3) Theurges are insane... Their area attacks are huge; their allies are mostly immune to them; and the PCs will spend probably half the encounter blind, prone, or both.
(4) Shock Troopers are really the only somewhat overrated Duergar, although they hit insanely hard after growing to Large size.
Exercise caution. Also, a lot of the Duergar will retreat back with their buddies when they're losing. This makes future fights very, very difficult.... My group had to barricade themselves into a cleared Tower to get a quick night's rest, and escaped through a chimney when the Duergar started trying to smoke them out.
-O
This makes me really look forward to 6:00pm, which is when we start up our next session and will likely reach the Horned Hold tonight.
The beard quills are great. It invokes that player WTF?! that is the whole reason I'm a DM. I had one of these guys come around the back of the party and do this to the wizard. She freaked out until she remembered her Shield power. It was a great gaming moment.
I'm running TS right now for my group- and I've been having a lot of fun running it. As most others have posted, the Seven Pillared Hall makes for a very interesting base, and my players seem to be enjoying the variety and the setting of it. I've been trying to create more plot points and social interactions in the Hall (I've been looking at it as an underground version of Deadwood). The players are in a bit of lurch now as they've run into the (almost) inevitable battle at the duergar trading post. Hopefully this will open up some roleplaying possibilities.
I created a miniature terrain piece of the Endless Stair (part of the Labyrinth) that I'm going to use in this weekend's game- but I haven't decided on what kind of encounter I'm going to run on it. I've also got to come up with a plan on transporting it, since it's over 40" tall and 30" long!
I agree with the sentiments of those who have written before me. Thunderspire is a superior module to KOTS. I ran a group of 6 players through it and it proved to be a difficult adventure for them. I nearly had a TPK toward the end of the adventure -- even with 6 players. Tactics become extremely important.
I also enjoyed the Seven Pillared Hall. I thought that Brugg made for a humorous recurring NPC.
My only gripe with the module (and with 4th edition modules thus far) is that it didn't have enough pre-fab'd maps.
I also enjoyed the Seven Pillared Hall. I thought that Brugg made for a humorous recurring NPC.
The fighter in my game got into a pit fight with Brugg in Rothar's. The fix was in; Rothar was doing stuff to help Brugg, the duergar were messing with the PC; it was pretty cool.
It would have been better if Brugg had more pit-fighting powers. I'd give him an At-Will that either Pushes 1 or allows him to swap places with the target. And maybe an encounter power that does lots of damage, pushes a few, and knocks the target prone.
Oh yeah, make sure that you add spiked walls (that Rothar can move out as an attack!), chains to swing from, a pit, and a tiger in a cage that Rothar can send out when he wants!
__________________ "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" Burning Empires:Boldaq Keep on the Shadowfell
One big flaw that Thunderspire shares with KotS is that the BBEG appears out of nothing at the end. Where is the foreshadowing?.
I think that the module as written relies somewhat too much on a railroad between the main encounter areas, which is a shame - it would have been stronger if it had been written so that the three main areas could be tackled in any order IMO, and if there were stronger links between BBEG's.
So far I've found it to be less interesting to run as a DM than KotS in a number of ways, as the background doesn't seem as rich.
(also it seems funny to me that The Ordinator Arcanis (mage of Sarun) 'causes people to tremble'. Apparently in most cases the judgement of the Ordinator is swift, harsh and usually fatal... however with three encounter powers and magic missile it seems like his judgement would be a slow grinding down of people who can't quite hit him! .
Cheers
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(also it seems funny to me that The Ordinator Arcanis (mage of Sarun) 'causes people to tremble'. Apparently in most cases the judgement of the Ordinator is swift, harsh and usually fatal... however with three encounter powers and magic missile it seems like his judgement would be a slow grinding down of people who can't quite hit him! .
Cheers
That's because to the Ordinators, everyone is a minion!
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355 hours played
Gnoguh, human fighter/cleric (kensei->adamantine soldier)
Carric, elf cleric/ranger (radiant servant->saint)
Torn, tiefling wizard/cleric (divine oracle->sages of ages)
Truxas, human feylock/bard (feytouched->feyliege)
Tagron, human rogue (daggermaster->deadly trickster) 21th level Musings of an Epic Virgin
One big flaw that Thunderspire shares with KotS is...
Hmm... I thought in KotS there was plenty foreshadowing... when they got there, it wasn't exactly a surprise for the PCs (i.e. not Oh, and who are you!?).
Bye
Thanee
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Well, I guess that counts for every dungeon, but for some reason, my players had many fights that encompassed several encounters, due to runners.
They are damage machines.
) that is the only thing I have changed.... I got embarrassed after handing out the fifth or whatever letter on a body with the next plot section on it! (running back into KotSF).
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