I ran this encounter last night with 3/4 of my gaming group (one had to spend some quality time with fiance and couldn't make it).
Everyone read the rules update, then picked a character. We had Fighter, Cleric, Ranger.
Roleplayed around the town a bit, mostly them seeing the spooked villagers, noticing vandalism (the Cleric being irked into action by the vandalism of the statue of Amunnator(sp?) in the town square), though they failed most of their social rolls due to none having any social skills.
As they decided to wait until morning to press on, the Fighter asked for and got a keg of authentic dwarven ale and everyone said they'd have some until I asked for saves, when the Cleric and Ranger said they were drinking water instead, leaving the Dwarf to drain the keg(let the player add Iron Stomach to the roll, and passed easily).
After emptying it, she spotted some dwarven carvings on the bottom of the keg with the following inscriptions "Blessings to those who drain me in one sitting," granting the Dwarf a nostalgic reverie about her home and a +1 bonus to the first roll of the day, which turned out to give just enough to the perception roll to track the Kobolds(the other players rolling poorly).
They reached the cave enterance and found some discarded "refuge"(was tired and "refuse" came out wrong). After a brief discussion and the wedging of a sunrod into the dwarf's shield-straps, they headed in, arranged in standard single-file array: Fighter-Cleric-Ranger.
I called for "passive stealth tests"(-2 to their stealth rolls) to see how much noise they were making since none of them actively said they were sneaking and opposed them to the kobold's perceptions. The two minions by the fire(scaled down from 4 due to party size) were oblivious, but Ichi-Ichi heard them, pulled the cowbell/cantrip drop rope and readied an action to hit the first person out.
Fighter advanced, was interrupted by Ichi-Ichi, took a hit and moved to engage. True to the player's style, the Cleric advanced into the center of the room, luckily missing the caltrop squares and then making a perception check(figured DC 15 since it was oddly lit, with small objects) to notice the caltrops. Then he blasted the other minion with his lance of faith.
The ranger [edited by admin]shot[/edited] one of the minions, almost using his daily power to kill both. I let him make a perception check to notice that they were "pretty runty." He switched to careful shot instead.
The 4 minions in the side room and the 2 skirmishers came out(forgot there was only supposed to be 1 skirmisher) and a hail of spears, one of the minions critting for max damage = normal damage of 2...
Fighter pounded Ichi-Ichi out of the corner with Iron Tide and moved into his spot, poor Ichi-Ichi going down a moment later when the Ranger stepped out and took him out.
The Cleric had meanwhile been ineffectually been tossing about Lances, while taking a second volley of spears.
With Ichi-Ichi down, the Fighter advanced into the minions, cleaving 2 apart on the first round. The cleric, now bloodied, wisely ran back into the cave enterance tunnel behind the ranger and healed himself. One of the minions used his minor power to shift to flank the Fighter, getting immediately owned, leaving the other minion to stab inneffectually at the Fighter.
The Cleric, healed back to almost full, headed back to the center of the room and threw another inneffectual lance and the skirmishers split up, one charging the Cleric and the other Charging the Ranger.
The Fighter moved to support the Cleric after dropping the last minion and the Skirmisher attacking the Ranger decided it would be better to flank the Cleric. The other skirmisher, now flanking proceeded to roll max 14 damage on the Cleric, taking him down to bloodied again(and leaving the players wondering how the heck the skirmisher had a damage range of 1 to 14).
The Ranger and Fighter then proceeded to dismember one of the Kobolds, the Fighter taking him down to bloodied in one hit, the ranger taking him from bloodied to dead in a second.
They then turned and mobbed the remaining one, the Fighter shield-slamming him into the firepit and curb-stomping him as he shifted to crawl out.
At the end of the first fight, they realized they'd, combined, used 1 of their encounter powers, though the Fighter did attempt to use his Daily, but missed, saving it for later.
They used their Second Winds and the Cleric's other heal, rested a bit more so the Cleric could heal himself again, then rested for another 5 minutes so he would be at full for the next battle. They also cleverly collected the caltrops to use themselves later.
They then proceeded to Meepo's room, the Fighter and Cleric oblivious to everything while the Ranger noticed not only the quivering pile of furs, but also the Spider as it dropped down on them(forgetting that Meepo would have fled by then according to the adventure. I blame it on the fact that I've been DMing for 12 years and have never used a pre-made adventure).
Rolling randomly to see who it attacked, it went for the Cleric, fortunately missing with it's nasty recharge bite.
After the surprise round(I gave the spider and the ranger 1 standard action each), they rolled and the spider went again, biting the Cleric "in half" (doing exactly half of his hp). The fighter knocked the Spider away so the Cleric and Ranger could move more easily, and Meepo stood up, wildly missing with his hand crossbow and charging the Ranger, doing a decent bit of damage.
As the Cleric healed himself, the Fighter beat down the spider some more and the Ranger shifted away and made a ranged attack, provoking an attack from Meepo, resulting in them stabbing/shooting each other at the same time.
After that, the Cleric blasted the Spider and the Fighter used his encounter power to finish it off and take Meepo down to bloodied, using his saved action point to hit him again and nearly kill him. At that point, Meepo began pleading for his life. They stripped him down, rolled more horribly low rolls to intimidate information out of him, though they managed to learn that there were hobgoblins around. (They really really liked Meepo btw, two of the players requested that they see him around more often).
They let Meepo go, with the promise that he would go to the village and turn himself in.
They then rested a bit more and proceeded to get wiped. That Hobgoblin caster is nasty. Ahem, back to continuity.
After suitable recharge rest, they advanced up the water passage, the Fighter coming around the bend first and spotting the Flail Hobgoblin, the archer behind the table, and the caster chanting and levelling his staff at him.
I blame what happened partially to the fact that all my bad rolls went to the archer. He hit exactly 1 time in about 5 rounds, while the flail hobo missed only 1/4 attacks and I never rolled less than 15 for the caster. Simultaneously, my players hit a streak of bad luck, missing with between 1/2 and 3/4 of their attacks and rolling low damage/heals when they did hit.
Predictably, the Fighter charged the enemy fighter, the cleric moved up behind him and tossed his first and only lance of the fight, missing.
The Ranger used his daily, putting one (almost min-damage) arrow into the caster and burying the other into the table the archer was behind.
At this point, they were lined up perfectly for the blast(I remember blast being a straight line in this edition for some reason, though I'm not sure from where... is it blast and cone or is it line and blast?). The flail hobo shifted out of the way(the Fighter missing on his AoO) and the caster let loose, sending all 3 pc's flying(forgot entirely about the dwarve's racial sturdiness) and critting the ranger, taking him from full to near-death in one hit.
They then spent a turn getting up and re-positioning, amid a flurry of heals and second winds. The Dwarf used his action point to move back into range - one that might have been used on a power if we'd remembered his save to avoid going prone, and hit with his daily, rolling dissapointingly low(barely over what his normal max weapon damage is).
The caster then dropped the fighter prone again with a blast of force(still forgetting the dwarf's resistance to it) and the cleric used up the last of his heals.
The dwarf managed to pull himself to his feet, taking another painful flail hit that he couldn't afford, and used his encounter to drop the flail hobgoblin and hearily miss the caster. The caster followed up by charging his staff with lightning and bringing the dwarf to about 5hp With all of them out of healing, mostly out of encounters, and low on hp it already looked bad - and then the hobgoblin's staff recharged completely.
Though the Ranger had teleported out of the way, the fighter went down and the cleric went from freshly-fully-healed to near-death in one blast from the staff, both going flying again. The archer then got his first hit of the fight, dropping the ranger.
The cleric decided discretion was the better part of valour and chose that point to flee, unfortunately not getting out of the range of the caster's staff, with results as per all previous encounters with said caster, namely pc's flying and dying. Hobgoblins: 1 soldier dead, caster hurt(not even bloodied), archer unharmed. PCs - #1 dead, #2 dead, #3 dead.
All in all, everyone but the cleric's player loved the system(and enjoyed the adventure - especially Meepo). I'm whipping up my own adventure for tonight and we're going to give it another go, with people probably trying different characters, our 4th player, and a new set of monsters. We'll see if the Cleric's player enjoys it more from a different role.
If anyone's interested, I'll let you know how it goes too.
