Session 6 (cont).
The Good
The rebel and investigator and rebel soldier both significantly outperformed their deceased wizard compatriot. The investigator landed a few good hits on Tok and the soldier landed a very good one indeed (11 points) on Thornt. Of course, he then got almost-one shotted by Erik*.
I'm not sure whether thieves are meant to be that good, but Erik's average hit is doing something like 20-25 points of damage, which is insane at level 1.
The other highpoint of the session for me was Wilheim repeating from the invisible fey drake in the tower. Despite knowing it was close to death (we play with visible hp bars), he knew that he himself was on 3 hp and taking 5 ongoing poison damage. If he failed to kill the drake and/or failed his save, then he was a long way from his companions on the ground. He chose to jump back out the window.
I was then left with the odd choice of what do with an invisible creature with 5 hp. It first ran down the stairs to the lower level expecting the PCs to open one of the doors. When no one did, I surmised that the fey drake was not able to open doors. So it returned upstairs, used its climb speed to clamber down the side of the tower, and attacked an unsuspecting Wilheim. I hit, but Tok had healed him in the meantime. The fey drake fell very shortly after
The Bad
Two of my players didn't quite get the abstractness of the lighthouse defence encounter, depsite me going out-of-character to explicitly explain it. They kept thinking about whether close powers would kill more enemies than melee attacks (no, I specifically said at-wills kill 1, encounters kill 2, etc) or that it would be cool to sneak around and ambush the attackers from behind (except they get a chance to act before they die and you're standing out in the open with them).
The other lowlight was that the group's defender spent almost the entire session sheltering behind walls or in the lighthouse. I think she made one attack the entire session, and spent the whole defence scenario building barricades. As a result, she was entirely ineffective in her role and absorbed no damage whatsoever. Now she is on 7 surges. Thornt is on 4. Tok is on 1 and Erik and William have 0.
The main problem appears to be that the player controlling the defender is much less aggressive than the players controlling everyone else.
I'm not sure how they're going to handle the rest of the module when so low on health. Hopefully they'll be able to circumvent Ghillie Dhu by questioning the prisoners in the brig, but they're in no condition to take on Asrabey (even the level 2 version that I've decided to use).
In a sense, that might be classified as a "Good" thing. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, Erik's wife is pregnant, and I've been thinking of throwing him a curveball: that she promised the Unseen Court their firstborn in exchange for Erik's safe return from the Fourth Yerasol War. Asrabey, as a senior operative for the Court, knows that, and I intend to use it as a negotiating position during the confrontation in the keep.
If Erik and the others allow Asrabey to escape, they will have the Duchess' and/or Nathan's blood on their hands, they will have saved Erik's child, but they will have firmly entered the grey territory that Dying Skyseer makes so much of. If Nathan dies, Lya Jierre suddenly has a personal reason for joining the Obscurati, and if word of their involvement gets back to her then she has a reason to dislike the PCs.
If they refuse to let Asrabey leave (and survive the confrontation!), then Erik will need to put measures in place to protect his wife and unborn child from the impressive abilities of the Unseen Court.
Either way, the AP certainly heats up.
The Ugly
As Erik's player pointed out, the structure of the lighthouse defence encounter prejudices Essentials characters because they generally don't have encounter or daily powers.
I told him that Essentials builds generally swap nova ability for consistent long-term damage, and that the encounter as built is no worse in that regard than a normal encounter would have been.
He does have a point though, and if a similar encounter is planned later in the AP, some thought might need to be given to how (or whether) to provide for classes that don't have encounter or daily powers.
Next session is 13 November 2011, and gee if it isn't going to be a knife-edge.
*He was 5 hp from full before the hit landed.