4 out of 5 rating for Escape from Phlan
I recently ran the world premier of this episode at GottaCon in Victoria, BC, Canada. Words after the next period should be considered potentially spoilerific. The session was slow to start with a late player or two and on top of that 4 out of 5 players showed up with level 4 characters and used the "catching up" downtime activity to bump up to level 5, so we lost close to an hour over-all. Despite that, the pacing was good and we finished with only minutes left on the clock. If they had gone for the dragon, it would have taken me at least 5-10 minutes past the finish time to kill them off (clerics.. *shakes fist*). The combat encounters were balanced well enough, maybe even a touch light for some of them. I followed the guidelines for adjusting each encounter based on APL (they were a "weak" party), but then started removing less than recommended after the first couple fights, so that it didn't feel too easy. The opening boxed text encouraged a couple players to wonder aloud why the hell they would ever agree to go back IN to Phlan AFTER escaping the dragon, but the mission at hand and some hidden d20 rolls from the DM distracted them and got things moving again, heh. My only sadness is the players not going for the dragon. That would have been FUNNY. According to the encounter building guidelines in the DMG, that dragon encounter is a DEADLY encounter for 7 level 18 characters!
