Game day adventure

[Stormtower]

I ran "Into the Shadowhaunt" three times at Games & Stuff in Glen Burnie, MD, and "Against the White Dragon" once. My first party was a group of 4E vets (relatively speaking) and they handled the module with ease, then had a very difficult fight with the white dragon... the wizard used Icy Terrain to knock the dragon prone and it fell out of the sky as a result,which enabled them to surround & pound it into submission.

The second group was two complete D&D newbs and three returning players (2nd Edition folks who skipped 3E)... they had a great time and just barely managed to overcome the statues and Helvec's skeletons along with the elf necro himself. That second group had great rolls, and my dice (luckily for them) got cold when rolling for the statues.

I TPK'd my third group, but they were really good sports about it. Like the previous two groups, they triggered the Helvec battle before fully investigating the statue room, so had to fight all the monsters at once. This group was more of a collection of individuals rather than a team; the cleric tried to tank the skeleton troopers and fell quickly, while the human fighter engaged one of the statues by himself. Even though it was a TPK the players thanked me for the session and there were smiles all around.

We had two other great DMs running games and the turnout was very impressive... easily triple what the store owners expected based on pre-Gameday signups.

 

[melkoriii]

The table I ran through triggered the final boss encounter before dealing with the statues so had to face both together.

I got the ghost to help out after a few rounds even though it was technically not 'helpful' at that point, so things lasted longer, but with the cleric and wizard cut off from the final room by the statues the party didn't really stand a chance.

Bad form to TPK young/newbie players, but they all seemed to enjoy it, even though they 'lost'! I did 'forget' about the 'free kick if you end turn adjacent to a prone enemy' more than a few times otherwise it'd have been over a lot sooner!

??

THe Ghost never helped out. We did everything right except take on the Statues in the trapped chamber. We also got them with the boss.

Boss went down in 3 rounds. Statues focus fired each character in ONE round.

Wizard was on the pedistile and so the statues could not get him. He MMed them to death after everyone else died. 3 of us failed ALL Death saves in a row.

Then the wizard went and saved the kids only to roll low on the cave in and get traped in the room. THe kids got saved though. but it was a TPK.

Who ever wrote that adventure was a MORON. You do not throw one let alone TWO mobs like the statues at nobie players.

 

[Mirtek]

I'm curious to know to those who ran this adventure...
Do you get to keep them or has to be delivered back to WoTC at some point ?

In the shop I played the DMs got to keep the adventure, the maps, all the monster miniatures and also an extra second set of player miniatures (because the players also got to keep their PC miniatures from the first set)

??

THe Ghost never helped out. We did everything right except take on the Statues in the trapped chamber. We also got them with the boss.

Our DM later explained us that there are three options for the ghost:
a) fight for you from the start of the end fight
b) fight against you from the start of the end fight
c) fight for you as soon as you bloody the necromancer

Which option the ghost takes depends on how you did at three certain points previous to the battle

 

[Greatwyrm]

I had a good time just for getting to play anything. Been way too long for me.

It could have gone better, but our GM was having some trouble. I don't think he got the adventure more than a few minutes before we started. On top of that, he had the continuing damage effects and healing surges pretty much all wrong. We took a lot more damage and were virtually unable to heal in combat. Still, I didn't want to really hassle the guy. New edition, new adventure, plenty of room for misunderstanding.

Still, had a good time. I didn't know most of the people at our event, but I think we had a pretty good mix of older and newer players. Overall, everyone seemed to have a good time.

 

[CrimsonNeko]

Had a blast myself. Those statues hurt a bunch, nearly everyone had to burn their daily on them. We just kept picturing them as riverdance statues with all the kicking they were doing. What was pretty awesome was what happened during the last encounter. I was playing the cleric, and I have to say, turn undead is pretty awesome now. But what was cool was what the wizard did. Fey stepped onto the platform, and used their thunder spell to knock the villain off. Not only did they take fall damage, but fighters were waiting for him. Didn't last long from there!

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

Will "Into the Shadowhaunt" be available online for download? I'd love to run this for my 3.5 group to try and get them to switch to 4E.

 

[stephengroy]

I ran it twice, and the first time also had to have the Shadow "Help" the PCs.
Both were rife with errors, and the back of the Cleric's sheet was cribbed straight from the D&DXP's cleric sheet without even a little clean-up.
The second time, I noticed the door had NO HARDNESS listed!
After being hired to remove the LWD, the adventurers wanted to buy oil, and reached for their shiny new PHBs. Guess what?

No Oil for sale in the PHB!!

If anyone wants OLDER game Day stuffs, please join

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Game_Day/

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

Did anyone else think this adventure was too easy?

Alas, no.

Oh dear, TPK again!

Paul