How to hurt a party KotS style - Ginnel stay out :-p

[Shabe]

Right I'm DMing for a party, maybe foolishly I let the players have a 28 point buy, but anyway the party consists of 1st level

Dragonborn Fighter / Wizard - Sword and board
Tiefling Paladin - Cha - Axe and board
Dragonborn Wizard - Orb - Cloud of Daggers and Thunderwave
Tiefling Warlock - Infernal
Half elf Warlord - Inspiring Prescence
Dwarf Cleric - Str/Wis mix

I don't seem to be able to do any meaningful damage to the players, no one has been dropped, all encounters are core KotS and have been scaled up by adding monsters equal to the 1/5th of the xp value of the encounter.

First Ambush - extra slinger
Resulted in 5 Healing surges taken from the Paladin, and one from another party member.

extended rest

Second Ambush - extra skirmisher
Resulted in 3 people being bloodied, 5 healing surges used across the party.

Burial Pit - extra human bandit
Resulted in 3 healing surges used across the party. The 3 attacks the guard drakes got didn't hit anything.

Outside the Kobold Lair - extra dragonshield and skirmisher. The slinger and dragonshields didn't hit anything.
No one bloodied, although a few are hurting a bit, and two healing surges have been used (via dwarves second wind and a healing word plus the warlock just discovered he had 30hp not 16).

The kobold slinger (by the skin of his teeth and 3 hit points) managed to get back inside leaving the remaining minion with a bunch of angry adventurers, they've used quite a few of their encounter powers and one daily (wizards).

I now have inside to run (which I've seperated as an encounter for spending action points) and i'm waiting for irontooth to bring on the hurt.
1) Any suggestions on which kobold/s I should add to make the fight challenging.


and 2) Is this normal (i'm used to 3rd Ed but other people always seem to have people dropping), am I just rolling badly or is the party one that can keep on treking until they run out of healing surges?

 

[Danceofmasks]

1) KoTS is written for 5 PCs, not six.
2) 28 point buy is teh broken.

 

[BlackMoria]

It is normal for my group. Their performance in these encounters is similar to your group.

While Irontooth is a tough encounter, his deadliness is more a factor of what kobolds remain when he enters the battle. My group killed the minions and skirmishers before the Irontooth wave arrived and my group made short work of Irontooth and dragonshields.

I played it again to see what would happen if some kobold minions/skirmishers survived and the encounter became immediately quite difficult.

If you want a tougher fight, then add another 50 - 100 xp of minions to ensure that there are some kobolds around when the Irontooth wave arrives, which will up the difficulty somewhat but not so it is over the top that a TPK is a possibility.

 

[Bumamgar]

Well, you are running six characters through an adventure designed for 5, and each of them is more powerful than the standard point buy, so yeah, you are going to have to beef it up a bit if you want to challenge them.

Not to mention, you have a strong class mix as well.

The 28 point buy is definitely a big problem since that breaks all assumptions in the DMG/MM for monster vs. character strength. I only recommend higher point buys if playing with fewer characters (ie: 3 or less) and even then, it causes problems that are better resolved by scaling the adventure down if you are using a small party.

 

[neobolts]

The kobold variants in Dragon sound like what you need.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drcinc/20080620a

The Wild Mage or War Priest should keep them busy.

 

[Stormtalon]

The kobold variants in Dragon sound like what you need.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drcinc/20080620a

The Wild Mage or War Priest should keep them busy.

Or the Rat Master -- he'd make things really interesting for the party....

 

[Shabe]

1) KoTS is written for 5 PCs, not six.
2) 28 point buy is teh broken.

1) Yeah thats why I said I'd added monsters equal to 1/5th of xp the encounter is worth aka encounters scaled up for 6 PCs.
2) Heh, as i said its quite true it may have made the encounters a little easier, i wonder by how much though.

 

[GorTeX]

You added monsters for the number of PC's correctly, but did not account for the party's increased strength based on the 28 pt buy.

Tho I must say my guys cake walked those encounters as well, using just the pregen PC's..but they had to flee from Irontooth, but didn't run far enough (they camped out at the burial site and set up an ambush that didn't go as planned, resulting in a TPK..)

 

[Shabe]

You added monsters for the number of PC's correctly, but did not account for the party's increased strength based on the 28 pt buy.

Hmmm but how to account for it, just whack +1 on to all monsters defences?
Giving them more monsters and therefore xp would mean they go up levels faster and outstrip the moduled campaign which is what i intend to run for lack of prep time.
I could just add in an extra monsters and not increase the xp they receive.

 

[Mengu]

Retcon the stats back down to 22 point buy. It's probably the easiest fix.