My group just went through it tonight. It was a lot of fun. Spoilers just in case...
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I had six players, so I bumped it up as directed in the adventure. The monsters did just the right amount of damage IMO. The whole idea behind this scenario was awesome, too.
My heroes lasted all the way to the end. The last character standing killed the t.rex. There were still monsters left, and they likely would have dropped her shortly after that. I am not sure if, once the goal is completed, the scenario ends, or do we play it out to see whether she lives or dies? In my case, we stopped because the store I ran this in was closing for the night.
The druid's vines protect the druid from forced movement and teleportation. But do they protect her from this elementalist power?
Raise Stone
You raise or lower a column of rock from the ground.
Encounter Arcane, Elemental
Minor Action Ranged 5
Target: One square of stone, mud, or dirt
Effect: You cause the target square to rise up to 20 feet or sink up to 10 feet. If you raise the square, the area below it is filled with solid rock and becomes blocking terrain. Creatures in the target square can shift 1 square as a free action to avoid being raised or lowered. This power cannot be used to harm a creature, and any such use causes the power to fail. The target square remains at its new elevation until the end of the encounter.
... She used it on Hyacinth! As far as I can tell, I had a couple options:
1. I could say that doing this would disrupt the ritual and cause the heroes to fail the challenge (though couldn't the druid just start it again?)
2. I could say that, since the vines magically block teleportation, they also block this spell from going off.
I was caught off guard, but decided to let it happen. I had visions of orcs climbing up the vines lining the stone column and hacking into the druid! And also, the casters, the javelins and the pterodactyls could still hit her.
Looking back, though, this definitely gave the heroes a major advantage.
And as mentioned above, there is an item that can shut down this whole thing. I guess I'll post it because I'm sure it's out there somewhere anyway. I should note that a player took this item, but decided on her own not to use it because it didn't feel right to do so.
Pixie Music Box
Description: This “box” appears to be an acorn shell. When the shell is opened, a childlike chorus of pixie voices sounds from within it for the next six hours, drifting gently on the wind. At the end of that time, the pixie music stops, leaving only a plain, hollow acorn. While the music is sounding, natural beasts won’t approach or attack anyone in the sound’s area (a 20-square radius), heeding the pixies’ beautiful song and staying away out of respect for those magical creatures.
... dinosaurs are natural beasts. That means that for 6 hours, the dinosaurs won't approach or attack. And that includes the t. rex!
One way around this, I guess, is to have an orc try to snatch it away... but there's not really rules for that. I suppose if you could bury the person with the box under the tar, that would muffle the sound and the effect..?
The worst thing about this item is that it's 50 gold! Every PC could take it!
The assault took us a full three hours and we still barely finished. I was a bit disappointed in my performance, as I missed a monster turn here and there, and forgot about the ankylosaurs bloodied attack. I kind of felt like I screwed up, since the PCs "won" on their first try.
I got such a kick out of the pterodactyls picking them up and dumping the PCs into the tar, that I did it as often as possible. I should have just had the pterodactyls tear into the druid.
I also didn't coup de grace at all. I normally don't do it, and I only started to consider it at the end when people kept healing each other up from death's door.
I had one player who was really on the ball. She figured out that the dinosaurs fled when bloodied and kept the other players from wasting attacks on bloodied dinos. She also did a great job of staying out of harm's way. She ended up on top of a hut in the tar and just launched off ranged attacks like crazy. Those elementalists from the Elemental Chaos book do a lot of damage.
All in all, it was great.
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