One Dark Night in Weeping Briar?

[ExploderWizard]

I didn't think it was the best of adventures I have read. And to assume 3 hours to complete was a joke. I ran it twice and cut both the badly written skill challenge and the second encounter in order to fit it into a 4 hour timeslot. All in all, I don't think it's worth seeking out.

I really REALLY hope that Wizards reconsiders using level 11 pregens for events like this. I had 5 or 6 new to 4E players who really needed help from experienced 4E players, where if they made it level 3-5 it would have been a lot easier and still showed that there is a lot more to 4E than what a level 1 adventure can reveal.

Well the adventure was supposed to focus on "paragon" level play. We had a good time making fun of the adventure as it went on. The skill challenge (if it can be called that) was so weak it didn't really matter. Either the party succeeded or the DM pretended they did to continue the adventure.

If typical paragon level play involves wandering into a village at night (after being told that you utterly failed to deal with a dragon problem) without a penny in your pocket (not one PC had so much as a copper piece at 11th level-they must have been mugged by that dragon) then proceeding to fight 3 running combats to rescue a few villagers from evil mill creatures then I will skip this tier. The message this adventure sends seems to tell the PC's that they are not yet ready for real challenges such as dragons or giants. They are better off sticking with the type of village rescue stuff that they have been doing since level 1 only now with larger numbers.

This looks like the type of adventure that gets thrown together in 10 minutes when you have to run something on the fly. This was supposed to be written to provide good PR for the game, wasn't it? I can't blame the 4E system for this mess, but the quality of this effort isn't doing the game any good.

I played the adventure in my FLGS ( I was the dragonborn pally) with people that I met there for the first time. We had fun because we were all fairly fun, entertaining people and could laugh at the adventure together.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I did cut out the skill challenge thing. I just thought it a little silly that 11th level characters would have THAT difficult a time with a little girl.

On the other hand, we started at 11:30 AM and ended at 3:00 PM ish.

 

[kenmarable]

Personally, I thought that the battlemat was horrible. The "altar" in the final encounter was just a bunch of boxes and the mill was even worse. For the millstone they just used the same image as the fountain! As if putting the millstone at ground level in a mill wasn't stupid enough...

I especially liked the "barrel" that placed in the middle of the millstone "fountain" - complete with unedited out cobblestone ground. Or the two completely different types of stairs that were stuck together. That map was just embarrassing.

And we also made it 4 1/2 hours and had to quit having only completed the 2nd combat (the skill challenge fell pretty flat, but we all tried to hurry up and get it over since it was taking so long already and had really easy checks).

 

[Dav]

The group I was in (I was the drow avenger) took SEVEN hours to finish this thing. 7 PM to 2 AM.

We even failed the skill challenge!

The first encounter took the longest, and the second one--well, the mill caught on fire. We got out there. The only good thing about the last encounter was that we freed the devil so we didn't have to fight him as well.

It was fun enough, but dragged on MUCH too long.

 

[Rechan]

Brutes should not be elite. Too many HP. Everything else seemed fine.

Although, I played the paladin, and I was very frustrated; I was only there for the first encounter and the skill challenge. Most of my utilities and such were 'grant saving throw to ally'. Not a single thing in the first encounter caused a saving throw.

 

[WotC_GregB]

I thought the first encounter ended up being a slog with an elite brute and two non-elite brutes. I cut the hit points in half for the bear and ran the trogs at about 3/4 hit points. Also, the brutes had a hard time hitting the party members, especially if you included the concealment from the rain (which I suggest not doing).

The second encounter would have been more fun if some of the sample characters had had some fire powers instead of just the enemies.

 

[WalterKovacs]

There were some strange choices ... going with brutes that couldn't hit anything but absorb a ton of punishment, and then throw in some high level soldiers so they never get hit ... groan.

As for paragon ... admitedly it is only 11th level, so it's not like the PCs are well into paragon tier, they are more finishing off their heroic careers.

As for being out of money ... they have more than would be expected of a starting character of that level (all their main items are +3, so they have 2 11th levels and 12th level, instead of 10, 10, 11, 12 that would be expected ... and it's not like money would have helped them). Also, failing to kill the dragon would mean failing to get any loot from the treasure trove. It's probably just an excuse to have the characters have little in the way of extra items on them.

One thing I will say, paragon tier was the right choice for the barbarian to be shown off, since it gives them enough rages to use one in each fight if they want (or actually use the rage strike class feature). In general though, there were arguably too many powers for even experienced players to keep track of everything. I know that the player that had problems keeping up at 5th level only got worse with an 11th level pregen. Playing up from 1st does have the benefit of only introducing powers a bit at a time.

 

[Holy Smokes]

I also played the pally, and joked with the table that my best power was called "Armor Class: 30". In the first encounter, I solo-tanked a trog for nearly the entire fight. Fun.

The bard and the avenger were definitely the stars of that encounter.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The bard and the avenger were definitely the stars of that encounter.

That encounter? The avenger made the rest of us look like BMX bandits through most of the adventure.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Hearing some of these tales, my group must've been a well oiled machine to finish in four hours. Seven hours? Ugh!