Rescue at Rivenroar question

[Belares]

Our group just started playing in that adventure path on WotC site and want to get some input on the start of it. I am gonna have SPOILER ALERT if you have not played in it, and we have just got to the ruined keep part.


Anyway I was hoping to see if anyone else thought the encounter levels were way off! I thought the intial bar fight was fine but then the Ogre with fire wagon and 2 hobgoblin archers were not too bad (supposedly a level 1 encounter). The thing is not to let the ogre get anywhere near you. The problem i really had was the skill challenges to get to the Rivenroar castle. We did fail the challenges twice (poorest rolls i have ever seen!) and first fail was a cave bear level 6 elite brute(another supposed level 1 encounter)...pretty dang tough but we escaped with our lives then the next one was 2 adult Kruthiks, 2 young Kruthiks and 4 kruthik hatchlings (supposedly a level 2 encounter). This encounter we had 5 players and my rogue died and the others survived but barely and my question is anyone else think these encounters are too tough? I am asking if anyone else went through them and thought the encounter level was off? I think if i had not taken 44 hps of damage (and died out right) in 1 round i might have been a better help in later rounds though LOL!

 

[LaserWolf]

I ran Rescue at Rivenroar a few months ago. It's worth noting that Rivenroar came out before they made the changes to the Skill Challenge rules, so the Skill Challenges within are much more difficult than they are in the other adventures on that path.

I did also feel that there are quite a few deadly encounters in the module. That's partly because it's difficult to make a varied adventure for 1st-level characters, so the rules were stretched a little. It's also partly because most people playing Rivenroar are new to 4e rules (as was the case for my players) and don't have a good head for 4e tactics yet. My characters nearly suffered a TPK when they allowed themselves to get trapped in a hallway.

 

[BlackSeven]

I've noticed in the Wizards adventures that they tend to err on the side of challenging. I ended up with my party fighting the cave bear so they'd have a place to store the hostages when rescued, but the cave bear was nearly too much for them. As a 6 elite, it functioned as a solo for them with slightly fewer abilities.

Having read all the way ahead in each adventure, I can see that they continue this trend. I haven't compared the skill challenges to each other, but I did notice that the first paragon adventure has an encounter with 2 solo creatures and another encounter with a solo creature and his 8 buddies. They're not on the side of your PCs, and I foresee a lot of deaths, but every (large) adventure I've seen of theirs has this quality. I read about a ton of TPKs in Keep on the Shadowfell in a fairly early encounter.

 

[Parlan]

Sucks that your rogue died.

I didn't like the look of either the Cave Bear or the Kruthik. They just didn't seem like particularly interesting encounters, and I was worried that my players were going to get bored of all the combat.

So I decided that if the players failed the skill challenge, there'd be no combat until the PCs reached Rivenroar. Of course they failed. So I had worked up an ambush with Kroola (an anthropomorphic crocodile people from Poison Ivy Press).

 

[Cold0]

Bear in mind that Rescue at Rivenroar is just a "showcase" to introduce the players (and the DM) to the 4th Edition. The dungeon is very "basic", it remembers me my first dungeons in the 80', and the next encounters are based around a "motley crew" of mosters (creatures that don't have anything in common, just assorted to show the new mechanics).

Iniatially my group and I erred and miscalcalated the starting hp of the PC, sum only the Con bonus. Cleary even the kruthiks encounter was lethal. After that the adventure was quite smooth.

The second chapter, Siege of Borodin's Watch, and the other are far better.

 

[gtoasnt3]

Our guys are pretty experience in 4th ed play. They learned a long time ago to assist each other on skill checks where they can and the skill challenge through the wilderness worked well for them. So far, on the first level, they have yet to be really challenged by the encounters, but are enjoying the plot.

 

[Ottergame]

I am the GM in the OP's post. I did not factor the lowered DCs into account for the module, I forgot that came out before the errata, this would have changed the outcome of the hobogoblin interrogation. Had I used lower DCs, they never would have fought the cave bear. Thankfully the cave bear was more bark then bite, I think I only hit twice in the entire fight.

The kruthik fight went poorly, though. The OPs rogue woke the baby nest, alerting the rest of the monsters to his presence. After the minions were killed and as the rogue was repositioning, the kruthiks were burrowing through the ground, and detected him (and only him) with tremorsense.

This was my first time seeing krutiks, and when I saw them, I saw Zerg. Burrowing underground, spitting poison, vicious buglizards.

So, they burrowed underground, popped up around the rouge, and zerg rushed him. I expected to drop him, I did not expect to kill him in one hit. The rest of the party was to far away to help, or to even prove a distraction until it was to late.

They then ganged up on the fighter, who barely managed to Not Die for several rounds until the young were killed. Had I used the creatures aura and had the adults acutlaly managed to recharge their spits, that fight would have ended in a wipe. Especially if I had used my original idea of having the adults hang far back, spitting and then burrowing until they recharged, using hit and run tactics.

Had I to redo that fight, I think I would have changed them into a different encounter, perhaps a hobogoblin scout force, or a small pack of drakes. The burrowing tactic proved to be what pushed this encounter over the edge.

 

[Diceboxisfull]

I just finished this module with a group of two experienced players, each playing two characters (total of 4).

I did not run them through the Cave Bear encounter (they really aced their navigation skill challenge) but they did fail to adequately pass the interrogation skill challenge so they got the bunk map and did blunder into the Kruthik Hive.

I wanted the encounters to be extremely difficult to really challenge these very tactical and experienced players, so I did not adjust the encounters for 4 characters (it is designed for 5).

I was a little worried at first, particularly with the Ogre fight right off the bat, but they seemed to catch on to the pitch barrels quickly and thankfully no one was hosed in the second encounter. I was almost sure that I would kill a PC with the Kruthiks, however the group is very DPR focused and managed to take them all down without losing any party members.

Things really changed once they got inside the castle though. I ran a majority of the encounters as written and they really breezed through a lot of them. There is really only one challenging "solo" encounter and by the end of the adventure, I actually found myself adding monsters and adjusting some of the encounters so that they would better challenge the PC's.

It seems like the module design really wanted to scare you as a DM (particularly if you had little experience with the encounter design system) so that you would learn the upper and lower limits of what an "X level party" could handle. This was the first module that I had GM'd in 4E so it had that effect on me, but I felt very comfortable by then end of it.

The really nice part is just how easy it is to adjust encounters now- even on the fly- so you can better tailor them to your party. So, no worries. Sit back and learn as you go and remember that it gets a bit easier once you get into castle crypts.

 

[Belares]

Ottergame my DM on this adventure said it all. The problem i stated was the level of the adventure encounter with the aforementioned Kruthiks and cave bear. They should have been like 3 or even 4. I made the error in judgement. I had a chance to go back to group on the road and opted to go closer to where the noises of the other Kruthiks were located. Didnt think about any burrowing and if i had gotten farther away i would have been fine. I was ticked off about dieing though LOL. Poor judgement gets you killed quicker than anything.

The other thing i didnt realize about skill challenges was that you could "help" with the roll. We would have done that for the single rolls. We seem to learn something new every game session..LOL

 

[Cold0]

Things really changed once they got inside the castle though. I ran a majority of the encounters as written and they really breezed through a lot of them. There is really only one challenging "solo" encounter and by the end of the adventure, I actually found myself adding monsters and adjusting some of the encounters so that they would better challenge the PC's.

Agree; my party has literally teared apart the last encounters of the adventures. Probably when they have reached the 2nd/3th level, the PC are so boosted in their abilities that outgunned the remained monsters, good for a 1rt level party but not per a 2/3rd level party.