Review of The Scouring of Gate Pass (Spoilers)

[Morrus]

Might want to call those new maps out in an errata or it's own thread.

I've stuck 'em on the WOTBS page. If you point your DM to it, he can grab maps, errata and stuff.

Glad you're enjoying it - didn't realise you were playing it!

 

[brightgoat]

Oh, Mistwell, you're exaggerating. (I'm his DM)

This is your first near TPK. You had two other tough fights, but there was little chance of everyone dying. Maybe one or two of you...

The dead rising encounter was WAY too hard for 1st level characters. The party did have a decent amount of bad luck. All of the monsters rolled high on initiative, beating everyone but the wizard and the ranger. So, the party didn't really have time to get into any sort of tactical formation before being boxed into a very small space.

After the first boneshard exploded, I realized I was definitely going to have a TPK on my hands unless I made some quick adjustments. So, I eliminated the final explosion, and just had the explosion when they were bloodied. Even with that, the monsters rolled fairly well, especially on their explosions (2 crits)

The steadfast position also hurt them, as the skeletons couldn't be maneuvered out of the way in order for the party to get past.

Now, had the party been smarter about it, they would have done better. They didn't make much effort to get the dead and dying away from the boneshards before hitting them with major attacks. So, they had people at the edge of death getting hit for 3d6+4 damage (I still wonder why the damage was 3d6+4 instead of 2d6+3 like they are in the MM).

Overall, this encounter seems like it needs some additional adjustment.

 

[merchantsteve]

Somehow the damage got past me. That deserves correcting.

 

[Erywin]

Yeah an extra d6 would definitely add to the lethality of the encounter. I have been looking at it and will be lowering it to 2d6+3 so as to avoid a TPK, seeing as I have mostly new players in my group. I am quite excited to run this adventure in a week and a half when we finally get a chance to sit down and play!

Cheers,
E

 

[liggetar]

I just ran the Undead Rising with my party Saturday. I modified the damage and the map (thanks to reading this thread first!) and still had 2 character deaths. My tabletop group is usually pretty good at strategy, but they got too conservative and were afraid to set off the boneshard skeles. They did get smart at the end, with the orcish warden grabbing dragging off the last one, away from the main group, so that he would be the only one to go down with it.

But their main nitpick was when Buron offered to Raise Dead on the characters. They pointed out that if Buron was high enough level to perform that ritual, he should have been down fighting with them! I had nothing to rebut that one with!

 

[EugeneZ]

I had Buron do Raise Dead too but I made it clear he was no fighter. If a PC asks, I would say that what's in the PHB are rules for heroes, not rules for all living organisms in the world. An NPC can have Raise Dead and yet not be able to hurt a fly.

 

[merchantsteve]

With the new ritual rules, you do not need to be a class type in order to cast a ritual. Buron is a priest of his order and knows the Raise Dead ritual. I see his 'Cleric Level 9' designation on page 11 needs to be yanked (old holdover from 3.5 version of the adventure - npcs are so much different now!). If the class info gets removed, then having those rituals doesn't imply anything more than that he can cast them. Changing his title to 'priest' separates him from a PHB class.

The new rules have precise definitions that can help weed out this confusion. I will certainly be more careful in the future

 

[Morrus]

But their main nitpick was when Buron offered to Raise Dead on the characters. They pointed out that if Buron was high enough level to perform that ritual, he should have been down fighting with them! I had nothing to rebut that one with!

That's one of the primary characteristics of 4E's exception-based rules system. Unlike 3E/3.5, NPCs do not follow the same rules as PCs. They have whatever abilities are needed. An NPC villain can have a world-breaking arcane power yet still have 5 hit points, unlike 3.5 in which in order to be a decent carpenter or seamstress an NPC had to also be cabable of battling a legion of goblins.

For example, in 4E you can give an NPC 30 ranks in Dungeoneering because he's a world-famous achitect, and still have him have only 8 hit points. In 3.5, that architect would have to be an 18th level Expert with 90 hit points in order to have 30 ranks in Dungeoneering. Your average achitect could easily fight an adult dragon!

So Buron is a weak NPC who happens to have a Raise Dead ritual.

 

[liggetar]

True, although the sidebar does specifically say that he is a cleric level 9 (not that I told my players that!)

 

[John Doom]

My group just ran through the Dead Rising encounter yesterday and boy was that a hoot. I forgot to explode the first guy upon being bloodied, which is probably the only thing that prevented total annihilation.

It was a very difficult encounter (I'm not sure if I did this right, but I allowed the bone-shard explosions to also hit the monster's allies - which also was a big part of ONLY 3 members of the party dying) but I have a feeling that the two members who did survive without dropping felt quite a bit of pride at surviving this harsh battle.

All the guys still had a really great time and look forward to continuing on from here. I think Buron having a Raise Dead ritual, or three, will help offset the difficulty of that encounter.