Ok, just to let everyone know how it all went. I ended up creating three characters, cause a friend of mine dropped by and decided to take part. He's never played D&D before.
So I went with a Battle Cleric, a Great Weapon Fighter, and a Two Weapon Ranger. All nice and simple, and easy for the players to use in a relatively decent way. Opened with the Raid on Loudwater encounter from FRCG, even though it's not a FR game.
Ommitted the controller from the raiding party for sake of balance.
The battle went fairly well, the PC's locked a group of the raiders fairly quickly, though one of the warrior raiders made a break, and smashed the window. He was cut down where he stood in short order. Another raider grabbed the "horn" (it was an amulet of avandra tonight) from the corpse, and made a dash, but he died to OAs. After the battle, things went pair shaped.
The PC's marched inside the shop, and asked the shopkeep what he'd pay for the return on the amulet. I fudged a figure of 20gp, and the PC's promptly attacked and cut him down. *sigh* After taking to 20gp from his corpse, they then decided to explore the rest of the city. I coughed, and suggested they either slept to be fresh to follow the raiders in the morning, or followed straight after them while the tracks were fresh. They got the hint, and set out, after the fighter traded his greatsword and the stolen 20gp for a greataxe (cause a greataxe is cooler).
A quick complexity 1 skill challenge, and the players descended into the first level of the keep from KotS. I blocked off the east pathway, as my brothers had been down there before, and modified the first room to have 1 central pillar and 2 pit traps, both of which promptly got fallen into. Off they went to the torture room, and their second encounter.
Again the characters all performed fairly well, more so than the first 1, with lots of shifting to gain combat advantage. The NPCs were reacting in kind, and fun was had by all. The last kobold threw down his weapon (he was going to be Splug, instead of having Splug be a prisoner), and they promptly tortured him for information, then slit his throat and looted the corpse. Alack, poor Splug, we barely knew thee. Ahh well, off towards Balgrun.
The Ranger finally decided to employ stealth, and managed to spot the two guards in the main room, then doubled back towards the party. They decided to saunter in and decorate the walls with blood. Just to liven things up, I had the guards challenge the party first, demanding to know why three humans were wandering around the Keep. "We're just wearing human skins, it's a disguise! We've got the amulet for Balgron!" was the response. Roll bluff was mine.
With some creativity, and great bluff rolls, and really poor insight rolls on the part of the guards (who I soon decided were a damn sight dumber than the stones in the walls), both of the guards were standing in a corner with their backs to the PC's, looking for a tasty crunchy spider. The PC's then wiped them out in 1 turn, as I decreed that since they were so off guard, for the first round the PC's were auto-critting. Ouch, let me re-think that next time!
They marched in to see Balgron, and kept up the human-skin disguise story for a bit longer. They were getting a bit silly after their success with the guards, so Balgron was very wary, demanding to know where the guards were. According to the PC's, they both were projectile vomiting out of their rear ends. With a natural 20 on the bluff check. *sigh* I roled with it, Balgron's a trusting sole after all!?! They then intimidated him into surrendering his club, and proceeded to beat the snot out of him, blocking the door from the guards (in an unexplored room) he called out to. Again, party synergy was good.
The night ended after they fought through the Zombies, and were standing on the stairs leading down to the second level. The PC's are on the cusp of level 2.
From tonight, it's obvious that I'm dropping the ball when it comes to promoting roleplaying during combat. There was far too much "yep, that hits him", "what's your AC?", "yep, he's dead" talk coming from me, but I felt that the players didn't give me anything to work with. The height of creativity during combat was "I'm using cleave". So hopefully, someone can point me in the direction of a transcript where people are using great combat language, that can give me some ideas to help flesh things out.
I'm happy with where the campaign itself is going, the PC's have an amulet of Avandra that the clerics back in yet-to-be-named town have warned them might just haunt their dreams (which will be nice and useful for providing plot hooks), the captured NPC's have postured and forshadowed about the might of Orcus, and the ritual which will be completed after 4 nights have passed (which has done wonders to cure the 5 min work-day they were using last campaign), and we did have some decent RP during non-combat encounters. We also had some abominable RP during those times, but hey.
All in all, I'm happy with tonight.
In terms of sample encounters, I omitted the controller from the first encounter, Raid on Loudwater. In the second, the torture room from KotS I removed 1 skirmisher, leaving a brute, a soldier, and 2 skirmishers. In Balgron's room, dropped 5 minions and 2 soldiers, leaving 4 soldiers, a brute, and 5 minions. Against the zombies, for the first group I just dropped 2 soldiers, for the second I dropped all the soldiers (cause they took forever to kill! Really dull fighting.) I think for a party of this style, controllers would destroy them, skirmishers could inconvenience them, and anything else that's balanced for the party level, they can munch through fairly happily. At the end of the day, the fighter was doing good damage, but not very consistently, the ranger was nice and consistent and average, and the cleric lagged in the damage stakes but certainly made up for it in healing and buffs.
