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Message: <blockquote data-quote="smbakeresq" data-source="post: 7409391" data-attributes="member: 28301">I played Against the Giants when it first came out.  By that I mean the one with the Green Cover, where you could actually find a Hammer of Thunderbolts.  Here is what it said for the Hall of the Fire Giant King, every DM should read it at least 3 times:"Remember also that these giants are not only the toughest so far encountered but also have the best advice immediately available to them. As soon as the party strikes and then retires, the attack will be assessed and countermeasures taken. Even when the party first enters the hall, you will have to gauge the reaction of the giants if and when they learn that intruders are within. How will they react? From whence will they call in guards? Where will Snurre go? Most assuredly, he will not remain seated upon his throne when an attack is in progress! You have not ceased being a Dungeon Master by using this prepared scenario; you have simply had some details handled for you so that you can better script the more important material. When the party retires from the hall to rest, the fire giants will lay whatever traps and ambushes they are able to prepare under the circumstances. Lights will be smothered, sentries posted, and so forth. In the original playtest, the giants who survived the first foray by the (exceptionally strong and well-played) party set several ambushes, each surprise being timed to allow them to retreat quickly behind a turn in a passage or through a set of doors, gradually falling back to the corridor to the lower level. While the characters offered no quarter and slew every giant or other creature encountered with absolute ruthlessness, their opponents fought with reckless abandon and self-sacrifice. How you manage this conflict in your game must be based on knowledge that only you can have. The upshot of this whole series of adventures is a fight to the finish. Only the leaders and those they take with them will normally seek to move to a place of safety; the rest will stand fast and battle to the end. "And"If the group journeyed hence by some other method, they will have noted such a place of refuge about two miles distant from Snurre's sooty palace. This hidden site should initially prove to be safe from detection as long as the characters leave no plain trail to it and as long as they are not followed to it. There is a limit, though, to how far they can push their luck. Each time they venture forth from their refuge to raid the fire giant hall, there is a 10 percent cumulative chance that the hidey-hole will be found by the giants (a 10 percent chance after the first raid, 20 percent following the second, and so forth). "Every time your players rest, short or long, countermeasures will be taken by any intelligent and organized opponent.  An enemy smart enough to build or occupy any type of base or dungeon will  have something planned.  Monsters that move in like oozes and ropers, no.  But almost everything else, yes.  They don't have a gong on the wall to just hang there, and unless you are casting silence spells they will hear combat sounds as modified by distance.  Several smaller encounters can easily escalate into one long running encounter, which is good.A "deadly" encounter can also be an "average" encounter with half of the party's resources gone.  Any BBEG uses his minions and traps to wear you down, and a Party that reaches a Endpoint Encounter with full health and resources has either played very well or something went wrong.Too many groups expect to always have most of their resources for every encounter or every other encounter.  The designers did state they did not take party endurance into account.  That was an error but DM don't have to do that.  Some adventures explicitly say some areas can  be rested in.As far as the Leomunds, yes its a refuge.  But the party also just built their own prison.  An organized enemy can find it and can take simple measures such as flooding the room its in subjecting the party to drowning when they leave or having giants cover it with boulders (I did this in SKT to my kids group.)  A more advanced approach would be the enemies all readying actions to shoot whoever emerges from the dome from cover with +2 to hit since they have surely "bore-sighted" the ranged weapons they would use.  An ooze can spread themselves over it.  Parties should have to take regular precautions like hiding it someplace remote.  A good place to hide a Leomunds is under water and then have players swim down to it.Rope trick for short rests is fine with me, however any alarm would not be called off because an hour passed by.  To me its an essential spell that Parties should have in scroll form.</blockquote>

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