NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 9164975" data-attributes="member: 3586">One of the interesting things about this playthrough is looking at the rebalanced encounters - which are often much harder (it's a surprise when I get an easier one). We really needed to have a long rest after the encounter with the wraith.Ogre Zombies + Zombies = short restThen Wraith = long rest.It's not like there weren't difficult encounters before. (Flameskull!) But with more of the encounters ratcheted up, then the flow of the adventure changes. You need to retreat and rest more often.It's interesting looking at that: is this good for the adventure flow? We're not in a standard dungeon crawl where the only goal is exploration (and loot and treasure), but instead we're trying to rescue Gundren's brother and find out what's going on. Too many hard combats, and you lose the story flow.BTW, the flameskull encounter has not changed. Except for one thing: An explanation about how it's one of the encounters that has made the Spider pause while he works out how to get through. That's a very nice change.Along with the cavern of fungi has also made the Spider pause... though that one seems weird.Seriously weird."This cave has hindered the Spider’s explorations. Nezznar suspects that the mine’s magic workshops are nearby, but he’s reluctant to risk facing the dangerous monsters here."The dangerous monsters = two violet fungi. Flameskull is dangerous. Violet fungi? Not so much.Though I guess the Spider is an incredibly underwhelming final boss.They've made him more powerful with a Poison Blast attack. +5 to hit, melee or ranged 120 feet, 2d8 poison damage.Violet Fungi? Not immune to poison.The fungi chamber has also changed significantly. In the original, no violet fungi. Instead, it's filled with poison gas. Which would do a much better job of delaying The Spider than the new version. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Also: The Spider has role-playing notes, mostly identical to the original. One wording change. It's gone from "However, he betrays the characters as soon as they outlive their usefulness." to "However, he betrays the characters as soon as he can."Which, again, I don't think is a great change.Cheers,Merric</blockquote>

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