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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeff Wilder" data-source="post: 1851698" data-attributes="member: 5122">It just repeatedly kicked their asses.  The fights and traps, despite the listed ELs, were consistently too brutal for my group.  (IMO, they would have been tough, but maybe doable, for a group of optimized PCs.  My PCs weren't optimized, as I said.)After the third or fourth session in a row with a PC death, the next sessions the PCs were on a ship back to Freeport, their memories of Ptolus hazy and nightmarish.  None of them remember exactly how events played out, but they're aware they failed, and that Ptolus has been consumed by a black blight on the surface of Oerth.  Right before heading into Hell's Triangle in Black Sails, they discovered that the black circle that used to be Ptolus is ... spreading.  (Think the Black Circle in Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles.)We had similar "we're overmatched, I don't care what the EL says" experiences in RttToEE, in which I was a player.  After all of us had suffered at least one PC death in that adventure, we decided to hyper-optimize our PCs, and from then on, the challenges were tough-but-surmountable.I tend to like Monte's game design, but his adventures have become an exception.  I dunno if he has all power-gaming players or what.  IMO, an adventure is easier to scale up than down.</blockquote>