Anybody played D1: The Crown of the Kobold King? (/w SPOILERS)

[Nlogue]

Well, as long as I've got your attention... I'm not quite clear on how the Ossuary encounter (area 14.) is supposed to work.

Are the openings in the back of the niches with the animated skelleton large enough for the skeletons (or the PCs) to pass through? Or do both sides stay on their side of the wall (and get cover when attacked through the opening)? Are skeletons supposed to be able to throw skulls only at a target that's right in front of them, or at anyone in the corridor?

I'm having some trouble visualizing all this.

Hmm...the way I envisioned this is that the skeletons claw at people in the corridor but some of them might circle around to the corridor entrance and hurl skulls at them (while simultaneously cutting off their retreat).

Can't remember if that's how the final version of the encounter turned out though.

 

[jasin]

I'd love to hear what you think of the rest of "Crown" Jasin, thanks for the kind review thus far.

OK, I've read it through and ran my first session.

In addition to the stuff I've already mentioned, I love the new magic items, and I love the fact that every child has its plot hook tied to their safe return.

I didn't randomize the "random" encounters, or even roll to see if they came up, but just used the ones I liked best: the bugbears, the adamantine arrow, the allips, and the hill giant. A small nitpick: IMO, the hill giant should have a noted EL since the encounter as it stands shouldn't have an EL equal to giant's CR. There's a challenge to "winning" the encounter (recognizing that it's suicide to engage in combat, finding the ring), but it's not as challenging as actually fighting the giant (CR 7).

Still, the players loved them.

I kind of screwed up the encounter with Jeva the werewolf girl. I managed to endear Jeva to the PCs, but they did a rather reasonable thing of taking her back to Falcon's Hollow, to Iomedae's church. When they went back to the orphanage to explore the basement, Jeva followed them and attacked (a big mistake, considering there are 7 PCs, and she's a rogue). They easily dropped her into the negatives and then had a big argument, a bit of which spilt over outside the game, about whether they should kill her or try to cure her. Two PCs ended the argument by killing her, and another two left the party and the players made characters who'll have less compunctions if similar situations come up in the future. And I forgot the spiders in Elara's corpse, which could've provided Jeva with a vital opportunity to flank... Eh.

They did show mercy to the kobold miners, and got to work sucking up to the giant out of their system, by bossing the kobolds around.

The dwarf "ghost" was great. The players took the allips as a hint that there will be non-hostile incorporeal undead, so they didn't attack it but slowly backed away, and it just kept approaching until it cornered them. Real creepy, especially when the cube needed to make a 90-degree turn, so the dwarf "ghost" just started going at them sideways! Then the cleric tried to talk to it (reasoning that a ghost of a dwarven hero might be non-Evil and just need help in going to its final rest)... and the cube gobbled him up.

Oh, BTW, they have also met Sithmuck the imp, and the druid and the ranger both wanted to keep him. He's still biding his time looking waiting for an opportunity to screw them over.

 

[Robert Ranting]

I recently got the chance to play through this module, and found it quite enjoyable. I'm fortunate enough to live next door to a pair of gamers, and one of them had picked up Crown of the Kobold King at our FLGS and offered to run it for his housemate and myself over the course of three consecutive evenings. Since there were only two of us, the DM was quite liberal, allowing us to play Gestalt characters with high stats and access to any books we wanted, as well as offering to ignore +1 LA if we wanted to play something weird.

The PCS were:
Wilhelm, Aasimar Gestalt Paladin /Archivist 2
Balto, Whisper Gnome Gestalt Warblade /Psion (Kineticist) 2

Despite the power of our PCs, we had a rough time of it. We had to flee the spider swarm beneath the burned orphanage. My character also almost had his head bashed in by the animated goblet. Being a bit lawful stupid, we were taken in by Jeva's story, and didn't realize her true nature until she had lead us into the grove of the assassin vine, (which killed our only horse) and then after fleeing in the woods, doubled back and attacked us as soon as the entangle effect ended. Even though we both had silver daggers and I managed to land a smite evil on her, she still managed to withdraw into the woods and call fair escape.

Inside the monastery, we fell for the Glintaxe "ghost" red herring (even the sideways moving turn didn't tip us off) and ended up fleeing to the surface level with the pair of kobold slaves we had spared. It was only when they described in detail how they'd seen glintaxe dissolve a kobold alive that we realized something was wrong, and I made a knowledge dungeoneering check to recognize the gelatinous cube. At which point, the gnome used one of his psionic abilities to animate an iron candlestick and had it beat the gelatinous cube to death while we stood at a safe distance (singing "Be Our Guest!" out of character). The mithril fullplate and the +1 battleaxe went a long way toward helping my paladin survive the encounters to come.

The forgespurned ended up being a heck of a challenge, even though we had the halfling bard and three of the kids with us. (The DM played up the fact that these kids were potential adventurers, and had Kimi and Mikra use slings, and allowed Savram to cast a cantrip once per fight to represent his wizard training) My character was knocked unconcious by a strike from the soul chain, and it was only the bard's timely assistance with a scroll of CLW I had handed him earlier that allowed me to get back into the fight before the gnome could be killed as well.

The slurks were an interesting series of encounters, knocking us prone so that we could be more easily struck by the kobolds, and forcing us to waste actions removing the hardened slime they exuded. It quickly became a priority for us to destroy them first and worry with the kobolds later. Generally, all the kobold encounters were entertaining and deviously set up, with the "Night of a million-jillion badguys" encounter of course topping the list. Two PCs standing back to back in a 5' wide hallway as kobolds rush you from all sides is one of those dramatic scenes that make D&D combat worthwhile, IMHO. I honestly don't know if a standard party could have survived that onslaught without losing at least one PC.

The Kobold King himself was quite the challenge, going toe-to-toe with our warblade/psion for about four rounds while I tangled with the myrmidons. Ultimately, I think that the only reason we won was that the King rushed to attack me with his human-bane weapon, and I managed to land a smite evil that finished him off. Had he pressed the attack against the Gnome, I think he might have taken him down, leaving me alone to face the kobold shaman (who was harsh in his own right).

Overall, I really enjoyed the tone and feel of the dungeon and the encounters en route through Darkmoon Vale. The running theme of small, unassuming, or bizarre monsters gave the entire adventure a feeling of tongue-in-cheek horror. While our DM omitted the incoporeal undead encounters for fear that our party of two melee combatants would be wiped out and unable to continue the adventure, the coporeal undead were enough to give us pause, and having the listening chamber being empty allowed us to get the children and the bard to relative safety while the PCs explored the lower level. The DM chose not to use the Hill Giant, adamantine arrow, and Manticore encounters to save time, and we successfully avoided the stirges completely, so there were still encounters to be run even when we returned the lost children to Falcon's Hollow 17 hours of gameplay later.

Yeah, that's right. 17 hours of gameplay in 32 pages, and we didn't even do everything in the adventure! Overall, I was quite happy with the play experience, and even more pleased when after concluding the adventure, the DM allowed us to page through the adventure and offered to let either of us borrow it if we wanted to run it for our own games. I sincerely think I might take him up on that offer...if I don't just buy a copy for myself!

Robert "Looking Forward to Future Paizo Offerings!" Ranting

 

[Nlogue]

Wow! You guys are awesome! Any published adventure is only as good as the players and DMs who bring it to life and it sounds like you all turned "Crown" into a winner. Thanks for enjoying it!

A loose sequel is up in a couple of months, which is also set in Falcon's Hollow, called "Carnival of Tears." It comes out in November from Paizo. Hope you all enjoy it as well.

 

[Nlogue]

Oh, BTW, they have also met Sithmuck the imp, and the druid and the ranger both wanted to keep him. He's still biding his time looking waiting for an opportunity to screw them over.

Muuuhahahha! Can't wait to hear how this turns out!