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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9637011" data-attributes="member: 6790260">You may or may not be surprised to learn that Keep on the Shadowfell is considered one of the worst adventures ever written for 4e--and, indeed, among the worst adventures ever written for D&D in general--by those who do actually play 4e.Imagine someone coming to you and complaining about B/X, or whichever edition you like instead, by using as their example an adventure frequently cited by fans of B/X(/whichever edition you like) as an absolutely awful adventure. Would you consider the conclusions drawn from that adventure unrepresentative?You may or may not also be surprised to learn that both Keep on the Shadowfell and Pyramid of Shadows, which are both considered highly execrable by fans of 4e, were the primary contributions to early 4e by a certain Mr. Mearls. They're the only early-4e books that have his name on the front cover, IIRC. No few 4e fans blame Mearls for a small part of the hatred 4e got at its launch specifically because the adventures bearing his name were SO bad.I'm quite well aware that your preference is only a few levels per year of weekly adventures. That gap will never be bridged; it's simply not how most people do play, and what minimal evidence we have suggests that most players find your preferred pace of growth glacially slow and thus lose interest in playing at such a pace.And, again, you're talking about the absolute lowest levels of the game, which I specifically said always have this kind of problem. Every edition--including whichever is your favorite--has issues with throwing 1st-level characters at higher-level stuff. Because 1st level is the lowest possible low, there isn't any lower you can go (though I personally would like there to be so, as I have said elsewhere). It's extremely likely that 1st-level characters in B/X are going to get utterly shredded by an adventure intended for 3rd+ level characters.My point generalizes to that too. If combats up to a common party level +4 are acceptable, then it shouldn't be a problem to go for a spread of roughly +5 above the lowest-level character or -5 below the highest-level one, where the PCs are within roughly 4 levels of each other (which you have quite handily done here) should do just fine. Average party level is 4.6, minimum 3. So fights up to level 7 should be perfectly doable, and the Warlord will level up faster because you need less XP to gain levels when you're low level yourself. A fight of roughly level 4-5 would be perfectly fine for this group; anything from level 2 (an easy fight for this group) to level 7 (a tough fight, where the warlord will have to be careful) should work just fine. It's never been true that 4e characters could just throw themselves at stuff--teamwork has always been essential--so yeah, in a level 7 fight the Warlord should probably be very cautious or rely on ranged attacks and the like, or focus on things that help their allies rather than things that directly push the fight forward. Likewise, with a level 2 fight, that Rogue is gonna be pumping out the damage, but that's fine--some fights should be easy and some should be rough, beyond just the chance that the dice go awry.</blockquote>

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