D&D Gameday: Into the Shadowhaunt

[Ebon Shar]

Ran 1-4 player game, 1-5 player game, 3-6 player games,and 2-7 player games. And 4 of the dragon fights. To make thing a little more fun I took pregens from all the different modules to date and let people pick from them. I just made sure every group had 1 rogue, 1 cleric and 1 wizard.

I'd say half the players in my store we people I hadn't seen. Almost completely sold out of the books had 1 dmg, and 1 mm left. It was a great day. And I had a few interested in coming in to get some on payday.

Sure it was 15 hours of gaming in 1 day. Omg I never want to game that much again in one day. Got to meet alot of cool geeks. I just to thank everyone who cameout for the fun.

Donny Rhye
Book & Music Exchange
Louisville,ky

Donny, If I lived in Louisville, I would patronize your store. I wish all game store owners were as dedicated to the hobby as you are.

 

[Twizz Stonefist]

I'm not the owner just the assistant manager. I just love gaming thats all.

 

[cdrcjsn]

But this then leads to another question - when a cleric uses Healing Word (and I was the cleric in this instance) when it says the target can spend a healing surge to heal, what happens if the target is on negative hps?

When you heal someone at negatives, they start at 0 hit points and then you apply the healing surge + cleric bonus. This is in the 'Healing the Dying' on page 295.

Also why does my cleric have three At Will abilities - Lance of Faith, Priest's Shield and Righteous Brand? In the rules it says only two At Will abilities. Or was I meant to only use two of them?

I don't have the character sheet on me, but he's probably human. Humans get an extra at-will ability from their class as a racial ability.

 

[cdrcjsn]

I ran this game twice today. I have a collection of pregen characters from various preview mods as well as KotS so I let players choose their own characters as long as the group had at least the core 4.

Both groups didn't like the riddle. The first group didn't solve it, but the second one did. There is a "frustration" out in the mod for those that just can't solve the riddle.

As the DM, I really enjoyed using the hobs and traps. I just love terrain features like that. The players were surprised by the traps, but quickly managed. I was amused by the tiefling when he declared "I have fire resistance 5 so I just walk through the flames" and then proceed to get burned for 11 damage.

The last two fights are really tough, especially if you roll them both together which is likely to happen.

Overall, it was a fun run.

 

[Heselbine]

Our DM played the riddle entirely differently; there wasn't a riddle as such at all as far as I could tell. Which sort of made it harder until the rogue just used his thievery to open the obelisk. I think he let it slide that way because he had introduced an extra encounter before we entered the tomb. A group of kobolds was attacking and we decided to barricade ourselves in. IMO that was an attempt to introduce minions into the module.

The two most deadly fights were the hobgobbos and the stone statues. We had some poor luck climbing over the traps and the dwarf caught on fire, got them down eventually though. The statues got activated after a scuffed roll from the rogue and the wizard and it got pretty hairy until the first one went down and we all piled onto the second.

End fight was over rather quickly even with the spirit joining in against us (we had been nice to it but DM though we needed the extra challenge). My turn undead rolls gave us room to get into the open and the wizard knocked the elf down, with the rogue finishing him off. I was a bit miffed that I missed with my daily though.

Pretty good module I thought, more interesting than last year's and I met a load of new people which is a nice bonus. Hopefully we'll be getting a 4e campaign running soon.

I was the DM in question! I played it this way not to get minions into the game but because I thought the riddle was rather dull. I ran the first encounter as a skill challenge - you had to get four successes before the kobolds arrived to open the secret door. I thought that this would add some tension.

The idea was that the shadow spirit was being compelled but wanted to help you, and also that he had some power to open the door. The rogue's Thievery skill was also helpful.

Overall, I was quite pleased with this little encounter as I thought it more exciting than the riddle. I certainly would have had no hesitation whatsoever to throw the kobolds at you if you had failed the skill challenge!!!

 

[maransreth]

2 Trivia games (Classic D&D and 4E Trivia),

Our DM asked us the Classic D&D trivia questions and I am proud to sat I got 9 out of 16. It was not just classic, it was every version, every campaign setting for questions.

Did anyone else have a go at the trivia?

 

[Badgerish]

I DMed for shadowhaunt (once). the white dragon (once) and played in a white dragon game (once).

Much fun was had by all. No detractors or complaints about the system, alot of people really got into it and enjoyed it.

My group had some problems with the riddle, although they got the son/sire thing right away, the 'sinister' thing stalled them. I placed one of the statuettes on the floor to encourage them to notice it.

Highlights of the session: Durgan Darksteel, Dwarven Fighter! This is possibly the greatest name ever!

The wizard's player took to marking down 'kills' on the top of his sheet, when the wizard got to death-blow something. During the white dragon encounter, he used acid-arrow on the dragon and hit the human fighter with the 2ndary attack. The dragon knocked the human fighter down to negatives with his cold-breath but it was the ongoing damage from the acid that killed him, this resulted in a good bit conversation and apology, but i pointed out that the wizard could draw another 'kill' on his sheet

Things i did wrong: I got the oil-traps wrong (didn't auto-ignite, but i solved it in one case with a minor action from the hobgoblin). I didn't require athletics checks to climb up the platform to Helvec, and (following the adventure plan, not my common sense) I let the spirit kill Helvec, prompting my players to call him a kill-stealer!

 

[Sithobi1]

My group figured out the riddle easily, completely avoided the traps, decided to explore the alcove(and thus fought the necromancer) before entering the locked room, and killed the necromancer in 1 round, courtesy of a Fey Step/Thunderwave combination from the wizard which knocked him right into two defenders and a striker. He died on the opportunity attacks from his action.

 

[FireLance]

I ran two sessions yesterday. The first group went to fight the BBEG before releasing the kids and the statues got called up to fight the party. The party actually managed to beat the encounter because they quickly brought down the BBEG with dailies, and then fought the statues in the choke point between the rooms so that only one could engage them at a time. The wizard proved to be extremely valuable because she kept hitting with Thunderwave and pushing the statues back, giving the rest of the party time to maneuver into position. However, they messed up the skill checks to disable the trap and only the wizard managed to escape the collapsing cavern.

The second group went to free the kids before fighting the BBEG, failed the skill check to disable the trap, and activated the statues. Here the dwarf was the MVP as he kept making his saves against the statues' knockdown ability, and kept hitting (most of the time, ironically, with Reaping Strike ). While the rogue stayed behind to disable the second part of the the other characters went to check on the BBEG, failed their Stealth checks, got noticed, and started fighting him and the skeletons. During the fight, the rogue messed up a skill check and brought down the ceiling. This time, they all managed to escape with the boys and the shadow spirit kept the BBEG from escaping.

I think you can see a common trend here. Did anyone else think the skill check DCs were too high?