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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shroomy" data-source="post: 4899145" data-attributes="member: 32739">The quicklings, spriggans, and fang golem are Emrett's minions and are not native to the Oasis (the same goes for Taalah and the satyr).Yeah, I'm don't normally favor loading an encounter with a bunch of soldiers, but since this is likely to be the only encounter that the PCs face prior to their arrival at the Oasis (unless the DM adds encounters of their own), I thought that pushing the PCs to their limits would be OK.  Its definitely a tough encounter, as I was told that during the WotC playtest, it almost ended in a TPK (curiously enough, the main culprit was apparently the war camel).Originally, there was a skill challenge that covered the journey to the Oasis, but in terms of word count it was very lengthy and I was told that the DM who ran the playtest felt it fell kind of flat, so it got cut for space.  That said, we should have probably made it clearer that even after encounter D1 concludes, the eladrin tracks are still easy to follow.  I should have also made the leeward/windward issues clearer on my map turnover since its really only depicted by the relative closesness of the elevation lines; the windward side is the east slope.  As for the sand on the windward slope, you need to make the skill check to move, but its still difficult terrain.I would personally handle it with a Passive Arcana check, but since they're explicitly called out in the description, I would think that some players would call for the check on their own.Even though she's a naked and apparently defenseless woman, I always figured that at some point either she'd get caught in an AoE, or someone would see through her deceptive veil, or she would attack at some point, or would try to subdue her (or the party just doesn't care and subscribes to the the kill 'em all theory) etc., but I also worried about some of the issues you identified (not the quickling, as I figured that the PCs just having to act threatening towards Taalah would give the DM a lot of leeway).  When I built Saqr, I did think about giving him some additional powers, but I didn't want to go overboard since he was a Brute; hopefully, tower of sand, fey step, and his threatening reach are enough to compensate (as well as the introduction of the quickling to the battle) if the PCs don't actually attack Taalah.Definitely, fighting Hazar in her lair is probably suicidal.  Hopefully that will encourage PCs to try to the non-violent option <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=":)" />Are you referring to the elevantion lines?Thanks to both you and Merric for your comments.  As for Emrett, even though she technically only appears once, I wanted to foreshadow her and her personality in earlier encounters (through Farooq, any captured eladrin, her diary, Hazar, Voor etc.); in addition, there will be a Side Trek coming out in the near future that supplements this adventure and can provide even more foreshadowing.  I hope everyone enjoys that one too.</blockquote>

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