We just finished the third session of our play through E1: Death's Reach. The adventure, in terms of pacing and construction, has been absolutely excellent so far. It suffers a bit from the problems with epic balancing, but as I've been using the new damage codes and am used to the PCs doing really well in any case, it hasn't bothered me much.
The session (a four-hour affair) happened like this:
* Combat against five normal monsters and TWENTY-FIVE minions!
* Role-playing with the Raven Queen
* Skill Challenge to pass successfully through a portal. (Used the corrected maths DCs; the PCs failed narrowly).
* Combat against two elite monsters and terrain features.
* Skill Challenge of negotiating with an Angel (could have turned into a combat, but the group is really good at negotiation so it didn't)
* Side quest & Combat against three higher-level monsters (including one elite) to recover a couple of powerful magic items.
Next session, they'll find out what Orcus wants in Death's Reach; it should be fun. However, when I look over the session, I'm very, very happy with how it was paced: there was a variety of encounter. It wasn't Combat, Combat, Combat, which is how many adventures have been constructed.
(I'm also running on the other weekend Tomb of Horrors; it is likewise so far nicely balanced between combat, exploration and tricks & traps).
We'd been anticipating the encounter with the Raven Queen for the past three weeks, but when it actually occurred, it was astonishing: all of the player's were tongue-tied and none spoke! This is in complete contrast to all the other sessions they've been in, where getting them to be quiet was impossible.
No small part of it was due to who she was: Goddess of Death. One of the PCs is her worshipper, another just thinks she's cool. All were rather worried about offending her. Score one for the reputation of the Raven Queen!
Cheers!
The session (a four-hour affair) happened like this:
* Combat against five normal monsters and TWENTY-FIVE minions!
* Role-playing with the Raven Queen
* Skill Challenge to pass successfully through a portal. (Used the corrected maths DCs; the PCs failed narrowly).
* Combat against two elite monsters and terrain features.
* Skill Challenge of negotiating with an Angel (could have turned into a combat, but the group is really good at negotiation so it didn't)
* Side quest & Combat against three higher-level monsters (including one elite) to recover a couple of powerful magic items.
Next session, they'll find out what Orcus wants in Death's Reach; it should be fun. However, when I look over the session, I'm very, very happy with how it was paced: there was a variety of encounter. It wasn't Combat, Combat, Combat, which is how many adventures have been constructed.
(I'm also running on the other weekend Tomb of Horrors; it is likewise so far nicely balanced between combat, exploration and tricks & traps).
We'd been anticipating the encounter with the Raven Queen for the past three weeks, but when it actually occurred, it was astonishing: all of the player's were tongue-tied and none spoke! This is in complete contrast to all the other sessions they've been in, where getting them to be quiet was impossible.
No small part of it was due to who she was: Goddess of Death. One of the PCs is her worshipper, another just thinks she's cool. All were rather worried about offending her. Score one for the reputation of the Raven Queen!
Cheers!
