Escape from Sembia

[FireLance]

If they did have all first level encounters that the PCs would normally live through, nobody would have known the new death rules and people would walk away with "Wow, 4e is a cakewalk... I don't think they balanced the encounters correctly."

There is a middle ground, you know: start with a 1st level encounter, then scale up from there.

 

[arscott]

It was intentionally scaled up:

Level 1, then level 3, then level 4, then level 5.

The purpose was to demonstrate threat levels, to demonstrate the Death and Dying rules, and to show that PCs can die.

Just looking through my copy of the adventure (I'm going to run it at Gamex in a few days), and I can say it's not that bad. The most difficult encounter is 4th level (175 xp per person)

And that's with 5 players. If you've got six (and I imagine that most of the official D&D previews were pretty full), then it's only 146ish--3rd level territory.

 

[baberg]

There is a middle ground, you know: start with a 1st level encounter, then scale up from there.

Your implications that there are shades of gray between black and white frighten and confuse me.