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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arbitrary" data-source="post: 4378347" data-attributes="member: 66185">So the game I'm running made it to the final encounter of KotS and faced Kalarel.  In the first round after Kalarel teleported to the rune in front of the opening to the Shadowfell the Warlock used Diabolic Grasp, picked up Kalarel's fig, thought very carefully, and shifted him into the portal.The end.  Any living creature who enters the Shadowfell through way of that portal is instantly slain.Now, I was well aware long ago what the module said and of course there are any number of ways to have Kalarel not die instantly like that, but because I had made quite a bit of changes already and I knew there was a pretty ugly encounter just on the horizon I let it go.  I'm not writing this to complain about a poorly written final encounter and how dare they waste my money and blah blah blah.If I wanted it changed, I'd have changed it.I was giving some of the players a ride home and we started talking about it and one of them had a very interesting theory.  Maybe, just maybe, it was intentional.  It probably wasn't, but I still thought it was a neat idea.The first encounter in the Keep on the Shadowfell has a disguised pit trap in it with a bunch of rats.  The players are maybe level 2 and the fight for my group really showcased the dangers of getting pushed into traps.  It was pretty rough having people take damage, fall prone, take more from the rats, try and get out, fail, try again, and so on.  A simple hole turned into a mixture of crowd control and sustained damage.  It was hideous.The first encounter on the second floor has a 30foot well in it with 5 feet of water that does a huge 3d10.  By the time the group got there they were third level, the Cleric had Command to go with the Warlock's Diabolic Grasp and the Fighter had Tide of Iron.  In the first round two Hobgoblins were nearly dead having been tossed in.  A third made his save.  Initially I thought the encounter had turned into free exp for the players but the tides turned when some minions pushed some PCs in and the fight was very, very rough.  It got rougher when one of the hobgoblins cut the rope hanging down.In the top floor of Kalarel's chamber is an encounter with a 50ft hole and again, 3d10 points of damage.  Again the players tossed enemies to their doom.  "Well, Kalarel knows they are there, that's for sure." And then, at the final encounter, round 1, Kalarel goes into the Shadowfell and dies.Here is what I mean when I said it could be intentional.  Given the scaling danger of forced movement in the module, and given that it is a new mechanic for the system, it may have been set up in such a way as to absolutely drill into the players heads the power of forced movement.  Even the trap room before Kalarel's chamber had statues that pushed players into additional traps.So, the moral of Keep on the Shadowfell, just may be MOVEMENT MOVEMENT MOVEMENT.  Throughout this entire module it was the MVP and the Silent Killer.</blockquote>

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