Free Keep on the Shadowfell at Wizards.com

[Echohawk]

"The vases can be attacked only from inside the trapped area".

However, it then says THIS in another (the next) paragraph:

"Characters can neutralize the whirlpool trap entirely by attacking the vases without setting foot in the trapped area between the cherub statues; see the whirlpool trap's statistics block for the vases' statistics".

I think the first bit applies after the trap is triggered. Once the "indestructible walls of arcane energy" are in place, the vases can only be attacked from the inside.

However, before the trap is triggered (which means the characters have not yet set foot in the trapped area), the vases can be attacked from outside and the trap neutralized.

 

[brunswick]

Ah, cheers. Just had a re-read over it, and what you say makes sense. Thanks for the help!

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Any suggestions?

I have a suggestion: skip the room entirely. It's a trainwreck.

First off, there are a ton of safe spots in it. Even if your players are willing to say "Well, the statues are very clearly traps, but maybe our characters don't know that" and eat a swing from the knight to start things off, they can then make that obvious conclusion, back up, and pepper everything with ranged attacks. Alternatively they can simply move around the dragons and the knight entirely without even bothering to deal with them. This is doubly true since the statues don't have any interrupts, so you can even move right through their attack ranges while scurrying past them. On the other hand, if you do have a player run past the knight & dragon statues alone, he's basically dead if you play the whirlpool straight; being slowed and at -5 to hit means it's going to take him a metric eternity to free himself. And thanks to ye olde "Wall of magic that is immune to weapons, magic, or creativity of any kind" preventing the rest of the party from contributing in any way, he'll be KO'ed well before then.

So you've got much of the room that completely fails to be threatening unless you go out of your way to disarm the traps just because they're there to be disarmed, and you've got the other part that's certain death if the group doesn't move into the area in exactly the same time and/or decides to do something other than attacking the statues while the water level is still rising (such as trying skills or looking for controls to stop the water or destroy the walls, or even just attacking the walls themselves.) And say what you will about the Tomb of Horrors-style deathtraps of days past, but at least they had the decency to kill you and be done with it. The whirlpool trap watches you flail helplessly about for 4 or 5 rounds while most of the party stands idly by saying, "Well, sucks to be him, I guess."

And then to compound things, they add in the asinine "This trap doesn't affect Evil creatures" to explain why this room is allowed to exist right in front of the villain's most important section of the keep. Even just using one of the keep's passwords would be a big step up, but apparently even that went way beyond the level of effort that went into designing this encounter.

This room was responsible for without a doubt the worst session of D&D I've ever played. Seriously, skip it or change it dramatically.

 

[Voadam]

Another thing I wish is that there were some appropriate low level demons to use. The balgura is a bit too brutal to drop down, and the carnage demon is a bit boring to me, and nothing else felt appropriate to drop down to fit into the dungeon.

But after all, Orcus is the Demon Prince of Undead; a few demons would have been nice.

I know its necroing but I'm just now reading the 4e MM. I think you could reskin an imp to be a quasit demon fairly easily.

 

[brunswick]

I have a suggestion: skip the room entirely. It's a trainwreck.

First off, there are a ton of safe spots in it. Even if your players are willing to say "Well, the statues are very clearly traps, but maybe our characters don't know that" and eat a swing from the knight to start things off, they can then make that obvious conclusion, back up, and pepper everything with ranged attacks. Alternatively they can simply move around the dragons and the knight entirely without even bothering to deal with them. This is doubly true since the statues don't have any interrupts, so you can even move right through their attack ranges while scurrying past them. On the other hand, if you do have a player run past the knight & dragon statues alone, he's basically dead if you play the whirlpool straight; being slowed and at -5 to hit means it's going to take him a metric eternity to free himself. And thanks to ye olde "Wall of magic that is immune to weapons, magic, or creativity of any kind" preventing the rest of the party from contributing in any way, he'll be KO'ed well before then.

So you've got much of the room that completely fails to be threatening unless you go out of your way to disarm the traps just because they're there to be disarmed, and you've got the other part that's certain death if the group doesn't move into the area in exactly the same time and/or decides to do something other than attacking the statues while the water level is still rising (such as trying skills or looking for controls to stop the water or destroy the walls, or even just attacking the walls themselves.) And say what you will about the Tomb of Horrors-style deathtraps of days past, but at least they had the decency to kill you and be done with it. The whirlpool trap watches you flail helplessly about for 4 or 5 rounds while most of the party stands idly by saying, "Well, sucks to be him, I guess."

And then to compound things, they add in the asinine "This trap doesn't affect Evil creatures" to explain why this room is allowed to exist right in front of the villain's most important section of the keep. Even just using one of the keep's passwords would be a big step up, but apparently even that went way beyond the level of effort that went into designing this encounter.

This room was responsible for without a doubt the worst session of D&D I've ever played. Seriously, skip it or change it dramatically.

Cheers Merlin - I might put some sort of password clue somewhere in the scenario. I'll have a think about it - the thing is I will be running the scenario for 2 different 4th edition groups, so I'll need to come up with something or "test drive" it with the first group as a gauge for how to handle it for the second group!

Edit: The two groups are only just about at Winterhaven at this point (I ran some 'home made' encounters en route from Fallcrest).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I have a suggestion: skip the room entirely. It's a trainwreck.

First off, there are a ton of safe spots in it. Even if your players are willing to say "Well, the statues are very clearly traps, but maybe our characters don't know that" and eat a swing from the knight to start things off, they can then make that obvious conclusion, back up, and pepper everything with ranged attacks. Alternatively they can simply move around the dragons and the knight entirely without even bothering to deal with them. This is doubly true since the statues don't have any interrupts, so you can even move right through their attack ranges while scurrying past them. On the other hand, if you do have a player run past the knight & dragon statues alone, he's basically dead if you play the whirlpool straight; being slowed and at -5 to hit means it's going to take him a metric eternity to free himself. And thanks to ye olde "Wall of magic that is immune to weapons, magic, or creativity of any kind" preventing the rest of the party from contributing in any way, he'll be KO'ed well before then.

So you've got much of the room that completely fails to be threatening unless you go out of your way to disarm the traps just because they're there to be disarmed, and you've got the other part that's certain death if the group doesn't move into the area in exactly the same time and/or decides to do something other than attacking the statues while the water level is still rising (such as trying skills or looking for controls to stop the water or destroy the walls, or even just attacking the walls themselves.) And say what you will about the Tomb of Horrors-style deathtraps of days past, but at least they had the decency to kill you and be done with it. The whirlpool trap watches you flail helplessly about for 4 or 5 rounds while most of the party stands idly by saying, "Well, sucks to be him, I guess."

And then to compound things, they add in the asinine "This trap doesn't affect Evil creatures" to explain why this room is allowed to exist right in front of the villain's most important section of the keep. Even just using one of the keep's passwords would be a big step up, but apparently even that went way beyond the level of effort that went into designing this encounter.

This room was responsible for without a doubt the worst session of D&D I've ever played. Seriously, skip it or change it dramatically.

I agree that the main room traps are a little boring though my players did disarm them. I really like the whirlpool trap though I did allow a bit of creativity in handling it. Bascially the eladrin wizard triggered it on her own but I allowed her to feystep out when the water was rising. Then I allowed her to use thivery with mage hand to disarm the trap while it was still active.
All in all I though it was pretty cool and good creative thinking on the part of the players.

 

[Shades of Green]

As someone who've never read 4E (and who plays BFRPG), I must say that this is a very good decision by WotC - letting players and DMs test-drive 4E before shelling out the cash to purchase the three core books.

Anyhow, I'm half-way through reading the Quick Start Rules, and so far they look quite well-written and easy to use. If you want, I'll post a more detailed "First Impressions" thread about them once I'll finish reading them.