Hello, everyone.
I'm new to the whole pen and paper rpg scene, but me and a couple of friends want to take a shot at it.
The adventure we would like to run is the lvl 1-4: Keep on the Shadowfell.
Now, my question is: do we have a balanced party?
Our party consists of me (a valour half-elf bard), an archery elf ranger, an eladrin wizard, a brutal half-orc rogue and a Githzerai shielding swordmage.
Any input would be helpful, looking forward to losing myself in d&d.
You seem to have covered all the roles, but I'd like to know what kind/build of wizard you have (control or war?). If it's a war wizard, you might be a little heavy on damage and a little low on healing (bards aren't the greatest healers, but they're not bad at all). Overall the group seems fine.
Details such as sourcebooks used, etc, will have an impact on your performance as well.
I've run the adventure once, and it has a few holes. I won't go into massive details or "I would have done it this way", just wanted to point out three things:
1) The monster math is the old math. If the group is new, I wouldn't change it, but if they're experienced you might want to update the damage values (see DMG errata or numerous other sources). A few monsters, like the orcus underpriest and some kind of drake brute already deal high damage, so watch out for those!
2) The minions in the second-last room have defense scores of "very high". It could be that my group wasn't so balanced in terms of being able to hit all defenses, but the minions actually killed the group, despite being minions, simply be being invincible. (I ended up negating the battle.)
3) The old math for elites and solos is pretty poor. The boss made for a
very boring fight. He had three problems: 1) His level is too high. (The adventure that came with Monster Vault covers the same levels, and the boss is only 1 level higher than the PCs. The boss is about 4 higher!) I suggest changing his level to 5 or so. 2) His defenses were too high. (In the old math, elites and solos got +2 to AC and two of three defenses.) His high level is also boosting his defenses. 3) He didn't have enough encounter powers, IMO (or they didn't recharge often enough), so the battle had very low offense on his side. Also note the damage is low for a monster of his level, but since he's using the old math, changing that can be complicated.
Gah! As I was writing this, I didn't realize you're a player, not a DM. I don't know, maybe you could email that to the DM. I was kind of upset about the last two encounters, and so were the players.
