Has anyone else started playing 'Scouring' yet? (Possible Spoilers)

[kumagroo]

We'll be starting this Sunday. Our group consists of:
a Dwarf Shaman
a dwarf battlerage fighter
a human ranger
a halfling rogue and
a 1/2 orc avenger

A little sad we don't have any arcanists for the Inquisitors to go after and not having a controller means that combat encounters with minons will take longer. On the positive side, we did some pre-game metagaming and we've got most skills but history trained for those skill encounters. I assume Torrent does NOT get involved in those unless she gets a cut of the exp...? HAving three strikers will be nice against the solos they meet, too.

 

[merchantsteve]

Torrent only divides the XP award if she gets bloodied (Campaign Guide). The idea is that she can help get people out of a jam (The DM's helper), but doesn't significantly impact any one encounter. If she gets bloodied, she is clearly doing a lot and so the XP award per character suffers. In the first adventure, there are many encounters available where she isn't even present, so those are the ones you will have to worry about.
Make sure you re-read her motivations and how she will react in most combats. I tried to create plausible reasons for her to take a back seat most of the time.
Of course, if a player loses a character, she is all about dishing out the pain!!!

 

[Talysian]

A little sad we don't have any arcanists for the Inquisitors to go after and not having a controller means that combat encounters with minons will take longer. On the positive side, we did some pre-game metagaming and we've got most skills but history trained for those skill encounters. I assume Torrent does NOT get involved in those unless she gets a cut of the exp...? HAving three strikers will be nice against the solos they meet, too.

How I'm handeling this is making it all spell casters Divine, Arcane, Natural, unless they swear an oath of Allegiance to Leeska (brain far on name sorry if that's not right). Someone who has actually sworn the oath has a Brand on his/her right hand, so they are easilly identifiable as loyal citiczens...

 

[kumagroo]

Torrent only divides the XP award if she gets bloodied (Campaign Guide). The idea is that she can help get people out of a jam (The DM's helper), but doesn't significantly impact any one encounter. If she gets bloodied, she is clearly doing a lot and so the XP award per character suffers. In the first adventure, there are many encounters available where she isn't even present, so those are the ones you will have to worry about.

I got that bit; I was just curious about skill challenges in particular.

 

[talarei07]

I must say you are correct. And in response to a previous post, an all-arcane group is going to be challenging! I think the DM will have a tough time keeping them alive...

Why do you think it will be difficult to keep them alive?

 

[Talysian]

Kind of like Keeping an All Jedi Party alive during Palpatine's Era.

 

[talarei07]

true i see your point

 

[Nareth]

Hoping to start tomorrow (6/11). My group is:

Goliath Warlord
Goliath Barbarian
Dwarf Druid
Human Rogue
Deva Paladin
Tiefling Warlock
Eladrin Ranger
1 TBA

Big group, but not everyone will be able to play at the same time. I think it's a decent mix, but I guess we'll see.

 

[talwynor]

Our campaign is starting next Tuesday...We've spent alot of time devleoping characters and backgrounds in the hopes of sustaining a long-term campaign beyond a straight-forward crawl. Having siad that - we all agree we like our combat too! For any that are interested, we've put together a fairly nice (IMHO) campaign site to document all the intrigue andplot points at War of the Burning Sky

 

[kumagroo]

So, we just finished our first run and I think it was a lot of fun! The flavor, descriptions, and intrique make this excpetional! Still, combat wise, I'm going to have to severely bump up the opposition. I knew that two of my party members were optimizers so I decided to dump the dogs, scouts, and thugs on the PC's in one round where they'd be nice and bunched up and flanked. Didn't matter: The party's dwarf shaman drops a daily power with a burst 5 effect and annihilates 3 of the 4 black horse minions, 2 of the 3 dogs, and injures some others. From there, our twin striking bow ranger and battlerage vigor fighter tore up the enemy with a little help from the rogue and avenger. The ceiling traps were a minor annoyance to them that ended up killing the last dog and finishing off a bloodied black horse thug.

Torrent, I decided from round one, got hit by a falling timber and was out. They didn't need her.

I thought it would be wise to send Kathor off to live to fight a harder encounter. Action points, the shaman's spirit, more arrows and some such were directed at his horse (which I made a level 3 warhorse brute to help him get away) and the 58 hp beast was dropped in 1 round. After the 1st hit on Kathor, he got his Trillith true strike and rolled a 1. *sigh* The party didn't slaughter him, but he gave his word to stay away. One character came close to bloodied; no healing surges were used by anyone.

They nearly obliterated Larion too before he could escape with his 40 remaining hp (and this is after the solon healed him). So, for future fights should I just:
1) add extra badguys,
2) or use the DMG rules to level up their enemies? In either case, I'll have to cheat down the experience values a bit and use the story-based system.

Next game they're slated to fight the "Fallen Devil" and I've already decided that he can't be bloodied or they'll laugh over his corpse by the end of round 3 at the lastest.