NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zinovia" data-source="post: 5181021" data-attributes="member: 57373">I haven't had the chance to play through any of the paragon adventures from WotC yet, although I do have a copy of P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens.  Upon initial read, it seems to provide more in the way of advice for groups that get creative and use a novel approach to the entrance to the big warren.  There are answers to what the trolls may do if adventurers try to talk or trick their way in, as mine are won't to do; answers beyond "they see through any disguise or ruse and attack immediately".  At least a bit - once the troll king gets there, he "attacks the moment he sees the party".    Unfortunately it still suffers from the breakup of the room descriptions among multiple pages, requiring page flipping.  For instance, the Great Warren is described in general on pages 6 and 7 (book 2), the map is a two page spread on pp 8-9, and is nicely illustrated.  When the players enter the room, you need the picture from page 26 of Book 1, the block text from Encounter W1 on page 10, and the description of the room on page 6 including info such as the DC to force or squeeze through the gate.  The Features of the Area section is better than many from previous adventures in that it answers stuff my group is always asking, such as which way the door is hinged.  They *always* want to know that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. There seem to be a number of rooms that don't contain encounters; again a big improvement over the H series.  The descriptions of these areas are better and more detailed, including a bit of treasure the PC's may stumble across.  I have't read the whole thing, so I can't comment on how well integrated the plot is, or whether the group knows or cares about the BBEG.  There seems to be an attack on the town partway through the dungeon crawl portion, much like in H1, and like that mod, the PC's will only hear about it if they head back to town.  Many groups are stubborn about returning to town in the middle of assaulting a dungeon, and with good reason.  If you leave, they can build up defenses and bring in reinforcements.  From what I have heard, many of the fights in this mod are grindy, without presenting a good challenge for characters of this level.  Some of this is intrinsic with trolls being the main enemy.  I do note that WotC doesn't believe in having easy encounters.  Most are level 11-13 with one at level 10, and as you progress, they go up in difficulty a little bit.  I certainly haven't given this module a proper evaluation, but I would say that while descriptive text has been expanded and improved, there are still some issues.  There are many many encounters, most of which are fights.  The skill challenges are far less stupid than the ones in the early modules, and might be usable without extensive rewriting.  I would have to reduce the number of encounters, and make some easier by using minions, while making sure the tough fights were memorable in some way.  Otherwise my group would get bored with months of slogging through fight after fight with the trolls.What they need to do is to make a good first level module that doesn't suck and can be run by a new DM without modification.  It's good to see some of the problems being addressed in the paragon modules, but where you most need modules to be well-designed and easy to run is at the starting levels.  Make them fun with an engaging story, and cut down the number of combats.  Reduce the number of levels covered by each module so a group can finish a story and move onto something new in less than six months of play time.  Many groups can't play on a weekly basis, and it gets old doing the same old thing over and over, against the same foes.</blockquote>

Verification