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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6727416" data-attributes="member: 3586">Originally posted by DarkCrisis77:I can't tell if that post is supposed to be sarcastic or something. The episode doesn't give much instruction beyond "Heres some missions and random encounters" While one non-random encounter by the river/tunnel consisting of 6 Kobolds and 2 Cultists was all my 4 players could handle for the night. A group that had a Paladin and a Cleric for healing. How were they supposed to fight 2 rat swarms immediatly afterwards? Or any random encounters? Or save the Mill or the Sanctuary? And lets not even mention the Dragon. I basically did nothing the episode requested short of "get to the keep" and fight a couple of encounters before doing the final battle that the hero can't win. Im scared now to keep running the book as the encounters can be very lop sided. Episode 3 has the Roper that hopefully the PCs wont get into a fight with. Eps 4 has the Assassins. I get the DM has carte blanche to change things etc but it seems like more work for the DM to edit and change the over-powered stuff that was thrown in. As if little regard for PCs levels was considered, or s mentioned above poor editing turned a normal encounter into an extra deadly one.Originally posted by Eugee: Thanks for the insight and suggestions. I suspected that the "math" behind that assassins encounter likely had something to do with a change in the MM during/post-writing. Can you comment on the Encounter XP Multiplier table in the DM Basic Rules? It doesn't seem like that was a factor when writing HotDQ either, because most of the tough encounters are hitting a full XP budget before factoring in how many enemies there are. Many times there is an encounter that seems like it was intended to be hard but winnable for the appropriate party level, and the XP of the NPCs adds up with that, but then when you factor in the multiplier, suddenly you have double or even triple a deadly encounter. I have no problem with just scaling back the numbers a bit or staggering waves out, etc, but I'm really interested to hear if those multipliers were a factor in encounter planning.Originally posted by QuestingWord:I initially had problems with the Adventure, but it was mostly because 'how in the heck do they survive the first hour of play?". In fact, I stated on Google+ DnDNext that it was horrible. BUT, after giving it a night to sleep on it I started reading the other episodes and started to see the brillance in the adventure. I have read up to the castle and I am still liking it. Ok, so the encounters are over powered in my opinion and others opinions, but without it being deadly I don't think the adventure would be half as good. Now, I understand what someone mentioned that the math might now work based on the DM basic rules encounter level/table multiplier-whatever, but it does say a 'work in progress' on the DM Basic Guide (somewhere). Also, just pull-punches and don't worry about the math that much, I am not personally going to. Just look at all the encounters and social interactions as LOTS of WAYS to use some of the content and you can pick and choose what you want and what you don't want to use, award XP as you think it should be worth. I can understand that you want a math complete product and it may seem like it doesn't provide it and you get hungup with wanting it all 'correct', I used to want stuff like that also... its a choice you will have to make... wait until the DMs Guide comes out and correct it, or just play fast and loose with portions of the adventure that need that style of play. Oh, Steve... don't hold back on the next adventure, keep it deadly... I would hate to see you take some of the advice and think that you need to hold back for people to like the next adventure... thanks for your work! Good job. </blockquote>

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