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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Truename" data-source="post: 4672264" data-attributes="member: 78255">Just finished the final encounter of Siege of Bordrin's Watch. The whole session took us about four hours.  We took about 30 minutes to get started and a 15 minute break to get food, so call it a bit over three hours total.I had high hopes for this encounter. It's got a lot of interesting terrain and "neverending monsters" mechanic that means you have to do more than just kill things, and a wicked trap that the PCs intentionally trigger. I'm happy to say my hopes were born out. It was a great encounter, an edge of the seat, we're all going to die encounter. Two of the PCs did die, a third would have died if he hadn't remembered his Second Chance power after taking a critical hit that would have killed him, and it was close for everyone. At one point, one of the players said "I give us zero chance of all getting out of this alive." Although it was long, I never felt like it was a grind.(Overall, the battles in Siege have been top-notch. It's not much for plot, but the combat encounters are varied and interesting.)Party composition:lvl 4 Archer Ranger (barely hurt)lvl 4 Wizard (nearly dropped)lvl 4 Rogue (dropped, nearly died)lvl 4 Fighter (died)lvl 4 Cleric (died)The encounter was a level 8 encounter. As written, it's a level 7 encounter for a level 3 party, so I bumped it up a level by adding more monsters. The trap isn't included in the encounter budget, but it's under the player's control. Also, the monsters enter in stages, but they're unlimited. I figure it's either lvl+3 or lvl+4 overall.Player tactics in this encounter were unusually poor. The room is huge and takes a good three or four rounds of flat-out running to reach the top. They split the party early and couldn't support each other well. There were also some dubious choices about when to use action points and encounter powers. Because of the split party, the rogue had to fend off some fairly nasty soldiers on his own rather than activating the trap that stops the flow of bad guys.Players also spent a lot of time hemming and hawing over their moves. A fair amount of "can the monster really do that?" and not-quite-rules-lawyering going on, even before the tide turned against them. Overall, they were more distracted and distractable than I've seen them in a while.They didn't have any real trouble hitting the monsters, but they didn't focus fire because they were split.Bottom line, I think they could have finished this 30-60 minutes earlier if they had taken their turns quicker, and another 30-60 minutes earlier with better tactics.  I expected it to take one and a half to two hours, not three.</blockquote>

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