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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Larrin" data-source="post: 6198218" data-attributes="member: 55816">I've been DMing 4e for Encounters this session, and its good to hear pretty much everything I've felt echoed here. A couple things I would add/reiterate:1. With a diplomatically minded party there are NO natural combat encounters in the first 6 stages.  1b. until things get really bad, there's no real enemy for them to fight.  They are heroes, and everyone loves them.  Who would attack the Heroes of the Wide? No one. 2. There is SO MUCH players can learn that they want to learn it (and they do), and thus spend a lot of time trying to contain every fire (and having fun doing so, so why stop them) but not leaving enough time for a combat encounter by the time the store closes. also, because of this, November 13th is too soon for me to stay with the book's stages and actually finish.3.  Player made characters that were warriors, not detective diplomats, they truly are starting to itch for some 'actual D&D'.4. Everything the players do is treating symptoms, not the cause.  The actual danger to Baldur's Gate is out of their reach by design.My response has been to go off script.I've expanded the "bhaal's chosen" to not be targeted at only certain individuals, but more like a plague, where certain people with certain predispositions will start going murder happy.  They've already run across a serial killer tanner and the Master of Cobbles going on killing sprees with some fun telltale signs tying the events together (whenever a creature dies in the presence of a 'chosen', the spilled blood briefly forms runes, etc) This way, they have enemies to fight, are given more knowledge about the real danger (they investigated the runes they saw and asked around at various temples to get more info), and are involved with something a little more fantasy based.  second, they've just entered the undercellers and found it crawling with fleeing goblins.  They don't know it yet, but if they back track the goblin's path, they'll find a short dungeon crawl and a cave deep beneath Baldur's gate where they can learn more about the return of Bhaal. Going this way is up to them, but if I read them right, they'll take the bait.  If they take this route, I'll fast forward through the stages so that when they get back, things are closer to the boiling point, and they'll need to start fighting in earnest just to get through the streets of madden citizens, minor bhaals chosen, and the machinations of the big 3 chosen.  That will be a bit more action packed I hope.</blockquote>

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