KotS adjustment *spoiler*

[f.e.n]

Legion devil, you're shared experiences helped make my running of the final encounter much more difficult. My p.c's probably hate you but it was definitely amazing to foresee certain events and deal with them accordingly.

FOR STARTERS THE ENCOUNTER WAS FOUR HOURS LONG.

epic. four. as in 4. Four friggin hours long.

I would like to say first and foremost that my p.c's played with guts, courage, swagger, and tactical finesse. As a dm, you can't be any more proud of your party than i am now. My hats off to them for playing the most brutally over challenging encounter i have ever seen in an adventure publication. That said, it was near tpk.

Four of the six pc's died horrible horrible deaths.
The adjustments were spot on seeing as the battle swung from p.c control, to enemy control. There were moments when both sides looked bleak, and then the teeter-totter of a fight would swing the other way.

Kalarel was played as best i could. His wild fanaticism for bringing p.c's back from the dead along with his odd fascination with hair of any kind, as well as the switching of genders he would perform on the p.c's kept the combat moving for much of the four hours. It seemed to infuriate the party to no end, and when splug turned on them, finishing off the rogue, they really went into another gear of outrage and shock. (his figurine, upon death, was cleanly thrown as far across the room as possible to many hurrahs)

Flaming sphere was not a problem for me as it was summoned for a short time. Kalarel sent his entire force to put the wizard down so that it's effects would diminish. The wizard was quickly overwhelmed by me throwing everything i had at her. The conjuration vanished when the wizard went zero and the main damage-over-time threat was neutralized. The rogue was next to be focus fired upon, as he was nearly killing the big k all by his lonesome. I put him down and killed his helpless body with the npc gone bad splug. Which just gave so much more meaning to his turning at this encounter. (experience will be adjusted for his effectiveness)

The portal was horribly useless. I rolled poorly for it and the p.c's seemed to keep just out of it's reach. I made the mistake of bull rushing a dwarf. First and last time. The wizard was killed next, followed finally by the fighter, than the paladin (who, combined with his resist necrotic 5 ability, was able to tank unbelievable amounts of damage)(this ability from armor found in the adventure).

The evil magic circle was insanely powerful. Having a level 3 p.c roll a 25 to hit will and having that power not deal damage is just frustrating for all involved (kalarel will defense in circle was 26!!!!). The cleric and warlock remained largely out of focus from the enemies and thus were able to defeat the remaining enemies once big k went down.

One thing though. the p.c's discovered kalarel through a rogue being roped down into the final chamber. The conversation of a suspended rogue talking to big k resulted in a show of ranged force, scaring the p.c's from entering the encounter. Fearing they would simply walk away once the rogue was pulled back up, i allowed the party to hear screams of joy from kalarel and his minions that the lord orcus was beginning to send reinforcements through the portal to pave the way for the shadowfell. This was all in an attempt to get the p.c's going, and not deciding to 'sleep on it' mentality that they seemed to be leaning on. I simply added two pitiful minion skeletons to the encounter as 'reinforcements' but could come up with no other solution for the party to just not up and walk away from the final encounter.

It advanced the storyline but now i'm wondering if anyone had a party that got cold feet coming up to the big fight? It certainly seemed like a 'leap of faith' dropping into a pool of blood from a chain to fight overwhelming odds.

All in all, a fun but brutal encounter. KotS is just about wrapped up for my group.

 

[legiondevil]

Legion devil, you're shared experiences helped make my running of the final encounter much more difficult. My p.c's probably hate you but it was definitely amazing to foresee certain events and deal with them accordingly.

FOR STARTERS THE ENCOUNTER WAS FOUR HOURS LONG.

epic. four. as in 4. Four friggin hours long.

Mine went slightly over 3 hours, I think this is just about the standard for your average group of 4th Edition players against a module big-boss. I forsee a similar amount of time at the end of Thunderspire Labrynth.

The evil magic circle was insanely powerful. Having a level 3 p.c roll a 25 to hit will and having that power not deal damage is just frustrating for all involved (kalarel will defense in circle was 26!!!!).

The circle is "bad news" for the players. Kalarel is already quite strong on defenses, but adding a +2 across the board just makes a difficult enough fight become near impossible.

This was all in an attempt to get the p.c's going, and not deciding to 'sleep on it' mentality that they seemed to be leaning on. I simply added two pitiful minion skeletons to the encounter as 'reinforcements' but could come up with no other solution for the party to just not up and walk away from the final encounter.

Padraig offered my group more gold than mentioned in the module. And my player's are greedy to the core, so they wouldn't have turned back. Though they would have taken the underpriest's head and tried to pass him off as Kalarel though.

 

[Obryn]

I had 6 players in my game, so I added a Wraith into the mix. (This same Wraith replaced the Mud Mephit or whatever he was from the Ghoul room.) I also think I added another Skeleton, but this was a week ago and I forget.

The combat was very, very difficult and I'd say it took over 2 hours. I started it out differently, though.

I modified a few things, like improvising Kalarel's referred-to-but-never-described amulet. (I decided for fun that it was an immediate interrupt when someone moves next to him.)

After the party cleaned out the Underpriest and his barbarian buddies, the aforementioned Wraith popped up and said that Kalarel invited them downstairs to parley and discuss the terms of their surrender. I mean, why not try and get more screen time out of him? I also decided to tie him into the Ashen Covenant from Dragon ...364? This was good fun with the party's cleric of the Raven Queen.

Once the battle was underway, the party focused fire on the Deathlock Wight, completely obliterating him in a round or two. This was, I think, the key to a successful battle... His long-range sniping and eventual Raising of the Wraith would have been outright deadly. Then, they decided to focus mainly on Kalarel... they were in for a big surprise when his amulet triggered. It worked out okay, though, since they really needed to try and keep the skeletons off the wizard & warlock.

The magic circle played a HUGE role in the combat. The Thing did, too, believe it or not. The party didn't have too many ways to move Kalarel from the Circle apart from Tide of Iron, so the dwarf fighter was exposed to that danger quite a bit.

Three characters dropped - the unfortunate Gnome Ranger who started the battle with 1 remaining healing surge and 1/2 his HPs; the Halfling Rogue who got caught between skeletons and the wraith; and EVENTUALLY the dwarf fighter - who was in and out of unconsciousness several times over the course of the battle. The cleric ran out of healing pretty early on, but got good use out of his abilities against the various undead. Healing potions ran like water. Nobody died, amazingly enough.

-O

 

[Yair]

I see I'm late to the party, but figured I'll pile on my experience.

I've had the opposite problem, as my group has 4 characters (a Paladin, Fighter, Warlock, and Wizard), all at level 3. Although smaller, these are competent players so I think they're pulling a bit above their weight - but the missing character was certainly missed. The party run both final encounters in a row, taking about 4:30 hours to finish them both.

I didn't modify the first encounter (the Cathedral one), and added the escaped clay golem from the previous encounter - which made things more difficult for them, but I think worked rather well to represent a fierce opposition.

This encounter was all about the PCs bunkering in the entryway. They never even really entered the room. The two defenders blocked the entrance as the artillery shot from behind. The lessons I learned there were that the Underpriest's ranged attacks were very powerful (dropping the paladin twice, and a third time once the bunker has been breached), but that he was exposed to the artillery. The second thing was that it was important to engage the party from both sides - quickly running to engage from the sideways. The vampire spawn were nearly useless, but the other underlings served well and the Underpriest was very, very effective - especially at range. The dark creeper's death was really important too, changing the battle considerably. All in all it was a difficult fight, but the party endured without losing many limited resources (I think one Daily, and 1 action point - but lots of healing surges); they knew they weren't facing Karael.

I did weaken the final battle to accomodate the lesser number of PCs, by dropping the two skeletons. This does, I think, make the battle far less interesting, unfortunately - I missed all those unndead-bolstering abilities. I too found the circle played a key role in the combat. The bulk of it revolved around the fighter trying to push Karael out of the circle, so that the party might actually hit him. I found K's ranged attacks, again, far more useful; especially so as the armor the fighter was wearing (found in the adventure) made him immune to the ongoing necrotic damage. Unlike the others, however, the Thing also proved very useful - especially as it was able to drop one character (the Paladin) and slowly drag it's unconscious body through the portal, hence providing both more healing for K and a dramatic ending for that character's life. The Wight was unable to compete with the ranged attacks of the party (mostly the wizard's), and was quickly dispatched; I think the idea to make him come and scare people and the idea to make him come into the circle to heal are both good - I didn't do either as I felt the party was depleted and needed some help. Otherwise, it mostly missed. K's teleportation was definitely a plus, adding surprise and interest to the battle.

Despite the lowered numbers, the fight proved very difficult, nearly to the point of desperation for the PCs, as Karael's high defenses and regeneration (in the circle) proved almost impossible to break. I ended up making him make a tactical mistake that, with the help of a few lucky dice rolls, managed to help the PCs enough for them to drop him. While it was not near a TPK, with only one character dying, it felt very close to it - with the fighter and warlock nearly dead too, and the wizard injured, and above all with the infuriating high defense of Karael.




As a general note on KotS - we found it too long, and a bit boring. So I essentially cut down all the middle part of it, from the moment they chanced into Sir Keegan (?) (who I made a ghost of the last defender, who toppled the Keep to protect its secrets from the Orcish Horde) - who directed them to the second level, healed them (well, Bahamut healed them...) as if they had a long rest, and provided guidance on how to reach the ritual chamber directly. In this way, they could finish the dungeon without resting (not bothering to engage in needless encounters while floundering around), and without doing all the interlude stuff. The interlude stuff looked like fun, but the dungeon crawl wasn't and we were pretty fed up with the adventure and wanted to finish it off.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Just a bit from my running of the final encounter.

I had the clay thing in the final encounter, ratting out the party, so that they knew what was coming. Much fun was had with the blood. Basically, the wizard knocked over the skeletons with Icy Terrain, and the party moved towards the stairs, so the Skeletons had to get up as a move, and then would need to charge to attack anyone. This lead to MANY turns of skeletons slipping and falling in blood, much to the amusement of the party. The Wight had his fun, raising the skeletons a number of times, and eventually started making his way to the circle, but the warlock immobilized him with a power, which slowed him long enough that he died before getting to the circle.

The party swarming on Kalarel with TWO fighters, made it very hard for him to get away, and he didn't make it to the circle either.

The creature was pretty much a non factor. Ditto with the clay golem, although the party did take glee in killing the guy that had run away from them.

 

[Tony Vargas]

My party found Kalarel frustrating, his defenses were just too high. While 3e-style hitting all the time is boring, missing all the time is boring and frustrating. 4e seems to be great when you keep it in the 'sweet spot' and a level + 5 opponent with easy access to a +2 all defenses is definitely /not/ in or anywhere near that spot. (We were a largish party and 3rd level for the final encounter, so K. was 5 levels above us).

Our DM decided to let the Wizard take down the cirle with an arcana skill challenge, which definitely helped make the encounter more tollerable. We were able to take out the Wight before the skelletons, so there was no undead-raising. Because we were a large party, and skipped the winterhaven enounter with her, our DM added Ninaren to the final encounter, the extra ranged punch hurt, but our Cleric made a startling use of Command to pull her into melee with our paladin, and she was doomed after that (flanked and unable to extricate herself from melee).

Kalarel was the last enemy to fall, of course, after the circle had been disabled. I used Pin the Foe on him early on and, while we couldn't keep him out of the circle, we did keep him away from the Portal for quite a while, so the creature didn't get to attack us.

 

[Tikigod]

My group just kept poor Splug locked up, until...

The party's rogue wanted to make Splug his butler after the dungeon had been cleared, but the wizard decided to use the gobbie as trap bait.

So Splug was feared from the hallway runes, grabbed by a ravenous zombie and finally burnt to a crisp from the wizard's scorching blast. Poor, poor Splug.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/238447-heroes-winterhaven-d-d-4th-edition.html

 

[Nebulous]

As a general note on KotS - we found it too long, and a bit boring. So I essentially cut down all the middle part of it, from the moment they chanced into Sir Keegan (?) (who I made a ghost of the last defender, who toppled the Keep to protect its secrets from the Orcish Horde) - who directed them to the second level, healed them (well, Bahamut healed them...) as if they had a long rest, and provided guidance on how to reach the ritual chamber directly. In this way, they could finish the dungeon without resting (not bothering to engage in needless encounters while floundering around), and without doing all the interlude stuff. The interlude stuff looked like fun, but the dungeon crawl wasn't and we were pretty fed up with the adventure and wanted to finish it off.

Just curious, what did you find boring exactly? Particular rooms or enemies? I've been enjoying the adventure very much, the players too i think, although i've added considerable variety and some solo adventures to the mix.

Our group is about to reach the hobgoblin lair, and then it won't be much longer until Big K. I've also been worried about his level and defenses. I don't really want anyone to die, my players tend to get upset by that, and someone already got whacked by Irontooth. Yet, that's the risk of their profession i suppose.