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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 4503534" data-attributes="member: 54629">Last session I ran two skill challenges back to back: the players had barricaded themselves in Balgron the Fat's room, but he had escaped, so I had him bring a hobgoblin patrol back. The first challenge consisted of the PCs trying to keep the hobgoblins out. They succeeded in doing this, so because they had to hang around for a full day to get another extended rest, I ran a series of mini skill challenges with the restless spirits and malevolent influence of the Shadowfell rift that meant some of them failed to get all their healing surges back.I don't know that I did either of these very well as the players just didn't seem to "get" it a lot of time. Oh well.Then, in the morning I had Ninaran "lure" the hobgoblins away and then tell the PCs they had to come back to town urgently. She wouldn't explain so they got a bit suspicious but they went anyway and I ran the Dead Walk encounter. I had it snowing the whole time, which of course is a great idea but not all that evocative in execution because it ends up just being a flat penalty to attack people ... Oh well.This is the main reason for my post today: as the PCs were making short work of all the skeletal minions, it suddenly occurred to me that the magic circle should play a more active role in the encounter ... so I had it randomly flash and cause all the fallen skeletons to rise up again, so the PCs had to fight them all over again. After this had happened a few times, they finally figured out what was going on and went to try and disrupt the circle.I had Ninaran run away and "replaced" her with an undead mage based on the human mage in the MM (I had hoped my players would go "Oh no, it's a lich!" but I don't think I described it well enough because no one did). His thunder clap and dancing lightning were fun but he got taken out pretty quickly.The zombie dogs were fun, though. They kept biting the minotaur fighter and dragging him to the ground, so he spent a good bit of the fight falling down and standing up and falling down and at one point he was dazed (the mage's thunder clap) so he stood up and couldn't do anything else. Ha ha.Anyway ... just thought I'd share. The players really seemed to enjoy the idea of having skeletons that just kept getting back up again (although one of them kept saying they should get multiple amounts of XP -- but the way I reasoned it is that the skeletons weren't being defeated by knocking them down. The only way to "defeat" them was to get rid of the circle ... I might give them some extra XP anyway though).</blockquote>

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