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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5486042" data-attributes="member: 78116">Dark Sun: The Builder's Cry I restarted my DnD after a long break - as you can tell from the thread - with my Dark Sun game and introducing a new character into the party. With introducing a new PC into the campaign, I wanted to actually integrate him more into the story and make it feel less random than normal. Essentially having the new PC introduced like an encounter and to accomplish this, I made a new item to do so. Effectively a shadowy spirit, it can flinch items and scout ahead in times of need - a legacy of the new PCs former house. In order to get the parties attention, the creature stole some of their items and then ran back towards the new character. After a short skill-challenge based pursuit, the PCs were lured away from the caravan and met up with the new player. After having a pleasant chat and getting over the whole "stealing stuff from them" part of meeting, everyone realized they had some similar plans in common. Thus did Alek, the human noble adept ardent join with the party, conclusively solving their problem of a lack of a leader. Not to mention giving a certain DM far less kittens designing encounters. With the party now having a healer within it, I felt an extended rest to get everything back to normal was a good idea and the party got themselves a mere 36 or so degree Celsius day with a balmy -2 degree night. More than cool enough for a good long rest. Unfortunately the next day bought hazards of its own, as a large group of ssurrans who had (silently) been pursuing the caravan descended upon it at dawn. Led by a familiar foe the PCs had fought before, the ravenous humanoid reptiles entered a swirling melee with the caravan and with the PCs as well. Of course the point of these encounters - mechanically - was to see how the new PC was going to handle things. In reality I haven't seen an ardent in play and so didn't really know a lot about them. So these fights were a way of testing out the ardent and seeing how it worked in play. The first encounter saw some minions, a ssurran shaman and more dune stalkers enter the fray. The PCs handled this encounter pretty well, with the ardent easily keeping up with the healing requirements. Of particular note in this encounter was Bob - the parties pack Crodlu - having a great time rolling crits for his claw attack. The players rapidly discovered his pounce power was more than handy for dealing some good damage and maneuvering bob into flanking positions. I think that bob being so useful is going to make certain decisions later potentially very difficult. At the same time I am pleased to see the little crodlu is pulling his weight in the party and helping out. One of the things with mounts/companions that I always worry about is if they will prove useful to the party. In my experience, if an NPC/mount/pet doesn't prove very handy many PCs don't get very attached to them. With the first encounter reasonably easily handled, the second encounter started with another group of ssurrans approaching from the eastern side of the battle. This time they were led by a large pack of Jhakar - vicious dog like lizards with big jaws. The last time the players encountered these was in the arena, but not in the sheer numbers in this encounter. <img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/JhakarPackAttack1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> In reality it was the large Jhakar pack that was the focus of this encounter. It's worth noting that Jhakar's may be level 1 monsters, but once you get a bigger XP budget for higher level encounters don't discount how well lots of lower level creatures can perform in an encounter. En masse and with an "annoyance" power like opportunistic chomp they can be as effective as higher level monsters - while being simpler to hit and kill individually. Additionally, I decided to make one of the Jhakar's a pack alpha. This was a simple process of making its bite power function slightly differently (getting two bites) and doubling the HP. A quick, dirty and simple elite that added a bit more extra oomph to the other Jhakar's in the pack. Had I thought about it a bit more, I also would have given him an aura that meant other Jhakar's within it could use their opportunistic chomp - even if they had expended it. The combat started quite aggressively, with initiate (the wizard) about to charge close to get a burst off before remembering the Jhakar's opportunistic chomp. This power isn't actually that great despite the considerable damage, due to the poor accuracy of the level 1 Jhakar's by this point in the game and it's an encounter power (so can be used once). It's psychological effects though are very interesting. Mostly because it means if a character gets close to too many Jhakar's at once, the character can be quickly surrounded and torn to pieces. This meant initiate had to hang back and use a less efficient power, or risk being eaten alive. The result of this ended up being that the combat after a couple of rounds turned into a "rugby scrum" as I was thinking of it. <img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/JhakarPackAttack4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Every creature in the combat is basically whirling around in this chaotic close quarters melee. It was oddly appropriate for the situation I had described. The party started to take some heavy damage as the creatures closed in and here it was where the ardent was put to the test. Especially as shortly after the above both Initiate and Eshara went down! <img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/JhakarPackAttack6.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Initiate and Eshara go down, placing the party into a precarious position... But here I found the ardent was actually a pretty solid healer. Energizing strike with an augment 2, combined with the ardents regular ardent surge healing got both characters up in no time (while letting the ardent deal decent damage as well). Considering the limited healing and difficulty that the shaman experienced in similar situations to the above, this was a very positive start for the Ardent. It also meant that while the PCs took some damage, they were able to finish the encounter in a solid - albeit battered - manner. <img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/JhakarPackAttack7.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> At the end of the combat the PCs were battered and bloodied, but in an extremely comfortable style. So my initial impressions of the ardent were very positive indeed. Given that energizing strike can be used twice (augment 2) and ardent surge can also be used twice, the ardent has some good depth to his healing reserves compared with the previous leader. Given how lethal the game has seemed up to this point, it is a pretty good start and I think will work very well. At the end of the combat, initiate finished off one of the Jhakar's with non-lethal damage. Clearly the PCs have some plan for the Jhakar but at the end of the combat came the end of the session. I decided to leave the game there (and whatever fate the players have planned for the Jhakar) until next session. Due to the amount of time between playing, I also decided to give my players the next level, advancing them to 4. I figured they must have felt they were level 3 since forever and decided it would be good just to let them level up a bit. I wonder what they plan to do with the Jhakar... </blockquote>

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