Poll: Irontooth Total Player Kill

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Ah-ha!

Yeah, after hearing about all the KotS TPKs here I didn't mind so much the extra XP.

Kobold Hall claimed a couple of victims though.

 

[Agamon]

Are KotS, Kobold Hall and the D&DE demo what we can come to expect from WotC adventures? I was ignoring them to begin with, now I'll be avoiding them like the plague.

 

[Festivus]

Are KotS, Kobold Hall and the D&DE demo what we can come to expect from WotC adventures? I was ignoring them to begin with, now I'll be avoiding them like the plague.

Kobold Hall (aka Scalegloom Hall) and Escape from Sembia are really combat demos, though the latter did have a skill challenge in it, but I wouldn't consider KotSF in the same league as those other two adventures. I would expect there will be more roleplay from these sorts of modules when Living Forgotten Realms begins, but within the confines of that campaign (If you have ever played Living Greyhawk you will understand what that means).

KotSF has enough legs to be a start of a campaign, complete with a town and NPC inhabitants, it isn't railroady at all, and I thought fairly well laid out and thus far a very fun adventure for both players and DMs. I would expect the rest of the modules, H2 onward, to be similar in terms of layout and style.

I don't think you can really lump them all together fairly, unless your expectation is such that you wanted something more from an adventure that isn't being presented to you in either type of adventure listed above.

I am looking forward to Irontooth. Party of 5 players who chose to explore the dragon burial grounds before they headed off to see where these pesky kobolds were coming from. Perhaps this weekend they will head off that way... I can't really say... they might elect to go striaght up to the keep.

 

[Simplicity]

So the party took on the outside creatures and then ventured into the caves after a short rest. They didn't enter from the middle entrance, thankfully because that would have been suicide.

The kobolds were waiting for them. As they entered, they had readied javelin throws. The minions swarmed the paladin and the warlock. At first, things looked pretty bad. Two thunderwaves and one action point later, the wizard had taken out eight or so of the minions. That helped more than a bit.

The wyrmpriest's temp hit points and energy orbs were devastating... and when he finally snuck in and breath weaponed virtually the entire party, the tide started shifting. Suddenly, everyone started worrying about a TPK. Irontooth waded in next, but he never managed to set up a "two-target" attack. He kept having to shift to get to his opponents. This probably saved everyone's bacon.

So, we had three IIRC people go unconscious at various points, and no healing left in the party, before the battle was over. It was very close, but my party did well and no fudging was necessary on my part.

 

[Agamon]

Kobold Hall (aka Scalegloom Hall) and Escape from Sembia are really combat demos, though the latter did have a skill challenge in it, but I wouldn't consider KotSF in the same league as those other two adventures. I would expect there will be more roleplay from these sorts of modules when Living Forgotten Realms begins, but within the confines of that campaign (If you have ever played Living Greyhawk you will understand what that means).

KotSF has enough legs to be a start of a campaign, complete with a town and NPC inhabitants, it isn't railroady at all, and I thought fairly well laid out and thus far a very fun adventure for both players and DMs. I would expect the rest of the modules, H2 onward, to be similar in terms of layout and style.

Well, quality of adventure wasn't quite what I was getting at, more the quality of encounters. If there's a 50/50 chance of a TPK at the end of each adventure, how does that make a campaign? I mean who do these guys think they are, Paizo?

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Group I game with did pretty well against Irontooth. Of course, it helped immensely that the Human Wizard kept hitting everything with his area-blast powers and rolling max damage, not to mention the havoc he wreaked with Flaming Sphere. Warlord also did a good job of backing up my greatsword-wielding Fighter while the Rogue and Warlock constantly manuevered for optimal striking positions.

Probably helped that the DM wasn't running the kobolds as tactical experts, so they made some blantantly stupid decisions (such as marked targets ignoring my Fighter to try and take a whack at the Rogue that was sticking a sharp pointy thing in its vital organ).

Sadly, Irontooth himself didn't stand much of a chance, as every daily he got hammered with (Brute Strike, Curse of the Dark Dream, and Easy Target) was delivered with a free critical hit.

Only person that dropped was the Halfing Paladin due to stupid tactics, and he didn't get back up as the Warlord decided to save his Inspiring Words for people that were actually making useful contributions to the fight.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Well, quality of adventure wasn't quite what I was getting at, more the quality of encounters. If there's a 50/50 chance of a TPK at the end of each adventure, how does that make a campaign? I mean who do these guys think they are, Paizo?

Well, the end of adventure fight should be a tough nut to crack. And unlike Kobold Hall, as long as the players are smart, using tactics and functioning as a group, they'll have a pretty good chance of avoiding a TPK... barring bad rolls on their part.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Spoilers!

Think Irontooth is tough? I think we're going to start seeing a lot of threads about the gelatinous cube soon. My party survived it only because they fought it solo--through luck and a bit of caution they didn't activate the rest of the encounter until after the GC was down. If they'd had to deal with the entire encounter at once--especially if they'd been surprised by the GC at their rear--it would definitely have been a TPK.

DM tip: Leave your GC mini in the box and just use a 2x2 dungeon tile. My characters were in and out of that thing so many times I would have worn my fingers down opening and closing the mini. . . .

 

[mithril]

My players fought the Irontooth encounter yesterday (4 pre-gens - Dragonborn Paladin, Tiefling Warlord, Halfling Rogue and Half-Elf Cleric - and one Human Infernal Pact Warlock). They managed to wipe the outside forces with no problem at all. Things went well against the first wave, with the skirmishers being a nuisance, but then the second wave hit, and the characters had a hard time dealing with the dragonshields, the wyrmpriest, and Irontooth.

They survived because the warlord used his daily to grant a +5 to hit against Irontooth, and because the bloodied Irontooth rolled two 1s in a row with his action point double attacks. However, the crit that came right after knocked the Tiefling Warlord out of play. The Half-Elf Cleric fell soon after. Their salvation came when the Halfling scored a crit on a backstab against Irontooth, taking him down.

The rest of the battle wasn't so easy, though, with the wyrmpriest's energy orb attacks being quite a hassle. The Half-Elf Cleric died, driving home their first lesson to pay attention to death saving throws, and not leave it until the last minute to tend to a fallen comrade (when they might fail a healing check as well).

 

[Festivus]

Well, quality of adventure wasn't quite what I was getting at, more the quality of encounters. If there's a 50/50 chance of a TPK at the end of each adventure, how does that make a campaign? I mean who do these guys think they are, Paizo?

I think WoTC did take a lesson from Paizo... tough encounters make memorable ones. People will know about Irontooth years from now, perhaps as much as Meepo from Sunless Citadel, or Vanthus Vanderboren in Savage Tide for example.

Also, there are far tougher things in KotSF than Irontooth... the thing in the pit has the markings of a party killer too. Good group tactics and knowing when you are outgunned will help you to survive... not a weaker encounter.

For those running this with 4 players, how are you scaling it back? To you dial down Irontooth a bit or remove some of the other creatures? I would look at backing Irontooth down a bit before I looked to pull combatants out.