Today was a good session of Pyramid of Shadows. This was a combination of good DMing, great players, and better encounters.
We had three major encounters.
The PCs met the bandits and talked to them; human foes are always interesting as they have at least some areas in common between them and the PCs. This led to the "room of the demon bitch", which saw everyone make insight checks against a succubus except Greg's paladin. Greg knew it was a succubus, but he decided to play his character as if he didn't. He ran up to Josh's fighter and tried to stop him from attacking the succubus - using the grab attack and then pulling him away from the succubus. (Side note: this is the first time the PCs have used the new grappling rules, and they seriously rock. 3e grappling bothered me terribly!)
Grabbing Josh allowed the Succubus to kiss him... and as Josh was still next to the Succubus, he took the next two hits (from Adam and Nate)... uh, oh!
That was a great encounter. Josh and Greg ended up spending rounds praying at the altar in the shrine for guidance whilst Splug, Nate and Adam finished off the succubus. Greg's actions made that encounter.
The next encounter was against a werewolf - a solo creature, scary! - which the bandits let the PCs deal with. This was a nice, simple encounter; no terrain to complicate it, just the PCs pounding on the werewolf as much as possible while it gave as good as it got. By the end of it, the PCs needed to rest. Greg failed his Endurance check against its Moon Fever, so - if I remember - we'll have a bunch of fun next session.
The final encounter had the PCs returning to the Arboreans with a tentacle of the Carrion Lord ("look, we've killed it!"); as they were escorted to the temple of the Arboreans, they attacked with surprise. (For those attacks, I require PCs that make Bluff vs. passive Insight or Stealth vs passive Perception to get the surprise round). This led to a combat where there was lots of space (good!), there was some terrain that the monsters could use effectively, but not really that much of it, and the monsters' vulnerability to fire was something the PCs could actually use!
The combat was tough, but they were able to get through it successfully, though Greg went down from a bunch of horrific attacks; thankfully, Josh now has the Warlord multiclass feat and was able to Inspire him back up!
Apart from that, the Nathaniel and Adam show continued (with support from Josh and Greg), and we got a bunch of good roleplaying in. The PCs now need to clear another three rooms on the bottom level, and we can then finally reach the second level of the dungeon, which I trust will be more entertaining than parts of the first. Need to see what's there and alter it to fit the group, I think!
One of the main reasons I'm happier is because I had a lot of fun roleplaying the opponents. For Nate, he had encounters which weren't more a struggle with the terrain than the monsters; he'd complained of that in the past. I actually took a bunch of pews out of the shrine just to free it up a bit; too constricting can really suck the fun out your powers.
Cheers!
We had three major encounters.
The PCs met the bandits and talked to them; human foes are always interesting as they have at least some areas in common between them and the PCs. This led to the "room of the demon bitch", which saw everyone make insight checks against a succubus except Greg's paladin. Greg knew it was a succubus, but he decided to play his character as if he didn't. He ran up to Josh's fighter and tried to stop him from attacking the succubus - using the grab attack and then pulling him away from the succubus. (Side note: this is the first time the PCs have used the new grappling rules, and they seriously rock. 3e grappling bothered me terribly!)
Grabbing Josh allowed the Succubus to kiss him... and as Josh was still next to the Succubus, he took the next two hits (from Adam and Nate)... uh, oh!
That was a great encounter. Josh and Greg ended up spending rounds praying at the altar in the shrine for guidance whilst Splug, Nate and Adam finished off the succubus. Greg's actions made that encounter.
The next encounter was against a werewolf - a solo creature, scary! - which the bandits let the PCs deal with. This was a nice, simple encounter; no terrain to complicate it, just the PCs pounding on the werewolf as much as possible while it gave as good as it got. By the end of it, the PCs needed to rest. Greg failed his Endurance check against its Moon Fever, so - if I remember - we'll have a bunch of fun next session.
The final encounter had the PCs returning to the Arboreans with a tentacle of the Carrion Lord ("look, we've killed it!"); as they were escorted to the temple of the Arboreans, they attacked with surprise. (For those attacks, I require PCs that make Bluff vs. passive Insight or Stealth vs passive Perception to get the surprise round). This led to a combat where there was lots of space (good!), there was some terrain that the monsters could use effectively, but not really that much of it, and the monsters' vulnerability to fire was something the PCs could actually use!
The combat was tough, but they were able to get through it successfully, though Greg went down from a bunch of horrific attacks; thankfully, Josh now has the Warlord multiclass feat and was able to Inspire him back up!
Apart from that, the Nathaniel and Adam show continued (with support from Josh and Greg), and we got a bunch of good roleplaying in. The PCs now need to clear another three rooms on the bottom level, and we can then finally reach the second level of the dungeon, which I trust will be more entertaining than parts of the first. Need to see what's there and alter it to fit the group, I think!
One of the main reasons I'm happier is because I had a lot of fun roleplaying the opponents. For Nate, he had encounters which weren't more a struggle with the terrain than the monsters; he'd complained of that in the past. I actually took a bunch of pews out of the shrine just to free it up a bit; too constricting can really suck the fun out your powers.
Cheers!
