Hey!
Olgar, thanks for writing this. I ran this last night for a group of 5. We had a Fighter, Cleric, Ranger, Wizard and Warlock.
Room 1: Entryway
Round 1: Minions went down like cake, but by the end of it, we still had a regular minion and a skirmisher. Light damage to people.
Round 2: More minions come running in from the side room. More light damage, and I think I finally got to use the Combat Advantage ability on the Skirmisher. Pretty much all the minions except one, and the skirmisher, died this round.
Round 3: I deviated from your module here. Added 6 regular minions, 2 more skirmirshers, and a Kobold Wyrmpriest coming from the left. This caused some concern, and I got a person bloodied, but it wasn't so bad. The Wyrmpriest is fun, and his granting of temp hp is awesome - every kobold got to shift into Combat Advantage when I did this.
Summary:
I did some damage, and I really like minions. I think that adding to round 3 was a mistake in retrospect though, because I damaged my party probably more than I should have. Wizard was out of Healing Surges by the Dragon fight.
Room 2: Kobold King
Had Caltrops on the entrance, which caused some frurstration as everyone seemed to get hit as they walked over it. Eladrin liked his teleport ability. Also, didn't have Meepo flee.
Round 1: Snap shot the Fighter, then used my hand crossbow on him as a standard, and got him to bloodied in one round. That caused concern in the group. Death from Above'd the Cleric after he moved into the room, hitting him for a lot.
Round 2+: Basically the group failed their rolls over and over again, while I kept pelting them with Combat Advantage and Meepo's nasty sneak attack. I also rolled recharge a lot, letting him snap shot before closing, which really screwed with them. All in all, I dropped everyone but the Warlock and the Fighter. Lasted like 5 rounds total though.
Summary:
This encounter is "tough", but doable. The players appreciated that although they have a lot of hp, they still felt threatened by this encounter.
Room 3: Hobgoblins
Round 1: Warcaster has abilities that require being close, so I ready. Archers zero in on the fighter, and nail him twice. He's bloodied (already, and again!) People start moving in, and attacking. Warcaster goes down in a hail of light, eldritch blasts and arrows.
Round 2: Hobbo soldier gets up on the cleric who's moved in, makes him scared. Ends up running away from a cause fear. Fighter gets next to the Archers, who stop firing and try to attack him in melee - moving or taking opportunity attacks from him sucks! Soldier eventually goes down under striker's barrage.
Round 3+: Cleanup of archers, easy peasy. Takes maybe 2 rounds due to bad rolls.
Summary:
This encounter was fun for everyone. You've got some tougher baddies, with almost 40 and 50 hp, but with some good tactics, they're not too tough. I forced the party to take a Extended Rest here, due to the last room.
Room 4: Nightscale
Summary:
My group got him bloodied, but only just barely. They had a terrible time hitting him, and I knocked people down left and right. I crit'd with him once, and did . . . 9 damage, and everyone kinda looked at me funny. "Only 9 damage?" Yup. Maybe I did critical hits wrong, but I thought it was max damage, not double or anything. Regardless, this guy definitely is tough, and the party enjoyed fighting him (and we called it after he was bloodied).
Very fun - thanks! Couple of notes on characters. I didn't read the character sheets, so don't know how accurate some of it is (first time trying it out, obviously).
General Class Stuff:
We didn't have trouble keeping track of effects, but only just barely. Curse and Quarry were easy, and Mark was a little harder. Going to have to use tokens, or something. Also, power cards seem the right thing to make for each person. We did have trouble healing, as the group could have used more Second Winds with Meepo fight and the Dragon fight. I arbitrarily said that if you survive the encounter, your allies auto-stabilize you, and then also decided the heal check could be used to allow a healing surge to be spent. It seemed alright. I'm curious how potions will work.
Fighter - Very important to know when you can use your abilities. Had a situation with Meepo where his Wicked Dodge would have let me hit the Warlock instead of Meepo, but I didn't because the Fighter used Cleave, which meant he could deal 3 damage to the Spider (for example). Also, has abilities that affect when someone Shifts around him, but not necessarily Moving into a square next to him. That threw us for a loop a bit. Guy playing him liked that he forced me to debate internally whether to shift for combat advantage or not.
Cleric - Hated that a lot of his abililties required him to hit to activate. The guy rolls bad consistently, so I can't blame him. Still, he had a fun time throwing radiant damage every which way, and being able to use his healing ability as a minor was a huge boon to everyone else.
Ranger - The guy loved his mobility and sheer damage output. He couldn't take hits, and so made sure to move around the battlefield. This guy, combined with the Warlock, were eating guys up (which is exactly what's supposed to happen, I'm guessing). His reaction ability is awesome.
Wizard - Starting with area effects, transitioning to magic missiles, and being able to generally unleash a number of variable effects that affected various creatures unlimited times per day - that's what this guy LOVED about the Wizard. Most of the guys in the dungeon have fairly high Reflex, and the guy playing noted that most of his effects were targeting Reflex. Made the Wizard less effective, but still - kept me from grouping guys up.
Warlock - My god. Moving 3+ spaces for concealment, combined with Eyebite, made our Warlock a monster. Guy playing this loved that he had damage, and could make himself a non-target in cases, because he'd just target the toughest looking guy, eyebite him, and go invisible to that one target. I thought that perhaps he might not shine as much as the Ranger, but that's clearly not the case - they're both superb damage dealers.
All in all, awesome. Thanks again Olgar. I managed to convince my group that we're switching to 4th Edition, barring something crazy!
- Bryan