[RHOD Spoilers] In which a strong party speedily...

[MerricB]

Ok, you're going to laugh...

The fighter is "Roy Greenhilt". And, in what is a first, the player was an Order of the Stick fan *before* he played his first game of D&D!

The paladin is "Delie Swift"

The cleric is "William"

The rogue is "Ricros Moonshadow"

The wizard is "Rthfgn". The player has a thing against vowels in character names, it seems. (His Mutants and Mastermind's character is "Plzglrb"). His wizard's greatest desire is to become an alienist. His character is also now a she, due to an unfortunate encounter with a belt of opposite gender, which delighted the player no end.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

The encounters look to be pretty underwhelming, which explains the pace. It's about the same as the encounter of my current party (average ECL 19) with an advanced (CR 17) beholder. He was gone in half a round - nothing more than a speedbump.

The game is pretty fast normally, but this session had a lot of really weak encounters. I was particularly impressed when they managed to parley with the first group of lizardmen rather than fireballing them.

I also maintain a clock on character actions. If you can't start telling me what your PC is doing in about 10 seconds, I move on to the next player. Doesn't happen that often, but if a player is looking through a book looking for a spell description, or just conflicted, their character is also standing there.

My Age of Worms game is back to being pretty fast as well, which is more of an effort at 18th level. (I'm enjoying it, too).

Cheers!

 

[Rhun]

My 3.x group maintains this kind of pace on average...they rarely spend much time before fights buffing up, instead preferring to get straight into combat. And then tend to hack their way through everything in just a few rounds.

 

[Quasqueton]

In my experience (noted information from my game’s battles), those fights would have lasted:

[Based on ~19 seconds per round per combatant (the average for my group).]

* 10 Stirges (4 rounds) – 19 minutes
* 1 Chuul (1 round) – 1.9 minutes
* 6 Lizardfolk - xx
* 1 Greenspawn Razorfiend (2 rounds) – 3.8 minutes
* An elven hunting party - xx
* An elvish village - xx
* 6 Lizardfolk (2 rounds) – 7.6 minutes
* 12 Lizardfolk (4 rounds) – 22.8 minutes
* 40+ Lizardfolk - xx
* 1 Ghast, 4 Ghouls (2 rounds) – 7 minutes
* 1 Large Black Dragon + Rider (4 rounds) – 7.6 minutes

Total battle times for 7 combats (19 rounds) = 69.7 minutes – 3.7 minutes per round

Quasqueton

 

[NiTessine]

Mmh. I ran what I presume to be the same adventure some time ago. It took us nine hours.

The PCs managed to botch things towards the end and alarm was raised. In the final combat, they took out...
* seven hobgoblins, two with significant class levels
* six lizardfolk
* six ogres
* one ettin
* one medium black dragon, plus rider, plus rider's animal companion
* one greenspawn razorfiend

The party has six melee types, all around level 6 at the time of the game.

The adventure in its entirety had a death toll of a whopping 110, mostly because the party insisted on going and doing in every one of the damn lizardfolks.

 

[GwydapLlew]

Heh. Sounds like someone is running Red Hand of Doom.

In my version, the party took care of the blockades in two sessions, the Tiri Kitor in one, and the ruins in one. There's only three PCs, though, (and no blaster casters) which makes combat a little bit longer.

 

[CharlesRyan]

We struggled with the razorfiend, but then we were 4 6th-level characters.

We only hit about half of these encounters--don't know if we circumvented the others or the DM was cutting out encounters to quicken the pace of the adventure. It took us probably 6 hours to cover half of that list.

 

[MerricB]

We struggled with the razorfiend, but then we were 4 6th-level characters.

We only hit about half of these encounters--don't know if we circumvented the others or the DM was cutting out encounters to quicken the pace of the adventure. It took us probably 6 hours to cover half of that list.

G'day, Charles!

Half of the encounters were random encounters as they made their way through the Witchwood and up the lake. (The first three, and the undead band).

The next session should see them finish the rest of this part of the adventure, or get very close to it, I expect.

A note: I didn't use miniatures for this session, mainly due to the fact that there were going to be quite a few random encounters, and I didn't know which minis to bring to the session! I can plan ahead for this week's session better.

Cheers!

 

[Sammael]

Wait a sec... I seem to recall something. Haven't you already run RHoD?

 

[MerricB]

Wait a sec... I seem to recall something. Haven't you already run RHoD?

Started it last year, but only ran the first section before...
(a) Christmas happened, and everyone went away
(b) My players ran out of TUs (We're playing it as part of the Living Greyhawk campaign)

Cheers!