RttToEE too easy

[Tom Cashel]

Apparently your husband is a good player. If I ran four PCs, I'd also have them work together as though they were of One Mind (hmmm....) and probably run roughshod over any module in existence.

Most groups don't have One Mind. Try running it with four players.

 

[Numion]

I DMed it for my party .. total kill count was 28 characters, IIRC. And I didn't even have to try too hard. Two players lost only one character (which were resurrected), but most went through several. One lost 10 or something

 

[Ron]

While playing RtToEE, my first character died at the mill. That's the first kia in the party and was the result of another player's mistake (never leave the mage -- me -- unscorted in a melee). Later on, I've lost two other characters and the party graveyard consisted of a total of eight characters, not counting a number of spells of ressurection or raise dead. Most of these deaths were not caused by player's incompetence, but rather brutal encounters. Some characters, such as a monk in the first bridge didn't lasted for a round (he made an attack, missed and was brutally killed in the same round). In another situation, at least three characters were killed in single encounter close to the fire temple (some stupid fighters, including the one who left my first character unprotected, went in pursue of an irrelevant opponent, leaving the party in understrength to a surprise counter-attack).

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is a very difficult adventure. You should expect that many PCs will die, despite the best efforts from the players. The problem is that you haven't arrived yet to the killing grounds.

 

[d12]

I ran a group of six players - every single one had at least one character death, some had two. We had guest players come in for a sinlge session and their characters died.

BTW, check out this. The author of the mod has a message board with tips and advice on how to run it. I found it most useful.

 

[the_mighty_agrippa]

we just breached the air temple in my sunday game and there have been many party deaths. i agree it would be lot safer if one player ran all the characters, but we have 7 players, yo.

so far, we have lost...

cleric of haela brightaxe (moathouse)
cleric of haela brightaxe (air temple)
ranger (mines)
rogue/illusionist (mines)

we have not fought anything spectacular yet. the party paladin escaped an easy death too.

 

[diaglo]

Apparently your husband is a good player. If I ran four PCs, I'd also have them work together as though they were of One Mind (hmmm....) and probably run roughshod over any module in existence.

Most groups don't have One Mind. Try running it with four players.

i gotta agree with TC.

group dynamics cause TPK more times than not.

 

[Celebrim]

"i gotta agree with TC.

group dynamics cause TPK more times than not."

As a DM I'll second that as well. Most of the times that the party suffers multiple deaths have been the result party cohesion breaking down. Inevitably you'll find situations where the party fighter is hanging back to protect his own hide, or the party mage has gone off on his own, or someone has decided to start opening doors without the rogues help, or the cleric has decided to be stingy with the healing and buffs and people start get beat down, confusion sets in, and the party disentigrates into every player for himself.

At that point, things usually get ugly.

 

[Skaros]

so far, we have lost...

cleric of haela brightaxe (moathouse)
cleric of haela brightaxe (air temple)

Oh ya, I forgot that last Sunday's game was the 2nd cleric of haela you've lost.

I guess those thunder twin powers never quite 'activated', did they?

Skaros

 

[the_mighty_agrippa]

i built those characters to survive just about anything but look who was running them.

 

[omnimpotent]

I think the hive mind may be helping out the PCs, and the most horrible stuff seems to start in the CRM rather than the moathouse. (except the blue dragon with his crazy hover feat, who had the players reaching for blank character sheets)

In the CRM, the most effective bad guys tend to be the character types. I ran them about as clever as I figured they were, so most of them did not loiter in their rooms awaiting individual slaughter. When they fought a pocket of organised resistance, they wound up fighting every bad guy who could hear the fireballs going off, and I would have low-power guards run off and get all the help they could.

The spellcasters used their self-improvement spells, and I had most of them ditch their lame duck spells. (How many of those guys had spiritual weapon, anyway? Not much use against opponents over 4th level or so by virtue of AC, unless you have a real tender-juicy wizard/sorceror to cast on...) If a player character would turn up his nose at some spells, and repeatedly cast others, I can't see why the bad guys wouldn't pick many of the same spells.

But fear not, the hack-factor of this module is truly impressive. Granted, a lot of the low level guards don't amount to much against an organised party of 4th-5th level PCs, but one evening, have a gang of the named characters with silence and invisibility spells scry the character's campsite and drop in on them...