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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lancelot" data-source="post: 5091897" data-attributes="member: 30022">Love 4e, played all of KotS (enjoyed it), all of Thunderspire, and some of Pyramid of Shadows (still ongoing).While there were parts of Thunderspire I thought were okay, I absolutely loathed the Trial. Here was my experience:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Party of Five - avenger, cleric, bard, warden, fighter. Appropriate level, normal point-buy, somewhat under-equipped (thanks to the low number of magic items available in the WotC adventure path).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Skill Challenge was incredibly frustrating. DCs were way too high until we pointed out to the DM that maybe he should be using errata'ed values. Our bard was failing Diplomacy checks with +15 skill and reasonable rolls. Charisma-based skills seemed to be useless (1-2 successes only, which seemed strange for an interaction challenge where we were trying to befriend someone). Instead, we were being asked to "prove our mettle" by flexing (Athletics) and showing arcane knowledge (Arcana). Seemed very arbitrary.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Chamber with mirrors/teleports was fine. Seemed easy, albeit a little scary at times. Good level of tension after one of our PCs "vanished".</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Chamber with minotaur statues was a bloodbath - literally. We were cut to ribbons. Difficult to move through terrain, and the evistros were doing far too much damage. Each round, one or more PCs were dropping or being bloodied... and we had limited capability to strike back. Admittedly, we made the horrible mistake of trying to get the objectives and get out - rather than killing everything first, then escaping. But it wasn't even clear to us until "too late" exactly what opposition we were facing.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The pillar room was just grindy. Again, evistros are *nasty* opponents at that level. They were teaming up 2-3 strong on single PCs, and virtually auto-hitting them with their attack bonuses. And, from a PC perspective, we had to dish out 600-odd damage to kill all the demons with one 6th level striker...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The guardian, by contrast was a cake-walk. Seriously... a 200-hp dragon that can do about 20% of the damage of 600-hp-worth of demons? Hugely anticlimactic.</li> </ul>So, it was a mix of a very poorly-designed skill challenge... ludicrously challenging bloodbaths with 100's of hp of damage flying around... a railroaded "collect-all-the-objects" quest... and an anticlimactic boss monster.It's the first time in many years that I've felt quite that frustrated as a player.</blockquote>

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