Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="accipiter" data-source="post: 3488558" data-attributes="member: 50893">My players definitely enjoy challenges!  In case anyone was wondering (no?  I'll share anyway!), today's session consisted of one CR3, three CR4, and two CR5 encounters, including an aballin, a sword spider, a cave-in, a pair of leucrottas (one already wounded by the sword spider), and the big final battle with a pack of ten skeletons, followed by five skeletons and the hydra.  I have four players, all with third level characters (mage, barbarian, druid, and cleric), and they had a couple of third level but not particularly committed to assisting them NPCs available for some of the fights, as well as a third level NPC cleric for the last battle.They were considerably down on resources by the time they reached the sealed door to the lower levels and the three hundred skeletons attacked (I did one batch of ten to start, followed by a batch of five and the hydra -- with more skeletons planned when those five went down).They were thrilled with the hydra, and totally 'oh, crap, can we beat that thing?', along with "cleric, get that damn door open NOW!".  While the PC cleric desperately tried to open the Sealed door that had just moments before melted several evil baddies who'd tried to open it, they took out the first wave of skeletons and then went to town on the hydra.I was having a really crappy rolling night (I'm not kidding -- not counting the first encounter, I rolled above a six exactly four times; I try not to fudge my rolls, since I'm a very bad liar and can never remember what number I made up when asked about it a few moments later.  Heck, I can't always remember the number I *rolled* when asked about it a few moments later), so my poor critters were a little handicapped.  (And Improved Trip SUCKS.  Seriously.  My leucrottas were both tripped and then AoP'd to death.)I also didn't realize that the druid's summoned wolves' attacks were considered piercing, slashing, AND bludgeoning, so the skeletons' DR wasn't much use... the hydra did manage to kill one wolf and mangle another before dying, though, and everyone was really worried (wow, that sounds lame... but it really was fun).At the end of the session, everyone was almost completely out of spells except the cleric, and the barbarian was down to half hit points.They were all really enthused, though, and didn't seem to notice that nobody had gotten scratched (by the hydra, anyway)!  And they seem really excited to find out what lies behind the door, as their characters limp into the darkness of a tomb that's been sealed for fifty years...All, in all, a very successful game, I think.  And it gives me more material for learning what challenges to throw at them. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm kind of worried about handing out XP, though.  I downtweaked it by 20% after the second session, when I realized they were just going to blow through levels at the given XP rate... I don't want to punish anybody or anything (I'm leaving treasure as is), I just need some time to figure out what I'm doing at lower levels before I have to worry about fly, levitate, fireball, and so on.  And I really need to be able to throw higher CRs against them so they're challenged without basically leveling them up every session and a half.  Meh, I think I overthink things too much!  (And apparently I've written a novel here.  Sorry.)Anyway, thanks for all the help and good advice!</blockquote>

Verification