Solo Adventure Scenario in Dungeon!

[deadsmurf]

I wonder what the balance is for playing "co-op" in an adventure like this? Any guidelines in the article? "For each extra player, increase monster hit points by 50%, all defenses by 1, and monster and trap damage goes up one die size"?

No guidelines are given. Most of the monsters are minions anyway though, so adding extra hitpoints doesn't do too much.

It would seem to me that it would run just fine with two PCs, and you drop splugg as a companion character.


I played through this earlier today as a hybrid cleric/barbarian, and it played pretty well, but it could be pretty challenging without a healing word type ability, as it was both splugg and my character were under 10 Hp at times in the adventure.

 

[Vael]

I was wondering what the ideal PC would be for this adventure. I've only scanned the first encounter, but I'm going to run a Human Druid through it later this week.

 

[Negflar2099]

Just got done running a human assassin through it. I was very impressed, both with the adventure and the class.

The adventure is very fun. It's laid out in a very intelligent way allowing you to play as either a solo or solitaire adventure very easily. There's even a section where they actually managed to get dialogue into it. Very cool. In fact that gave me a great idea about how to handle dialogue in the adventures I run.

I'm also very impressed with the assassin class which has a nice jump out and stab a dude in the face vibe. My favorite powers were the at-will Inescapable Blade which allows you to have reach with an attack and the the Shadow Darts encounter power.

Unfortunately I did not beat the adventure. I made it all the way to the last boss, managed to kill him (after he killed splug) but then I was taken down by other monsters. Despite that it was very fun. I could even see myself playing it again although I think next time I'll try to run someone through it.

I hope they do more of these types of adventures. I think maybe one every six months would be very cool. I'm not sure I'm quite geeky enough to try to run myself through an entire campaign but it would be pretty neat.

This adventure also gave me a ton of great ideas for writing my own solo adventures. It was the perfect challenge level. Nicely done.

 

[Dice4Hire]

[INSERT "playing with myself" innuendo as a double entendre HERE!]

b-)

[Insert Grandma's look of disapproval here.]

 

[Riley]

Well there's nothing to lose, and nothing to prove, so I'll be dicing with myself.

 

[Ainamacar]

I played through as a Changeling sorcerer (storm magic), and enjoyed myself. It wasn't a great adventure, and I really wished the PDF had hyperlinks in it, but overall pretty decent. And Splug was a pretty ideal sidekick -- the cringe power is perfect for a solo adventure.

The beginning of the adventure was very rough for me (Splug ran out of healing surges quite early on) and the boss fight was very close. I got the drop on the bad guys in two encounters, and that was probably the only thing that kept me alive.

I also played the whole thing digitally except the rolling: Character builder and notepad handled my character needs, Photoshop for maps and tokens, and a custom program for initiative tracking. Considering it was jury-rigged, and not maptools or what have you, it all went pretty smoothly.

 

[On Puget Sound]

I tried it with an artificer and died in the second encounter. Bad initiative and some bad rolls, plus Splug's combat instructions (always use Cringe when you can) don't mesh well with leader powers (give an ally bonuses to hit and damage).

Will try it again with a less party-dependent class.

Incidentally I ran into an interesting flavor-vs-crunch issue while playing this: my character was causticsoul genasi, with a racial ability that lets him turn into acid and flow through enemies' squares, damaging them. It seemed really odd that he couldn't move because a vine was wrapped around him! I think if I were GMing for other people I would have let it work to auto-escape a grab.

 

[Hawke]

I totally misunderstood what this adventure would be about... I expected 1 DM 1 solo player. Dang! Well I can't wait to give it a try...

 

[Wormwood]

Played it [at work---shhhh] with an infernal warlock and was surprised at how engaging it turned out to be.

I think i just found my new lunchtime diversion. Keep 'em coming WotC.

 

[Kzach]

I just played through it using a Maptools campaign I configured with Veggiesama's 4e Framework.

I had a blast!

I stayed true to the rules and the tactics given and got through it quite easily. In retrospect, the character I used was possibly the best possible combination of abilities to use in such an adventure, however there was no intention to 'cheat' at all.

My character was a longtooth shifter ardent paladin with Toughness and the Scales of War Auspicious Birth background. It's a character I play elsewhere and had already configured as a 1st-level Maptool's token. The 40 hit points definitely made things easy.

With Valiant Strike I was hitting almost 90% of the time. Ironically, at the last encounter, I actually did more damage to myself through using Blood of the Mighty and missing three times than the wight did

Splug was a genius though! He was shifting all over the place and giving me extra attacks, it was awesome!

The paladin's extra damage, longtooth shifting power, combined with a high amount of healing surges and high defences definitely made things fairly easy though. Still, was loads of fun!

I genuinely hope this is a continuing feature. I play in two games a week and am trying to get into a third, or perhaps will be DM'ing a third soon and it's still not enough D&D for me