The results of Saturday's game were that everyone did pretty well.
The tiefling was hilarious as The Most Ineffective Private Detective Ever. His dimension door was pivotal in getting a bulky quest item - the legendary Rajahese hawk statue - out of the adventure location. The paladin went through the door with him, but had to strip down to his mask and codpiece to meet the weight limit, which made for an interesting return to the starting town, Lionguard, City of Protagonists.
The paladin went down in a battle with the hill giant Glurt "Beef" Wellington in the bowling alley after being hit with a couple of bowling balls followed up with some greatclub smashes. He was saved with a timely goodberry suppository. This illiterate superhero was pretty funny. His radiant smite was pivotal in taking down Hyrish, A Troll of Distinction, after he wandered out of the bathroom with deep fried halfling popper related indigestion. (Hyrish's regeneration was shut down by radiant and necrotic rather than fire and acid.)
The goblin ranger was pivotal is convincing the goblin slaves to help out from time to time and was very useful in gathering knowledge on a lot of the denizens of the party house given his favored enemies. He did draw the ire of the frost giant Prince Krolstaag though by tricking him into drinking a barrel of urine which the giant thought was ale. The prince's wrath soon followed and he confronted the party in Lord Swampass' bedroom along with the goblin slaver, Boss Ulcrak. The ranger got dropped in one turn, but was later brought around with the paladin's lay on hands.
The kobold swashbuckler was very effective, lots of damage and highly mobile. He and the goblin ranger were often at odds over a red cap they stole from a redcap mummy which was odd considering that they accumulated over 11,000 gp as a party in loot. But the worthless tattered red hat was what both of them wanted more than anything. They bickered over it all the way back to Lionguard.
The halfling barbarian/warlock was useful in a number of ways, not the least of which was lurking invisibly outside of areas the party was exploring to keep an eye out for wandering monsters. This meant the PCs were never surprised. (They were quite unlucky on the wandering monster checks. I don't think I missed even one.) His lack of darkvision was a source of consternation, but if I'm being honest, I should probably have included some more braziers around the lair.
As a whole, when I calculated the XP and gold for the 4-hour session, they scored as a party 32% - meaning they left about two-thirds of the possible XP and gold on the table in that one-shot. Of course, there's no expectation that the party can possibly get it all, especially given the Variant Encumbrance rules in effect. I'm running this again on Friday with another group, so we'll see how they compare. I'll post the new party composition once it comes into focus.
