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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 2999296" data-attributes="member: 3424">I agree with MerricB.Last week, it was my turn to DM for my group, and I started preparing Friday evening for a 4th-level game on Saturday afternoon.I'd already established the campaign story arc as "Entropic Shadar-kai are invading." After a little thought I decided the theme for the game would be "Retrieve the Cup of Golden Light from the ruins of an ancient dwarven kingdom that was overrun by evil."The PCs were a warforged fighter, a spellscale artificer, and an azurin monk/totemist grappling specialist. So, I figured that I would want creatures that used poison and paralysis, to cater to the warforged, one trap for the artificer, and a few single opponents for the grappler to neutralize. In addition, since our group has a one adventure = one level convention, I wanted the challenges to provide at least 12,000 xp (not strictly necessary, but I do like to follow convention).Flipping through the MM and some other monster sources, I quickly settled on the following:1. One wyvern (CR 6, 2,400 xp) - poison2. Two rutterkin (CR 3, 1,600 xp) - generic fight3. One carrion crawler (CR 4, 1,200 xp) - paralysis4. One flesh golem (CR 7, 3,200 xp) - to challenge the grappler5. Glyph of warding trap (CR 4, 1,200 xp) - for the artificer to disarm6. One ghast duskblade 2 (CR 5, 1,600 xp) and two ghoul ranger 1 (CR 2, 1,200 xp) - final fightI worked out the general plan of the game: the wyvern lairs in a cave which is the only known entrance to the dwarven kingdom, the rutterkins were part of the demon forces that destroyed the dwarven kingdom, the carrion crawler lairs in the library, where the PCs must go to find information about the cup, the flesh golem and the glyph protect the temple where the cup is kept, and the ghasts and ghouls are enemy agents sent to ambush the PCs and prevent them from returning with the cup.I statted them out in the new stat block format and put them on initiative cards to help me run them during the fights in about six hours. It would have taken me less time, but I was surfing ENWorld and CircvsMaximvs at the same time. <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=":)" />Oh, and the players had a blast. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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