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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OnlineDM" data-source="post: 5292930" data-attributes="member: 90804">Our fourth War of the Burning Sky session is now in the history books (as always, more details are <a href="http://onlinedm.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/improvised-cave-trolls-and-double-skill-challenges/" target="_blank">on my blog</a>).  The party left off the previous session in my home brew "escape from the city via the sewers and natural caverns" skill challenge, resting in the ruins of the dwarven village where our fighter had grown up.Two of our players were late and the other three wanted to game, so we began by having those three delve back into the caverns looking for a path through while the other two were presumed to be looking for a way out of the ruins (the valley had been blocked by a rockfall).  I threw the three spelunkers into an encounter with a trio of deathjump spiders.  Just as things were looking grim (especially for the warlock and the druid in the group - the swordmage/wizard was fine), the shaman player showed up and I let his character come to the rescue.  After that battle the fifth player logged on, and we moved onward.  The next skill challenge was a group Endurance check to get through a long, tight passage, which everyone made easily (penalty for failure: lost healing surge).  They then had to pick a path, and picked poorly (low Dungeoneering check), so I threw them into an improvised battle with a single level 7 cave troll.  It was entertaining - I love the way the cave troll will grab a character and use them as a weapon to smack another character!Upon beating the troll, the party made it out of the caves and back onto the adventure path.  I had them encounter the kingdom of Marben Diamondheart and the double skill challenge.  I ran it more or less as written and had a good time.  I liked having a character who was trying to fix the lifts getting ready to try something dangerous, but before resolving the roll have the action cut away to the other skill challenge in the store room.  The players succeeded in fixing the lift but not in completely solving the thefts, so Marben let them go on their way without extending any hospitality.The last encounter of the night was Gnoll Hunt, again run pretty much as written - although I accidentally had the hyena Pack Attacks at +12 versus AC instead of +7.  Oops.  After killing a character I realized my mistake and un-killed the character.  Heh.  I awarded extra experience for the battle, since the hyenas definitely got some hits that they should have earlier in the battle.From here I'm back on the published path.  I've started looking at the Fire Forest adventure, and I think I'll at least start it as written.  Any tips on improving that adventure will be greatly appreciated.The last encounter</blockquote>

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