A DM's Notes

[lordgersh]

As some of you know, I divide my games into encounters in order to keep track of things and not go insane. I'll post my thoughts on these encounters periodically, and I'd like to know what you all think about them as well...mostly, whether you think I came anywhere close to accomplishing the goals of the encounter.

The Introduction to Dark Enterprise (which you just finished) had 9 encounters.

I-1: Meeting with Varien
Roleplaying Encounter

The point of this was to establish theme and tone of the whole damn story... or at least as best I could. Yes, there was also a quest introduction here, but the point of the Introduction Adventure is to introduce you to the world. I wanted you to get to know Varien, and each other somewhat. You should still be in your comfort zone, but the atmosphere was important. I hope I accomplished that.

I-2: Interlude
Open-Ended

I didn't really have anything planned here. I needed you to get to the Mines, and anything you wanted to do on the way, I was going to ad-lib. I decided at the last second that there should be someone scared sh*t-less at the mine entrance, again, for feel and tone.

I-3: Descent into the Mines
Skill Encounter

Skill Challenges in D&D can often come off as ham-fisted, but I hope that after several years of DMing, I would have gotten the hang of it. I'm curious as to how you thought this felt: Natural or Forced? Good use of a climbing kit.

I-4: Bore
Combat Encounter (level 5)

This should be the simplest, most straightforward encounter of the entire campaign. There was no terrain, no surprises, just a straight-up equivalent-level encounter fight. You guys pretty much wiped the floor with it, and that was what I expected.

I-5: Tool Room
Combat Encounter (Level 8)

Having done an equivalent-level fight, I wanted to do a not-equivalent level fight. It was basically a disaster. The Destrachan was a level 9 Artillery, which meant (relative to you) he had decent defenses (22/24/21/20) and HP (70-ish) but I didn't think they would be overwhelming. The main problem I anticipated was his damage: 2d6+5 at will, Range 10. Every other enemy on the board had less defenses than the Destachan, but about the same HP. I figured that once I had him step forward and blast everybody, that you all would sort of focus-fire him down quickly, taking the gamble of bypassing the other aberrants in the encounter in order to kick his ass.

Almost the exact opposite happened. Between the AoE Daze (not nice, admittedly) and the positioning of the Lashers, you guys ended up in a crawling melee conflict while the Destrachan just sat back and blasted your eardrums out. On about Round 2 of combat, I realized this encounter was way deadlier than I had anticipated (the Scales of War group I DM'd for regularly trounced encounters 5 levels higher than them), and adjusted the Acolytes to need to spend their actions controlling the Destrachan, thus taking them somewhat out of combat. On Round 4 I realized that without being a little creative on my part, this encounter would wipe the party. That surprised the hell out of me.

I know that the combination of AoE daze plus bad rolling is a brutally nasty one, and it seems that the MapTool dice are particularly unforgiving. I'm really looking for feedback on this encounter, though.

Am I better at building powerful encounters than Wizards?
Is it that the party used bad tactics?
Is it that the party really hadn't learned what tactics to use yet?
Did I do a bad job explaining the encounter and the vulnerabilities of the enemies?
Is the capability of a 4-person party that much less than a 5-person party? (the encounter XP budget IS scaled for 4 people)

I need some feedback on this one, guys.

I-6: Mining Tunnels
Combat Encounter (Level 6/7)

Terrified about how the previous encounter went, I cut a handful of enemies from this one at the last minute. The basic premise of this one was to have one Artillery (the Beholder) sitting up, nice and cozy on top of a ledge, and you had to wade through some minions and an Atrocity to get to him. The Beholder is the obvious Big-Bad in the encounter. In some ways, this is markedly similar to the second encounter, except with more terrain, and weaker enemies. I thought this encounter went phenomenally well. Challenging without being overpowering. My one disappointment is that I expected some legitimate "Oh crap!" from the players upon seeing the Beholder, since Beholders are typically a lot more powerful than this guy. Instead, everyone was like "Yep, that's a Beholder. Let's kill it."

Oh well.

The biggest problem with this one, I think was that the previous one had sapped so much of your capability (dailies, surges) that the party felt much more threatened by this encounter than you actually were.

I-7: Meet Kostov
Roleplaying Encounter

The entire purpose of this was to introduce Kostov (who will show up again from time to time) and to give a little additional background on what happened in the mines. I knew he had a strong personality, and was curious as to how the other characters would react to him (especially Keidra), whether it be amusement or annoyance. I think it ended up being a combination of both, which is kind of what I was going for.

I-8: Deep Mine
Combat Encounter (Level 8/10)

Look, most dungeons have Boss fights. This was yours. Originally, this was supposed to be a level 10 encounter, but, again, after the second fight, I cut the four Lashers and turned them into skeletons. Very glad I did. This fight stretched you to the limit; everyone used all of their dailies, action points, and encounters (with one exception, I think). It was a bit of a feint on my part to have the Abomination be less deadly (though physically bigger) than the Insanity. You guys took the bait, going after the Abomination immediately, and then turning your attention to the Insanity. I still consider it good tactics; you were focus-firing down two fairly deadly creatures one at a time (while a single skeleton took potshots at Keidra).

All in all, if at the end of the boss fight, you all are still standing, even if you're tapped out; I say mission accomplished. My one complaint about this fight is that I found it boring. The terrain I came up with was non-important, and after you all blew your powers, I felt like it turned into a slugging match. What do you think?

Oh, by the way, that Abomination was actually a reskinned Mummy Guardian, with a little more HP, no regeneration, no resistances/immunities/vulnerabilities. His Slam attack also kept you from contracting Mummy Rot. I needed a Brute who was give-or-take level 8.

I-9: And then there was this gem...
Skill Encounter

This encounter was almost completely ad-libbed on my part. I expected you to immediately walk up and claim the gem. Instead you were much more cautious, which pleased me, but I hadn't really prepared for it. I knew I had to give the gem to Gareth, but figured doing so would be rather straightforward. Here's what I had planned:

A: You walk up to inspect the gem. It's very shiny, and Gareth might even immediately pick it up. At the very least, I could say that he felt a need to personally examine it... mission accomplished.

B: You all would ignore the gem and leave the room, at which point the gem would fly out and hit Gareth in the back of the head, leaving him unconscious, but in possession of it.

C: You would be a little more cautious, and if you took too long, or did something silly (like throw a rock at it... no, seriously, I had that thought) then I'd say it was reactivating and put you on the timer to fix it.

Instead you chose option D, which I think worked out fabulously. While I had to ad-lib a lot, it actually gave you much more information about the gem that I was not planning on revealing quite yet. That's not going to be a problem with the story or anything, so ultimately, I think it was the best solution. So good for you.

[Zguy]

Encounter 5:

I think most of the issues we had here were pretty much because of our party. The encounter could have been far less of a challenge or a potential TPK if our party was different in several ways:

1) We only have 4 people. From my experience working with a 6-person party and later testing out 4-person parties, I've learned that there isn't a linear shift in capability. 4e was designed and balanced for 5-character parties. The encounter difficulty doesn't shift easily to 4 or 6 character parties. You really have to modify things and take into account the different number of actions, surges, etc. In summary - it sucks to try and figure out. I'd really like to see a 5th character added, even if it's just an Pseudo-NPC played by Gersh. It would make things a whole lot easier.

2) We don't have a Controller. Monks are considered secondary controllers, but they really only do minor re-arrangement of the battlefield. Assassins are considered secondary controllers, but they mostly put debuffs that only benefit the Assassin. Missing a full or even a true secondary controller is making our ability to penalize enemies almost non-existent. If you decide to go with my above recommendation of a Pseudo-NPC, I'd recommend making a controller!

3) We're 90% Melee. When put up against 3 ranged opponents, (the Lashers were effectively ranged since they could attack outside our range while we were dazed) we ended up trying to figure out who to take down. We definitely made the mistake of not focus-firing on the enemies, but that Daze from the word go made our ability to maneuver and take down a single opponent incredibly hard. Bad luck made our Defender unable to fulfill his role, and that just sucks, but nothing we can do about it.

Individually, none of these 3 points would have caused a problem for another group, but adding them all together just made this encounter pretty much perfect for kicking our butts. I don't think there was anyway to know that ahead of time - you just happened to find this group's kryptonite.

[lordgersh]

I think it's more 1 and 3 than two, especially #3. Considering your party has two half-controllers and a Ritual Caster, I don't find that to be a significant problem. I actually think that one of the biggest problems wasn't the daze in general, but the fact that Viscal stayed dazed for 3 rounds. Since he hadn't marked anyone yet, that meant three rounds of effectively no Defender, and that's hard for any party to deal with. Couple in the fact that the Strikers are the squishiest of the party (and there's no fifth member to soak up some points), and without a defender mark, good tactics by the enemy says to engage those that are dealing the most damage, that led to Gareth being beaten rather severely. Couple THAT in with the fact that everyone on the board had range or reach (mostly reach) and you had enemies that could attack almost with impunity (especially if you kept failing saves... which you did).

[Zguy]

I'll definitely agree there. Although I think #2 was just the icing on the cake of the bad situation. Overall: 1, 3 and very bad luck on saving throws I think is what did us in.

A note on the encounter exp: Just so you know, in Eberron - the first few encounters you guys dealt with (other than the train robbery) were exp scaled for 6 players, and you still beat the everliving crap out of them. I ended up having to scale the exp up to what would be considered 7 players AND put you against groups at minimum 1-2 levels above your party, and the group still had very little trouble except against a badly designed baddie who had an at-will daze I think.

[nivek]

Ranged attacks and mass daze really hurt us. In addition, the basic minions hit often enough (over +14) and hard enough (10+ damage per) that we had to pay some attention to them instead of just focussing the big baddy (as opposed to the skeleton who was dealing 5-6 damage and could be ignored for a while).

We could have done better with better teamwork, but that really wasn't possible while dazed against a reach 3 creature. Getting rid of one of those aspects would have made the encounter much less difficult.

I don't remember hearing anything about vulnerabilities other than the insight into disrupting the acolytes.

Encounter 3: It seemed reasonable to me.

Encounter 6: I don't think that our characters really know much about beholders and the like, so why treat it as anything other than a typically enemy?

Encounter 8: With our party being mostly melee, it is going to be difficult to make terrain important once we reach our targets.

Encounter 9: You said that the gem caused the monsters to appear, but not how. My character is naturally going to be cautious to avoid having it happen again (especially with almost no healing remaining).