Room for Improvement: Down the Rabbit Hole

I always ask my players for feedback as to how I can improve their experience.  I was especially insistent yesterday since this was my first real adventure completely written by me in 4th edition.  Here are some of the suggestions from the group:

• More chasms for slow-mo leaping attacks (story involved, will add later)
• Variety in fighting environments
• Interactive terrain
• Different ways to kill enemies
• Exploration increased
• Quick and dirty fights in addition to epic battles
• Give them a cleric

All in all, I think that's good advice and something for me to grow on.  About the chasms bit...  One of the players is a Dragonborn sorcerer.  In what they had thought was the big battle, the caster was hiding across a 7' wide chasm in the cave.  The sorcerer throws his Arcing Fire on to her, runs and leaps the chasm, then spends an action point to rend into her with his Tearing Claws.  He dropped her well into pudding consistency with this attack, but it was the most awesome visual attack we had.  Fantastic!  I love how the players are getting into it since we had started as mainly a 'let's go fight stuff, no need to roleplay' group and are growing from there.

Adventure: Down the Rabbit Hole

It has been over a month since the last time I ran a game, due to vacations, and the fact that my group has to work for a living, and our schedules don't line up very well all the time.  However, I have been writing a little module that would neatly take the group to second level, pass out the treasure parcels, and do what I really wanted to do: take my group from Forgotten Realms to Eberron.

I wrote an adventure called Down the Rabbit Hole that incorporated three combat encounters and a skill challenge.  This was my first real adventure written for 4th edition, so I took a lot of time with the monster creation (I had a gang of bandits in it).  I also had a group of 4 elites who were a gang of mercenaries that I spent most of my time handcrafting.  They were pretty fun to write, more fun to run (especially since they had some Alchemical items to use and confuse/tick off the players).  My Big Bad didn't have a chance to summon the 12 followers of his that were supposed to show up when bloodied -- he was mobbed and slaughtered with some great rolls by the party.

The best part, I think, was a new monster role that I implemented (but had heard discussed on Sly Flourish) that I called a Goon.  It is essentially a normal bad guy, but worth about a third of a standard monster.  The change is in the hit points.  It has 2hp, and any normal hit takes 1hp away, unless it is a natural 20, which kills a Goon outright.  I ran them to good effect, breaking minions up into "squads" of three that were led by a Goon.  I had 14 enemies in the room at once, and they all went at different times, but it worked out well.

The group said that they had fun, and I hope they did.  I am now going to run Khyber's Harvest and then I will have to write my own campaign after that.

I had better familiarize myself with Eberron!