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!

Start of a New Blog

This blog will have interesting news posts from around the internet, reviews of new products, and some posts recounting the tales of our home campaign.  Our 4th ed campaign started very recently, and I was going to run it as a LFR campaign exclusively, but now that I have been reading more about Eberron, I think that I want to bring our players over to the other world.  I think I am going to have to run a few more sessions in the realms before I throw in some sort of portal that throws them from their world and into the world of Eberron.

The implications of that are pretty cool.  For example, would the gods be the same, or would my cleric have to convert?  Would I allow access to Dragonmarks that would slowly spread on the bodies of the players (as if they'd been there the whole time)?  I love the idea of running a campaign paralell to a similar group of NPCs trying to reach the same goal.  For instance I am drawing the idea from the Rod of Seven Parts theme where I have the players gathering multiple pieces of an artifact that would help them get home or at least give them access to go back and forth (thus expanding my potential game play options).  If they choose to go back and forth, this wouldn't be until Paragon Tier.

Finally, I think I will move them over when they hit 2nd level and have them run the Khyber's Harvest module that was given out for Free RPG Day 2009.  It looks pretty fun, and the idea of Symbiont magic items are interesting how they have special uses but require a healing surge to activate.  I can just see the potential stigmata involved with roleplaying options also...

Okay, well this is David Gibb signing off of the inaugural post of Temporary Hit Points.