Before we started the encounter itself, Jarvix performed a Comrades’ Succor ritual. This allowed the PCs to redistribute their remaining healing surges. So going into the encounter for week 4 everyone had full (or nearly full) hit points and at least one healing surge at their disposal during the combat. I want to thank the other DM running D&D Encounters for pointing out this ritual and explaining how to use it. Having never played an arcane character with Ritual Casting I had no idea. It made a huge difference.
The encounter began with the skill checks towards the ongoing skill challenge. My intent was to provide the players with the skill cards I created earlier in the week, however I left them sitting in my printer and didn’t realize it until I got to my FLGS. Well, hopefully some of you found these cards useful. I will certainly use them next week. As it turned out, all of the players at my table were fairly experienced 4e D&D players so they didn’t need the skill cards to know what other abilities their PCs were capable of doing (or attempting). Had my table been filled with newer players like it was last week, then the skill cards would have been a huge help.
After the skill checks were finished, the PCs came across a lone Dwarf named Ralo in the desert. He parleyed with the party and explained who he was and what he was doing in the desert alone. But before he could provide any other details the party was attacked by a Poisonscale Magus and three dust devils.
The monsters focused their initial attacks on Ralo. He was brought below 0 hit points and slid into the slit pool to suffocate to death by the end of the first round. The PCs ignored the plight of their new friend and engaged the enemies in combat.
The Magus managed to inflict a lot of damage to the bunched-up party with his burst 3 attack. Shikirr and Castri engaged the Magus in melee. By the second round, the Magus had only 4 hit points remaining and was pinned against a rocky outcropping. He desperately tried to use a ranged attack against the now poison-vulnerable PCs, but Castri rolled a 20 and soundly connected with his opportunity attack from the adjacent square.
Meanwhile the dust devils all managed to get multiple PCs in their close burst 3 attack inflicting 3d6+3 damage each. My d20 wasn’t as hot this week as it’s been, but my damage dice were on fire. When rolling the 3d6+3 for the dust devils damage I rolled 4, 5, 6 +3 = 18; 4, 6, 6 +3 =19; 5, 6, 6 +3 = 20. The PCs didn’t stand a chance. Or so I thought.
It’s refreshing to see players play smart and realize that they can do more than fight on their turn. Jarvix and Castri were both unconscious. When Phye’s turn came around she wasn’t close enough to engage any of the enemies in melee. So she did what a leader is beast at – healing. She used her Ardent Surge healing power as a minor action to bring Jarvix back to consciousness. Then, as a standard action, she made a successful Heal check on Castri who was unconscious in the adjacent square allowing him to use his second wind. Two comrades who were unconscious were now awake and were able to attack on their respective turns instead of just rolling another death save and hoping for a 20.
Smart combat tactics also made all the difference this week. The PCs worked together to focus fire on the Magus first. After he was down they all worked together on a single dust devil before engaging any of the others. Shikirr, the defender, marked the dust devil most likely to attack the weaker and vulnerable PCs. Had my damage dice not been red hot, this encounter would have ended after two rounds rather than the four it ended up taking.
Of the four encounters I’ve run in D&D Encounter season two so far, this week’s was the most fun (for me). It seemed appropriately balanced. The players finally have a good sense of what the pre-generated characters can do. They’ve seen what the party as a whole is good at and what it’s not so good at. They realize which characters should be engaging in melee and which ones should be diving for cover.
My only real complaint about this week’s encounter is that the monsters seem to do a lot of damage. And this is not just this week, but every week. I don’t think it’s right when the monsters can deal up to 21 damage in a single attack. Especially when that’s only one or two points less than Barcan, Jarvix and Castri’s maximum hit points (22, 22 and 23 respectively). I realize that this attack should deal about 12 points on average, but some poor players – like the guys at my table – will end up on the wrong side of that average and take a real pounding.
Next week is the final encounter of chapter one. The PCs will get an extended rest and level up at the conclusion of next week’s encounter. Only Shikirr, Yuka and Phye are going into the final battle with healing surges (one a piece). None of the PCs are at maximum hit points, although most are pretty close and no one is bloodied.
Visit the Dungeon’s Master D&D Encounters Archive for all of our ongoing weekly coverage as well as other great D&D Encounters articles and resources.
How did you manage this week? Did the Magus manage to survive longer at your table and really do some damage? Were my players the only ones who just let Ralo die during the combat? How many of your party members do you expect will survive the next encounter?
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1 2 3 Next »Since I'm still new to DnD, I went to my local game shop last night to observe this encounter. There were four tables. The two I started watching focused initially on the dust devils that rushed them-- the DMs were initially missing with the Poisonscale's attack. After a few rounds of getting roughed up by dust devils and/or pushed into silt, both tables went after the Poisonscale Mage mid battle. Several players were knocked unconscious at both tables during the fight.
After about a 45 minutes of watching the first two tables, I went over to see how the others were doing. They were packing up. Nearly everyone died. One of the remaining DMs explained to me that the Poisonscale Mage demanded the players surrender the dwarf (which of course they didn't) and then BOOM! Players drop. "Do you surrender?" BOOM!. Players drop. "Do you surrender??" And at this point the response from the only player who wasn't unconscious was "Yes". And that's how their game ended.
I went back to the other two tables. I stayed the entire time, and I suspect the tables that survived were really going easy on the players, and the tables that died were games that were run by more experienced DMs with shall we say... "higher standards". I may not be quite up to speed with DnD, but I've played other turn based miniature games of similar styles, and I felt like the DMs at these tables were taking it easy on the players. So with some decent damage rolls the players at both of the "easy" tables managed to survive the encounter with no one dying.
The group I played in ended up winning as well, though we were all somewhat surprised at that. The dust bunnies won the initiative so they were able to attack us all three times before we had a chance to do much of anything. (Well, Barqan teleported two when the first attack missed him, but he didn't get out of range).
So before we could do anything, Rolo was kaput, Phye was unconcious, and most of the rest of us were bloodied or nearly bloodied and blind for a round.
After that, we began to do more damage to the dust bunnies than we were taking, ignoring the Magus for a moment. (Our DM, thankfully, had him take a defensive turn for his first round.) We all took an attack and our action point and either healed ourselves or made a second attack.
Our only mistake, probably, was not having someone try to help Phye immediately. But when Castri got around to it, after Phye had failed two death saving throws, he rolled just enough to heal Phye. And luckily Phye was up just before two other PCs fell unconscious.
A round or two later, and the Dust Devils and the Magus were finished off, while we were all in horrible shape (two of us had exactly 1 hitpoint remaining) but alive.
I had some problems with this encounter, as I have with the entire season, of which I'm so far disapointed with the overall quality.
Our Rilo ended up surviving, which is what I believe granted all members of the Veiled Alliance, Barcan and Jarvix, a magic item that granted them +1 to bluff and a daily item power that could trigger when an arcane power was used. Jarvix is a Psion, so this item is near worthless to him. And there should be no excuse for items that don't fit the characters, since the characters were created by the same people who made the adventure. Same with the +1 spear. None of the characters use a spear (longspear is a different weapon).
That point carries over into my next criticism of the encounter. At the start of the encounter our party was placed in a 3x2 starting area. The monsters got a suprise round, which a character could participate in by having a passive perception of 20; which none of the pregens do, so it was pointless to even bring up. This meant that everyone but the Battlemind (due to Speed of Thought), got hit by a suprise round AoE by the magus, doing massive damage, and then we were all knocked prone. By the end of round 1 Jarvix and Barcan were making death saving throws.
We survived by the skin of our teeth, but going into encounter 5 we have a collective 3 healing surges, we're all at 3/4 HP, 1 colective daily power, and everyone has a new AP. I'm honestly supprised that WotC gave Jarvix Comrades’ Succor, since it's an obscure, but powerful, ritual from the Vistani article in Dragon. It's also the only thing that has kept us alive, since 2 characters were out of surges before encounter 4 started.
The problem of running desperatly low on resources (not Survival Days though, we have tons of those), could have been alliviated in two ways. Shorten the chapters to 4 encounters, which is what I aim for when I have my DM hat on (LFR are all 3), or improving the characters overall. We only have 5 players so none of us have touched the ranger with a 10' pole, Barcan's defenses could be surpassed by a small child, Yuka's daily power is so laughable that the player sighed when he used it (and then was knocked under a turn later, so lost it), and our Battlemind has the Cha based class feature but his 2nd highest stat is Wis.
@Sunyaku
If you're new to D&D I highly recommend learning with some of the low level Dungeon Delves (great book), Living Forgotten Realms, or Keep on the Shadowfell (available for free download http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/h1.pdf)
Regarding the tables "going easy" or having "higher expectations," I'm all for a DM pulling their punches when it's necessary for the plot, but most of the time I'm a, "let the dice fall where they may" kind of guy, especially when WotC has provided the adventure (as opposed to me crafting it) and I expect it to have been playtested and balanced, especially considering their goal of bringing in new players. Did they really want to bring in people new to D&D and then crush them under Athas's boot heel?
We got slaughtered this week. The team was low on surges across the board. Not that it would have mattered. No one made the initial perception check. The dwarf died with a crit on the first attack. The team was mostly bloodied and down in the surprise round when the 3 dust devils closed in on 3 sides with their aoe attacks. Everyone was down but the ardent at the end of round 1. Our ardent got 3 players on their feet again with an ardent surge, a heal check, and an action point - energizing strike. But most of us had rolled low on initiative, and only Castri and the sorcerer were still up at the end of round 2. Everyone dead by the end of round 3. I think the only thing 4 of the 6 players did was make death saves this week.
Total session was over in about 30 minutes. One player was new tonight, (the sorcerer) and he was able to get 1 attack off before death. Afterward, we chatted and he stated that if Encounters is supposed to get him interested in Dark Sun, it's having the opposite effect. Another player echoed his concerns. Some of us chimed in saying that Dark Sun historically is very difficult and unforgiving.
Interestingly, the other 2 tables fared much better. We found out later that the DMs had decided to do away with the initial surprise rounds, and let the dwarf assist the party. Thus, those 2 tables received their encounter rewards, while ours did not.
The DM was not out to get us. His dice were hot. He excluded unconscious players in AOE's. He didn't concentrate fire on individuals (with the exception of the initial AOE volleys).
On a humorous note, the battlemind afterwards joked that the best use of his fleet foot ability (or whatever it's called), to move 5 squares during initiative rolls, would be to get a head start running away :)
The surprise round plus the really high monster initiatives almost killed the party outright. The first dust devil to burst killed the dwarf and bloodied almost the entire party. The first one to try to knock everyone down did. The first round was a bloody mess.
They recovered though so I gave them their veiled mystery thing.
Easily the roughest encounter for my usual table. Easily could have TPK'd in round 1.
One word describes this encounter, OUCH! 3 level 3 skirmishers with a speed of 8, an initiative bonus of 7, an encounter power of close burst 3 that deals 3d6+3 damage, hits half of the party on a 4, oh and they automatically get a surprise round... This session was a tpk with a detonator. Five o'clock session had 4 of the 6 party members making death saves for their first action, the other two, well you don't make death saves at -bloodied.
7 o'clock session (me as Dm) saw 1 out of 7 make a death save on his first turn, the other 6 were -bloodied, after Shikkirr's turn the magus dropped his area burst 3 to finish off everything.
To quote Rich Baker (our guest last week, we are the "Pimp Your Store" winners), "I'm going home to tell them that this thing's too hard!"
All 6 pcs died in the surpise round. Encounter over.
I haven't been able to play D&D Encounters at my local store due to schedule conflicts, so I don't know all the ins and outs of the process. What are the consequences if players die? Are they then done for future encounters? From what I'm reading that doesn't seem to be the case, but what IS the outcome?
Yeah, we've pretty much given up. The guys I started Dark Sun with have formed our own LFR group to continue are characters from undermountain. I think Athas, with this adventure at least, is a bust.