It's a trap!

The gang meet on Saturday night for a go at the old D&D adventure thingy. :-) We had seven players at the table, usual suspects with the inclusion of Greg as a new join as a Dragonborn Paladin (Yes the second one in the party).

When we last left our intrepid adventures they had busted down the back door of the Drueger hold, fought their way through the guards and encountered the boss. That battle was gruesome with the boss able to inflict some heavy damage along the way. At the conclusion they had spent most of their daily powers and were down in the surge category.

Not having found the prisoners, they decided to press on a bit further and Splug, following a secret door behind the fire place discovered a small hidden treasure which he kept, then another door into the slave pits. The Drueger cleric and guards, not to mention the Spiny Devils were not too pleased to see the Goblin Thief and decided to act. The party then became involved in a scrum, with the poor caravan crew hiding out in the slave pits. The two front battle made it a going concern, with the Drueger cleric dropping Brimstone and other nastiness. In the end some cleaver foot work by the team lead to all the Drueger's no longer alive and the Devils, being well wounded, deciding that perhaps their are better ways to serve and departed.

Taking the slaves back to the Seven Pillar Hall, the gang was handed a note from a kobold telling them to meet to discuss their operations against the Druegers. Sensing a trap, the party put the reformed slaves up at the Halfmoon Inn with some help from Erra Halfmoon and departed for their meeting.

The party followed the provided map into a small side room of the Hall of Shadows. Looking cautiously for a trap, the party missed the large Bronze Warder 'lurking' behind the boulder. Oh, and his three Tiefling companions. A tougher battle then I thought ensued. Some early misses with critical daily powers really swung the battle in the wrong direction early. It was noted around the table that sub-par die rolls can go along way to making a tough battle down right hard. In this case the Bronze Warder was an AC 25... The party had, at the time, a 5th level Wizard, Thief, Ranger, 4th Level Warlord, 2nd Level Paladin x2, Thief. The numbers of attacks outbound were in the parties favor, but the defenders were at a disadvantage due to the lower level. It is amazing what two levels will do to a to hit number. In the end, Sliver the Ranger was the hero, finally getting his Twin Strike Mojo working and dropping a ton of arrows into the pesky Tieflings that were casting a real annoying fire ranged attack.

With the bad guys dispatched, the party found a pair of scrolls that indicate that the rouge Wizard, Padamare, is behind the trap and wishes to dispose of their bodies. Even though they just left the Inn, the party needed to debate an extended rest (Adventures are lazy SOBs), but decided to take the reformed slaves back to Fellcrest.

The return to Fellcrest was uneventful, but the party did gain a bit of experience for finding the prisoners and returning them safely as well as destroying the Bloodreavers. A rest was had, as were magic items transferred before the party returned to the Seven-Pillar Hall to prepare to battle Gnolls.

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So the adventuring is going well, but I keep having this nagging feeling that I am taking to long to run folks through the adventure... Specifically that the encounters take too long. It may just be me. Some ideas that I think I'll try next time:

• Enslave, I mean, enlist one of the players to run the initiative for me. I'll give him the critters and let them track. The Loft has a white board that is tailored made for that effort.
• Roll Damage with the too hit. Zoltan, Eldecar, and Kaz'nak all do that already, but it may become game standard. The 'issue' will come with the double attack type of attacks like twin strike. Hmmm...
• Pre-Stage the bad guy minis... I'll do my best to get the bad guys all bagged up and ready, vice hunt and peck for the ones I need.
  

To deal with the daily powers missing and how badly that swings the battle, I was thinking of allowing players to spend their action point to re-roll a missed attack roll or any roll for that matter. I don't know how that would swing the power of the party, but at the moment, at times, they usually seam under power versus the enemy. Maybe I'm over doing the enemy, but it doesn't look like it.

And on the entertainment front...

The other half and I went to go see The Wrestler on Sunday. Not sure what to say about this one. I hated the cinematography. I mean hated. It was too jittery, like the Blair Witch Project almost at times at the camera was perched over Micky Rourke. I had to leave twice because I thought I was going to hurl. That combined with I think that Mr. Rourke is highly over rated as an actor and the story, although interesting wasn't really what I would consider 'Oscar' quality it was just OK. It was fine (other then the wanting to puke parts), on the small screen, it might be better for my eyes to watch. The highlight was Marisa Tomei who was not only hot for a 40+ year old stripper :-p but also the better half of the acting. Anyways, I give it two out of four WWF championship belts.

jp
Is it just me?