The last session's Q&A:

-1 Do daily spells from the spell book need to be readied before they are used like in the previous editions?

Yes. After an extended rest, you can prepare a number of daily and utility spells according to what you can cast per day for your level. You can't prepare the same spell twice. (PHB, p158)

-2 There are spells and powers that have area effects that cause half damage on a miss. Can these kill minions?

No. If a minion is missed by an attack that normally deals damage on a miss, it takes no damage. (DMG, p55)

-3 Does a readied action interrupt its trigger when it happens?

No. A readied action is an immediate reaction. It takes place after your enemy completes the action that triggered it. (PHB, p291).

However, if you prepare an attack in reaction to a creature's movement, you will stop its movement. But it will still be able to attack - provided it is still alive.

-4 Can an awesome rogue really hide in the middle of nowhere just because his bonus are so high it'll beat any reasonable DC you set?

No. It is worth revising the whole Stealth Skill section from PHB (p188)

Martin was nice enough to provide the errata for the skill - which replaces the whole description and helps makes sense of the whole thing.

Stealth (Revision) Player’s Handbook, page 188

Stealth: At the end of a move action.

• Opposed Check: Stealth vs. passive Perception. If multiple enemies are present, your Stealth check is opposed by each enemy’s passive Perception check. If you move more than 2 squares during the move action, you take a –5 penalty to the Stealth check. If you run, the penalty is –10.
• Becoming Hidden: You can make a Stealth check against an enemy only if you have superior cover or total concealment against the enemy or if you’re outside the enemy’s line of sight. Outside combat, the DM can allow you to make a Stealth check against a distracted enemy, even if you don’t have superior cover or total concealment and aren’t outside the enemy’s line of sight. The distracted enemy might be focused on something in a different direction, allowing you to sneak up.
• Success: You are hidden, which means you are silent and invisible to the enemy (see “Concealment” and “Targeting What You Can’t See,” page 281).
• Failure: You can try again at the end of another move action.
• Remaining Hidden: You remain hidden as long as you meet these requirements.
• Keep Out of Sight: If you no longer have any cover or concealment against an enemy, you don’t remain hidden from that enemy. You don’t need superior cover, total concealment, or to stay outside line of sight, but you do need some degree of cover or concealment to remain hidden. You can’t use another creature as cover to remain hidden.
• Keep Quiet: If you speak louder than a whisper or otherwise draw attention to yourself, you don’t remain hidden from any enemy that can hear you.
• Keep Still: If you move more than 2 squares during an action, you must make a new Stealth check with a –5 penalty. If you run, the penalty is –10. If any enemy’s passive Perception check beats your check result, you don’t remain hidden from that enemy.
• Don’t Attack: If you attack, you don’t remain hidden.
• Not Remaining Hidden: If you take an action that causes you not to remain hidden, you retain the benefits of being hidden until you resolve the action. You can’t become hidden again as part of that same action.
• Enemy Activity: An enemy can try to find you on its turn. If an enemy makes an active Perception check and beats your Stealth check result (don’t make a new check), you don’t remain hidden from that enemy. Also, if an enemy tries to enter your space, you don’t remain hidden from that enemy.

I hadn't butchered the next map yet - I only had my set of dungeon tiles to build it... which also allowed my to hide unseen details from the players. They were quite happy with this hiding - as they were no longer tempted to plan using what they should not have seen...

This is another one that went very well. Except that we really were too tired to play through it properly. Players had a hard time concentrating and multiple discussions were forming... making it hard for me to concentrate as well.

I learned that saying "zombie breasts" grasps the attention of my whole group.

We managed to play through this pretty sweet room.

Two mistakes I made in this room:

• The spiretop drake is not the same drake as before and can actually fly. Which I noticed after. (And told my players)
• The drake does not actually fly, it hovers. (And I told my players)
• The platform in the middle doesn't shouldn't have had a ceiling - now I have to figure out why there's a room here. (And I've told my players).

Now the ceiling thing, I think I like better than the original scenario. It helped me hide the kobolds on the ceiling and make them pop up and glue people to the floor before the stone rolls on them.

Nevertheless, the group went through this fourth encounter. Much more challenging. A few players got bloodied. Dailies got used. Action points. Second winds. Standard actions were turned into move actions to run away from the rock. Marisol Rockhugger managed to jump over the boulder.

Now the players and the PCs are exhausted. We're all pretty much satisfied with this long gaming session.

I ask for feedback and the main feedback is: stop apologizing. We don't care about your mistakes - we don't want to know about it. Keep it up, you're doing great.

Ok. I think I 'll do that.

Oh, by the way, I said, the "bring back from the dead" ritual takes 8 hours to complete and you've been in the dungeon for roughly 1 hour. Do you guys think you have time for an extended rest?

"Oh", I though, "I wanted to give you guys a special potion at the end that restores as an extended rest!"

And I told my players.

By this room, I was starting to get the hang of the kobolds. I was familiar enough with their particularities and the traps in the room. I felt I could give the players a proper challenge here.

This room is the skull-skull room. And I had something extra planned here.

A fiery rogue genasi the players met at an inn back at Albercott was in the goo pit, freeing a tied-up a watersoul genasi (his sister). The kobold were unaware of his presence and were occupied arguing the validity of the game's score.

The rogue spotted the adventurers and motioned them to be quiet... which is exactly when the kobold took notice of them.

This time, all the kobold were on a 10 foot high platform and were equipped to take pot shots at the players below until they figured something out.

As soon as his initiative was up, the genasi rogue and his quarry fled the scene - the players made no attempt to stop them.

The combat went fairly well - the kobolds on the platform took turns swinging the skull-skull stone at the players. Arkanis plucked one down with his annoying jedi powers. Rolen had some awful bad luck with his bow and wasted his daily power, an action point and a few arrows in one single turn.

Dali also flash-froze a few kobolds. It wasn't too long before the kobolds were handled. One of them was left alive and hiding behind the doors where the drakes were waiting.

The doors swung open and the drakes bull-rushed the closes players right in the pool of goo!

Glee! I always wanted to do this!

Of course, I waited too long before releasing the drakes (and told my players (!)) so they were chopped meat in no time. Arkanis used one of his wonderful jedi tricks (Dimensional thunder, dragon magazine 367) to basically teleport himself from the goo, right in the middle of the fray, blazing with electricity.

Room 3 was cleared. Some treasure found. I was ready to call it quits - we had already been playing for roughly 5 hours.

But a few players insisted that we moved onwards... and everyone agreed.

Tomorrow: Area 4

This one went well, but was far too easy. I messed up the power level by failing to properly raise the difficulty. Tired of unoriginally boosting a room by adding a critter, I wanted to add a trap instead.

So my 6 players were facing 3 kobolds... and 2 traps, because I didn't figure out where to put a 3rd trap and, quite frankly, 2 such traps was enough for the room.

What I did right, though, I have the kobolds take advantage of the traps. I played them more aggressively - effectively pulling a few players into the trap. But two of them were no match for the party.

And I started to see what kind of min-maxing, combo building group I was facing.

Man.

I have a rogue who's constantly hidden and always throws dagger from total concealment - doing a boatload of damage each time.

Check this out: Using Sly Flourish:

• + 9 Attack bonus
• 1d4 +2d8 + 8 damage. That's 1d4 + dex +charisma + sneak attack damage (brutal scoundrel)

This brutal thing deals **minimum** 11 damage when using combat advantage. She actually killed a full-health creature with 1 dagger!

She has a potential of doing 28 damage in one single, sneaky flick of her knife-throwing hand!

So, this assassin is obviously awesome. And I obviously wasn't prepared for it. Obviously.

Arkanis also was this awesomely annoying power where he can "force-pull" an opponent to an adjacent square. Effectively throwing a bone into most of my strategies. Obviously, I'll have to clever-up to give them a challenge.

Right now, I'm a pez-dispenser with a DM's head throwing away XP.

Nevertheless, we had a jolly time in this room - Arkanis and Iris the cleric were finding the rigged tiles. The technique consisted in Arkanis crawling on the floor and, when paralyzed by a dart, Iris would pull him away from the trigger.

Then, they placed a kobold's corpse on the tile - forcing the trap to keep firing until it was emptied of all darts.

When they ran out of kobold corpses, they simply marked the trigger tiles with kobold blood.

All this time, the rogue was... feeding her baby girl.

Searching the room, the players found some papers describing parts of a ritual. The cleric and wizard examined the paper and figured out that it described a ritual used to bring something back from the dead.

The resurrection ritual called from some exotic components and wards. It requires sacrifices both from victims and from devoted practitioners, willing to die for the ritual.

Offended by the affront such a ritual is to his goddess, Arkanis burned the paper to dust.

Tomorrow: the tackles Area 3

I tackled this room twice before and did the same mistake twice and basically ruined the encounter.

See I redid the maps they gave for the first three room and shrunk them a bit to fit my print paper. Doing this, I deformed the rooms a bit and, not understanding how the encounter worked, I pretty much ruined it.

This and I didn't understand the ambush.

See, the original scenario has a few kobolds hide in a storage room while a second kobold attracts the players towards them.

A third group of kobolds are hiding behind a wall and will try to surprise the players when they pass them.

What I understood is that the first kobold tries to attract the players in the storeroom.... and my messing up the room placed the other critters close enough for the players to see them arrive.

What happens is that the players move forward, attracted by the first kobold who goes to hide in the store room. You know, for the "trap".

The players advance carefully and destroys the first small group.

They then advance towards the storage room, where the remaining few kobolds are trapped.

Kobolds never shift and never gang up on a target. No one tries to push a player in the sticky goo - I simply allow the kobolds to be picked up one by one.

Re-reading the script for the humpteenth time, I realized that the first kobold wants to attract the player in the big room - not the closet space.

Once the players are distracted (or surprised) by the kobolds actually hiding behind the wall, the other kobolds come running to trap the players and flank them.

So, my players basically destroyed the kobolds without breaking a sweat.

They tried interrogating a kobold - which I hadn't planned for. And for all my talk about immersion and improv, I nearly choked on that. And told my players.

I had to come up with some answers and improved that the kobolds were capturing humans because "Drak" told them so. And told my players I just made that up.

(See where I'm going with that? I could've kept my mouth shut - I was doing okay!)

The kobold tried to barter for his life by offering a piece of parchment to the heroes. Arkanis (Steve's SwordMage) ended the interrogation by running his sword through the paper... and the kobold's head.

He took the bloodied paper from his sword and handed it to his in-game wife, Dali - a goth chick Wizard (who happens to be his real-life girl friend).

The paper talked about a magic dagger that can be summoned from a ring and help the wearer hide in shadows.

The group promptly moved to the second room.

Tomorrow: Area 2