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
