Justin Achilli

Neflim Pass (Thursday, 5/21)

Neflim Pass was the site of a battle between the barbarians of the north and the soldiers of the Kingdom of Galbez.

A curse levied by one of the barbarian witch-priests has rendered Neflim Pass a blighted chasm. The bodies of fallen soldiers on both sides of the conflict rise from their bloody resting place to torment those who would travel the pass. Despite winning the battle, the citizens of Galbez still suffer under the plague of the deathless fallen.

Only the heroes stand between the restless dead and the terrified folk of Galbez.

(Character creation: 2nd level, anything goes. PHB, PHB2, and FRPG are permitted. Backgrounds are allowed. Use and advance your previous character if you’re in Tuesday’s game.)

Into the dungeon delved a potent party of noble adventurers, intent on reclaiming Rundig's Keep. The keep was an outpost on the far reaches of an empire a thousand years lost, and the heroes investigated it to help push back the savage frontier. Located near the modern city of Secundum, Rundig's Keep will serve as a base for the reclamation effort of the surrounding desert badlands.

Consisting of Althea (eladrin wizard), Gabriel (dragonborn paladin), Path (tiefling bard), and Angrist (elven avenger), the party encountered a hidden warren of ratmen in the ruins of the keep. They made short work of the foot soldiers -- bit in exterminating them, disturbed a nest of stormclaw scorpions.

The avenger and the paladin boldly rushed into the fray, locking down the bigger threats while the wizard got off to a rocky start with area effects that brought down the minions. Gabriel and Path found themselves grappled and electrocuted, which took the paladin to death's door twice. Judicious healing and clever maneuvering by Path revived the paladin and kept the scorpions arranged so as to be caught in the nimbus of Althaea's fire spirit. Angrist eviscerated one of the more formidable ratmen warriors, so terrifying another one to such a degree that he jumped back into the depths from which he came.

Thus, with one lone, surviving ratman in desperate retreat, Rundig's Keep belongs once again to civilization.

Notable Positive Experiences: Minions are fun. It's especially exciting to watch a bunch of baddies go down in a doomed mass when a wizard or other area-effect character does her thing. It's extremely empowering for the players to watch it happen, and if you're using them right as a DM, you can pat yourself on the back for having them provide that morale-boosting powerkill. Angrist, using an action point, hit a double-critical with an encounter and a daily power that left a smoldering crater where his adversary once stood. Much fun to see, and to witness a first-level character dropping 40+ points of damage in a single turn.

Notable Negative Experiences: None. This one flowed pretty smoothly, and concluded in the timebox. The stormclaw scorpion felt a little tougher than I expected for a first-level soldier, but that's not really a complaint.

A bold band of heroes journeyed into the dreaded jungles of Thresh to discover what perils lurked therein and to fight them back past the borders of civilization. A clearing in the jungle where a waterfall emptied into a pool with a natural arch above it marked the location of the encounter. Something foul and atavistic made its home in the rocky walls of the waterfall -- the debased descendents of men who once ruled an empire that spanned all of Thresh.

The six heroes closed ranks as the menace advanced upon them. One of the creatures, emerging from the jungle behind them, charged and struck true, injuring the cleric and bard who had been holding the back of the line. Another dashed out of a copse of dense jungle undergrowth while another pair stormed across the natural arch. A third pair descended from the top of the waterfall, and these seemed to be some sort of sorcerers of their ilk, as they moved by teleportation.

As the party engaged each pair of the reptilian subhumans, the sorcerers teleported down the side of the waterfall, dazzling the heroes with some sort of invasive mental manipulations. The sorcerers proved too slow, however, and by the time they made it down the waterfall, the heroes had already put most of the savage, four-armed shock troops to the sword…

…When some sort of bizarre, tentacle, crocodilian horror dragged itself out of the murk of the pool at the waterfall's base. It focused its attention on the paladin, who kept it enthralled via divine challenge, while the party focused their attacks on it. They managed to defeat it before it pulled the paladin into the mire, but only just, and a single turn spelled the difference between victory and a watery death for the paladin.

With the crocodile-beast dispatched and the reptile-men screaming in cold-blooded hell, the sorcerers were no match for the battle-hardened warriors. In tandem, they would have been dangerous, but the efficient combatants in the group dismantled the jungle threat piece by piece and emerged victorious.

Notable Positive Experiences: Group dynamics continue to be the single greatest facet of 4e. When a party puts its abilities together to take on foes, they're a powerhouse. When someone breaks ranks and charges in recklessly, he fares less well. I really like this, as it keeps the group working toward a common goal instead of ambling off on their own doomed solo jaunts during which I feel bad about killing them for their own mistakes.

Notable Negative Experiences: 4e usually runs quickly. Not so this time. Part of the problem was group size, as we had six players, and part of the problem was that not all of the players had their actions cards preformatted, meaning that some of them had to rifle through the books to figure out what they wanted to do. Normally, you'd say "figure out what you're going to do in the downtime between your turns," but 4e is so tactical that the best thing to do might literally change with the action of the person before you. While it was still exceedingly easy to run and adjudicate, it just took longer than we had set aside as our time box.