Editing User:Bill/Thunderspire Mountain Enhanced (section)

==Pregame==
The local Encounters group tapped me to run the Season 5 module, Dark Legacy of Evard. I agreed without hesitation, mostly because my efforts to put together a consistent play group have failed for the last two years, but also because I wanted to see how D&D 4 really handles. I've owned a copy of the game for several years, but I've done very little with it due to my general bias against D20 and all things D&D. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with the game; I'm just the sort of person that prefers to avoid popular things. 

Anyway, one of the regulars expressed an interest in playing the season at a higher level, Encounters starts at level 1. So I determined to run the game starting at level 5. That presented two immediate challenges. First, I had to generate a set of appropriate characters. One of the strengths of the Encounters program is that anyone, regardless of his or her familiarity with the game can show up totally unprepared and join the game. To preserve that, every element of every character needs to be available for quick and easy reference. Bearing in mind that this season coincided with the release of Heroes of Shadow and the Shadowfell campaign setting, I intended to use HoS characters exclusively for my pregens. Drastically underestimating the time commitment involved in fully detailing each of them, I decided to make one of each class and race option. And, just for my own amusement, I used all of the fey PC races. Ultimately, I completed nine characters with notes for each power, feat, and magic item relevant to them; at approximately five hours per character to complete.

The second challenge would be upgrading the adventure to be suitable for level five characters. Encounters resets to level one every season, so I was anticipating needing to revise the adventure significantly. However, due to an oversight, our Encounters group never ordered the season 5 materials. Undaunted, and because we were two-weeks behind on season 4, I had time to find a substitute. I selected H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth, an adventure for characters from levels 3-5. I probably could have saved myself some work by choosing a level 5 adventure, but I liked the tone of the book. The process of revising the adventure has been very informative too.