Editing User:Bill/Thunderspire Mountain Enhanced (section)

===Session 4 - June 22, 2011===
I spent the last week in Reno, visiting with friends and enjoying the company of my fiancée. As a consequence, I was a bit out of the swing of things for this week's encounter. Even so, I chose to press on with the adventure albeit less prepared than I had been in earlier sessions. In no small part is this due to the next season of encounters starting August 10th. I would like to finish with Thunderspire Labyrinth, or at least the main storyline thereof, on time. 

With that in mind, I shorthanded the set-up and skipped over what could have been some valuable role play to put the players at the Chamber of Eyes. This week featured six players; Bruce, Dylan, Jason, Maria, Matt, and Rachel. Bruce elected to play his own character this time out, a half-orc avenger. Maria took on the role of Volistis while Matt played Cleitemnestra. Dylan, Jason, and Rachel continued with their previous characters. I have been asking if they would like to try a different character at the outset of each session. One of the benefits of Encounters is that you can mix things up, but it's certainly not required.

Per the text of the adventure, the player characters were confronted by an antechamber with a locked double door and a balcony. I quizzed the players to see if they could remember what the hobgoblin spellcaster had told them in session one, five weeks ago; they did not. I had everyone that was present for session one make an intelligence check, which none of them passed. Had they done so, I would have reminded the players that the hobgoblin indicated they could bypass the main entrance by going through the balcony. Instead, Helfyn and Cleitemnestra attempted to smash down the door; immediately alerting the monsters on the other side. Even worse, they failed to successfully break down the door. In response to this, I had three goblin warriors with javelins take up positions on the balcony and attack Seleme; who was the most exposed at the time. Owing to her AC, and the ludicrously poor attack bonus that level one monsters have, this was little more than a nuisance. Her response was to blast them with Ebony Razors, one of her more powerful spells, slaughtering two of them outright and leaving the third bloodied. He was further abused by Volistis, who cast an acidic zone over the balcony, and Sarsariel, who used her Dark Beckoning power to finish the poor goblin off.

On his action, Dylan managed to have Helfyn pick the lock and assess the situation on the other side of the door before being noticed. A large, particularly hairy goblinoid, later revealed to be a barghest, was mustering several hobgoblins and bugbears to repel the player characters. The remainder of the session was spent wading through four hobgoblin soldiers, three bugbears, two wolves, and the barghest. Some notable highlights:

Matt at one point found Cleitemnestra surrounded, with only one path of escape. This led his character to be separated from the group, facing the barghest alone. By this point he had also blown through most of the character's powers. Against most level seven antagonists, I'd put my money on Cleitemnestra; I wrote her to be an implacable whirlwind of destruction. Unfortunately everything she can do is based off gaining combat advantage, something that invisible targets generally don't grant. Matt was in the undesirable and not fun position of being picked apart by a foe that he couldn't effectively oppose. The character did survive, but only just, and mostly because I rolled badly.

Maria did reasonably well with Volistis's powers, though she did argue for the most favorable interpretation of the text. I don't really appreciate that sort of rules lawyering, but it's kind of part of the game. She also used both of the character's daily powers. This is potentially very bad, as I intend to have everyone play the same characters next session; proceeding to the next encounter without a rest. I will probably allow her to use Web of Shadows again. Due to a misinterpretation of the movement rules on my part the spell was vastly less effective than it should have been in this encounter.

Rachel is catching on to the rules pretty well at this point. She has mentioned to me on more than one occasion that she does not enjoy or perform well on strategy games, however she seems to be picking up on the most effective application of her character's powers quickly. I would argue that she is better at this than she thinks.

Jason struggled a little with how his character's regeneration functions. Sarsariel is very strange compared to what is typical of D&D characters. Due to her regeneration, she can effectively go down multiple times in a fight and recover. In this encounter she was taken to zero hit points by one of the bugbears, but quickly recovered to kill it. About the only way the character will actually die is if a coup de gras is used to finish her off.

Overall, this was a reasonably successful encounter. The players were challenged and the characters were forced to expend a significant quantity of resources. The downside of it is that this amounts to a level nine encounter. And while both Sarsariel and Cleitemnestra were severely injured, both recovered. I'm not sure how high I would have to push the encounter level to actually kill one of the player characters.