| Legendary Crumpet |
So we ran this campaign yesterday, session one. It was my first time Game Mastering (anything) and we made it to the Gnoll camp in about three hours.
The combat was far too easy for the players in my opinion, which is fine because they emerge victorious, but I fear they didn't have nearly enough of a challenge with the first two encounters.
(Edit: we have two fighters, a paladin and druid with animal companion)
The three melee fighters have an Ac over 20, one being 25, so the Hyena were having zero luck with that, I wanted to emulate their packattack and drag abilities so one got a decent hit on the druids animal companion. But beyond that the 20 or so hit points just vanished in a round or two.
Ankheg: I set up a battleship-esk system of numbers and letters and didn't reveal the location of the quicksand. Furthermore I hid many small dunes across the map with one visibly different (the Ankheg). The druid immediately had the mind set to use a pole to test every square before progressing as she picked up on the descriptor of water from the river being packed into the sand. Someone also noticed the subtly different mound of sand and the druid correctly identified it as an Ankheg. It did literally zero damage when it emerged and died in a single round. 38 hit points. Dead.
Ideally next week, particularly the manticore will be more trouble for them. Did anyone else (including original poster) have a similar experience to this? Should I keep playing the encounters as is and accept the team may just be a little too qualified even at level four, or are the first two fights just the warm ups for new characters and the real fights begin now. I'm flustered.