Matthew Hinton's page

I'm glad it's not just me that believes that this is an easy mod.
I know that there is a difference in the dpr of certain classes at the moment, but I think that a load of pregens could get through this easy, and they are definitely not optimized.

Just such a shame.
Incidentally. They all had either decent climbs or decent rolls (or were levitated by a very kind wizard)! So I guess they were lucky with that!

what would the rules be adding in other stuff to make it more... shall we say, challenging? E.g. the dragon coming at the end. I know I really shouldn't kill PCs by making it harder, since that's kinda not fair. But I'm assuming it is allowed? If so, would anyone want to run it with these extra modifications and if they do. Let me know how people like it.

Thanks again guys,
Matt

I really did like the story arc for the 3, but I did think challenge-wise the last part fell a little flat.

On that note however, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and I didn't sense any level of frustration regarding the slot only running 2+ hours.

I suppose the main thing is that everyone enjoys themselves! That's my number one thing as a GM, rules ALWAYS comes second to fun.

Matt

Andrew Christian wrote:

Um... as far as I'm aware you can't play up unless your average party level falls in the middle range (2.5 or higher).

It's possible that he had 6 characters with an APL that rounded up to 2, +1 for being 6.

Yeah, that's how they played up. I wasn't sure about the 6th level guys, maybe they were 5 and strong. I just got sent players!

They spotted the stampede way in advance, so managed to easily avoid the damage from that (some good perception rolls)

The wolverine hits fairly hard yeah, but doesn't even have reach! They definitely took it down in round, which is not challenging. The party looked into the cave quick, saw nothing in there, walked out and fireballed it! I was like... okay... so I put the dinos past the rockfall just so it wasn't an hour & 30 min long module (since he actually hit 34 damage from the fireball).

Are people's opinion's generally that this isn't an easy mod, it just really seemed like it to me, maybe I wasn't running it right somewhere (hopefully not).

Did people like the stuff I added in, or thought it was definitely unnecessary? I just felt this epic 3part module deserved more challenge, but maybe I had strong partys...

Thanks guys.
Matt

Hey guys,
I'm new to the forums really, but after running 10 slots of PFS at GenCon. (Most awesome thing ever!) I thought I would try and invest some time in yet another brower-based distraction.
So, gripe #1:
I ran 3 slots of Shades III during GenCon, after having run I and II at Scotty's just before (yup it was a 13 slot PFS week!)
I and II were awesome, even in the crazyness that was Scotty's and I think all of my party really enjoyed them.

However, this is when I then got to part III.

Spoiler Alert!!!
I ran the first encounter with a table of 5/6s in the tier 4-5, so I knew they were gonna do well. But there was one guy with a power gaming summoner, who would have taken down the wolverine in a single hit. Following on this trend, none of the encounters would have challenged the party and not just because of this stupidly overpowered summoner.

They would have just blown up the dinos, (what party doesn't fireball a cave just in case) and the final fight they would have done in a round! I just don't know how that is tier 4-5!
This was then confirmed for me when I ran my 3rd slot of it for 1-2 level characters at tier 4-5 (I warned them that they very very well could die)
In no way did they breeze through it at tier 4-5, in fact the final fight only had 2 guys standing and all the others guys bleeding out (one was just saved by one round after combat as a party member charged to him, wand in hand and made the UMD check)
But still, level 1-2 characters at tier 4-5?

So, in my second slot and half of my first slot I made a few changes.
Ran the first two as normal, but made the ambushers rougue/ barbarians for sneak attack damage, they also hid a decoy weapon just showing out of one snowpile!

Dinos are just past the cave in, so when each party started clearing it the small ones jump over the hauling people's heads and attack the squishy mages (that'll teach them for never doing manual labour), then after 1 round an anklyosaurus busts through the rock fall, doing bludgeoning damage (mainly so I wouldn't kill them!)

In the final fight I really wanted to add in a white dragon of some kind, who flies in and takes revenge by going for whoever has the axe at that time, believing him to be a descendant of the king. This would have meant much more hitpoint to the woman, because she would be taking damage from the dragon, but it would have been far more cool. Then if the party want to take off with the axe, then they have to slay the white dragon.
Unfortunately I did not have time to run this as the final encounter, due to the roleplayiong and set-up section taking a while.
I would love to see how this works, to provide a fitting end to what really could have been an awesome series.

Obviously, it's a bit mean to kill party members due to making things tougher, but the secenario is just not a challenge at all, and that's what PFS is about, the risks (and possible rewards) of life as a pathfinder!

Hope people eventually got through all of that and have some comments, if you didn't, hey! don't worry, I'm not exactly going to read it now for horrible spelling mistakes!

Matt

Swiftbrook, you could be in my slot. Just prepared the adventure yest. It's really cool, looking forward to running it!