MikeD's page

Woo Hoo! I solved it!
I won't give anything away, but I will tell you which hints I found most helpful:

And why a "T," exactly?

What does that mean for that stone? What does that mean for other stones?

Hope that helps.

Character: Ominara Avondale (Human Cleric of Heironeous Lv. 3)
Adventure: The Whispering Cairn
Location of Death: Chamber of Sighs
Catalyst: Wind Warrior
Long Description: Ominara died in a valiant rescue that would have made Heironeous proud.
By the time the first Wind Warrior fell the party had pretty much used up all their resources and were ready to make a retreat. Unfortunately, Lyavel, the half-elf rogue, was in negative hp and fading. So, while the others ran for the door Ominara went to save Lyavel. A cure light wounds spell revived the rogue, but she was still within melee reach of the Wind Warrior so she couldn't get up without provoking an AofO, and a successful hit would surely put her back down. So Ominara got the Wind Warrior's attention and ran to the far side of the room to lead it away from Lyavel. It followed and she kept it distracted while Lyavel made a run for the exit. Lyavel escaped, but the twin swords proved to much for Ominara. When she fell the creature moved to block the door and by the time anyone managed to get past it, Ominara was gone.
Ominara was given an honorable memorial at the garrison chapel and laid to rest in the Diamond Lake boneyard.

I strongly agree with the idea of making those low level adventures easier. I'm all for unique and challenging encounters, and there should certainly be a few set peice encounter that are really tough, but I think the average CR for an adventure should match the level of the characters.

I'd definitely like to see more wilderness adventuring in future APs. Gotta give those rangers and druids their chance to shine.

One thing I thought I'd like to see done differently is to leave some more room between adventures. In AoW each adventure seems to lead you right up to the next one, both in terms of experience and of story. Give us a little more room for side quests and time for the PCs to follow their own agendas.

from the cleric's

There is a thread on this board where people are talking about parties of 6 or more getting their butts kicked by the second encounter in "The Whispering Cairn". This worried me because if I get to run this I will be lucky to get a party of 4. So, I decided to take a closer look at the ELs.

According to the DMG, about half the encounters in an adventure should have an EL equal to the intended level of the PCs, about 30% or so should be lower, and roughly 20% should be higher. Out of 19 encounters in the "The Whispering Cairn" there are a grand total of 2 which are EL 1. There are none which are lower. The average EL for the entire adventure comes to about 2.8.

My conclusion: "The Whispering Cairn" is not an adventure for a 1st level party, as advertised. It is for 2nd or maybe even 3rd level. I plan to do some scaling down before running it.

Eric-

I know alot of the adventures are still incomplete, but how will the "Free City" be used? I mean this, I bought Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins from ebay, but the doggone thing did not have the map booklet. I know there are a few awesome maps available online, but most are not keyed. Should I go through all the trouble of that, or will the adventure itself have keyed maps of the city, and the specific important locations to the adventure? I can print the map of the city, and coordinate this with keyed maps from the module?

Thanks alot,
Patrick.

If you're interested RPGnow has a pdf of Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins that includes all the maps.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1479&