We played our first session Friday night with a party of six PCs. Party composition:
Xandril, a wood elf fighter
Alandria, a half-elf fighter
Phoebe, an aasimar cleric of Myrhiss
Cole, a tiefling spirit shaman
Sotek, a poison dusk lizardman sorceror
Festus, a human rogue
I'll be posting a more detailed entry on the campaign journals board soon, in the thread "Age of Worms in Olive Branch, MS." This is just a quick summary for DMs that will be running this in the future, particularly if you'll be running it with six characters. (I'll be running a second Age of Worms campaign concurrently, also with six characters, so I'll be trying out my suggested changes.)
First, let me say thanks to Erik Mona for writing what has so far been a very fun first level adventure. The detail you went into when describing Diamond Lake was fantastic, and really gave the characters a sense of place. The PCs haven't visited Diamond Lake in game yet, but I posted a bunch of blurbs to our email list, and they came into the first session with good backgrounds and a sense of how they fit into the local area.
The encounters:
They had no problem dispatching the wolves. I'll be adding a fourth wolf in my second AoW campaign.
Nor did they have any problems with the lurking strangler. I'll be adding a second lurking strangler for my other group.
One character did get knocked unconscious by the brown mold. He knew it was in the room somewhere. I gave him a spot check when he was coming around the corner to see it before coming within five feet of it, but he failed it. They don't have any cold magic, so they haven't been able to get past it yet. After this encounter, they returned to the mining office to rest.
The PCs also didn't have much problem with the mad slasher and the acid beetle swarm. They were equipped with some alchemical weapons (acid and alchemist's fire), so the swarm was dispatched quickly. I'll be adding a second swarm for my other group.
The bombadier beetles were tough. I'll be keeping those as written.
And the water elemental just about killed two PCs. I changed the submerged section so there was two feet of breathable air above the water. If I hadn't, one PC would have drowned after being knocked unconscious in the first round of combat by the elemental. (Another PC pulled him to the surface.) This is a very difficult encounter.
The party hasn't encountered the ghoul yet, nor have they ventured up to "the face."
They earned a total of 5100 xp in the first session (850 each).
I was wondering if the submerged area was supposed to have any air space above the water. I don't see any notation of how deep the water is in that area.
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I was wondering if the submerged area was supposed to have any air space above the water. I don't see any notation of how deep the water is in that area.
Eric said on another thread, that the room should be completely filled with water!
Philarete - I thought of the bombardier beetles that they gonna be a tough one. The water elemental even more so, especially, because it comes almost straight after the beetles! I as well thought about making the water only breast high. If my group gets well around the beetles, I will have the shower area fully under water. If not, than the water will be breast high.Two stranglers might be a bit too hard. I did a sample fight with four 1st level pcs I had in stock, and one pc almost got suffocated (bad dice rolls). If a pc, already low on hit points falls unconscious and you happen to have a second strangler, than things can get ugly very fast. I'd rather not loose a pc during this encounter, and I know my players have a better time accepting character-death while fighting the elemental, than the strangler.
But anyway - your thread helped me out on a few thing and thoughts. Thanx!
One thing I've been concerned about is the battle with Filge and all his zombies. I might wind up with a party size of close to six, especialy after a few sessions, so I'd be very interested to hear how your players deal with the necromancer once they get that far.