Dark Mountain Pass *SPOILERS SPOILERS*

[Canadian Bakka]

Out of curiosity, did anyone else find the Dark Mountain Pass (in HTBM) insanely brutal? Especially

Spoiler:

the spears trap? My players had beefed themselves up just prior to crossing the bridge so they wanted to "run" through the entire complex while still enjoying the benefits of their spells. Since they didn't bother with disturbing the dead in area 3, they found the entrance to area 4 without encountering anything else other than the centipedes. However, the priest decided to stroll in and open the sarcophagus. Of course that sets off the trap. 1d6 spears per target in the room is just nasty, with a save for each spear that hits (not hard with its attack bonus). Tavey alone suffered 8 points of Con damage while the rest suffered, on average, 3 points of Con damage. Now they have to deal with the mummies that will arriving soon after. More Con damage (thanks Mummy Rot!) I sincerely doubt the entire party is going to surive.

I am just wondering if perhaps the brutality of Dark Mountain Pass was intentional or just accidental. Of course, it doesn't help the party if they don't have a single rogue or scout.

At any rate, feel free to share your experiences with Dark Mountain Pass.

Cheers

CB

[Humble Minion]

I didn't find it too bad. The only real problem my PCs had was that they used all their big spells up on the

Spoiler:

centipedes, and then a lot of the extra abilities on opening those Str test DC25 or whatever doors. Only one PC triggered the spear trap, and the save DC was so low that he easily made all his saves anyway.

Though they were pretty careful to keep the 'non-combatants' well back and out of the way while they poked around in any unexplored bits of dungeon. There was a bit of a problem when one of the mummies animated behind the group and got in among the civilians, but they managed to put it down again with only one NPC casualty.

Fogmire is potentially much nastier. Especially if you play the bar-lgura's spell-like abilities to the hilt.

[blargney the second]

I'm thinking of changing the mummies into advanced ghouls with some sort of aura of fear. My group has no cleric, so the mummy's curse would be brutal...

[vikingson]

Hmm, there were almost no problems for my group in Dark Mountain pass at all - While they sprung the suspected (they were certain about the coffin being traped, but couldn't detect the precise mechanism due to low rolls ) trap on the sarcophagus, this was being done by the monk, who incidentally had high AC against ranged attacks from an armour enhancement crystal.

Aa for the rest, the mummies being highly susceptible to fire was a major clincher for our group, the centipedes falling quickly as well.

The one thing I had replaced was the Black Pudding which got exchanged with some Brown Mold, since I dislike puddings them for their equipment-dissolving effects- it can really ruin motivation and chances in item-dependent campaigns. Hence it went out.

Overall, not really deadly, but stymifying to player morale, because of it flawed, read "illogical" setup

[Hierophantasm]

I'm especially fond of Jason Bulmahn's adventures--they can really annihilate an ill-prepared party, and are very tough, but never outside the boundaries of the standard challenge level of an adventure. That said, there is an encounter in practically every room in this mini-dungeon (Dark Mountain Pass).

Spoiler:

The spear trap can be potentially deadly, but against a party member with a respectable, say, AC of 21 (not hard with spells like protection from evil, good armor or decent armor with a good dex, etc), the spears have a one-in-four chance of missing. The damage can add up, but the poison DCs are very low. A party entering a foreign area at low or mid-level would do well to down an antidote prior to proceeding, if concerned.

I could see how this would severely harm or kill any NPCs, though. Still, it seems kind of foolish to bring the relatively defenseless NPCs into an unfamiliar tomb, and start poking around.

One thing I've taken to mention to my players at the start of each adventure is both the name of the adventure (when it is spoiler-free), and the author. I previously mentioned (as most of my players were also in my Age of Worms campaign) that this author (Jason Bulmahn) had also written the Hall of Harsh Reflections adventure for that AP...perhaps, that was a knowing clue for the more familiar players...heh.

Spoiler:

On another note, I game with a lot of power gamers (a badge they wear with some pride), so I'm become used to their number-crunching marches to victory. Still, after buffing up Olangru, I still managed to put fear into their hearts, and even nearly kill two of the players. So, yeah, this is one adventure where a little DM-cruelty goes a long way.

[Humble Minion]

Spoiler:

Have to say, my Olangru got minced in this adventure. Charged in, missed on all his attacks thanks to rolling a fistful of <5s on his dice, got smacked, tried his disengage-and-charge-again tactic, got smacked again with 3 AoOs, and went down without having inflicted so much as a hit point of damage. And then I had to on-the-fly double the hp total of the Lemorian Golem (and I was using the CORRECT hp total, not the misprint from the magazine!) so that it could even get a proper round of attacks in before getting smashed.

Was a bit startling to be honest - my first encounter as DM with what happens when PCs uberbuff each other. A bit anticlimactic, but on the other hand it was very late and a long combat would have been a bit of a chore at the time. Plus I almost TPKed with the naga (yes, really), so I'd had my bit of fun. In hindsight, I probably should have had Olangru spend his first round using dispel magic (even at the cost of making him visible again) to strip off some of the buffs, or put a couple of extra standard bar-lguras in the shrine room just to take some of the heat off him. Oh well, live and learn. Vanthus ain't going to go down that easy, believe you me...

[lin_fusan]

Spoiler:

I my game, Dark Mountain Pass was a challenge. The fighter lost nearly all his equipment in the black pudding fight. The player with the mage wasn't there at the time, so the chop-up-the-pudding and fireball it tactic wasn't available.

Unfortunately, the fighter went through the chop-up-the-pudding part of the combo anyway, so there were five or six mini-puddings all hitting him and dissolving his equipment. Is the fault of the encounter or the player? I don't know...

The rest of the encounters went OK. Challenging but not deadly.

However, my game pretty much went TPK with the gargoyles. For whatever reason, every character thought that it would be an easy fight (perhaps because of the earlier encounter with the flight of gargoyles) and did nothing to buff or support each other.

When the gargoyle king knocked down the fighter, then the mage, then the druid, the cleric cast Invis on himself to recover the bodies and Raise Dead them.

After that, it was going downhill. Two characters with -1 level (the druid was at negative hp instead of dead) and a lot of equipment lost, the Temple of Demogorgon proved to be incredibly dangerous. I'm sure the Olangru and Golem fight would have wiped them out.

By this time we ending up during the holidays, so hadn't played in two months. Because everyone was demoralized, confused as to the plot, and so beat up, I decided to hand-wave the end of the Temple and start Tides of Dread with a 9th level party.

[blargney the second]

Here's how I'm modifying DMP for my group:

Spoiler:

1) Black pudding replaced with corrupted large water elemental from City of Peril.

2) 3 mummies replaced with 1 mummy dread marshal, 1 ghast fighter, and 1 ghoul druid with a ghoul deathjump spider companion.

3) The blue rod is on the mummy marshal instead of in the secret room.

-blarg

[blargney the second]

The changes I made went fantastically well in tonight's game. They were tough fights, but not TPKs. All three PCs don't yet realize that they're going to have to make Fort saves vs ghoul fever in a day. :> (Which is way more dealable for this group than mummy rot...)

I'm also very happy I subbed out the black pudding - that thing would have been about as bad as a deck of many things at this point in my campaign.
-blarg