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Played through much of Jason Nelson's original draft material (all except the final battle with Irovetti) and here's what we experienced:
Summary: great stuff. Players need to be kept on their toes and taken outside their comfort zone from time to time. I used the Tower of Jewels, Jousting Rules, and altered Whiterose Abbey ambush.
- Tower of Jewels: Entertaining even without a rogue. Slow and steady is the best way since one just needs the 5,000gp gem to win. The barbarians climb at an insane pace but just snatched random gems before they fell. Our player used survival to turn her clothes into a climbing device after falling, despite the catcalls. She couldn't appraise worth a darn though.
- Jousting is hard. Our cavalier went down to a hedge knight in the first round. Ouch. Of course, rolling a 3 and a 5 in the same round usually does one in... I liked the idea that players can't just get on a horse and be successful, but unless one is mounted-combat full bore, winning the Joust probably isn't in the cards. Even then, it's at best a 50/50 proposition.
- The Whiterose Abbey ambush was tremendously more satisfying than as written in the module, but one must know their party before springing it. If I didn't think any of the players had a way out, I wouldn't spring it. Environmental hazards are great to shake things up. The rat swarm is plain nasty (the distraction DC is brutal). Still, it gave our travel domain cleric who usually supports a chance to use his offensive spells for the first time since he was the only one who could get out before the rats came.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Glad you enjoyed!
Interestingly, the Whiterose Abbey section was actually the first part of the adventure that I wrote, and also the very last thing that I edited as I went back and slashed out about 2000 words while making it far more concise and tightly written. The version in the published product was fine too, but I thought the one in the manuscript was the sort of ambush that would really put the fear of God into the PLAYERS. It certainly did with the PCs in my campaign when I ran it. :)