0-1E Nature's Wrath - How did you do?

[ThreeEyedSloth]

The Adventure 1 scenarios are coming to an end soon, as Nature's Wrath marks the penultimate challenge for AD1. The difficulty continues to ramp up as well.

From a design standpoint, I really love the Botfly Swarms. Being immune to Piercing and Slashing makes for an interesting challenge, allowing spellcasters to really shine while making Ranged and Melee-focused characters sweat a little.

I'm not a huge fan of the arbitrary "All animal banes are +4 difficulty" addition to the scenario, though. Even besides the Botflies, this makes even some of the standard monsters in the box brutually tough for a still low-level group of characters. The added numbers seem like a cheap and slightly frustrating way to artificially inflate the difficulty. I prefer when the scenario design takes some unique turns that makes things harder in interesting ways, like Salvage Operations (despite some problems, it's still one of the neatest scenarios created to date.)

So, how did everyone do?

[The Knight Argent]

Seoni, Radillo, Kyra, and Harsk braved the dragon's wrath. When the botfly swarms... swarmed, the spellcasters could blast them out of the sky, but the adventurers found themselves dangerously low on resources, having to use their divine providence to keep themselves alive through regular, amped-up-and-pissed-off animals, and Harsk was running out of random crap to shoot.

Because of this, the party could only cobble together a lackluster assault on the dragon, which actually succeeded, but the Gods' favor ran too low for even Kyra to close her remaining location. Attempting to pursue the beast any further would have resulted in the death of at least one of the Arcanists, so the dejected party withdrew and licked their wounds.

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I agree with your sentiments. I'm OK with the animal bane buff myself, but +4 may have been too much. The characters that could defeat henchmen couldn't afford to explore because they'd use all of their resources killing other monsters. Our table tried again, and I used Radillo's scrying powers to find the henchmen and villain. This made it easier to "pinch hit" those bastardos, but our FLGS closed before we could finish. I think we can do it next time, provided I draw my two Auguries and Detect Magic. ;)

[Pirate Rob]

We had several players on vacation this week so we had a single table of 5 and we rocked it.

It was a nice relief after the brutality of previous weeks.

Our table was:

Team bard: Lem, Beekah & Siwar along with Harsk and Amaryllis (sorcerer)

We had lots of extra d4s, Amaryllis was able to bury cards to re-roll any of her checks and did so ~4 times. Of course her ability to roll 5 or less on 1d8+2d4 2 times in a row was impressive.

We handed cards around to get armor on the right people to absorb the whale without having it explode and the +1 Shock Musket that Harsk found made him super extra deadly at combat.

One of the things we've discovered recently is when you have a bunch of support character and a combat badass like Harsk, something helpful to do is actually handing harsk your cards that let you explore again. That way he can do it and probably needs less help during the encounters anyway.

For us this scenario felt fun and relaxing instead of the brutal we're all going to die of the past few weeks. That said w cornered and defeated the villain with fewer than 5 cards remaining in the blessing deck.

[pluvia33]

So far, I've only played this scenario solo with Olenjack. I'll hopefully get to play it with my store group Saturday, but we do still need to replay Salvage Operations.

I didn't really mind the increased difficulty of Animal banes, although I didn't run into any Animals other than the henchmen during the scenario. I thought it was actually a kind of nice change of pace to only have one simple sentence for the special rules of this scenario (especially with the two wall-of-text scenarios coming up after it).

With Olenjack, the crossbow and dagger wielding rogue, the combat checks were not an option against the Botfly Swarms. Luckily, even though he only has a d6 Wisdom, getting a +2 for displaying each ally and having a 2-dice wisdom blessing made the check of 12 beatable. If the proper conditions didn't line up, I just recharged an ally to evade it and went to a different location to hunt for the villain instead. It wasn't too bad at all. I'm really getting into a grove with Olenjack after I was able to get some good weapons and that all important power feat.

[Ryan Jensen --- NOG]

The hardest parts for us were the increased difficulty of some of the barriers and the fact that most people had the wrong type of weapons for use against the henchmen. I have run this three times now, and it came down to the last few turns each time. Also strangely owlbeartross has shown up in all three games... he must love coral islands.

Masterwork tools has been the MVP card in this scenario.

[zeroth_hour]

This didn't give too much trouble for us. But we had 2 casters and 2 other characters with Survival.

Once again, we managed to get a 1st round villain encounter. I'm trying to reconcile the "simpleness" of the scenario - like pluvia, it actually didn't come into play much for us either. The barriers were a problem (Our team makeup isn't the best at barrier busting) but we do have a Rogue whose job is to bust barriers.

So yeah, Villain, 1 Botfly Swarm (thoroughly defeated with an attack spell), Villain (funnel Villain to single location), Villain (temp close rest of locations).

Didn't expect to get good loot. Didn't really care, most of our decks are pretty solid at this point so the only thing left are Weapon 1s, and soon, 2s.

[Theryon Stormrune]

A couple of our regulars couldn't make it last night so it was just Harsk and Kyra. The limited crew was probably a bonus since there were only 4 locations and we decided to Pinnacle Atoll as the last location. We explored together which also helped.

Started at the swamp and were able to plow through that without much problem. Second to last (card) was a Botfly and Kyra happened upon it. Her survival roll dispatched them but she didn't close the location. But the handy ranger did on the next turn.

Then onto the swamp. Not much problem there as well. Kyra again encountered the Botflies about two thirds of the way down the deck. And again, dispatched. This time no problem with closure.

Onto Tempest Cay and this time the Botflies showed up earlier for Kyra once more! Each time she used a blessing to help her with her wisdom/survival check. And another closure handled. We got moved to the only open location left.

So our choice to save the atoll to the last we a good one. Harsk used his Spyglass to peak at the top two cards. I moved the monster to the top and the item (potion) next. Rolled a 2 on the d12 ... whew ... no dragon turtle. Explored and encountered Dire Rats ... surprise (not!). With his trusty Returning Throwing Axe in hand as well as Bracers of Archery that were acquired earlier, he was already +7 and decimated the rats ... not to return.

Still no dragon turtle sightings. We knew that a potion was next but Kyra couldn't make the Int roll. Our hands were both without blessings and Harsk was a little worried about that. Flip the location deck and there was the brood Queen. She told Harsk to go play with The Whale first.

+3 Ranged, +1 Dexterity, Returning Throwing Axe +1, Archer's Bracers +2 ... and throw in a Dagger as well. One dead Whale. Harsk tossed his Thieves Tools that he acquired that were damaged after the battle. Kyra shrugged it off just by showing her armor. This time, the ranger decides he'll throw the axe and let it sink in for the extra damage plus his other dagger. One dead Queen.

It was relatively easy with the two characters. Kyra with her new weapon proficiency allowed her better use of swords. Plus her ability adds Magic to her swords! That helped with the ghost earlier. She encountered all the Botfly henchmen and we were able to throw blessings on those checks plus blessing for closures where applicable. The Whale and the Queen were not much of a challenge with Harsk ready for hunting.

An Ally upgrade (reward) for Kyra but no deck upgrade.
An Item reward AND upgrade for Harsk. Masterwork Tools and Archer's Bracers and he's a happy ranger.

[Ron Lundeen]

We're replaying Chapter 1 to get a friend of ours into the game. I wanted to post here just to say RIP Arabundi...

So Radillo, Siwar, Valendron, and Arabundi teamed up for this one. (Arabundi is me, and, no, I don't know why a mage-hating ranger has teamed up with three arcane casters!)

We played Nature's Wrath once that evening, and got pretty well hammered by it. We'd hit a lot of hard barriers at the Fringes of the Eye; Siwar thought she could close those barriers quickly (with her Diplomacy-to-close-barriers rule, and a Potion of Glibness to boot), but we kept hitting deck-crippling barriers like the Harpoon Trap and Drowning Spikes. We hardly met any other henchmen in the other locations, and when time ran out we still had 3 locations open and no idea where the Brinebrood Queen had run off to.

So we played it again. This time things went much better! Despite shuffling Hirgy into Pinnacle Atoll, and encountering him once, that location closed quickly. The Fringes of the Eye that had given us such trouble the first time around also went quickly. We'd ended with only the Jungle (*always* last or second-to-last if possible!) and the Sea Caves left. We didn't think we'd have trouble at either--even the Sea Caves with its check-at-the-start-of-your-turn-or-bury-a-card rule. Keep in mind we have the Valendron Bus, which ferries us all away from a dangerous location at the end of his turn. Plenty of time on the blessing deck, and victory in sight.

So my Arabundi had taken a beating and used his cures to heal others. No problem, though, as I still had 6 cards left in my deck, so I could survive a total hand wipe if necessary. I had only two cards in hand, having helped out others with blessings and the "crossbow shot from afar" to aid combat checks. Off to the Sea Caves, where I found--a Botfly Swarm! My only two cards were two piercing weapons, neither of which can be used at all against the swarm. Everyone else was out of blessings and Foxes, so I couldn't succeed at the Wisdom 12 check at all. So, failure. No problem, though, I'd counted on that: I still had 6 cards in my deck.

Then I read that the Botfly Swarms cause you to discard the top card of your deck if you fail--and then I couldn't draw up to 6.

RIP, Arabundi, you're in a happier place now away from all those mages...

[James McKendrew]

This was a LITTLE more comfortable, completed with two blessings to spare. Each Grazzle (with his new power feat that allows him to shuffle when he auto-recharges a spell), Merisiel, and Brielle got a whack at the Brinebrood queen. In the end, Merisiel ended up at Tempest Cay, closing with deft manipulations of her Emerald of Dexterity, while Grazzle held down the Mangrove Swamp, clearing Brielle to take a crowbar to The Brinebrood Queen and her buddy the Whale.

Brielle was nervous at first, since she only had slashing and piercing weapons, which aren't much good against Botfly Swarms, but then she remembered, the Crowbars, Mattocks, Caltrop Beads, and Rage Totems have no such traits. Apparently, you can beat Botflies to dath individually with a Caltrop Bead...

Merisiel managed to clear the Pinnacle Atoll without running into Hirgenzosk, then corner the Brinebrood Queen in the Jungle.

Best use of a potion (which nobody in games I play likes to take), Brielle cleared the Sea Caves in two turns: She moved there on the first, dodging the Con/Fort check, then banished her Potion of Fortitude to succeed on the second turn, where she pounded the Botfly Swarm and took a crowbar (she's been feeling a little medieval lately) to the Sea Drake for the close.