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Characters: Pregens of Seelah, Meriesel, Kyra and Fumbus
Kids aged 11-13 and 1 adult player
Total Time: 5 hours
Prep: 1-2 hours
Finished in 1 session (3 days of game time)
Hero Points Awarded: 1
Times characters were reduced to 0 hp: 6
- Fumbus 4 times, Kyra 2
Characters Killed: 0
Encounter Overview: Fumbus had knowledge of many rooms and possible encounters, yet still fell victim to many of them.
Sewer Ooze - cake walk but did injure 3 players with the area acid damage
4 goblin warriors - they were able to sneak in close and Fumbus tried to talk to them. They attacked but Fumbus set some on fire with alchemical bombs, the enemy goblins tried to run but ended up running into the fungus room - setting off the spore cloud and explosion. More party damage, used some healing.
Vermin Den- Deadly encounter. Fumbus went below zero 3 times, Kyra once trying to help him. The centipedes swarmed Fumbus in the first round when he critically failed his bomb throw and it didn't go off, alerting the centipedes to his presence. After this encounter, the rest of the party's healing was used up.
Fungus Bloom - not encountered due to goblin warrior setting off the fungus accidentally.
Quasits - Fumbus went into the pool and retrieved the idol -HERO POINT (he was evil), gave it to the Paladin to smash and thus set off the encounter. First quasit went down quickly, due to critical hits. The second played invisible tag with the crew. Meriesel was not hit but couldn't do any damage either. Eventually, they grabbed the little guy while he was in centipede form and bashed him down.
Falling rock trap - Fumbus informed the party of the trap and they triggered it safely.
Goblin Headquarters - deadly encounter. Fumbus went down again twice and Kyra again once. The goblin pyro was deadly with burning hands, but less effective after that. The regular goblins ganged up on the "traitor" Fumbus and took him to Dying 3, he used a Hero Point to recover, only to go down again a few rounds later. The party was so beat up after this encounter they took 2 days to recover back in town and came back refreshed.
Skeleton - nuh-huh - no way. Skipped this encounter until they met the BigBadGuy.
Choking Sands - Religion check passed to recall a prayer to bypass the trap. The water from the fountain was also clear, so they went back and drank some just in case.
Befouled Shrine - Drakus and the (giant)rat [I couldn't find a dire rat entry while running] were relatively easy for a fully charged party. The rat was killed in the first round after charging from hiding. Drakus did some damage to Kyra and Seelah, but the two of them kept him busy and made him switch targets often.
Pharasma's Sanctum - they purified it without prompting from me but chose not to take the magical dagger out of respect. They also figured that they were not going to play these characters again until 9th level so why bother?
Drakus' Lair - no issues, used the key as expected without prompting and returned the stolen goods to the townsfolk without prompting...amazing! Informed Keleri of the Star and journal.
Overall, they had fun and are excited about trying new characters next week for their 4th level adventure. We just finished up a 2 year campaign with this group so 1st level characters were a challenge for them.
We had questions about opportunity attacks and spells per round (if you have actions left can you cast more than one spell?) We did lots of looking up rules as we went. A suggestion would be to put those rules expected to be used right in the adventure. "So you want to grab a creature here's what you roll..."
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I also played with three of my daughters - ages 13, 11, and 9.
Our party consisted of a Dwarf Barbarian (my character - I always try to play a 'dumb' character that can help in combat, but that makes no decisions for the party), Elven Rogue, Goblin Druid, and Human Paladin.
Since our Goblin friend (my 13yo daughter's character) had intel on most of the Ossuary, the party decided to completely ignore the room with the centipedes ("No reason to go in there! Methinks there are bugs too big to eat!"), and no one had any interest in touching the head/egg in the fountain, so we skipped that encounter as well. The fungus was completely uninteresting to everyone, and so they left it alone.
The party expertly handled all other encounters - even the skeleton one (Disrupt Undead is a REALLY powerful cantrip, we discovered!), until we got to the Drakus fight. His higher AC meant that he lasted a few rounds. And since my dumb Dwarf Barbarian charged over to fight him, it meant that he got three attacks per round on the Dwarf. The rat, of course, went down in one hit from our Rogue, but Drakus brought poor Froggy (the Barbarian) to 0.
The Death and Dying rules were rather frustrating. The amount of work it takes to figure out what the Fort Save DC is for stabilizing is kind of ridiculous. I'm very unhappy with the weird DC chart. Surely there has to be another way.
Anyway, I finally figured out the DC (or at least I think I did: 17?), and Froggy failed it repeatedly until I just spent his hero point and recovered that way.
All in all, the kids and I had a blast playing Part 1. And the Flip-Map was awesome!
Well, I didn't give them exhaustive knowledge of 75% of the dungeon. I did probably a lot like you did. For the centipede room, for example, I didn't say, "Six centipedes inside. Do not go!" Instead, I just told the goblin that no one really went in there, and that the goblins have heard weird sounds. I said pretty much nothing about the fungus, but it didn't interest them anyway. Maybe if there would have been a dead body with visible loot it would have enticed them to brave it. And I said absolutely nothing about the quasits. They just weren't interested.