Mirrored Moon Encounter I

[Shade325]

Question on encounter I of Mirrored Moon.

This is the encounter with the Cyclops. The Start of Section I says its a High 9 (difficulty High level 9.) High equals 80xp to spend on monsters. I'm calculating the encounter has 145xp.

Elite Cyclop (level 6, party -3): 15xp * 9 = 135xp
Smilodon (level 5, party -4): 10xp * 1 = 10xp

Add it together and get 145xp. That seems way off. Is this an encounter the PCs aren't supposed to fight but rather negotiate?

Better yet how is this a High 9 encounter. What is the design intent here. Help appreciated... especially as I have 5 players and need to adjust.

[DM Livgin]

I assumed that because all the enemies are significantly lower level than the PCs, they were just admitting that the Encounter Calculator doesn't work at that scale.

Or you can run it so that the hall bottlenecks the cyclops' so that the group only fights a handful at a time. This seems more likely to me, the terrain makes it easier for the party.

I added major earth elementals (20 xp) as the 5-6 PC adjustment. I decided to not worry about their math and just add an enemy or two.

[Greyblade23]

Although this chapter is designed to test the one-encounter-per-day dynamic, it also penalizes murder hobo behavior.

PCs need a combined total of 4 ally or research points. Research points are few and far between: there are only 2 areas that have them, K and M (the final battleground). Ally points are easier to get, but there are still only 4 of them: the Cyclops, the Gnomes, the Dryad, and the Fire Giant.

PCs can (and should) parley with any humanoid creatures they meet rather than fight them. For example, if the party agree to kill the dragon that's been fire-bombing them, they'll agree to help you in the final battle.

If the party doesn't recruit enough allies, the final battle becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to win. Our group recruited all of the possible allies, and the final encounter was relatively easy for as a result.

[pauljathome]

Greyblade23 wrote:

Ally points are easier to get, but there are still only 4 of them: the Cyclops, the Gnomes, the Dryad, and the Fire Giant.

More than 4 available.

ally points:

Tulaeth - 2
Gnomes - 2
Cyclopes - 2
Rocs - 1
Giant - 1

My group never even met the gnomes, ignored the Rocs (the druid insisted :-)) and still had more than enough Ally points