My party and I are a bit behind the playtest due to getting a late start and our bi-weekly schedule. We're scheduled to start Ch. 2, In Pale Mountains Shadow, this upcoming weekend and I have a few questions for the other GM's on here that have already ran this chapter.
*The Camels*
Has a consensus formed around the mechanics of the party riding these creatures? As written in the adventure there is no apparent downside, and even with multiple critical failures the party would still reach B1 in 3.5 days. Much faster than the 5 days the adventure states a "typical party" will take.
B1 - The Gnarled Foothills
The only notes from the adventure state the hyenas find the PCs if they aren't stealthing or if the PC's Stealth checks are less than the hyena's perception DC.
1) Have you ran the "pre-fight" in Encounter Mode, thereby allowing the players to have "meta"-knowledge that a fight is imminent, or did you run everything in Exploration mode?
2) What if they all beat the Perception DC? Does the party simply sneak through with no combat?
3) Do the hyenas get an extra action if the PCs don't detect them (based on the pg. 330 rules on "pre-buffing" before a fight if they "have a drop on their foes")?
B2 - Sand Flats
1) There are no notes in the adventure on whether the party's speed will cause them to walk right into the quicksand. However, pg. 331's text on the "Searching" tactic implies that they likely wouldn't see the hazard in time otherwise. Comments?
2) Has anyone allowed PC's to bypass the entire encounter based on Searching/Stealthing tactics? Would you have the Ankhrav attack if the party attempted to keep a wide berth of the quicksand?
B3 - Gnoll Camp
1) How many parties actually engaged here? It seems like the rules push the party towards fleeing rather than fighting.
B4 - A Treacherous Climb
1) Is the first Survival check free or does it also cost 4 hours (meaning the PCs could simply choose the "hard" path with no check)?
2) As written it appears the party simply bypasses the encounter if they all choose the "Sneaking" tactic. What have people employed to prevent this easy-button from being used?
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Camels - My party chose to ride these all the way to B1, due to a party reached the foothills in about 3.5 days like you said as your worse case scenario due to only succeeding at 1 check for their entire ride(Bad luck).
B1- My players chose to not be stealth for the first hour of their movement through difficult terrain, so they were ambushed by the Hyenas but spotted them. They also chose to stealth after this point, fearing gnoll scouts(passed their knowledge checks).
1) I kept them in exploration mode until combat broke out.
2) If my party was sneaking and they all beat the perception DC of the Hyenas I would have let them sneak past if they so desired.
3) I wouldn't play it like this personally unless there was something the hyenas needed to do before combat broke out. If you were interested, it might be worth considering to allow them to be positioned more favorably(i.e. snuck around behind the party, ect) but I'd probably never let it break down into free attacks.
B2- Once the party hit the sand flats, they decided stealth wouldn't benefit them as much since the terrain was so open. They instead chose to move forward and scan for trouble.(I treated this like search) They spotted the Hazard and Identified the Ankhrav nest.
1) If they were not searching, I think they could technically 'walk into the quicksand.' without notice. This is basically a trade off for them 'going fast' I assume.
2) Mine totally did, wanted to save time and resources. I was pleasantly surprised that so many encounters in this particular adventure were able to be bypassed if they chose to.
B3- Group chose to swim the river and stealth through the gnoll camp as opposed to taking the extra time to go around.
1) Mine didn't, but they did take a slightly riskier approach that could have lead to combat.
B4- My group settled down and camped for the night after the gnoll camp(as sun was setting and they figured they would rather save the climb for the morning). They then chose to find an easier path as opposed to scaling the cliff face. They climbed out of stealth mode until they found the corpses and decided to take a more subtle approach from that point on.
1) I had this first check cost the characters 4 hours of time. It seemed like it was in the spirit of the adventure to cost time(since that is an important resource). Not totally sure if that is correct or not, but that is how I would run it every time.
2)I had the party roll their stealth against the manticore's perception DC. Since I assumed it was passively looking for things to ambush as it glided around, this seemed to best represent how this worked without an 'easy button'.
Camels - My party chose to ride these all the way to B1, due to a party reached the foothills in about 3.5 days like you said as your worse case scenario due to only succeeding at 1 check for their entire ride(Bad luck).
This is my fear, but I feel as it's a playtest I'll need to allow it. Just seems like it will really dampen the effect of "time pressure" that the adventure is going for.
B1- My players chose to not be stealth for the first hour of their movement through difficult terrain, so they were ambushed by the Hyenas but spotted them. They also chose to stealth after this point, fearing gnoll scouts(passed their knowledge checks).
Can you expand on how you adjudicated this? Did the hyena "ambush" simply mean they used Stealth for initiative?
3) I wouldn't play it like this personally unless there was something the hyenas needed to do before combat broke out. If you were interested, it might be worth considering to allow them to be positioned more favorably(i.e. snuck around behind the party, ect) but I'd probably never let it break down into free attacks.
I GM for a table of...let's call them tactical optimizers. They will hunt for advantages such as an "extra-action" pre-buff at all times, and I've learned it's best to simply turn the tables sometimes. This is perhaps a table-specific call though so YMMV.
2)I had the party roll their stealth against the manticore's perception DC. Since I assumed it was passively looking for things to ambush as it glided around, this seemed to best represent how this worked without an 'easy button'.
This seems fair and I will likely follow suit, although I'm not positive this is what the adventure intends. This section could use some more clear writing in my opinion.
1. The camels speed the adventure up some, but it's still certainly plausible they can fail.
2. I gave PCs an excuse to stop by putting brambles in the middle of the trail as well as to the sides. Probably not what the adventure says, but I wasn't 100% sure, and it made my players paranoid enough to investigate the encounter, which is what I was going for there. They do succeed on the knowledge checks after they kill them, and they do lose a camel (which makes the shorter people share one).
Remember that there is no surprise round. As soon as the players or an NPC make an action (such as attack), initiative is rolled, no bonus actions or anything.
3. I disliked the sand trap because it made the encounter obvious. However, due to godlike Survival and Perception rolls on both sides, the players sidestep the quicksand, but are tracked down by the Ankhrav.
4. Our players actually intimidated the gnolls into a parley, but the rules actually call for a combat. Mr. Seifter said that it is a fair avenue to explore and run, so if your players are up to it, let them try and see what happens!
5. The rule is that the players need to make a survival check to avoid making athletics checks and waste more time. Because my party parlayed with the gnolls, they were shown the correct path without issue.
As for the Stealth check, it's probably an oversight, or it could be in relation to the Manticore using Stealth instead of Perception for Initiative, signaling that the Manticore isn't actively looking for prey. Most others simply recommended a DC 10 + Stealth of Manticore check to bypass, but that seems extremely hard if even just one player fails.
B1- My players chose to not be stealth for the first hour of their movement through difficult terrain, so they were ambushed by the Hyenas but spotted them. They also chose to stealth after this point, fearing gnoll scouts(passed their knowledge checks).Can you expand on how you adjudicated this? Did the hyena "ambush" simply mean they used Stealth for initiative?
Sure thing, in our case, our Barbarian was out front 'hacking' his way through the underbrush so I assumed there was basically no chance for the Hyena pack to not take notice of them. Also the party wasn't making any attempts to be extra observant(they were basically trying to make as much progress as possible to get clear of the difficult terrain).
As soon as it came time to start the combat, I rolled the stealth for the Hyenas, then checked against the PC's Perception + 10 DC. Two of the Hyena's failed said check, so I put down their tokens and proceeded to have the PC's roll perception and started combat as normal.
If I would have theoretically beat all the PC's perception, I would have probably had the encounter begin closer and in the midst of the back lines as the Hyena's jumped out to attack.
Also, I'm not completely sure I handled this correctly but I felt like it could work well for ambush scenarios. The Hyenas that were noticed by the PC, I made their tokens visible, where-as the one who was not noticed, I kept their token hidden at the start of combat.
If someone noticed them, it seemed like a good chance to use the seek and point out type of actions.
Also, just a side note/bonus tip. I've been struggling to remember to do secret rolls fairly frequently for my table. But the end of this adventure was a really great chance for me to use them with the elemental floor puzzle.
I had two separate players attempting to solve the 'puzzle' at the end of the adventure. I was able to use that as an interesting chance to pit them against each other and other times have them come to a consensus about which steps they needed to take next(i.e. lining up the elemental effects to open up the door).
That might just be my table though as my players seemed to appreciate the overall back and forth of trying to solve it.