Episode 2

Episode 2:

The Party headed back to town after hearing Collins request that they return (this was from the magic mouth scroll).  When they arrived in town they found that Ninian, the towns huntmaster, had raised undead in the graveyard and was preparing laying siege to the rest of the town from within.  This was around a CR5 encounter- it was honestly pretty close to a CR6, which I think is fine for a 6 person party of 2nd level.  I can clearly see that I am going to need to add in my maps for these things, because this stuff is hard to describe without map aid.

Ninian is a 4th level Ranger, there are a handful of skeletons, super weak (again 1 hp minion style), and 2 zombies, and 3 megazombies

I like to break my bigger fights into 3 pieces,  opening, twist, BIGGER TWIST.
In this case I have 4 skeletons and 2 zombies on the field when the players enter.  The zombies are the meat shields and the skeletons are archers.  easy so far.  3 rounds in Ninnian pops out on top of a crypt and begins lobbing arrows down on the party.  As they get into melee range Ninian pops a scroll and 3 mega zombies show up.  These are regular zombies in most every regard save they have too many HP.
I knew this was going to be the only encounter they faced that day so I wanted to push them to their limit on this fight.  I am not a big fan of random encounters- I think it slows down the game and it makes the designed encounters too hard (or too easy if they happen to grab a level between sessions).  I really like to control the pace of the game, so eliminating random encounters is a nice way to do that.  I don't tell my players I eliminate them- I still roll the dice and have them run into a "random" encounter sometimes.

Ninian is on top of the crypt, S=Skeleton, Z=zombie, MZ= MEGAzombie

So after this they found a letter that told them (cue scary and surprising music!) that Ninian is working for Belfast.

So with their new levels and a couple magic items under their belts they headed back to the dungeon.  I stole a trap from somebody at this point, but I really liked it.  Its a statue with a big sword and a couple dragons that push you into the sword guy.  Pissed off one of my more experienced players- he called it "horseshit, no way you can get around that without getting hurt!"  I almost agreed.... except they charged right into the damn thing with little caution.  The rogue could have disabled it.... maybe, but I still loved it.

In the next room they had a pretty cut and dry encounter with some death cultists and some zombies.  no big deal.  At this point the Sam began using what has become a staple of this party.  He enlarged Urz and Kong.  So now we have two large fighters roaming the map and doing lots of damage.

Well they captured a death cultist (who I named Giles on the spot) and Damone, the bard charmed the fool. So he spilled his guts and then they tied him up and prepared to rest, since the next day they would be fighting their first real BBEG, Belfast.  I also let them pop another level.

Until next time!
-Ubercroz