Carnival of Tears This is a playtest review. We played through this adventure in two five hour session (including nachos, salsa, cookies, sirup, tea & coffee). Half of the players used the pregen characters, the other two created their own.
The atmosphere was interesting with sad music being played by the grigs. I started playing The Black Rider by Tom Waits in the background when we reached that point.
Not all encounters are necessary. Players can easily avoid some encounters if they they feel that they have to conserve their resources.
The pregen characters all have something useful against the predominant creature type without being obviously optimized. That makes the entire thing believable and feels very organic.
The DM (me) liked the relatively simple encounters. Each one was a challenge for the players and yet easy to run.
The last foe has SR but I ignored it. The last foe also has *Freedom of Movement* and our barbarian was specialized in grappling. I ignored that, too. I guess that really depends on the party on how it has been going until now.
The nymph encounter was bad. I gave a hint about people clawing at the eyes and groaning with pleasure, asked for initiative rolls, the bard NPC won, failed his save, and turned blind. I played it as an always on ability, not as a gaze attack. I was happy that this didn’t happen to a PC, but it was bad news for the party’s strongest ally with little warning. I guess I was glad that the NPC wasn’t going to steal anybody’s show. But I should have provided better warning. A suggested solution in the book would have been great, too. Example: “The cleric of X in the temple of Y can help you. Getting help will waste two hours. Do you want to do it?” The NPC being blind, I had him roll Listen checks to pinpoint foes: DC 20 for foes talking or casting spells, DC 15 for foes fighting. As the NPC isn’t very good at listening, this basically reduced him to *Haste* and singing. Not too hot.
One player felt that the foes were incredibly tough with all the extra damage they were causing and their poisons, but another player felt that those made interesting encounters.
The quickling would have been unbeatable if it hadn’t been for one of the players who had bought an anchor feather token and managed a ranged touch attack on the quickling. The anchor knocked the quickling down and so he ended up prone next to the character who had thrown it. Getting up provokes an attack of opportunity. The character in question was the fighter who had specialized in grappling. Awesome!
On two occasions my players decided to retreat and cut down a tent instead of fighting inside. A little rule to handle that would have been nice. I said that the big tent required four standard actions to cut with a blade and a smaller tent required three standard actions to cut down. Once the tent collapsed, it took people and monsters inside about three or four rounds to get out of the tent. So that worked pretty well after all.
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I really liked the atmosphere of the adventure. Not something I would necessarily want to run over a campaign, but for a one-shot it was perfect. The somewhat bitter ending (we did pretty well, only allowing ~250 deaths) left me a bit crestfallen, especially moments after I grappled the Cold Rider, killed him with one last twist of the armor spikes, and ripped off his helm! But clearly that was an important theme of the adventure, and like I said, I really liked the overall flavor.
The war of attrition was a bit tough, I think. If everyone’s character was optimized, it wouldn’t be so bad, and thank the gods the pregen cleric had a *wand of cure moderate wounds*. As the grappling barbarian, I ended up being healed for 170 points of damage over the course of the adventure (3.5 times my hit points, hehe). Wands were not helpful, they were necessary.
The possibility of permanent blindness and the persistent ability damage of the poison magnifies the fatigue the party must endure over the course of the adventure. I think if we had found more clever and non-combat ways of solving problems, we would not have been in nearly as bad a shape. It was unclear to me how many options were specifically called out in the text, or how much of it would have relied on us convincing the DM to let us try something. In any case, we solved most situations by violence (which suited my barbarian fine).
SR on the Cold Rider is lame, and I am happy Alex decided not to use it. It already has very good Reflex and Will saves, the casters at this point have only a few spells left, and then you are going to give them an automatic 45% of failing outright? But this goes to the deeper problem with SR. *Freedom of movement* would have nerfed my character, but I think that might have been ok; I probably would have grappled the horse, at least to immobilize the Rider (unless he decided to dismount), and being inside the threatened area of his glaive, I might actually have survived 😄
Overall, I liked it, but more as a one-shot than having much potential as part of an ongoing campaign.
Rating: 70% (recommended)
– Adrian 2008-03-31 07:34 UTC
