Shadowfell session #3 – The Waterfall Battle
We started in the middle of combat, outside the Kobold lair. The players easily slipped back into the encounter. I took some time to talk tactics, especially combat advantage and flanking. Knowing the big fight coming I wanted to give them every bit of help in playing the game in order to keep me from having to deal with a TPK. We had a new player tonight, a dwarf ranger, Vita du Eldebjarg.
He leapt out of the woods, killing two minions immediately. The players made short work of the kobolds, and they knew it. A slinger began to move to the lair to alert his cohorts. Calon Lan (the dragonborn warlord) ran to the kobold and grabbed the kobold. (I like the grab rules, I know that Wotc made a big deal of simplifying them, I don’t know how bad they were before, but it was easier than I feared it’d be.)
Vita then runs of into the woods, as the other characters dispatch the remain kobolds. The encounter ends, the characters grabbed the dwarf, and began asking questions. “Who are you?” “Why are you following us?”
At first Vita refused to answer the group. As the group took a more friendly approach, he reveals that there is someone in the lair that he must kill.
They send their rouge, Felix to gather intelligence, before launching their attack. With a fair amount of luck, she was able to get enough information to formulate a plan. The ranger and rouge will wait by the waterfall entrance, while the main force makes an assault on the west entrance.
Shortly after the fight begins, we start running out of time. The wizard dropped his flaming sphere, and used it to great effect to scour some minions. The skirmishers are harrassing the rouge and ranger, who entered the lair as the guards ran to attack the main force.
We ran out of time as the second eve of kobolds became ready, so we took pictures of the map, and called it a night.
My thoughts.
This session went great. Liam, who is playing Vita, had me nervous, as him playing his concept could easily become a fun-spoiler for the rest of the group. It seems that that’s not the direction that Vita is going in, and it should be awesome. (I’d love to share it, but I need to have a discussion with the players regarding PC vs. Player knowlege). In fact, many of the players have begun to develop some interesting backstories. The setting is startig to write itself, thanks to the players.
I’m having trouble with the session format. In a 2 hour slot, there seems to be enough time for a combat, and a small amount of roleplay, I think thy there needs to be a bit more time to have the narrative not feel disjointed.
School’s going on spring break, and we’re not sure yet if we want to have a Skype session, or just miss the session.
I’ll keep you posted.
