Review of our first Epic D&D Game

4th edition Dungeons and Dragons is still fairly new, in fact so much so my groups normal campaign is only at level 10 right now. This is with 120 hours of game play too, so all of us are really enjoying ourselves.

This weekend we decided to play 21st level characters in a one shot night using the 4th Edition D&D Supplement "Dungeon Delve". I ran the 21st level adventure in there.

The adventure itself was fun, however i highly recommend not adding more encounters if this is a one night game. I made this mistake and added the ghost encounter the book suggested. This encounter was roughly two hours log.

The party consisted of a Avenger, Ranger, Warlord, Sorcerer, and a Fighter. I felt the party was a bit squishy as they took massive amounts of damage. On the upside with this party build they dished out the damage.

The first encounter with the ghosts took a while because the ghosts were only taking half damage and constantly controlling the party members. This encounter lasted about 8 rounds, two ours long.

Dave -
The first encounter was not much fun. Mostly because there was way too many of them and the available area vs. monsters really limited movement. Also, I think since there where so many non-minions to kill it took a frighteningly long time to continue. I think I looked up and saw it was after 11:30 (closer to 12:00).

The second encounter was the entrance to the building with some demons and minotaurs. The tactics the book suggested seemed solid, however the sorcerer teleported the minotaurs in a tight group where the fighter was able to get to the center of and burst constantly. Minotaurs were dropping quickly and i forgot about most of their on death attacks, not that this seemed to matter. The warlord really shined in this encounter giving all players +8 to their initiative really let the party go first and control the fight. The encounter lasted maybe 45 minutes and totaling 3 rounds.

The player review at this point was mixed, the ghosts seemed to draw things out, and then the next encounter was extremely quick. Nothing at this point really seemed epic in nature it was still just a dungeon crawl, the only epic part was the background story.

On encounter three the players seemed a bit confused about the area created by the statues, however the party again thanks to the extremely high initiative even for epic was able to charge in and destroy the Rashaka-Khan noble. The two Rashaka-Khan destroyers entered melee and really didn't bring much to the fight. However the fighter and the astral stalker went toe to toe, the astral stalker only went on round 2 for the invisible attack, but was dead by round 3.

Jared
Not to hot, not to cold.

The skill challenge itself was confusing, no one fully understand what they needed to do, and from a DM point of view, i think they needed to explain things a bit more. IE the arcane roll would tell the party they need to use endurance to power the teleporter. It could have also been lack of sleep, at this point it was around 1:30 in the morning

Once the party finally made its way through the skill challenge and onto the final encounter. As a DM i enjoyed the core encounter; the Players felt a great challenge fighting these two creatures. The area allowed for some neat combat maneuvers. However once the reaper dropped other players began fighting for the amulet, the marut was still walking around while the infighting went on. The sorcerer escaped invisibility, and the avenger left with the eye.

Deryk -
the end fight i thought was pretty challenging, just speaking of the bosses.
But again, I think perhaps maybe if this was more than a one night deal the role playing/story behind the adventure would have been more in depth and better justified for how things ended.

Though the player left players upset, it actually opened up an idea for a great adventure since the sorcerer was.

Over all most people had a fun night, and are eager to see what higher levels have to offer.