DavesGaming

Finished up Dragonseye pretty easily, that went very well. The Ziggurat fight was won easily on the first try. I do always think of that as the defining fight of the mid-game. With Julya and Hastings both throwing Fireballs on the first round and Werner adding a Holy Smiting this was all over pretty fast. Funny, I hadn’t even been aware at the start that the cleric of Lathander would get Fireball as 3rd spell. Not only do a I use it a lot, but I’d say its made a big difference. Julya did hit 5th level well ahead of the mage getting the spell, so we’ve now had access to that for a while. Everything else in Dragonseye, including the epic fight against Yxi, went quickly.

From there we did Snowytoes Hamlet, that mod also has a couple potentially difficult fights in the Black Tar sub-quest. But this crew had no problems.

Then on to “The Hand”. The early levels of this were actually a little harder. Still not “difficult” per se, but it is much more of a bashing sort of combat and this team is not as strong on pure melee as others I’ve run. Victoria and Pyrite are plenty tough, but Werner and Julya are the next tier of melee types and that’s a big drop off. Don’t get me wrong, both are now 8th level clerics and can competently carry their weight (no more cracks about Julya’s lack of capability!), but they don’t hit hard like the top two do. One of the fights on level three against armored skeletons and such had the whole team involved in melee, Julya can protect Hastings and Geoffry far more ably now than at the start. She even took out two skeletons single handed, even though her only real bonus came from her +2 flail. Of course Hastings and Geoffry are also a lot more dangerous now themselves.