Saph's adventures with the Red Hand of Doom inspired me to start running it myself. My plan was to run it over the course of spring semester '09, and I already have a group lined up for that - but I got home for the holidays and realized that I really, really wanted to play. Besides, I thought it would be a good idea to give it a test-run before I ran it for real - I've been hyping this a lot for my school chums and I don't want to screw this one up. I'd like to journal the "real" run-through come spring, since I doubt that I'll have enough time to go through the entire module over the course of a month. Hell, I'd be impressed if we make it past Rhest.

With that in mind, I made some calls. I was planning on four players (number and type will fluctuate due to availability throughout this campaign) but due to an inopportune snowstorm, only two people made it. We decided to roll up four characters and have each play two, since we all really wanted to play. This isn't something that I like doing, but it was better than the alternative - hopefully, we won't have to do it again.

Needless to say, spoilers for the Red Hand of Doom abound, so proceed at your own risk.

The party so far (all level 5):
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Jason Schruder, human factotum with all feats going to Font of Inspiration. Sharing the skillmonkey role, and the strongest arcanist in the party, amusingly enough. With 20 HP, his ongoing survival is a bit of a concern.

Tyv Taika, human spellthief. The other arcanist and skillmonkey. With TWF, Craven, and two +1 shortswords (see below), he's a force to be reckoned with. There are enough casters among the Horde to make this interesting, IMHO.

Luan Phien, elven druid (shapeshifter variant). His spells haven't seen a whole lot of use, outside of healing, but I forsee a lot of good uses for his shifting. Can hold his own in combat, too, but has piss-poor AC.

Clutch, warforged fighter. Took Oversized TWF and Monkey Grip. When I told the player that this wouldn't let him wield two greatswords, he said that he knew, and that the intent was to switch off between two longswords and a large greatsword. I just shook my head and let him. Still a good tank, since he rolled insanely well for HP (62 at 5th level!) and took Adamatine Body.


The events of the evening:
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The party fought off the marauder ambush handily, immobilizing half the hobgoblins with Entangle and taking out the reinforcements with a flaming Web (I ruled that the road was deep enough for it to have "walls"). The fighter was particularly effective, shrugging off blows and dealing out massive damage by Power Attacking with his greatsword. They made it into Drellin's Ferry and accepted the mission from Norro Winston and Captain Soranna, and headed out into the Witchwood the next day after buying some supplies. They were attacked by warg riders on the road - not much of a challenge (and dear lord I hate mounted combat rules). After narrowly averting a fight with Jorr (the warforged thought the dogs were attacking, and picked one up by the scruff of the neck) they defused the situation and hired him along as a guide.

That's where we wrapped up the first session. It's been fun, but I'm looking forward to the battle of the keep, as it will hopefully provide them with a real challenge.


Observations so far:

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-Treasure is all over the board. After two combats, the party has two +1 shortswords, three sets of +1 banded mail, and more masterwork weapons than they know what to do with. Fortunately, they're not the kind of party to take everything they find in the hopes of selling it later, since if they were, they'd be SOL - I don't think there's enough cash in the Vale. Since character creation was rushed, they didn't get even close to WBL for starting equipment, but the characters in the spring campaign will. Seeing how much treasure there is so early on, I'm considering not doing this... although since most of the treasure is equipment that they won't be able to sell, how much of a problem is this really? And how exactly is the Horde managing to equip all these people with such expensive equipment? I guess I'm just worried about the power level being upset by an influx of treasure, but clearly the answer isn't to only give the Horde equipment not worth looting.

-I'm not sure whether or not random encounters are worth keeping. They add to verisimilitude, and (as Saph showed) can result in vast amounts of lulz, but I'm worried that they'll just bog everything down.

-Spell selections for NPC spellcasters are not what I would have chosen for them. It might be a lot of work to change them all, but it will probably be worth it.

-I love the attention to detail. We very nearly veered off on a sidequest to identify the bodies of the merchants in the abandoned farmhouse and return them to their families - next time, when something like this happens, I'll just let it roll.

-I keep forgetting to keep track of terrain modifiers. Since these will generally help the opponents more than the PCs, I should... not do that? Any suggestions on how to keep track of all this stuff in a big fight?

-I'm not yet sure how to handle social situations. I don't want to leave them up to a flat Diplomacy roll, and it seems silly that, for example, Norro would withhold any information about the Horde, or that Jorr wouldn't want to work with the PCs in clearing the goblins out of his forest. How much would it change things if I ditched all the diplomacy checks altogether and just played it by ear? The various states (indifferent, hostile, friendly) aren't really well defined anyway.

-Some of the threads between locations are a little weak. Norro sends them into the Witchwood to deal with the hobgoblins, but how is that supposed to lead them to Vraath Keep? They were headed there anyway (using the suggested adventure hook), but when the party entered the Witchwood, it was with two distinct goals - find the Keep, and find the hobgoblins. It seems a little too convenient that these happen to coincide. I just had Jorr tell them that he suspects that hobgoblins are occupying the Keep, which is a reasonable thing for him to know.

-I expect balancing encounters, power-wise, to be an ongoing challenge. I think this is more of an inherent problem with 3.5 than with the module, since the module does a decent job (with noted exceptions above) on its own. The party in the spring will consist of a batman-ish wizard, a rogue/swashbuckler, a scout, a favored soul, and a crusader, and those people know how to play, so... it will be interesting, to say the least.