TOPIC: Overall Review of the rooms for V4A

Room 1 - First time through my reaction was that the AC was insanely high and the fact that the first 3 spells had no effect was highly annoying. It was also annoying that he had a tendency to always attack the elf wizard. Part of doing multiple runs is that you get to adjust your strategy and tweak your build as you continue. Since I equip the Cabal set, my first action is to cast my two weakest spells and don't waste time doing any skill checks. That takes out 2/3 of the ioun stone. On Sunday I boosted my retribution damage just to take some revenge for being targeted so much. But then I wasn't targeted on Sunday. Go figure. So, as time went on, I had less of a problem with this room. I just thought it was pretty tough for room 1.

Room 2 - Sort of a straight forward puzzle. Most groups got it pretty quickly. Some were distracted by the misspellings in the scroll, but otherwise it was very solvable and the NPC created some fun interactions. I will say you had to move fairly quickly, although by the 11th time I saw this I could recite the answer from memory. It was fun enough. I was fine with it.

Room 3 - These little guys were tough, but a well organized group could put them down pretty quickly. After I learned that every other combat was mitigating some or all of my spell damage, this is the room where I really unloaded. I started doing 2 fireballs in round one and toward the later runs we were able to take them out in one round. Early on, these guys also seemed to target the elf wizard. In later runs we were always able to at least take out one or two out in round 1 and dwarf fighter taunting kept them off my back. It seems like I just don't run with enough paladins these days. I liked that organized groups that spread out their damage could take them down more quickly. Sometimes everyone would pile onto one monster until it was dead, which then wasted some of my AOE spell damage. There is logic from a fighter standpoint to doing that, but if you coordinate with your spellcasters, you can maximize the effectiveness of your damage. All in all, I really did like this room.

Room 4 - I really like the look of this room. The first and second time through this room it was a lot of fun and required a group effort to memorize all of the runes. I agree, someone with a screen grab could ruin this. Although, by the 11th time I ran this I had 75% of it memorized by myself. The last four times we ran this we solved it without even looking at the scroll once. I'm hoping this becomes the optional room in V4b. Either that, or have 2 or 3 different scrolls with different order of runes. It will mess up the memorization and any group that doesn't bother looking at the scroll may take unexpected damage. I wonder how hard that would be to pull off? The pattern could be the same based on DM all weekend so the DMs don't need to worry about it, but if you get a different DM, you might have a different sequence. Just a suggestion.

Room 5 - This was a fun combat and I loved the effort that went into the monster's look. But it was pretty straight-forward and I think it was the one combat (maybe along with room 1), that could be changed in V4c. I think rooms 3, 6 and 7 were referenced in the opening video and several things would need to be changed to the narrative to pull them. Again, I noted that spell damage was significantly mitigated, but I think that might have been true for all damage.

Room 6
Puzzle - It took me 5 tries and then my brain finally clicked and figured it out (with a lot of inspiration from others in the group). I think this is a great puzzle, but once you figure it out the room does become a little boring. I saw this room enough that I can still recite the plaques and the order in which they are placed. I'm really glad this was the optional room.

Combat - Wow! This was an insane combat, but after running it a few times I can appreciate the way it was designed. She's our friend and she's powerful. I have no issue with her doing massive damage if you try to attack her. There's almost a puzzle element to understanding that that is not the approach you're supposed to take. Subdual seemed a little tough, but I was in one group that was successful enough that we subdued her in round 1 (that was on nightmare level). I really loved that this room pushed you to try tokens and approaches that were seldom used in the past. It took several tries, but we figured those out. Once you know those approaches, the room becomes very doable to higher level groups. I only ran at normal level once and they did the puzzle option. So I hope this room was scaled back sufficiently at normal level. Once again, it was another room where damage spellcasting was really untenable. But then again, you're really not supposed to want to kill her.

Room 7 - A fitting combat for the final room. It's too bad 2021 preorders were not out by now, because Stone to Flesh scrolls were in demand. More experienced groups normally had sufficient tokens to unpetrify their comrades, so this really wasn't taking a lot of people out. Also, many players I ran with had high enough save totals and made sure to equip Questor's so failing the save wasn't even possible. One final time, spell damage to the monster was being partially mitigated. I guess this is the penalty wizards pay for constantly asking to do more damage, 4 of the 5 combat rooms partially or totally mitigated that damage.

Damage was reduced for all attacks, to my knowledge, in multiple rooms. My room 7 damage was insanely low because I didn't have the type to hit the vulnerability.

If a player gets turned to stone but has a Stone to Flesh Scroll, can anther player use it to resurrect them, or does the scroll get turned to stone as well, and is therefore useless? I had two DMS rule both ways this weekend.

I liked the acid damaged the "statues" - made sense!