Ye Olde Inn

by **lestodante** » Saturday October 19th, 2019 6:32am

I was thinking the Wizard could kill a lot of monsters in this way with Fire of Wrath. The Wizard will just stay inside the temple while other heroes will go wandering through the dungeon; each time they discover some monsters the Wizard will attack one from the Temple casting Fire of Wrath ("whenever he is on the board") and on the next turn he will restore the spell by meditation. :twisted:

I guess Spell Ring is not allowed here since it is an US artefact and also I guess the meditation will not restore the spell stored in the ring.

Thanks for the door Anderas!

Dante, your fire of wrath suggestion is pretty evil. Whilst it is very “gamey”, I would probably allow it as an EWP. The Wizard would only be able to cast it every other turn. Also, as he gets further and further away from the other Heroes he won’t be able to use any of the other spells. I would laugh so hard if I managed to kill his buddies whilst he was too far away to carry out healing on them.

by **Davane** » Thursday December 10th, 2020 7:39am

The two secret doors to the central room are pretty important, tactically. The two DW in the corridor are best served as crossbowmen, as there are supposed to be pits in front of them. The secret doors allow the Heroes to attack the DW without dealing with the pits, but if the Heroes deal with the pits and DW, they have multiple entrance points into the central room to assault the boss. I often allow the DW to open these secret doors, so that the DW crossbowmen can fire into the central room, should the Heroes simply decide to rush past them to deal with the main room. It's always a tough encounter, and very climactic for the quest.

by **Pancho** » Thursday December 10th, 2020 8:08am

Davane, it sounds like you might have played through the Dark Company a few times.
If so, do you have any thoughts on the difficulty of the adventure overall, and how my redrawing of it might affect things? Apologies but you might have to read through the whole thread to answer.

by **Davane** » Friday December 11th, 2020 2:54pm

Pancho wrote:Davane, it sounds like you might have played through the Dark Company a few times.
If so, do you have any thoughts on the difficulty of the adventure overall, and how my redrawing of it might affect things? Apologies but you might have to read through the whole thread to answer.

From what I can see, your redrawings don't seem to affect the difficulty too much, and give the adventure some extra direction that the original doesn't.

I've not really played the Dark Company that much, but I have set it up for play on Roll20 recently. Not being limited by physical components, I was able to think tactically about how the DWs would be placed, and there are a few places where the EW should put crossbowmen to lure the Heroes into traps, and in front of the central room with the boss is one of them. Plus, using Roll20 allowed me to go with the 4 board version, so you can see it in it's glory.

The original already has a room with the crossbowmen/pit trap combo, and it makes sense that the DWs would use this more than once if they can, since they are on the defensive in this mission. As I said, it makes sense that they would know about the secret doors and make use of them so wherever the Heroes go, the crossbowmen will still be a nuisance that needs to be dealt with. If you really want to make the room a climactic battle, consider treating the DWs outside (whether crossbows or not, but I prefer crossbows) as sentries, so that if the Heroes don't rush into the central room, the DWs will open the doors and engage the Heroes, possibly keeping them separated and hard pressed.

When using DWs, you need to understand how the four types work. Crossbowmen are great for firing and luring heroes into traps. Halberdiers are grunts, but are good in formation, whilst Swordsmen are excellent tanks. Finally, Scouts are fast, light units, so they are great for running away from, and drawing Heroes into ambushes, or for surrounding and cutting off Heroes from the rest of the group. You can make the encounters with the DWs unique just by choosing what weapons they are armed with, and using the tactical advantages of the room(s).

You have changed some of these encounters by changing the layout, but the EW should be able to utilise the DWs in the best way by bearing these concepts in mind. DWs are flexible, and tactical, and the EW use this to his best advantage.