Re: The True Threat
Thus endeth the threats in Kobold Hall. Thanks for the compliments, and thank you for playing.
Assuming you show Devlin d'Denieth the bone mask and return the dragon skin to Goldcap, you have earned 1143 XP each and reached level 2.
From the start of the market scene to the end of the fight with the dragon was 158 days. At that rate, taking the characters to level 30 would take about 12 and a half years. I don't see that happening, but if any of you are interested, I'd like to continue this game with you. It would continue to be based in Sharn and my intent would be to run situations in which the characters remain in Sharn and help keep its collection of points-of-light from dimming too much, both by their own efforts to improve their own status and by dedicated efforts on behalf of the people and organizations of the city.
I think Sharn is big enough to hide threats that are even physically larger and more destructive than the dragon you fought, but given my preference for challenges that aren't just kill-or-be-killed fights, I'd probably have the focus be heavily on objectives the party is trying to achieve, for themselves or others. These would be things like the object and information gathering you just did, or things like sabotaging, escorting, or delivering, or taking or or protecting a person or thing, except with the goal of the opposition being not to kill the party (necessarily) but to keep the party from accomplishing their goal. Or, the goal of the PCs might be to keep someone from accomplishing one of those kinds of goals, which again might be easier to accomplish without zeroing out the opposition's HP. I would plan to make liberal use of skill challenges that happen concurrently with each other or with combat or both and generally have some kind of time limit.
I'm not against the kinds of fights we all just went through, but I just usually like there to be a reason someone is willing to die (or put themselves in a position to die) on the character's swords, and I'd rather it not always be because they weren't aware of the PC's existence or capabilities.
My hope would be that we could reduce the number of combat "typical" encounters per level to something like 3. This is not because I don't like combat, but because it tends to represent the largest expenditure of time for the amount of XP it generates.
Anyway, no pressure. If this is all we play, it was well worth the time. Thanks for trying no-map play, and bearing with me through various errors and confusions. Whether you'd like to continue this game, or game with me again under some other circumstances, please let me know.