# Return of the Burning Plague (Updated)



## Chris_Nightwing (Mar 4, 2008)

I know adventure-making has already been done, but why not? Here's my sequel to that wonderful 3E adventure, The Burning Plague. I hope the formatting turns out ok, and if you spot any errors or silliness, do let me know! I'm planning to test it in play this evening myself. Where I wasn't sure about a number or a format or such, I just made it up, so I encourage DMs to do the same should the need arise!

Edit: Updated version now uploaded, modified encounters after playtest and fixed some copy errors.

Edit 2: Added contact information and changed a skill check to reflect new information.


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## ltbaxter (Mar 4, 2008)

It's great to see adventures for 4e, even if kobolds are a key part of each one   

The only problem I'm seeing as I look through this is the difficulty / XP of several of the encounters. This is for a 1st lvl party of 4-6. You have one encounter at 550 XP (will be rough), another listed at 775 XP (ouch!) and unless I'm mistaken, a final encounter of 900 XP (!!!)  That will eat the party's lunch and I would fully expect a TPK. If that's what you're aiming for, fine, but if you're gauging difficulty from the black dragon solo - that's _supposed _to kill everyone unless the party gets very lucky.

More normal for 1st level would be 100XP per character in the party translates to a solid encounter that's challenging without using daily powers.

See how your own playtesting goes and adjust if needed...


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## Chris_Nightwing (Mar 4, 2008)

Yes I thought quite a bit about this. 100XP per character is the supposed recommendation, so 500XP for a standard party. Then I looked over the photos of the DDXP encounters and they were crammed with enemies! The only apparently difficult fight was against the dragon, who was worth 875XP on its own, so I'm hoping less than that will be _thoroughly_ challenging, but not deadly. I may be editing it tomorrow !


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## psionotic (Mar 4, 2008)

The Burning Plague was the first 3rd edition mod I ever DM'ed, and the first time that I had DM'ed at all in about ten years.  I have the fondest of memories for that free! gem of an adventure.  So thanks for doing this, and I'll definitely check it out!


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## Colmarr (Mar 4, 2008)

Chris_Nightwing said:
			
		

> Yes I thought quite a bit about this. 100XP per character is the supposed recommendation, so 500XP for a standard party. Then I looked over the photos of the DDXP encounters and they were crammed with enemies! The only apparently difficult fight was against the dragon, who was worth 875XP on its own, so I'm hoping less than that will be _thoroughly_ challenging, but not deadly. I may be editing it tomorrow !




I think the D&DXP encounters featured minions, which are one-hit-kills. 4 minions equal 1 "normal" monster.

Notwithstanding that I agree with Itbaxter that the encounter will likely cause TPKs, I have to say that this is the best presented 4e adventure so far. Congratulations on publishing such a polished product.

P.S. If you do edit it to ease off on the encounters, I will definitely ask my 4e DM to run it for us!


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## Xethreau (Mar 4, 2008)

The Burning Pague was the first adventure I ever played in (I have only been playing D&D for a few years,) and, oh, the memories.  I had a friend get his face eaten of by that damn ferret.  The crazy elf yelled into the cavern for the support of the halfling with "Hey Rogue-y!" which, needless to say, ended poorly x.x

The gnome wizard made friends with the gnome psion, and his psicrystal crawled ontop of her head and started purring!  Juan the Barbarian raged and kilt the kobolds good.


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## Rechan (Mar 4, 2008)

Colmarr said:
			
		

> I think the D&DXP encounters featured minions, which are one-hit-kills. 4 minions equal 1 "normal" monster.



Aye; a regular 1st level kobold skirmisher is 100xp, a 1st level minion is 25xp.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Mar 4, 2008)

So I played through it this evening, noting a few copy-errors and the like for an update, but further, I will edit a couple of the encounters.

I had 3 players and after some wackiness involving being filmed for an upcoming Channel 4 documentary about the makers of the computer game _Elite_ (The guys who did it went to Cambridge and met through roleplaying, were inspired by the open-endedness of it, etc.) we got down to business. For some reason they didn't choose either of the healing-capable classes (Cleric, Paladin) and the party consisted of the Fighter, Wizard and Ranger. I fudged my way through explaining the rules (not actually knowing everything about opportunity attacks was a pain for instance) and we had great fun!

The first encounter, a warm-up was nice and easy, as expected. The second a little harder, particularly when the Tiefling Wizard realised he could set fire to the flour clouds and take hardly any damage from it. The extra concealment was a minor effect but made the fight really fun. It was perhaps a little overpowered, one person went down, but they still won with ease. I'll probably drop some of the minions to clear space.

The third encounter went quite awry, alas. Whilst the tactics were sound, I had to fudge the slinger's ammo to one unusual pot each (else they seem way better than the archers!). I think I played the archers wrongly too, removing 5 from their normal shortbow attack when they got scared, whereas perhaps their base is +9 and they have +14 until scared. The Fighter was excellent here, ramming people off of the ledge for falling damage all the time. The Ranger suffered by teleporting up to the ledge immediately and triggering the entry of the priest and his minions. He went down and later died. The Wizard never used his daily _sleep_ which didn't help and also went down then died. The Fighter though finished everyone off and won through.

The two dead players came back as the Paladin and Cleric. The undead fight was very tough until they realised they could pin down the artillery. They won with severe damage so I think with 4-6 players this would be a standard encounter. Finally, the hobgoblins totally pwned them. Hitting consistently, high AC and there was very little they could do so outnumbered. Even with more players I think this would have been tough so I'm probably going to tone it down a little.

So, version 2 will be out sometime tomorrow! Thanks for all the comments so far. Like many of you, it was one of the first 3E adventures I ran and it had a certain charm. The sheer number of available kobolds from DDXP made it a must-convert!


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## keterys (Mar 5, 2008)

Good job collecting a lot of different things together... but that last combat might be really brutal. In the playtest it was that combat minus one soldier, and it was very dangerous. Not TPK dangerous, but pretty tough. In this instance, there's a decent chance people will have blown their dailies by the time they hit it, which could get bad.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Mar 5, 2008)

As I said, above, it's updated. Much less harsh now and scaling the adventure will now work as intended (just dropping/adding one enemy per encounter).

One thing I remember from playing last night was a player declaring that the minions in the pantry were just out to turn the fight into a Laurel and Hardy sketch .


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## Dizlag (Mar 7, 2008)

I'm going to run this tomorrow night for my group.  I could either have 2 players or 4 players, but there will be 4 PCs running through the adventure.  I'm not sure what characters from the 6 pre-gen'd ones they'll be picking.  We'll see.    

Btw, great job on the conversion to 4e with this adventure.  I've used the original a couple of times on two different groups before.  It looks like this one won't disappoint.  And I must say that I'm looking forward to squishing a PC with the crushing rock trap + gluepots.  Muhahahaha!!!

Thanks for the adventure!  And I'll re-post back here to let you all know how it went.

Dizlag


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## Chris_Nightwing (Mar 10, 2008)

Shameless bump to point out a minor update (and some people were asking where this adventure was, honest!)


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## leifthelucky (Mar 10, 2008)

Hey, if anyone's interested, my group ran thru Chris's adventure and I posted a detailed report here:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=221153 

       We had a good game, hope you do too!


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## Dizlag (Mar 10, 2008)

And I too have reported my gaming experience on this adventure!

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=221237

Thanks again Chris!

Dizlag

_Edit: Changed the link to use the thread link instead of the first post.  oops!_


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## Xorn (Mar 23, 2008)

Ran this for a full group of six this morning, wanted to share my report!  I included a screenshot of each encounter, taken with Fantasy Grounds II, just to get an idea of the layout of things.

We started off with the Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Wizard, and Ranger (in that marching order) delving into the mines to end the misery of the townsfolk.  I was actually finding it funny that when I say, "We're gonna go role-play lite and focus on test driving the rules." they seem to role-play even more.    They reach room 2 and they each kind of pick their own thing to do, but the fighter plops down at the east entrance and says they are watching down the tunnel for anything heading towards them.

Kobolds!

So no surprise round.  They lock horns in the hallway, and between the fighter and paladin, I couldn't get a minion in the edgewise.  The kobolds got obliterated by the party, though using some creative shifting I was able to get several attacks launched on them.  Unfortunately, it got the fighter and paladin starting to think about 4E combat in a different light, getting away from the stand and fight idea, to control who they can attack tactics.

After a quick rest the party moves down to the mess hall, and after a little listening, the dwarf decides to just kick in the door and ask questions later.  Around this time the player using the warlock showed up as well, joining right at the start of the fight.  The fighter and paladin proceeded to wreck whatever plans I had for maneuvering from the start.  The fighter waded in and locked down their area, making 8 squares that were like fly paper around her!  Then the paladin trudged in behind her and locked down what I call the "mid-field"; anything that could actually get around the fighter was just facing another meatshield.

More Kobolds!

The ranger, wizard, and warlock starting delivering punishment, and while the defenders soaked up a hit or two, it was nothing that wasn't healed at the end of the fight easily.  The flour bombs were a great surprise for them, although the damned wizard was actually astute enough to ask if the flour cloud would be flammable.  With 20 intelligence and a player having the forethought to ask, I told him and he decided to be a little more careful with scorching burst.  Speaking of scorching burst--well... back to that later.

So they take these kobolds apart, too.  Some injuries suffered, but primarily it was the defenders doing a bang up job of making the front line solid.

After ransacking the mess hall for themselves (the dwarf was delighted to get the honey), they noticed the stink in the air was getting stronger as they went deeper.  As no one bothered to ask me about anything peculiar during the 500 foot journey, I didn't do any active perception checks, and no one noticed the boulder.  Getting to the very bottom, they weren't particularly quiet, but they were cautious enough at the entrance to avoid a surprise round.

This fight could have gone a lot better than it did, for the kobolds.  A serious of bad rolls left the fighter and paladin charging steadily up the ramp, gluepots and firepots just not hitting effectively.  The ranger, warlock, and wizard again set up shop and started delivering punishment, while the cleric got in good position to support them while dropping those lances up to the cheap seats.

Mysterious Cavern!

Then that boulder rolled over the wizard!  LOL.  It really, really tore him up, but he lived, and the ranger dove clear in time.  I think we all laughed harder about the critical boulder hit than anything else in the adventure--it was just awesome.  After that, it just got worse and worse for the kobolds.  The few hits they were scoring were easily healed by the cleric, and pretty soon the wizard starting reigning down firey death--then finished off the wyrmpriest with a critical magic missile!

Incidentally, when they got to the sick kobolds, the dwarf wanted to put them out of their misery, the cleric wanted to cleanse their dark souls from the world, the paladin said the plaguebearers must be burned, and the wizard was just pissed off about the boulder.  So they left a flaming room behind them, with some dog-lizard shrieks fading away.

The sacrificial pit was probably the scariest room, primarily because those skeletons are _mean_.  The defenders ran up to do their work as usual, but this time the skeletons _hit_.  They hit _hard_, too.  The fighter went to negative in the first round!  A quick Lay on Hands kept her in the fight, and the cleric managed to drop a perfect heal (18 points) to keep the fight going, but that first exchange was brutal.

Sacrificial Pit

One really cool moment was when the wizard asked to use mage hand to hoist up one of the rib cages in the pit in the middle of the undead and blast it with acid arrow!  I couldn't deny such a cool idea, and after making a hit roll to blast a helpless target, he showered them all with acid, which did a significant amount of damage!

But after seriously underestimating the undead's ability to opportunity attack, the party was really left licking their wounds.  Turn Undead was a pretty impressive blast, and most of the damage to the skeletons came from the paladin and cleric.  Finally putting them down, the party rested only briefly before continuing down the hall, the wizard's arcane sense feeling a perversion of the natural world ahead.

Finally, the last encounter--the entire adventure took 5.5 hours from first fart to last flush, and that was with 2 people brand new to the rules, and it was actually kind of a landslide for the party.  The defenders again locked up and engaged the soldiers, and while neither side was scoring a huge amount of damage on the other, the line wouldn't budge.  Then the wizard--that damned wizard--dropped a double scorching burst on them via an action point, and really weakened them all, badly.

Final Battle!

There was a scare when the archer _nailed_ the wizard with a crit, followed by the warcaster stepping into position to Force Pulse the entire group (save the warlock) and send them flying!  The fighter managed to hold her ground, but everyone else went down, and the wizard was _down_ down.  The party answered with a round of action points, that ended with a downed soldier, another badly wounded and "Tided" back far enough for a Brutal Strike to END the warcaster with one shot!  (Well, the double scorching burst tore him up, too!)  The last moments included the warlocks dark dream missing, but shifting the soldier away from the fighter, ending him with the combat superiority attack, and the ranger justly finishing the archer with an arrow to the face.  He had the first kill, and the last.

The wizard got one strike on his turn, but the cleric brought him around before the ranger's shot and then the warlock played Final Fantasy victory music over Ventrilo!  (I take it back, that was the funniest moment.)

*Player Comments*
Everyone had outstanding fun, positive comments all around.  The new folks really liked how smooth everything played, and how the mechanics carry simple elegance but allow for complex strategy.  Everyone said it FELT like D&D, or at least like they thought D&D _should_ feel, even if they didn't realize it till just then.  Underlined for emphasis on a point that even applies to me, in retrospect.  I was excited about 4E, but after tasting it, I'm reluctant to run 3.5, because it doesn't... feel like it did, I guess.  I _was_ happy with 3.5, at least as happy as I felt was reasonably due.  Now I find I'd rather play another 4E playtest with characters that can't level.  My players want to see more, but want to LEVEL for once.  Me, I'm just having so much fun RUNNING everything, that I've lost sight of my 3.5 campaign.  I'm just going to end the world in a giant fireball.

*DM Comments*
4E rocks, I think my opinion on that is clear.  I know it will be even better than it feels now--because the design direction things are going just feels right to me.  In regards to the adventure, it felt a little too easy, though I don't know if that's because my player's really put forth great tactics, or the encounters weren't big enough.  I felt like the terrain for encounter 1 crippled the minions, and in the second area it felt like there should have been more kobolds--as they went down in droves.  The cavern needed some heavy hitters (dragonshields, maybe--at least skirmishers) on the ramp to prevent the party from doing exactly what they did, marching up and stomping those poor slingers.    The wyrmpriest was too little, too late, really.

The skeletons felt perfect, and scary as hell when they nailed that fighter right off the bat.

The hobgoblins were good--I think the party's high rolls and action points (5th encounter is obviously going to have a lot of AP ready) turned the fight around.  After the warcaster nailed them all with Force Pulse and dropped the wizard, every single character used an action point on their turn--it just obliterated the hobbos.  I'd be nervous to rebalance the encounter off this experience, but I think a second archer wouldn't be over the top.

GREAT adventure though--the list of people asking me to run fan playtests is getting longer and longer.


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## rembrandtqeinstein (Apr 15, 2008)

Thanks a lot Chris, the adventure is really fun.

I ran it for a playtest last saturday because I lost the roll for who has to DM.  Since I wasn't familiar with the adventure I screwed up a few things and my group ended up wiping on the skeleton group but overall it was a good test.

Things I screwed up:

I thought the map had 10' squares not 5'
I didn't read the flour bombs closely enough and gave them burst 1 instead of target square + 1 more
I made the boulder roll the WRONG WAY!
I didn't use the burning skeleton's fire aura
I added the speed of the dead bonus of the skel wars to their flanking attacks rather than their opportunity attacks


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## Chris_Nightwing (Apr 15, 2008)

Hey, cheers! I reckon the map change probably gave you more movement opportunities and really the flour clouds should be burst 1 under pure 4E rules, which works fine on a bigger map anyway! Having the boulder run the other way is pretty funny and does prevent party members hanging back which is fun. Monsters can be tricky to play first time, I made my own mistakes there too. Glad you had fun!


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## rembrandtqeinstein (Apr 16, 2008)

The 10' squares meant the tables and mining carts were huge because I drew them to the same scale on our battle map.  But it was actually an advantage for the players because the minions weren't nearly as effective at meat shielding the archers.

Also the players had the mining cart in front of them when I released the boulder (from the front) and they thought the massive 10x20 cart should have stopped it.  I gave the cart a saving throw against boulder and it lost so the boulder kept going.

One of the things we talked about was that the burning skel and skel wars were really over level for level 1 PCs.  It might be better if they were elite 2 and 3s rather than normal 4 and 5s.  The high defense numbers meant they were really hard to hit.  Of course it might have been different if we had 5 PCs instead of 4.

In any case keep up the great work, I'm looking forward to more maps I can steal for my homebrew stuff when 4e rolls around.


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## Memnaelar (Apr 22, 2008)

You know, I've been really tickled by just how warm a reception The Burning Plague got when I wrote it seven years ago and how it endures in so many people's memories to this day.  I'm as excited as anyone about 4th Edition and the fact that TBP inspired you to write a sequel for the new edition is a pleasure to behold.  Thanks for doing so and for sharing with the community.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Apr 22, 2008)

Memnaelar, thanks for your thanks and for the inspiration! I think it's remarkable that the community is able to bring us together like this and I'm just as tickled to hear from you !


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## BradfordFerguson (Apr 23, 2008)

Hey Chris,

I JUST ran 4E-ish Return of Burning Plague for my Tuesday group and they enjoyed it a lot.  Thank you very much.  I may do a write-up/review of the experience and if I do I will be sure to let you know.  And thanks to Memnaelar as well!

It's cool to experience ourselves as creative forces in our lives and it is cool to know that What We Create affects other people.


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## skipdog172 (May 4, 2008)

*Great adventure*

I ran this adventure this weekend for my group who played the pre-made Warlock, Paladin, Fighter and Wizard. The adventure was great fun...that boulder trap was GREAT!! Really exciting, ended up hitting 3 of the characters with the boulder trap and really crushing them(causing the wizard to go down on that fight). This was our first time playing with miniatures at all and all I can say is...FINALLY!! I am so glad we finally did this...our guy that normally DMs had this thing against miniatures. After he got to play in this adventure he says he feels bad about not trying out using miniatures before in 3.x. We just had SO MUCH FUN and are now VERY PUMPED for 4e! Thanks for writing this and causing everyone in my group to pre-order all the 4e books!!!!


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## Belares (Jan 11, 2009)

*Cant wait to run this adventure*

I am going to be running this next weekend and I have ran the original several times so I am juiced to see how this one runs.


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## Garnath (Nov 15, 2009)

Hi
First of all thanks for sharing.... Im "trolling" the net for small encounters and taking what I see of use in my own campaign 

I would like to take this for a spin, but I dont get where you place the
enemy. Dont get the map depth I guess... 


_The kobolds are atop the ledge and will use the 
cover there to their advantage.
_
ledge?

_ In the 1st round, the 
closest kobold will pull the lever to trigger the trap, 
releasing the boulder. 
_
Closest?

_The boulder will follow the 
path shown on the map and stop at the end._

The boulder roles past "5" on the map and stops.
_
In the 2nd round, the closest kobold will move out of sight to 
Area 6 to fetch help.
_
Closest to the passage close to "5" on the map
or how to get to room "6" other than past "5"?

_A round after disappearing, he 
will return with the minions. Another round after 
this, the kobold leader himself will emerge"_

Will they come through that path close to "5" on the map?

The detailed "wall" between the boulder path (red) and "6" on the map is what? is this higher ground so room "6" is higher ground.

I read some feedbacks that one player Fighter pushed the poor Minions over and edge so the took damage? where ?

-any help appreciated

Cheers


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