Session #8 Experience

By my calculations, the experience from this session would have put you all at around 2100. That's about 150 shy of the 2250 that you need for 3rd level. Go ahead and level. Put your self at 2251.

Combat Encounter #9

1 Kobold WyrmPriest (150)
1 Kobold Piker (125)
8 Kobold minions (25 each = 200)
1 Young black Dragon (875)

To metagame for a minute, let me tell you about the Dragon. It is what's known in
4e as a "solo" monster, which is supposed to take the place of 4 level appropriate monsters. I had read going in the the solos in the first Monster Manual needed some tweaks. They had a lot of HP, high defenses, but weak attacks. They tended to create long tedious combat sessions. The advice I read was to decrease their HP by 20%, increase there attacks a little, and lower their defenses a little.

In this case, I lowered his HP from 224 to 180. I lowered his AC from 22 to 21 (which made a difference. You hit with a 21 at least 3 times. If one of those misses, he gets to breath acid again, and we have a possible TPK). I raised his claw fro d4+3 to d6+3. I raised his bite from d6+3 to d8+3.

By mistake, I neglected to use one of his attacks. On a melee miss by an opponent, the dragon gets to make an attack with his tail doing d6+4 as an immediate action. By the time I realized I was forgetting this, the battle was a nail-biter. It probably would have tipped the balance the other way. I decided this dragon hadn't learned to use his tail yet!

Still if, you had gone into this with all your daily powers available, this would have been a very managable fight for you.