5e Stonehell: The Quiet Halls

On Sunday 9/7 the open table Stonehell Dungeon-crawl continued. In attendance were the following PCs:

Human Paladin
Rogue
Human Fighter (pregen)

Realizing that once again they lacked any real healing ability, they opted to hire a cleric to join them. The new guy, in spite of never having played 5e before decided that he'd run the cleric was well.

As the Paladin was the only player to have entered Stonehell before, and he had the map, they followed his lead through Hell's Antechamber until they reached the great Dance Macabre doors of the Quiet Halls. The corpses of the fire beetles from the last delve seemed undisturbed. Pressing on into the chill darkness, they discovered an old morgue, and a remembrance chamber before discovering a secret hallway that brought them to a hall of crypts.

They explored 4 of them, encountering giant rats, numerous skeletons, some zombies, and a ghoul. The fights were hard and draining, even with the cleric's help. They opted to rest in the morgue, barricading themselves in and praying that nothing would come knocking.

Amazingly enough, nothing did.  Or at least nothing made it through the barracaded door. After their rest, the adventurers returned to the hall of crypts, fought some more skeletons, a ghoul, and a crypt shade! Looting from the various crypts they ended up with a mixed pile of coins and a few pieces of jewelry. Certainly enough to provide them with comfortable lodgings for a bit, and even a few spare healing potions.

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The addition of an NPC cleric improved the PC's survivability, not just because of the healing, but also because of the radiant damage against the undead, not to mention the bludgeoning damage against the skeletons.

In running Stonehell with 5e, I've been halving the number of creatures encountered, and that seems to be working pretty well. The players are going at it with much more caution this time around, so I guess nearly killing them off last time was effective. I also haven't been doing very much prep since I don't really know where they're going to go. I just skim though the first level and glance at the second, and then keep the book handy. I can't wait for them to get to the Kobold Korners.