D&D 4e: Kobold Hall

Game Date: 6/8/2013
System: D&D 4e
DM: Rusty   

Characters:
Kris (Matt): Half-Elf Hexblade
Matilda (Cliff): Dwarf Paladin

Our potential GURPS campaign ended before it even began.  Two of our players (who were also our hosts) had to suddenly move out of state, leaving us with too small a group and no place to play.  So for now we're playing at the Game Keep, with the hopes of attracting a few more players.  Today we played the starter module Kobold Hall.  As a DM, I had run this module once before (2/21/09), but this was my first time playing it as a PC.

We only had two players, and the first encounter nearly killed us.  We rolled lots of 1s, and at one point each of us found ourselves at 0 hit points.  The final kobold fled (probably as a mercy) and the DM realized he would have to nerf the encounters from this point on. 

The second encounter was a little better, but the paralytic darts gave us some trouble.  Matilda went down again, and the encounter might have been lost if not for a lucky 20 on death save.  We came out okay, but Kris was low on healing surges, so we took an extended rest afterwards.

The third encounter started out rough because the enemies were out of reach.  Matilda had no ranged attacks whatsoever.  Kris managed to kill a kobold with Eldrich Blast, and used her teleport reaction to reach the rest of the enemies.  Meanwhile, Matilda opened some doors, where she found some stairs - and a drake to fight.  Once again, the final kobold fled.  Not having taken much damage, we chased the kobold rather than take a short rest.

In the fourth encounter we faced the kobold boss.  It wasn't easy, especially since one of the enemies could fly.  But we finally took them out.  One more time, the final kobold fled, back the way we'd come.  Instead of chasing him, we explored the room and found the key to the secret passage.  We had fulfilled our mission.  As players, we both knew that the fifth encounter was a dragon, and our chances of winning were iffy.  But we knew that our characters wouldn't know about the dragon, and would be anxious to find any treasure that might be below.

So we took a short rest and headed downstairs. We didn't stand a chance.  The dragon rolled a 20 on its stealth roll, and headed straight for us before we even knew he was there.  He used a fear power that paralyzed Matilda, then hit both of us with his breath weapon.  We both began heading for the door, but didn't make much progress because were slowed.  The dragon used its two claw attacks and tore Kris in half, taking her from barely bloodied to completely dead in one round.  Matilda managed to save against slow and fled the scene, surviving to fight another day.

"When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled..."

Afterthoughts:
Stepping back into 4e was kind of nice.  It's still a flawed system, but my familiarity with it made for a comfortable session.  I wasn't really attached to this character, and she had a rather epic death, so I'm not that torn up about it.  Hexblades are interesting, but I don't think they're for me.  However, I have no idea what sort of character I do want to play.  We might resume the Adventures of Matilda in two weeks, though it's up in the air whether we'll be playing 4e or Next.