So last night we continued the kids' game, along with my father-in-law. They are getting close to the end of the dungeon. It was decided at the beginning of this session they would rest for the night, which they did in the secret treasure room they had found in the previous session. Hit points restored, they went back to the last place they had explored to, which was a hallway with two closed doors, one going right and one left. They opened the left door first, and found a remarkably clean dungeon hallway. Past the door on the right was a large room with a huge statue of a knight. They chose to go down the clean hallway first, where they eventually encountered a gelatinous cube, which they fought and killed. In that area was also the sarcophagi of the family of Sir Keegan, the last lord of Shadowfell Keep. They found the burial items of the Keegan family hidden in the crypt, which the cleric convinced the rest of the party to leave (a toy wooden sword, a doll, a broom, and an amulet).
Next they went into the room with the huge statue. I opted to make that the only trap in the room, instead of the three different traps listed in the module. The thief spotted the access panel on the back of the statue after it attacked the first time. They gave the thief a drink of the invisibility potion, which enabled her to cross the room and not trigger the statue's attack, and she climbed up the back of it and spent some time disabling it.
Then, still invisible, she went and opened the door on the other side of the room! She discovered all the undead inside, and ran back around to the end of the room. Attracted to the light of the torches and lanterns the team was carrying, a whole mess of undead lurched forward attack.
This fight got pretty interesting. A mix of skeletons, zombies, and ghouls were in the room. The ghouls' paralyzing bite almost had the whole party down at one point, with three out of five failing their saving throws (I allow the players a saving throw each turn to overcome the paralysis).
And then the flesh golem lumbered up the stairs. Its first attack critted for 12, knocking the elf fighter down to 2 HP in a single blow! She ran away quickly but the other elf, weilding Aecris, Sir Keegan's old sword, stepped in and fought bravely. The wizard was flying around thanks to a potion of flight he'd drunk, and was shooting flaming magic missiles at the monster (I let him pay an extra HP to cast the spell to add a +1 to damage and add an basic elemental type to it). A couple oil flasks kept the fire damage rolling, which kept the flesh golem slowed (and only making one slam attack at +12 to hit per round instead of two!). The fire was probably the difference between victory and TPK.
It's a pretty interesting experience DMing for your kids. On one hand, you want to challenge them and facilitate a thrilling adventure. On the other hand, you don't want to arbitrarily kill off a kid's character. But the dice are fickle! I have been rolling them all right out in the open, including monsters' hit dice (which I don't roll until the monster is actually attacked). There's no fudging anything. The kids would be able to tell if I was, anyway.
All in all, a good session. They healed up and are about to enter the room with the Rift.
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