The party dispatches a straggler.
Lyndus manages to locate a secret door.
The secret door leads to trouble – of the sort that the party is just not prepared to deal with right now.
Discretion is the better part of valor, and the group decides that they want to live so that they can fight another day.
The party returns to the relative safety of the moathouse tower.
Lester sets to work identifying the scrolls he found. They turn out to be a protection from evil scroll, a ray of enfeeblement scroll, and a charm animal scroll.
Unfortunately, Ray of Enfeeblement happens to belong to one of Lester’s prohibited spell scrolls.
Charm Animal, meanwhile, isn’t even a wizard spell. It’s a druid spell.
Protection from Evil is the only spell in there that Lester can learn. However, the party clerics can cast it as well, and Rodd even has it as a domain spell that he has prepared separate from his normal spell list.
With that done, the party rests once again before they decide among themselves what to do next.
Thoughts on the party so far:
Elladan has proven to be the most valuable party member by far, scoring consistent damaging hits with his greatsword.
Thog has proven to be the least useful. The frontline tends to be too crowded for him to do anything, first level bards hardly have any spells at all, his low INT limits what would otherwise be a nice skill selection, and I derped out at the character creation screen and forgot to give him ranks in the perform skill. Thog should improve greatly in a couple of levels.
First level spellcasters suck in general. A level 1 wizard in particular is just about the weakest RPG character you will ever play.
Spellcasters start to come into their own at level 5, and by level 10 they will have completely supressed the fighters in terms of power.
Frontline is proving to be a crowded place, and firing missile weapons into melee carries a rater substantial penalty. The Precise Shot feat negates this penalty, however it also requires a general focus on archery in order to get it. If I do a second playthrough, I am definitely bringing along an elven archer or halfling warsling sniper or somesuch along.
Luna has proven to be reasonably competent when forced into melee, much moreso then I would of expected.
Having a party of 8 as opposed to a party of 5 really cuts into XP. It's also going to cut into equipment quality, as I will have more adventurers to equip.
Thankfully, despite the game's best efforts, no one has died yet and the party is still in good condition overall.