Quote Originally Posted by Sutremaine View Post
What were the ACs, saves, and DCs of the relevant parties? CR is descriptive, not proscriptive, and if your level 4 players have a very good chance of either making their attack rolls or roflstomping the CR 8 / 9 enemy's saves then CR is unreliable.

Next time, more communication on the villains' part. Sending isn't a pocket change spell at those levels, but signal whistles are cheap.
Communication? What do you mean? If you're saying that the villains shouldn't have been caught unawares, well...the way the PCs played I couldn't have justified them being prepared, really.

There's actually some more stuff that happens underground that more or less contributed to that, but I edited somewhat since the post was huge. If you guys are interested, I can tell you about the entire section of the adventure.