Dragon Heist TPK

[5ekyu]

From what i read and liked about the module it made no bones about the crossing paths with high power npcs, went into that a bit, provided multiple justifications for why normal dungeon crawl kill on sight wont apply here and iirc even to the point iirc of in character cautions.

The GM chose to change the objective of the NPC to kill them - so they died.

But that wasnt forced or necessarily in kerping with the "faction v faction" instructions underpinning the whole adventure.

Its a mystery and treasure hunt adventure for Odin's sake and a major npc mega-player thought killing a bunch of newbies was better than KO, interrogation, turn or recruit options?

Yeah, absolutely all that is the faulty adventure... Yessirree.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Frodo was never a D&D character. In fact in todays D&D its impossible to create Frodo because thanks to the class system everyone will eventually be a extremely good combatant which Frodo definitely was not. But after a few adventures which he certainly had he would be in D&D.

In D&D you get XP from killing things, nearly all the rules are about killing things, all classes are geared towards killing things and the DMG even tells you how many things you should kill each day (which is quite a lot) for the rules to work best.
Killing things is the core of D&D and you see it in the rules, the flavour text, the adventures, basically everywhere.

I've been playing D&D since 1981, and xp has always been awarded for getting past obstacles, including monsters, not just for killing them. That's what stops the game being boring.

As for 5e - seen the sessional xp rules? You can level up in this edition without ever killing anything.

 

[5ekyu]

I've been playing D&D since 1981, and xp has always been awarded for getting past obstacles, including monsters, not just for killing them. That's what stops the game being boring.

As for 5e - seen the sessional xp rules? You can level up in this edition without ever killing anything.

yup been using session xp for years - its fantastic. Do what your characters would do, not what you need for xp.

 

[5ekyu]

Frodo was never a D&D character. In fact in todays D&D its impossible to create Frodo because thanks to the class system everyone will eventually be a extremely good combatant which Frodo definitely was not. But after a few adventures which he certainly had he would be in D&D.

In D&D you get XP from killing things, nearly all the rules are about killing things, all classes are geared towards killing things and the DMG even tells you how many things you should kill each day (which is quite a lot) for the rules to work best.
Killing things is the core of D&D and you see it in the rules, the flavour text, the adventures, basically everywhere.

RE the bold - this fiction keeps getting stated over and over.

The adventuring day section explicitly gives you an estimate figure of how many encounters based on difficulty or xp modified budget etc the "typical" pc party can expect to handle before needing a long rest.

it never says anything that they are expected to fight this many in a day or that its the best...

here is the intro...

"Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer."

that section providing those benchmarks for a Gm to use as he sees fit keeps getting drug around and re-imagined by those who see it (or want to pretend they see it that way) as a thing wholly different from what it says it is.

I mean, i wonder if those same people see the estimating miles per gallon for cars and think they have to or are expected to drive that many miles per day?

 

[Reynard]

In D&D you get XP from killing things

No, you don't. You get XP for overcoming challenges. If a group of 3 trolls is guarding a bridge, the PCs get the XP for getting to the other side regardless of whether they kill the trolls, con them into letting the party across, beat up one and intimidate the others, sneak past unnoticed, or any number of other actions that come down to overcoming the obstacle.

 

[GameOgre]

From what i read and liked about the module it made no bones about the crossing paths with high power npcs, went into that a bit, provided multiple justifications for why normal dungeon crawl kill on sight wont apply here and iirc even to the point iirc of in character cautions.

The GM chose to change the objective of the NPC to kill them - so they died.

But that wasnt forced or necessarily in kerping with the "faction v faction" instructions underpinning the whole adventure.

Its a mystery and treasure hunt adventure for Odin's sake and a major npc mega-player thought killing a bunch of newbies was better than KO, interrogation, turn or recruit options?

Yeah, absolutely all that is the faulty adventure... Yessirree.

I didn't change anything. The NPC didn't get a chance to do anything before his options were VERY limited. It was face a very real possibility for death from unknown forces trying to escape without using any abilities(They took him down almost 30 hit points before he even got to go) or use his main go to power that had every chance of if not killing the foes then at least taking them out of the combat long enough for him to escape.

Now its important to realize that at my table the pc's and npc's and monsters all play by a lot of the same rules. I realize thats obviously not how you play things at your table and that's fine for you.
But I don't let the party just move and attack ect whenever they want to, I don't let the other side do that either. In combat we use initiative to decide who goes when.
As far as the bad guy not killing them goes. I do not let the party wizard cast a fireball and just decide who in its area of effect is effected and how much they are. The spell doesn't work like that. You cant just fireball goblins holding a child captive and just say"the child is unharmed and the goblins all drop to 0 hit points but not dead". That's just not how the spell works.

It seems like a lot of DM's here don't go by this way of playing and just have spells and abilities do whatever they want to. AND THAT IS FINE FOR YOU!

That's also not the default way the rules tell you to play the game and acting like it is is disingenuous.

I mean if it was well,remove death from the game then. After all you can always alter it so the pc's live.

 

[GameOgre]

The Fact of the matter is you do not put a foe 7 CR's higher against the party and expect everything to be fine. Not at level 1 at any rate. Yes the foe wasn't trying to kill the monster but you cant say the same for the other way around!

It's just bad design.

 

[Reynard]

The Fact of the matter is you do not put a foe 7 CR's higher against the party and expect everything to be fine. Not at level 1 at any rate. Yes the foe wasn't trying to kill the monster but you cant say the same for the other way around!

It's just bad design.

It's only "bad design" if the only way PCs interact with villains is through violence. Dragon Heist isn't supposed to be that kind of adventure, where everything you meet is meant to be skewered.

Now that the players know this, how was it going forward?

 

[GameOgre]

Game night isn't Till Thursday so we will see. The default game play of this group has been forged in Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Storm Kings Thunder ect...mostly they expect to be set in a direction and to encounter foes and defeat them and take there stuff.

 

[5ekyu]

I didn't change anything. The NPC didn't get a chance to do anything before his options were VERY limited. It was face a very real possibility for death from unknown forces trying to escape without using any abilities(They took him down almost 30 hit points before he even got to go) or use his main go to power that had every chance of if not killing the foes then at least taking them out of the combat long enough for him to escape.

Now its important to realize that at my table the pc's and npc's and monsters all play by a lot of the same rules. I realize thats obviously not how you play things at your table and that's fine for you.
But I don't let the party just move and attack ect whenever they want to, I don't let the other side do that either. In combat we use initiative to decide who goes when.
As far as the bad guy not killing them goes. I do not let the party wizard cast a fireball and just decide who in its area of effect is effected and how much they are. The spell doesn't work like that. You cant just fireball goblins holding a child captive and just say"the child is unharmed and the goblins all drop to 0 hit points but not dead". That's just not how the spell works.

It seems like a lot of DM's here don't go by this way of playing and just have spells and abilities do whatever they want to. AND THAT IS FINE FOR YOU!

That's also not the default way the rules tell you to play the game and acting like it is is disingenuous.

I mean if it was well,remove death from the game then. After all you can always alter it so the pc's live.

RE the first bold - no idea what you imagine gives you any insight on the PC vs NPC divide in my game. Was that in the module too?

RE the second bold - again, not sure why you think thats how i or anyone else specific to this thread plays. Was that in the module too?

As for fireball and cutting out the child etc - assuming they actually do not have the ability to shape spell or whatever - its not hard to imagine a character with fireball in a city adventure which emphasizes having non-lethal results due to faction intrigue also having non-fireball solutions. its hard to imagine some high level faction intrigue operative not have stuff that makes them able to deal with a 1st level ish party short of blowing the place up.

Obviously, the Gm can choose to ignore all that part of the adventure and kill PCs. Nothing in the book prevents one from doing that. i for one am glad they didn't aim for the lowest common denominator and "gm proof" the adventure.

For me, if some OMG holy cow way too high level NPC guy got drug into a fight with this band of operatives in that scenario - my NPC would want prisoners to interrogate, search for clues and possibly bribe or corrupt - because that is how faction intrigue gets done - rather than boom-matchsticks-corpses that now i have to clean up.

But you are right, thats not what every Gm will choose to do, obviously.