Dragonlance Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen shows up in the wild!

[pukunui]

One assumes the PCs don't know and probably don't believe they can take him down easy. He is supposed to be end of Rogue One Vader.

Yeah, more or less, although there is a macguffin the PCs can use to take him out of play as it were.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One assumes the PCs don't know and probably don't believe they can take him down easy. He is supposed to be end of Rogue One Vader.

Not with that statblock, unfortunately. PCs aren't quite generic Rebel troops in any event.

 

[pukunui]

Not with that statblock, unfortunately. PCs aren't quite generic Rebel troops in any event.

No, but neither should they be at full health when they do encounter him. If anything, they should be jonesing for a rest by that point ... but they won't get one until after the final battle with the real BBEG, by which point it is the end of the adventure.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Speaking of the party taking on Lord Soth, I've been idly coming up with ideas on how to continue the adventure should my group want to do so, and, obviously, Lord Soth makes for a perfect target. After completing the adventure, the characters should reach 12th level, so with a CR 19, I would think a well-equiped party at 15th level or so should find him a reasonable challenge. He wouldn't be permanently dead of course, as his curse won't allow that to happen, but it would likely put him out of action for some months at least. And luckily, with dragons (and the remnants of an army) around, there are plenty of reasonable targets to help with that leveling process.

As I've said before, I've been pondering converting the enchanted draconians from Dark Queen of Krynn to create some more higher-level challenges for this. And I'm thinking about creating a "greater dragonlance" for any campaign extension to reproduce something a bit stronger that would be closer to the original 1e item. Doing damage equal to the wielder's hit points is, as then, a bit over-powered, so I was thinking upping the damage from 3d6 to 10d6 force damage, and some other additional effect, such as negating the next successful recharge roll for the breath weapon (automatic, or have a DC?).

 

[darjr]

Anybody run an encounter with Lord Soth? Anyone try it?

 

[Remathilis]

Not with that statblock, unfortunately. PCs aren't quite generic Rebel troops in any event.

Meh. Just add a thousand more HP and quintuple the damage he deals.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

As I pointed out elsewhere (either in this thread or one of the others), Soth isn't intended to be the main BBEG. He's meant to be "a lurking threat to be avoided".

You have to fight through a whole citadel of his allies and minions (lots of draconians, undead, and so on) to even to get to him, and since time is of the essence, without having more than a short rest at most.

And, as others have said, there are ways of defeating him without head-to-head combat. And, in the end, Kansaldi is actually the ultimate foe in the module.

I can't believe that I have to say this... but I was trying to be funny with

I am disappointed that it isn't Death Dragon, Soth, 4 skeletal warriors (knights?) a small zombie hoard (animated by BW) and a group of draconians...

In a game where everything is turned up to deadly I want the Soth encounter to be "Not D&D deadly, but the DM found out their SO is sleeping with one or more player's Deadly"

 

[Reynard]

Not with that statblock, unfortunately. PCs aren't quite generic Rebel troops in any event.

My point was the players don't know his CR and only know what's been whispered about him. If he appears they should RUN, regardless of anything else because that's the whole point of his presence in the adventure.

Of course, as GM I would absolutely have a monstrous Soth statblock on hand if they were feeling brave. TPKs are valid campaign endings, too.

 

[pukunui]

OK so something that bugs me a little bit about the premise of not just this adventure but the beginning of the War of the Lance in general is that, despite international trade continuing as normal in places like Kalaman, the existence of the Dragon Armies and their conquest of eastern Ansalon is still mere rumor.

Shouldn’t there either be merchants (and maybe even refugees) bringing tales of the Dragon Armies and their conquests? Or perhaps there are suddenly no more merchants or travelers from the east – but no one seems to wonder why.

It’s just always struck me as somewhat unbelievable that the Dragon Armies are essentially able to take all of western Ansalon by surprise – especially when you consider how small Ansalon is.

 

[overgeeked]

OK so something that bugs me a little bit about the premise of not just this adventure but the beginning of the War of the Lance in general is that, despite international trade continuing as normal in places like Kalaman, the existence of the Dragon Armies and their conquest of eastern Ansalon is still mere rumor.

Shouldn’t there either be merchants (and maybe even refugees) bringing tales of the Dragon Armies and their conquests? Or perhaps there are suddenly no more merchants or travelers from the east – but no one seems to wonder why.

It’s just always struck me as somewhat unbelievable that the Dragon Armies are essentially able to take all of western Ansalon by surprise – especially when you consider how small Ansalon is.

Information travels at the speed of a horse-drawn wagon. At the time, no one believed dragons were real. They’d been gone 351 years. No one had seen one and they’re repeatedly referred to as children’s stories until they actually show up in the novels. So when a few merchants from the east start talking about armies invading and dragons, most people would reasonably dismiss them as madmen or fools. You’d likely also have some pretty good disinformation going. With shapechanging and simple illusions, you could even have draconians taking the place of some merchants, so they wouldn’t be talking.