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Hoard of the Dragon Queen - a solid D effort.
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6376761" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>I finished episode one of HotDQ for Encounters on Wed. Rather, it finished my players. Unlike the OP, though, I don't really blame the module (yeah, it's got it's failings, but some are just the nature of an adventure meant for organized play) so much as the system. 1st level characters are pretty fragile and don't have many resources, yet the module assumes they're going to go on multiple 'missions' all night in order to reach 2nd level in time for the next episode. It's not like the guy writing the module ignored the encounter guidelines (no overleveled elite controllers this time), which call for 6-8 med-hard encounters. Yep, that's about what's in Episode 1: 8 encounters ('missions'), a couple easy or pointless, some pretty hard. Nope, a 1st level party can't really do that. </p><p></p><p>I also ran Seek the Keep & Dragon Attack as a 2hr mini-event (repeatedly) at a con over labor day with similarly poor results. Most parties just plain died to the barrage of random (50% chance per 100') and obligatory encounters. The one party that did better had a wizard casting Sleep on Kobolds and Magic Missile at the dragon. That worked out OK, still had plenty of dropped characters and everyone was tapped out after only two 'missions.'</p><p></p><p></p><p>The game just doesn't quite work as presented at 1st level. I'm assuming there's a sweet spot starting later - 2nd, 3rd, 5th, sometime - where 6-8 encounters are realistic and encounters and classes start to balance and the whole becomes more playable.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6376761, member: 996"] I finished episode one of HotDQ for Encounters on Wed. Rather, it finished my players. Unlike the OP, though, I don't really blame the module (yeah, it's got it's failings, but some are just the nature of an adventure meant for organized play) so much as the system. 1st level characters are pretty fragile and don't have many resources, yet the module assumes they're going to go on multiple 'missions' all night in order to reach 2nd level in time for the next episode. It's not like the guy writing the module ignored the encounter guidelines (no overleveled elite controllers this time), which call for 6-8 med-hard encounters. Yep, that's about what's in Episode 1: 8 encounters ('missions'), a couple easy or pointless, some pretty hard. Nope, a 1st level party can't really do that. I also ran Seek the Keep & Dragon Attack as a 2hr mini-event (repeatedly) at a con over labor day with similarly poor results. Most parties just plain died to the barrage of random (50% chance per 100') and obligatory encounters. The one party that did better had a wizard casting Sleep on Kobolds and Magic Missile at the dragon. That worked out OK, still had plenty of dropped characters and everyone was tapped out after only two 'missions.' The game just doesn't quite work as presented at 1st level. I'm assuming there's a sweet spot starting later - 2nd, 3rd, 5th, sometime - where 6-8 encounters are realistic and encounters and classes start to balance and the whole becomes more playable. [/QUOTE]
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