Red Hand of Doom - I feel like a butcher...

[Lord Zardoz]

How dead is dead? Dropping a character in combat is not a huge issue, if they manage to stabilize. Does each death you mention mean losing the character and having to roll a new one?

I have not yet run this adventure, and I expect it to be pretty rough. But, I do have the benefit of having a party consisting of 2 clerics, 1 fighter, and 1 sorcerer. Between the 2 Clerics and having action points that can auto stabilize, its going to be pretty hard to outright kill a character.

As a DM, I am pretty dangerous because I usually play enemies as though they are playing for the kill. But I also am pretty lenient out long term character survivability.

And Red Hand of Doom does seem to be a very good module, and I look forward to running it.

Anyway, dont kick yourself. Given the kind of combat encounters this adventure uses, it should be a hard adventure. Pushing the players hard enough that there is 1 last guy standing is about right for what is meant to be a difficult fight. If I am trying to stage a centerpiece fight, that is exactly the result I aim for.

As long as your players are not pissed at you, dont worry about it. It could have been worse. You could have pulled out the Tomb of Horrors on them.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[klofft]

I'm running it and am in part 2 now. I'm sort of disappointed: I'm not really a rat-bastard DM at all, but I really expected SOMEone to fall by now. Not only has that not happened, they really haven't even come that close to losing someone (other than the poor ranger guide NPC in part 1).

FWIW, I am running 6 characters, not 4, but I'm jacking up the encounters on every occasion the designers' suggest.

 

[subrosas]

Thanks for the responses. Good to know I'm not totally alone...

Spoiler

I guess a lot of what especially bothers me is the way the campaign finished up. They dropped Azzar Kul in two rounds (!) after he wasted about ten buffing himself per the tactics section in the encounter. Then you-know-who showed up and offed all but one party member in exactly two rounds (they got as far as saying "...hmmm, maybe we're supposed to flee? But this is the end of the module. Why would we be set up to LOSE the last battle of the module?"). The last party member, a wizard, leapt down the shaft in terror and tried to hide amongst the hobgoblin bodies below.

Maybe I shouldn't have rolled in the open. If I'd used a screen, I could have fudged things perhaps. Or maybe I should have used action points or some other mechanism throughout the RHoD. Not sure...

btw - Don't mistake me - I thought the scenarios depicted in the campaign to be compelling, interesting, and very high quality.

 

[Nikroecyst]

:::FURTHER SPOILER:::

Its the best campaign i've read through since Shattered Gates of Slaughterguarde. I ran the first part of the RHoD, up to after the bridge battle, and the group decided to seek out the leaders of the army instead of following the army to Brindol. The group disbanded for a while then got back together and I ran the last encounter of the module, the battle with Azzar Khul and "you-know-who" with thier newly leveled up characters. The only pc to die was a guest player (brother in law) who wasn't really taking the game seriously at the time. Infact Ozzyrandion, the green dragon was reduced to less than half hp in one shot first round of combat, first attack, with a crit from the skirmisher. As per the module "if reduced to less than half hp he attempts to flee" he caught a couple arrows in his rear on the way out and died. They never did find his hidden potions but they took out the hardest part of that encounter in the first two rounds of the combat. Everyone had a blast. I was sad when it ended.

 

[Endur]

One occurred at the bridge, and another immediately following the climactic fight.

The climatic fight is designed to be a TPK, so the fact that one person survived means that you are a merciful GM.

 

[Squire James]

The climatic fight is designed to be a TPK, so the fact that one person survived means that you are a merciful GM.

In my game, the final encounter quickly killed 2 characters in 2 rounds (though those two characters knocked off 3/4 of total enemy HP in the process). The scout excelled in this encounter, using Evasion to negate the "special attack" and Tumble to prevent it from ever getting in a Full Attack. The dragon shaman dished out and took lots of damage, and simply retreated when engaged directly to avoid the dreaded Full Attack (sense a pattern here?). Skirmish damage finished the encounter off in round 6.

 

[Peni Griffin]

I'm heavily modifying this game for - oh, lots of reasons. Part 1 went well partly because my characters were already 7th level and had some smart moves. I also buffed some of the encounters to deal with the higher level of the party. At the bridge, the paladin and his pegasus were taking the bulk of the damage because the priest of Moradin had pinned half of the defenders down on the far bank with Spike Stones, and they had nothing to do but shoot at the flying guy duking it out with Ozyrrandion. At one point he took his hits and the player remarked: "You know, I could die here." The relevant initiatives were Ozyrrandion, Sir Tib, hobgoblin archers. Ozyrrandion had just gone from OK to 1 point (partly due to missle fire from the nonflying PCs) and was going to use his round (after Sir Tib's attack) to flee, but if Tib attacked, the hobgoblins would get their attacks on him and if he instead retreated into the cover of the trees, they wouldn't. So when his turn came around, I told him, in my Serious DM voice, that he thought he could probably take the dragon, but that to take the attack meant another round of arrows and Tib had to decide whether it was worth it.

I'm trying not to be too softhearted, but I don't see anything wrong with a little gentle prodding of this type. Losing Tib and his brand-new pegasus warhorse would have been a huge blow to everybody's morale. This may even yet cause his death, because Ozyrrandion, escaping with a single hit pointhas spread the word in the Horde about the fearsome Pegasus Guy, and every available distance weapon will be aimed at him from now on. I fully intend to up the lethality of some of the Horde's tactics, because frankly they don't use their resources to the fullest extent. But then, I'm also omitting 2 chapters.

I've sent out an e-mail to the group asking under what circumstances it's okay for characters to die. By this I wish to determine which sorts of deaths they don't mind be rescued from by obvious DM fudging. Nobody wants to go down due to a save-or-die spell or miraculous series of crits from a random encounter. That's just lame. And we're all agreed, presumably, that if there's no chance whatever of the PCs dying the satisfaction of victory is reduced. All the same, when it comes down to it, nobody wants to lose a character he's invested time and effort in; and I am not one of those cold-blooded DMs who can let the dice fall where they may without remorse. So I would like some kind of guideline to fall back on when we're in the thick of things, a point at which to stop encouraging them to think carefully about the consequences of their actions, reviewing my notes to see if there's potential rescuers in the offing, and letting the bad guys misjudge the situation.

As long as we're all on the same page about that, even this adventure should work out. It's tough, but except for that last chapter (which I'm omiting) it doesn't need to be a meatgrinder.

 

[DM_Jeff]

It was tough, but I wasn't a butcher. I have some of the canniest, most experienced rules and tactics-savvy players around, and my RHoD campaign still had two deaths.

As the PCs said: it was challenging!

-DM Jeff

 

[Shazman]

I'd say we're at least 3/4 of the way through it,and have had two PC deaths so far. We also had at least three encounters where we were all sure we were headed for a TPK. All the characters had awesome ability scores too. Red Hand of Doom run by the book is pretty brutal. If there was more down-time for resting and enhancing equipment, it would be less lethal, but that hobgoblin army isn't going to wait around while you rest and have your sword and armor, etc. crafted or enhanced. Don't feel too bad, if you run it strictly by the book, PC's will die.

 

[green slime]

I don't know why you feel like a butcher; buchers cut up the carcass of an animal after it's dead. You're more like the psychopath who preys on innocent girls and wears their skins from Silence of the Lamb.

mwahahahahaha!

Well said!