Run It

[Blackwarder]

In the module, the last paragraph of the first boxed section seems to be saying the opposite - change this to suit your taste and tell us what you changed.

You should change the module all you want, just don't change the rules out of hand before playing.

Personally, I dislike the long rest rule but I'm not going to change it because I'm play testing the game. That being said, if after a session or two ill find that I really don't like it Han all bets are off.

Warder

 

[MichaelSomething]

I agree with the OP. We didn't figure out Codzilla in the early days of 3.5 either.

 

[Dire Bare]

I too, disagree with Mengu's approach and agree with the "chorus line".

However, I think the designers at WotC running the playtest understand their audience well enough that they are expecting folks like Mengu to change rules and effectively provide less useful feedback. Mengu, and others, changing the rules won't break the playtest overall, it'll just mean that Mengu's feedback won't be all that useful to WotC. A shame, but nothing to get worried about. Hopefully.

 

[stevelabny]

I think certain changes are ok.

If Mengu's example of "fighter doesn't feel tanky enough, so I gave him the Guardian theme from the other cleric" is PERFECT. He's not completely houseruling or homebrewing anything. He's clearly identifying a problem and trying a 5e way to fix it.

As for hand-waving a player death or suddenly healing people in game? That's also not a problem. Because in theory the party could just travel back to "town" (most modules have those - caves of chaos IS assuming theres a little keep on the borderlands nearby, no?) and SLEEP ONE NIGHT (heh) and find the dead guy's TWIN BROTHER and return.

As long as Mengu explains in his playtest feedback what he changed and why, that's still extremely valuable.

If he ran the 5e characters through a 3.x or 4.x adventure, that might help look at certain basics of the rules, but wouldn't help with any playtest advice on the monsters. If he ran Caves of Chaos as is with 3.x or 4.x characters, that would be completely pointless and useless - might as well another game.


Let's be real, this Caves of Chaos adventure as written is horrific. The pre-adventure list of possible plot hooks hints at some potentially interesting interactions / role-playing / stategy but the actually area descriptions provide very little beyond "they guard the entrance of their subsection and go get help"

The module is completely leaving it up to the DM to name every leader and give them all personality. To determine who wants what and why and which tactics will work. On the surface, thats how a home-brew adventure would work, but if you're providing a pre-written one, the NPCs should have pre-established personalities.

I know that 5e wants to get back to DM's in charge and I like that, and a lot of experienced DMs will be fine at fleshing out the details of why the Caves work the way they do. BUT if this adventure was being run by a new DM for a new group? Chances are it would quickly become the most boring hack-and-slash fest ever.

I'm pretty sure they want to know what the DMs do to flesh out the adventure and what outside-the-box concepts the players come up with (if any) and what the DMs allow or don't allow.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are gonna look at the basic bare-bones fighter, and the mostly straightforward hack-n-slash adventure and get turned off.