Replacing Mission to Thay
Hi again all!
So, Mission to Thay suffers from a number of problems in my opinion. In no particular order:
- The entire episode boils down to two rolls per player. There's no inherent tension/conflict, just a a series of rolls (i.e. a skill challenge), and with very little at risk.
- Unless the players are familiar with Faerun already, they'll have no real idea who the Red Wizards are, or why Thay is scary.
- For that matter, Red Wizards (een if they're rebels, but still evil) are members of the opposition. Why ask them for help?
- Also, if its to give the Alliance/Players sufficient background wizardly help, why go all the way to Thay? The players already have an in with the Arcane Brotherhood through the resuce of Maccath.
- It's short an under-detailed, leaving the GM having to "wing it" in response to the adventure, instead of the players' actions.
Its one (very small) saving grace is that it's SHORT, and thus doesn't interrupt the adventure's pacing. It's also VERY role-play heavy, which is great if your group enjoys it, but my group leans heavily towards combat bunnies.
Travel Times
[sblock]If you haven't already run this section, don't forget the Travel Times for the armies. By my estimate, there's roughly 21 days of travel from Triel (the most likely assembly point) and the Well of Dragons. Then there's all the travel for the armies to get *to* Triel. If you read closely, its apparent that the campaign is supposed to take significant game world time. Running the calculations drives home that it's most likely *months* between council sessions. [/sblock]
One final thing before I start the posts - my group has a lot of very experienced players, most of them are combat bunnies, and we have a few very, very, good tacticians. As a result, my defaut difficulty setting is *much, much* harder than 5e's. The group (a Warlock 15, Cleric 14, Monk 13, Rogue 13, Sorcerer 13) dealt with what I would consider a Very Difficult, possibly Deadly encounter. It was a CR 24 encounter. Depending on your group, you will want to revise the encounters, probably quite heavily.
Also, I made extensive use of Matt Woodfill's
Elementals Expanded,
Greater Elementals,
Lesser Elementals, and
Elemental Myrmidons. All are available throught the DM's Guild, and I recommend them highly.