D&D 5E Why is Hoard of the Dragon Queen such a bad adventure?

Sailor Moon said:

Name me a build in 5th edition that brings absolutely nothing worth while to a party.

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One with a Charisma of 8–, who constantly attempts to bed every NPC, with or without consent, because they've chosen "polyamorous pervert sex addict" as their personality line, and thus is constantly getting the party in trouble, and his Bond is "Save my own skin" or "2 cute to die"...

Or the bard who uses ventriloquism to make it sound like the fighter just called out the guy they're wanting to negotiate with, because he's taken "Prankster"...

Or any of a dozen other similar troublemakers.

Their net benefit is severely negative. Both for the party as characters in the gameworld, and as the players at the table.

Evenglare said:

They bought the module but expect that the module doesn't want you to play the story line? Why buy the module? I also see the use of railroading a bit liberally. Railroading to me expects you to follow on a line with invisible walls to a story that can't be changed. Of course modules expect that, but that doesn't mean the DM can't have people go off the path. That's the point of these games. Modules can't account for every single thing, and nor should they. They exist to provide a specific story.

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Maybe some modules do. But there's also plenty of modules that focus on giving you a detailed description of one or several locations, describing their inhabitants, their motives and daily routines and how they are related to each other without implying how the GM is going to use that information in her game. At most these modules tend to provide a list of story hooks to give you some ideas why it might be interesting for characters to visit the described area. In short, these modules describe a sandbox.
I seem to remember that adventure modules written for the old MERP were like that.
Similarly for games that focus more on social encounters, politics, etc. rather than exploration, there's modules describing organisations, npcs, and events, supplying a suggested timeline that basically describes what's most likely to happen if the players don't interfere in any way. Often, but not always, they also describe a couple of 'what if?' scenarios that cover likely developments if the players interfere in certain ways and/or at certain points. Several modules written for Vampire or Ars Magica are like that.

Naturally, these modules have a disadvantage over modules that are written in the expectation that a particular script is followed: They always require some additional effort from the GM, either in preparing for a session or in improvising during the session. However, I've found that 'scripted modules' rarely work as effortless as advertized. At the least you'll have to tailor them to your players' characters to get them involved. At worst you have to rewrite large passages to make it fit, resulting in more work than you'd have had, had you used a more open module or even written your own adventure from scratch.

From my reading, Tyranny of Dragons works better if it is looked at as a series of modules, each "episode" being a different adventure. Particularly Episode 4 and after, they can be separated and treated on their own. Rise has some pretty sweet dungeon modules, that don't actually need the storyline at all to make sense. So, is it railroad if you follow the breadcrumbs from episode to episode? Possibly, but in my experience people will either want to follow that trail, or be fine going off the beaten path and winging it. Multiple paths are given at various points in the Path; and it would be fairly easy to get back to a lot of the material I'd the rails are left, shen the time is right.

KarinsDad said:

Actually, it seems like both you and I are misreading Arcane Ward.

I was reading the recharge rule as conditional on it being at zero hit points. Someone at WotC verified that this is not the case.

But, you cannot recharge your Arcane Ward with Alarm between encounters because it only resets after a long rest.

Edit: As a side note, casting Shield when Arcane Ward is a bit of a bigger deal than you are letting on. If someone is willing to do that on the first hit of the day, they are often also willing to do it on the second, third, etc., especially at higher levels and hence, not be giving up 2 points of Arcane Ward for Shield, but 4 or 6 or more. So, situation depending, it is often still worthwhile to allow the first (or even second if the first hit is in a low-intensity situation) hit to go through. Granted, if the DM often throws damaging save spells or breath weapons against the group, saving Arcane Ward might make sense. But as a general rule, using it up early is not a terrible decision, especially if each Shield spell from then on charges it by 2.

On the Alarm issue, Alarm only makes sense for PCs with Armor (e.g. Dwarves, multiclass, etc.). Otherwise, if I have a choice between using up a spell choice to up my AC by 5 one round per day or by 3 8 hours a day, I'll be taking Mage Armor every time and Alarm is not necessary.

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You've made two points that I want to respond to separately.

1.) Forgoing Shield: "If someone is willing to do that on the first hit of the day, they are often also willing to do it on the second, third, etc., especially at higher levels and hence, not be giving up 2 points of Arcane Ward for Shield, but 4 or 6 or more." I agree with the bolded part. This is what I meant when I said, "instead, I would eschew Shield entirely when in low-intensity combats." Arcane Ward is rechargeable for free, unlike spell slots, so you would often prefer to expend your ward and not your spell slots. I don't see how it follows though that that makes casting Shield give up 4 or 6 or more "free" HP.

2.) Recharging via Alarm: "Otherwise, if I have a choice between using up a spell choice to up my AC by 5 one round per day or by 3 8 hours a day, I'll be taking Mage Armor every time and Alarm is not necessary." It's not a dichotomy. You can cast Mage Armor and recharge your Arcane Ward (for free!) using Alarm.

Related to (2), when you say, "But, you cannot recharge your Arcane Ward with Alarm between encounters because it only resets after a long rest.", I don't understand your point. Each time you cast Alarm as a ritual, it takes 11 minutes and restore 2 HP to your Arcane Ward. A long rest is not involved. This is confirmed here: https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/509777894344622080

Jeremy Crawford ‏@JeremyECrawford Sep 22
@Plaguescarred @wax_eagle Yes, you could cast alarm every 11 minutes to give the ward 2 hp.'

emdw45 said:

Each time you cast Alarm as a ritual, it takes 11 minutes and restore 2 HP to your Arcane Ward. A long rest is not involved.[/I]

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You are correct. I had not considered this bag of rats solutions.

Interesting.

aramis erak said:

One with a Charisma of 8–, who constantly attempts to bed every NPC, with or without consent, because they've chosen "polyamorous pervert sex addict" as their personality line, and thus is constantly getting the party in trouble, and his Bond is "Save my own skin" or "2 cute to die"...

Or the bard who uses ventriloquism to make it sound like the fighter just called out the guy they're wanting to negotiate with, because he's taken "Prankster"...

Or any of a dozen other similar troublemakers.

Their net benefit is severely negative. Both for the party as characters in the gameworld, and as the players at the table.

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This kind of prove sthe point. The player has to be wilfully violating Wheatons law to break the system.
I suspect it's as robust as 4e he who has 18 in his attack stat shall not go very far wrong. Well 16 in 5e. User error in play will have a bigger effect.

Sailor Moon said:

Name me a build in 5th edition that brings absolutely nothing worth while to a party.

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There is a gap between "nothing" and "worth a full share of the spoils". As players we usally do not get the option of kicking out and underperforming party member, which a bunch of individual whose lives were on the line might.

Tbh the issue I had with your original comment was more the tone of entitlement than the fact of it. (I will play exactly what I want the rest of you be d*mned).

You may just be expressing belief in the robustness of the system than being wilfully anti social.

For myself I do think that like 4e most parties will work well. "Balanced" means a few guys who can live with being in melee and some decent ranged attackers for those tricky monsters that won't close. Plus covering a wide range of skills.

Spot healing is the single biggest advantage of PCs over monsters and ideally someone can do a bit Even a thief rogue with potions or healer feat. In 4e a few MC into healer feats covered this. Lacking a healer you will have less stamina over the day but you may be able to compensate (4e strikers kill so fast, controllers mitigate damage, defenders are durable, not sure of 5e dynamics).

Pickles JG said:

Tbh the issue I had with your original comment was more the tone of entitlement than the fact of it. (I will play exactly what I want the rest of you be d*mned).

You may just be expressing belief in the robustness of the system than being wilfully anti social.

For myself I do think that like 4e most parties will work well. "Balanced" means a few guys who can live with being in melee and some decent ranged attackers for those tricky monsters that won't close. Plus covering a wide range of skills.

Spot healing is the single biggest advantage of PCs over monsters and ideally someone can do a bit Even a thief rogue with potions or healer feat. In 4e a few MC into healer feats covered this. Lacking a healer you will have less stamina over the day but you may be able to compensate (4e strikers kill so fast, controllers mitigate damage, defenders are durable, not sure of 5e dynamics).

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What I was saying is that I don't need to go around to each of my fellow player's in order to find out what they are playing in order to create a PC that will synergize the best with what they have. To be honest, we never did that anyway. We all created what we wanted based on the concepts we wanted to play.

What makes me different than some people here is we don't hold that much value in winning. My group and I are able to be heavily involved in our PC's and yet still be able to shrug our shoulders and say "oh well, guess that was my PC's fate" if any of our PC's die, or the quest we are on fails.

D&D is not about succeeding, it's about playing a game that contains rules you use in order to try and succeed at many different things but with the possibility that you may not succeed and that it may be all over.

Sailor Moon said:

What I was saying is that I don't need to go around to each of my fellow player's in order to find out what they are playing in order to create a PC that will synergize the best with what they have.

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If that is what you meant, you should have said so. What you said was totally different.

Sailor Moon said:

D&D is not about succeeding, it's about playing a game that contains rules you use in order to try and succeed at many different things but with the possibility that you may not succeed and that it may be all over.

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While this might be true, there is the general hobby notion that if someone is not succeeding over and over again, they may quit the hobby. This could be D&D, skiing, fishing, whatever.

If someone goes fishing and almost never catches a fish, one person just enjoys the moments out on the lake and keeps doing it. Another person gets frustrated after a while and stops fishing. We do what we enjoy, but we mostly do what we enjoy and are at least somewhat successful in.

The same with D&D. If a person is playing a wizard and is almost always having subpar combat results, one person might just enjoy the moments in the game, and another person might get frustrated after a while and stop playing D&D (or switch to a different class). That doesn't make the latter person whiny, or lame, or any other derogatory adjective that you might apply to him. It just means that the person is not often succeeding and is getting frustrated over it.

This lack of success is difficult to achieve with most of the 5E classes, but it can happen with the wizard. At least until higher levels. It might even be the reason historically that some people never play a wizard.

We've just had our fifth session and the PCs have made it through Episode 3. So far, my group has not been finding it horrible. I have been altering it a bit, per advice in the Hack & Slash blog, but they're more like tweaks to make thing have a little more sense and verisimilitude. My players have been playing up the background choices they took, particularly the ones that tie them to Greenest, so they had no problem going into town (i.e. their home) while it was under siege. They were understandably reluctant to have anything to do with the dragon, but one of the PCs stepped up when called out by the Half-Dragon because it was in his character's nature to do things like that. I played that encounter up to the hilt: the Half-Dragon swung and missed, the PC got a solid hit in and then caught a breath weapon in the face. Naturally he went down and the Half-Dragon threw his sword down, spit on the body and walked away complaining that there was no one in town to give him a proper fight (if you want more details, I've been blogging on about at DoctorStrangeRoll and on Obisidian Portal).

The PC was only MOSTLY dead, so he healed up and used the encounter to inform some of his choices as his character moved to 2nd level.

For my group, buying into the adventure's conceit, everything seems to be working as the designers intended.

JediSoth said:

We've just had our fifth session and the PCs have made it through Episode 3. So far, my group has not been finding it horrible. ... My players have been playing up the background choices they took, particularly the ones that tie them to Greenest, so they had no problem going into town (i.e. their home) while it was under siege.
...
For my group, buying into the adventure's conceit, everything seems to be working as the designers intended.

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Defending Greenest is fine. The railroad tracks become blatantly obvious when the PCs have to leave Greenest.