D&D 5E Enhancing "Rise of Tiamat" (Practical stuff to try at your table!)

The foam board sounds great and does make it feel more epic. These are things that should have been in the book!

I filled in the meetings with reports from 2 other groups of Adventurers and other fluff from the realms. Sean over at http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1 had a group called Darks Company, I used the characters from his Tyranny of Dragons campaign. The PCs hated competition and the running joke throughout our subsequent campaigns is that everyone sings songs about Dark’s company rather than the PCs.

Hi all, I just wanted to add my small contribution since I got so many great ideas from all of you guys. I was disappointed with all the Draakhorn idea: the first time players hear the sound it was really scary, and they soon went to the Sea of Moving Ice to find out more about it, even if in the end Maccath provides no real additional information, at least in the adventure as it is written. So I pimped it up a little, and decided that the horn has a secondary effect that only Maccath knows: not only it calls back all chromatic dragons, but it can also knock out metallic ones. This makes it a much more valuable asset for the Cult forces. Moreover it turned out pretty well in the Metallic Dragon episode, since right in the middle of the Metallic Dragon Council the Cult forces kicked in, flying on Skyreach Castle (my players did not succeed to crash it at the end of the previous book), blasting all the Draakhorn power, and trying to kill all the stunned metallic dragons there. The players had to sneak in the castle , find the Draakhorn and stop its sound before the Metalic Dragons were slained.

grob76 said:

I was disappointed with all the Draakhorn idea

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The player with a Ranger character wasn't happy that I "played his character for him" when I tried to foreshadow the Final Battle a little bit (by giving them a clue where the Cult's base is).

The group had heard the initial call of the horn while they were in Waterdeep.
The group heard it again, one day out from Waterdeep, and I told them the sound might be coming from somewhere southeast.
Just before they tracked down Varram, I had the Ranger wake up to watch the sunrise. He could hear the horn sound in the quiet moment between the night creatures going a-bed and day creatures stirring in the morning. It seemed to be coming from the east.

None of the group thought to get out a map and run a rough plot. If the campaign had lasted all the way through, I would have had the Council send the group off on some mission and have a member (probably whoever they didn't especially like) tell them "by the way, find out where the Draakhorn IS when you get a chance, would ya?"

edit: The truly ancient dragons who just sit on the sidelines for both Tiamat and Storm King, should probably awaken and stir from their ages-long slumber because the Draakhorn buzzes in their ears like a nasty alarm clock.
The metallic dragons on their Council should mention it too. An additional way to gain favor with the metallic dragons could be to create / invent an "aspirin" or "earmuffs" for them...

My group is nearing the second "Cult Strikes Back" and now that MToF is out I had the though of replacing the Yugoloths (Nycaloth & Mezzoloths specifically) with Abishai.

Pros
Abishai are devils, loyal to Tiamat which makes more sense, story wise.

Cons
Even though the strike is meant to be a power statement by the Cult, I don't want to accidentally TPK. This limits me to Black & White Abishai which don't have any of the magical abilities of the Yugoloths (teleport, invisibility). Those are the kind of things that really panic my players and make them step up their game.

Thoughts?

I could always save the Abishai for the Well of Dragons and would be more interesting than more high level Cultists.

akr71 said:

Even though the strike is meant to be a power statement by the Cult, I don't want to accidentally TPK.

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You got further into Tiamat than my group and I did, so maybe a purchase of Morton Salt (trade goods) would be in order:

Yes you do want to try to TPK the group with this. A power statement doesn't work if the intended target survives; the other meddling hero groups learn 'Team Villain is not as tough as they think they are', if Team Hero strides out of the smoke of battle visibly still functional.

IMC, my metagame plan was to teach the group to cooperate and good battle tactics. I seriously tried to kill them only with Arauthator (even then I got interested in 'how are they going to get out of this one?' half-way through, and they did) and with the assassins. The Cult Strikes Back scenes SHOULD feel different from the other encounters, like the PCs have made a difference in thwarting / delaying the Cult's plans with all their other activities - and the Cult wants revenge.

Eltab said:

You got further into Tiamat than my group and I did, so maybe a purchase of Morton Salt (trade goods) would be in order:

Yes you do want to try to TPK the group with this. A power statement doesn't work if the intended target survives; the other meddling hero groups learn 'Team Villain is not as tough as they think they are', if Team Hero strides out of the smoke of battle visibly still functional.

IMC, my metagame plan was to teach the group to cooperate and good battle tactics. I seriously tried to kill them only with Arauthator (even then I got interested in 'how are they going to get out of this one?' half-way through, and they did) and with the assassins. The Cult Strikes Back scenes SHOULD feel different from the other encounters, like the PCs have made a difference in thwarting / delaying the Cult's plans with all their other activities - and the Cult wants revenge.

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Hmm, you've given me something to think about here. The difficulty for what I have planned out is in the 'Deadly' category already.

I'm planning on the second attack on happening in a populated area (a town square) with an adult black dragon. The dragon is going to stick to the air. There will likely be lots of civilian casualties - afterwards the survivors will not look too kindly on the party from bringing this down on their sleepy town.

Don't get me wrong - I'm planning on coming at them hard, but I don't want them to feel I set them up to fail with no chance to succeed. Many of the encounters have been met with methodical planning - I want to see what they do in a completely reactionary position.

I should add that these players, while they have a healthy respect for a dragon in it lair, a dragon out in the open where they can't somewhat corner it terrifies them. Glazhael(sp?) escaped them on the cloud castle and teamed up with Talis the White. Talis and the dragon ambushed them as they were about to enter the Tomb of Diderus. She offered a shortcut (the secret door into the final room) in exchange for them retrieving the White Mask for her.

Why did they cooperate? Because she threatened to have her white dragon rip their airship from the sky and let the innocent crew plummet to the ground. It was their first real setback where they didn't get exactly what they wanted and it was all due to a flying dragon threatening much weaker allies.

The black dragon hitting the town square (& perhaps their airship) when it is full of powerless commoners is going to hurt more than a character death I think. Sort of "Ok, coming after us powerful adventurers in one thing. We can take it & if we fall, we have powerful friends who will resurrect us, but innocent townsfolk! How dare they!"

Enhancng thw tomb of diderius

Ive just finished runn8ng through the tomb of diderius and have a few points to make to enhance it, upgrade if you need to and shift the focus a little.

- previously in the first council meeting the pcs learned that varam was rumoured intheserpent hills, te pcs were dispatched to the sea of movng ice and another adventuring group was sent to the hill.
- another group of heroes was sent to soubar to slay a great green dragon that was ravaging the countryside.
- The pcs found out from macath that varam called on makath to fond the location of the well of diderius.
- the location was revealed as serpent ISLE not hills so the others guys had a bad lead.
- this helped lead the pcs straight on in pursuit of varam on the rocky desert serpent isle.
- they found varams beached longship but guards were gone(killed by predatory yuan ti)

- they found the tmple and scouting around discovered some shallow graves. And blood marks leading to the well.
- i changed the trolls to blue and red slaad.(all grey so it didnt give the game away for those monster manual readers). I use the colour as just the portal iol slick colour when they are either banished or summoned. And the colour of thier blood.
- they searched down the well and found blood pools where the red slaad feasted o;the remaining guards.
there was on guard corpse ther that had a viscious chest wound. The pc barbarian recoginised this as similar to the wickedly barbed spears of his people, hinting at the chest burst death of a red slaad victim.

Other Monster. changes
- my pcs are quite a bit more powerful so i have 3 stone golems instead of one.
- manticore i simply reskinned to a land based beast with 5 base attacks instead of 3.
- i changed the barbed devils into male 3 erinyes easily mostaken for angels. These erinyes massacrd the mumies that our pc priest turned so the pcs were also wary of attacking. i played the erinyes as entirely despising varam and the followers of tiamat in general so willing to assist the party with information.

- despite their level the party had real trouble withfood and water. On their first rest retreat they went hungry and did some tense digging in the wet sand at the base of the well to find potable water.

- i havent played outthe yuan ti section yet but have planted a grey slaad in human form as another captive. He is really relishing causing chaos amongst the yuan ti sureptitiously. When the party are parleying he is goignto see an opportunity for causing more trouble and will choose that point to break his weakened bonds, attack the yuan ti from the rear and call on his ‘rescuers’ assistance against thes vile cannibal snake people.

I like the abisahai idea and may add them to encounter 3. After skyreach my pcs learned from the zhents than not only were the cult intent on killing the party b7t had put a large price on thier heads. A powerful eastern mercenary group based on the ten thunders from malifaux took up the mark. The second attack, largely about me4cenary yugoloths, is going to be when the ten thunders strike.
- 2 assasins
- 2 gladiators
- 1 shadow thief with poisoned weapons
- some sort of outer planar me4cenary thrall beef

its not practical for the attempt to be after the6 are already weakened for standard remote adventure chapters so the assassins will set up a couple of softener assaaain attempts through the day to soften them up before e the real hit.

I agree with the rules that there should be a real risk of pc death but not a real attempt at Tpk. Ie a genuine ‘deadly’ encounter.