D&D 5E Hoard of the Dragon Queen: As it Turns out, it's Pretty Good (so far)

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[MENTION=20741]Steel_Wind[/MENTION]
To focus on the issue of bringing in newer younger players, of which price is certainly an aspect...
I know you only skimmed the book since you're playing thru the advenure, but did you get a sense from the book or your DM how user-friendly Hoard of the Dragon Queen is for new players? Are there sidebars for new DMs or DM pointers for potential sticking spots? Do the sections of the adventure that involve mystery discuss certain spells that can dramatically impact the pacing? That sort of thing.

Thanks for posting your experience too!

 

[Steel_Wind]

Leaving aside the issue of price (seriously, we had a million threads about this back when the prices were first announced)...


Really? It's been underwhelming over here. The production value is surprisingly low, and the text didn't give me much to go with. The whole first episode is basically just a lot of "then they fight X cultists and X kobolds" in a row, with no real interesting choices between them. How did that play out at your table?

Please appreciate that I come to this as someone who played in the session -- not as someone who ran it.

The DM has about 30+ years experience as a DM, makes up a LOT of things up on the fly and spends a lot of time differentiating the context in which combats occur and in adding the flourishes which could make a real difference in how I received those combat encounters.

What I am trying to say is that I enjoyed it a lot -- but I can't say for sure that I enjoyed what was on the page -- or maybe I just enjoyed the flourishes he added to it. I'm not able to confirm that with you either way.

I can say that we initially:

• investigated some mysterious deaths, ascribed to a disease and then later investigated to be poisoning;
• fought some kobolds and cultists in the forest who were attacking some women who were fleeing Greenest; this may be an entirely made up encounter - I just don't know. There was a fair bit of roleplaying and moral choices which transpired out of this combat by reason of the capture of the kobold and cultist and the fact we did not trust these ladies we were rescuing;
• We got to the town managing what we had left of the caravan to find it under attack by a dragon (Blue or black was unclear -- probably blue) and many cultists and kobolds. The Big Ass dragon scared the bejezus out of us and we cowered like little bitches, but we got our hero on as we saw the kobolds and cultists attacking the city and killing civilians with kids in tow that were running towards us for safety as we watched the horror spread out before us as we crested the hill and looked down on to Greenest;
• The variation in the three combats with the Cultists/kobolds was differentiated through the threats posed to the civilians and the city streets/houses where the combats took place. They got a little "samey", but that had more to do with the effectiveness of Sleep and FireBolt in 5E then it did with the tactics and environment, imo;
• We avoided a final encounter with winged kobolds when my familiar spotted them on the wing and we ran and hid to avoid them. (Did I mention we ran heroically to avoid them?);
• We also had a brief exploration of a sewer/ sally port entrance into the Keep where we dealt with 2 rat swarms in 5e. While not as large as 3.xx/PF swarms they were mostly just as annoying; and
• We ended it off with a roleplaying encounter with the local lord and his dwarven castellan.

What can I say? I LIKED IT. I want to play it again. I didn't like the 5e system all that much, but I didn't mind it and any druthers I might have had with it were more than made up for by the story and game session itself. If I were asked to play in a 5E home-brew? I must confess I'd probably say no. Mind you -- I'd probably say no to a Pathfinder homebrew given my current gaming schedule, too.

But will I play Hoard of the Dragon Queen again? Hells yes. I'm in.

If you care to watch the session for yourself (which is based physically in California by the way *ahem*) most of the session is viewable on our Twitch channel: GrumpyGM

 

[Steel_Wind]

@Steel_Wind
To focus on the issue of bringing in newer younger players, of which price is certainly an aspect...
I know you only skimmed the book since you're playing thru the advenure, but did you get a sense from the book or your DM how user-friendly Hoard of the Dragon Queen is for new players? Are there sidebars for new DMs or DM pointers for potential sticking spots? Do the sections of the adventure that involve mystery discuss certain spells that can dramatically impact the pacing? That sort of thing.

Thanks for posting your experience too!

I am not able to properly field your questions, but I will call in [MENTION=92300]Azmyth[/MENTION] who was the DM to answer them for you and give you his take on those questions you pose.

 

[MortalPlague]

Good write-up of your experiences, Steel Wind! It's interesting to hear the perspective of someone who prefers Pathfinder, yet finds the adventure compelling. It leads me to wonder if WotC might just pull off their goal of producing higher quality adventures this time around!

My own experiences (as a loyal 5E supporter) have been similarly excellent, both running and playing. I have a table playing through Tyranny of Dragons right now (we had the alpha playtest version), and it gets pretty epic.

 

[doctorhook]

Speaking as someone who ordered HotDQ with the intention of DMing it, I'm having some serious doubts about it as-written. In part, my players are really enjoying the sandbox elements of Lost Mine of Phandelver, but HotDQ appears to be a lot more railroad-y.

Additionally, I've found some of the plot summaries to be fairly unbelievable; for example, upon arrival in Greenest (a town under attack by mercenaries), the summary of episode says that the adventurers (who will probably look like random adventurers and mercenaries, so much so that apparently some of the attackers won't even recognize them as enemies) should end up in an audience before the lord of the town. It seems extremely contrived to say that while holed-up in his keep, under attack from random mercenaries, the lord is going to allow more mercenaries to just knock on the front door and come talk to him. Obviously this problem can be resolved with just a bit of creative DMing, but as written it seems kinda stupid.

My other complaint about it is the quality of the maps by Jared Blando: they're waaay too stylized around the periphery and border of each map, and almost completely bland and undetailed within each room. Overall, this makes his maps nearly useless for those of us who incorporate a VTT into play; as it stands, I'll have to redraw the maps for my table's use. My strong preference would be for future adventures to either have maps more in the practical style of Mike Schley's work, or to just hire Mike Schley.

Overall, not having had a chance to play it yet, I've definitely got some serious misgivings about this adventure that I had been excited to run.

(PS: Someone asked if there are sidebars and tips for new DMs in HotDQ. There are sidebars with DM tips for the adventure but they are definitely not direct towards new DMs. HotDQ is definitely not a system-introduction product.)

 

[fjw70]

I have been looking through HotDQ a little bit. I probably won't run it as is but will probably pick and choose pieces of it to use in my campaign. I am trying to get away from big over-arching plots and just run it adventure by adventure. We are doing the Lost Mines adventure now and I will introduce the dragon cultists but am not sure how much they will be used in the campaign.

 

[Lwaxy]

Please don't derail the thread and be polite to each other so we don't have to close the thread or start giving people vacations.

Price discussions would be best in their own thread.

Thanks.

 

[KarinsDad]

My 1st level PHB custom Wizard (Human Wizard built with the Elemental Adept: Fire feat) was kicking ass and taking names with Sleep and Fire Bolt so much that there seemed few compelling reasons to even consider casting any other spells. This fact seemed to highlight a potential play balance issue. Moreover, the lack of a range disadvantage on the Fire Bolt cantrip seemed unfair to the melee characters in the party, too. As cantrips go, Fire Bolt has to be the most powerful cantrip spell in any version of D&D I ever recall playing. If it was a 1st level spell, you'd still consider preparing it. That cleaves pretty close to the heart of the matter.

SW, this caught my eye.

Did you create this PC yourself? Or did the DM create the PCs?

Just curious because although you were very enthusiastic about the Firebolt of this PC, Elemental Adept basically sucks. The Firebolt damage was 5.6 average instead of any other wizard at 5.5 (Burning Hands does better at 11 average damage instead of the normal 10.5, but it is still a small gain).

It just seems like a waste of a feat when the PC could have picked up a better feat, or been a non-variant human with +1 to four more ability scores.

And the fact that you were gushing about it when a normal wizard with a 14 Dex could be doing just a little less damage with a light crossbow (or do a little more with a 16 Dex) seemed odd. Firebolt is basically the wizard's equivalent of a light crossbow (which Wizards get automatically anyway, so they might as well take a different cantrip).

 

[ExploderWizard]

And the fact that you were gushing about it when a normal wizard with a 14 Dex could be doing just a little less damage with a light crossbow (or do a little more with a 16 Dex) seemed odd. Firebolt is basically the wizard's equivalent of a light crossbow (which Wizards get automatically anyway, so they might as well take a different cantrip).

I'm not that familiar with the feat (books not handy) but firebolt by itself is a fine cantrip choice. Does a light crossbow set things on fire? There is more to wielding fire than just damage per round.

 

[Agamon]

It just seems like a waste of a feat when the PC could have picked up a better feat, or been a non-variant human with +1 to four more ability scores.

It's one thing to play optimised yourself, which isn't a problem. The problem comes when telling others they've made poor choices.