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

[doctorhook]

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

Must spread XP around before giving to Agamon again, and so on...

 

[Lalato]

Must spread XP around before giving to Agamon again, and so on...

Covered

 

[Steel_Wind]

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.

I didn't take Elemental Adept: Fire for the moderate extra damage bump; I took it to be able to ignore Fire Resistance possessed by any foes I might encounter.

It seemed reasonable that Fire Resistance would crop up from time to time - and I wasn't going to have my Wizard be stripped of his theme and spell focus by such a defence. At the same time, I would ensure that I was concentrating learning spells to be within that "fire" theme to take advantage of it.

I like thematic builds for my characters. I'm not such a fan of squeezing out every last bit of DPS from my characters I choose to play. Theme (albeit a playable one) is more important than DPS optimization to me. YMMV - and clearly does.

As for Firebolt just being a light crossbow. I agree that mechanically they are equivalent enough to be very close to one another, but they are not completely the same. There is no disadvantage for range - and a range of 120 feet is functionally long range in just about any RPG in which I have ever played for all practical purposes. I am not subject to Blade Ward or other resistances with my Firebolt and a 1d10 for a cantrip I can pew-pew with all day is decent enough to make me feel useful. Plus, I can set things on fire with it, oil and so forth, which is handy. It fits my character theme and makes me feel like I am playing a Wizard in a dozen ways a crossbow never could. It's just a cantrip after all - but for being a cantrip, I am rather impressed by it all the same.

If Pathfinder Wizards had a 1d10 cantrip with a range touch of 120 feet, let me tell you, that one would be pew-pew all session long in most games, too.

 

[Wormwood]

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

When I read the OP's description of his character, I honestly said to myself that if someone rolls into this thread and tells him his feat choice sucks that it's time for me to take another extended rest from these forums.

So good gaming and have a wonderful holiday season!

 

[Tony Semana]

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.

I have the HotDQ adventure as well and, as far as getting into the keep, reading past the summary:

[SBLOCK]
The very first (and only required) 'mission' of that episode is you meet a family under attack in Greenest as they try to get to the keep for safety. The adventurers are setup to help this group and escort them to the keep - collecting others of the town's survivors along the way. The keep itself is about to close its gates just as the party herds the survivors in. The saviors, at that point, would easily get an audience with the person in charge by saying "who's in charge here?". No creative DM'ing required to help (but of course always encouraged).
[/SBLOCK]

I find the adventure, like many of Kobold Press' / Baur's publications, very well thought out. And while it IS very railroad-y at the beginning, as to be expected as it's setting up the ToD 'story', it gets more open in the latter part of the book.

 

[KarinsDad]

Must spread XP around before giving to Agamon again, and so on...

So it's ok and even XP worthy to tell people that they made poor posts, but not it's not ok to tell people that they made poor choices?

The number of people here who complain about how other people write posts is amazing, without them realizing that their very complaint is in itself a non-constructive and worthless post.

"The problem comes when telling others they've made poor posts." Duh! Pot or Kettle?


Letting someone know that they made a sub-optimal choice might help them or some other readers to learn the game system better. He did it for theme, so good for him. But some players make design choices because they are misled into thinking that something is better when it isn't.

He was stating how good it was when in reality, it has a few minor uses beyond combat. If foes are 85 or more feet away, sure it does better than a light crossbow, but if they are 125 feet away, it doesn't. Mechanically, Shocking Grasp gives the wizard a LOT more versatility as a cantrip because it has a greater chance of saving the wizards life. Foes are going to be 5 feet away in combat a whole heck of a lot more in most campaigns than they will be 85 to 120 feet away.

My post was constructive for some people who may not know the game system real well yet. If not constructive for you guys, then why don't you post something constructive?

 

[Agamon]

Letting someone know that they made a sub-optimal choice might help them or some other readers to learn the game system better. He did it for theme, so good for him. But some players make design choices because they are misled into thinking that something is better when it isn't.

If someone is asking for advice because they aren't enjoying their PC or the game, telling them what they can do to make the experience better is great. But when someone says how much fun they are having and someone comes in and says they've made poor choice, that's not cool. You'll note that he had to come back and defend his choice, which should not have been necessary.

And comparing PCs and forum posts is apples and oranges. We're not playing a game here.

 

[Mad Zagyg]

We play-tested this adventure at Gencon last weekend. Unfortunately, I'm very disappointed.

The group consisted of five veteran players and one veteran DM, all with 30+ years experience. We have totally embraced the new edition, which in my opinion, is the best edition of D&D to date. People play D&D for all different reasons, and 5th is exactly to my taste.

For what it's worth, I'm also the owner of Battleground Games & Hobbies, two retail game stores in Massachusetts in the towns of Abington and Plainville, so I have a vested interest in these products too. I want them to do well, for obvious reasons.

My main gripe with Hoard of the Dragon Queen is that it seems VERY obvious to me that it was written specifically for D&D Encounters and/or Adventurer's League play. After all, the first three episodes of the adventure are pretty much verbatim as they appear in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen Encounters PDF. Why is this obvious? Well, if you run the adventure as written, and your players are trying to complete all the missions that the adventure throws at them in Episode 1, it seems extremely likely that they will fail, and probably TPK (as my group did). When you play D&D Encounters at your FLGS, characters come fully refreshed to every session, as tables can change from week to week.

[sblock=HUGE SPOILERS BELOWIn Episode 1 of the adventure, you are tasked with saving the town from a series of attacks that are occurring throughout the night. The Governor requests that the party help out. Of course, this means the players will do so. The adventure states that you have from 9 pm until 4 am to complete the missions as presented. Here is a list of the encounters my group faced leading up to their TPK. Please keep in mind that in running the adventure as written you will not have time to take a full rest or level up in Episode 1. The group has 7 in-game hours to deal with the missions, so maybe they could squeeze in two short rests at most. It should also be noted that the list below DOES NOT include several random encounters my group circumvented using stealth.

1. Random encounter (as dictated by the adventure): with 3 guards + 1 acolyte.
2. Seek the Keep encounter (main): 8 kobolds.
3. Seek the Keep encounter (1 of 3 encounters on way to keep): 2 cultists + 4 kobolds.
4. Seek the Keep encounter (2 of 3 encounters on way to keep): 3 cultists + 1 kobold.
5. Seek the Keep encounter (3 of 3 encounters on way to keep): 3 cultists + 3 kobolds.
6. The Old Tunnel mission: 2 swarms of rats.
7. Save the Mill: 5 cultists + 5 guards.
8. Random encounter (as dictated by the adventure): 3 guards + 1 acolyte.
9. Dragon Attack encounter: If you are kind to your players, as I was, you won't have the dragon attack them as they fire at it from the battlements. If you do choose to attack them with the adult blue dragon, you will kill them for sure. This leaves you a little torn, because having the dragon choose NOT to attack the party (basically the only ones doing any damage to the creature at all) interferes enormously with the game's necessary verisimilitude. Why wouldn't the dragon attack the only creatures hurting it? Ridiculous.
10. The Sally Port encounter part 1: 1 acolyte + 4 kobolds + 1 ambush drake.
[This is the point that my party TPK'd. Had they not TPK'd, they would still need to face the following line items before being able to take a long rest. The following also assumes the DM does not roll for any additional random encounters even though the adventure clearly states they should.]
11. The Sally Port encounter part 2: 1 guard + 3 cultists + 4 kobolds.
12. Sanctuary encounter: The party WILL need to fight at least one or two of the following groups to complete the mission: 1 dragonclaw + 2 cultists + 6 kobolds AND/OR 3 cultists + 10 kobolds + 2 ambush drakes AND/OR 2 cultists + 6 kobolds.
13. Half-Dragon Champion encounter: this is the last fight in the episode and one party member is very likely to face a challenge 4 half-dragon champion in single combat. The encounter is designed for the character to lose in order to set up a future villain. But seriously, at this point who cares? There's no way a group is still standing after all that if you played this adventure as written in a typical "campaign style."

Most parties will be out of juice and badly wounded somewhere around the sixth or seventh encounter. Expecting them to get through the rest is absolutely absurd (without huge help from a generous DM).

Now if you are running this for your Wednesday Night D&D Encounters group at your FLGS, the party will be "refreshed" each week. As anyone who plays in D&D Encounters before will know that there is plenty of hand-waving that goes on in order to make the sessions make sense from week to week. With the possibility of new players showing up any time, or DMs being switched out, or any other such thing, D&D Encounters is very much "fast-food D&D." And that's okay! It's built to be that way to facilitate in-store game play and accommodate new players. I'm just really disappointed to see this first big adventure being WRITTEN with that play-style in mind. For those of us who prefer a "steak dinner D&D game" as opposed to the fast-food style, this product comes up way short.

It seems like I might be in the minority, considering how many positive reviews I've seen of the adventure but I figured it was important for me to share my personal experience with it. I have to wonder how these other DMs ran Episode 1, considering how brutal it is as written.[/sblock]

 

[Steel_Wind]

We play-tested this adventure at Gencon last weekend. Unfortunately, I'm very disappointed.

My main gripe with Hoard of the Dragon Queen is that it seems VERY obvious to me that it was written specifically for D&D Encounters and/or Adventurer's League play. After all, the first three episodes of the adventure are pretty much verbatim as they appear in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen Encounters PDF. Why is this obvious? Well, if you run the adventure as written, and your players are trying to complete all the missions that the adventure throws at them in Episode 1, it seems extremely likely that they will fail, and probably TPK (as my group did). When you play D&D Encounters at your FLGS, characters come fully refreshed to every session, as tables can change from week to week.


HUGE SPOILERS BELOW:

*snip*

I see your point, but the issues arise precisely due to the reasons you note, are expected to be achievable by most play groups precisely due to the reasons you note -- and are completely fixable without much of a problem, too.

Looking at your list, we achieved 4 or 5 of those encounters before we reached the Keep and we leveled up to level 2 before we did. Our own DM adapted that on the fly and it all felt quite reasonable.

If all that is required is an opportunity or two to rest, that's very easy to fix, wouldn't you agree?

I'm not trying to make light of the problems you encountered playing the adventure as written, but the real issue is whether these things are easy to solve.

Whatever the case, if you are used to Adventure Paths and adapting elements of OP scenarios like Pathfinder Society for use as part of a larger campaign, I don't think any of these things should prove to be all that troublesome. Whether or not the printed text in the hardcover matches the text in the .PDF distributed along with the D&D Adventurer's League OP installments or not I cannot say. But even if they do, it's not that difficult to address these issues for home use for all of the reasons that you outlined.

While this is a bit of a turn-off to some, I don't think anybody who runs an out of the box Campaign arc adventure path should expect to do so without evaluating the text and making adjustments as may be necessary. While your experience is unfortunate, DMs who run the adventure can bear those issues in mind and make adjustments.

If the problems persists throughout the balance of volume 1, then matters may be different.

 

[Mad Zagyg]

I see your point, but the issues arise precisely due to the reasons you note, are expected to be achievable by most play groups precisely due to the reasons you note -- and are completely fixable without much of a problem, too.

Looking at your list, we achieved 4 or 5 of those encounters before we reached the Keep and we leveled up to level 2 before we did. Our own DM adapted that on the fly and it all felt quite reasonable.

If all that is required is an opportunity or two to rest, that's very easy to fix, wouldn't you agree?

I'm not trying to make light of the problems you encountered playing the adventure as written, but the real issue is whether these things are easy to solve.

Whatever the case, if you are used to Adventure Paths and adapting elements of OP scenarios like Pathfinder Society for use as part of a larger campaign, I don't think any of these things should prove to be all that troublesome. Whether or not the printed text in the hardcover matches the text in the .PDF distributed along with the D&D Adventurer's League OP installments or not I cannot say. But even if they do, it's not that difficult to address these issues for home use for all of the reasons that you outlined.

While this is a bit of a turn-off to some, I don't think anybody who runs an out of the box Campaign arc adventure path should expect to do so without evaluating the text and making adjustments as may be necessary. While your experience is unfortunate, DMs who run the adventure can bear those issues in mind and make adjustments.

If the problems persists throughout the balance of volume 1, then matters may be different.

I totally agree with your opinion that the problems are easy to fix. But first, you must be aware that they exist, and it wasn't until midway through running that opening encounter that I realized that the problems of survivability were as severe as they were. My post is definitely aimed to inform those who haven't yet run the adventure as part of their ongoing FR campaign that they should definitely ignore the adventure's flawed suggestions that Episode 1 is for 1st level characters to succeed at. In fact, the final words of the Episode 1 section are: "If you are using the milestone experience rule, the characters reach 2nd level at the end of this episode."

In my opinion, it should read, "If you have run this episode without letting your party level up or rest, have fun rolling up new characters!" HAHA