Once again, though, I think people should more closely read the encounters in the first episode. As was mentioned earlier, there is nothing requiring the PC's to fight every group, that is entirely the player's choice.
I'm not sure what people are missing
. The only time when the book explicitly states that players can avoid fighting an enemy encounter is during Seek the Keep: "Unless characters interfere, the kobolds assume the characters are cultists and ignore them to concentrate on killing the woman first, her family second." Also: "To reach the keep, the characters must make it past three groups of raiders...Characters can fight these enemies, sneak past them, retreat to avoid them entirely, or try something clever such as bluffing."
In regard to the random encounters when players leave the keep, I take this to mean that if they fail two stealth checks that means they were noticed by the enemy and must bluff or enter combat (they cannot sneak past them because they have already failed the checks): "If characters use cover and stealth to avoid encounters, have each character attempt a DC 10 Dexterity(Stealth) check. For every two individual checks that fail, the characters have one encounter on the way to their destination."
Players are forced into combat in the 'Old Tunnel', 'The Sally Port', 'Dragon Attack', 'Save the Mill', 'Sanctuary', and 'Half-Dragon Champion'. If they are going to avoid combat in those missions the players have to be pretty creative, the DM has to play it differently than written, or the party just has to sit the entire thing out. At least three of those have multiple combat encounters. Also each time players leave the old tunnel there is a chance that they are discovered and attacked outright.
There are six hours (9 PM to 4 AM) in this chapter. There are six ‘missions’ that are assumed to take one hour each (not including ‘Half-Dragon Champion’). If players are going to complete all the missions there is absolutely no time to take a one hour short rest. Given the situation of the scenario (village being pillaged) it also seems incredibly unlikely that any ‘good’ aligned characters would rest for an hour while innocent villagers are being killed.
Please explain to me, what am I missing? It seems like a hell of a lot of forced combat encounters, many of them being ‘hard’ to ‘deadly’, with not even enough time for a short rest to break them up.
Thank Dog said:
Another thing is that the challenge against the dragon happens when it is already in combat with the NPC defenders. Why would it suddenly turn and attack the PC's just because they entered the fray? I had the dragon do one pass when the PC's came out to the fight in order to showcase the dragon's lethality, as the module states, rolled the d6 and d4 for the NPC tally to start, and then said the dragon rises up out of range while everyone below prepares for the next fly-by attack. That's when the PC's had their chance to attack and they did well over the required amount of damage to scare him off. I feel I ran it how it was written and intended so at what point would the dragon have reason to target the PC's?
Lennithon has every reason to attack the players once he notices them because he was ordered to: "Frulam Mondath orders the attack, knowing that the adventurers are in the keep at the time." Also the way it was written the players are the only ones that can do damage to him, so once they do damage, why would he not turn his attention to them? Yes, it does say that "Lennithon doesn’t consider this to be its fight, and it isn’t keen on tangling with adventurers for another’s benefit." However this doesn't make any sense to me. Why is he so disinterested in this fight and why would he obey orders if he doesn't want to tangle with the adventurers?
It even says in the book “The dragon doesn’t target the adventures at first,” as well as “Bear in mind that the dragon’s breath weapon will kill a 1st-level character out-right, so be sure to demonstrate its destructive power to the players before turning the dragon against the party.” Both of these are an indication to me that the players are viable targets for the dragon to attack once they draw his attention. I’m glad that your PCs were able to damage the dragon enough that he would fly off in one turn. However not all groups are that fortunate and must deal with the dragon as he flies back for another attack. In that case how would you have logically had the dragon attack not the players but the group of soldiers doing “ineffective against Lennithon” without it being implausible?
