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

[Gradine]

How much time and energy is spent convincing Luke that he's not ready to take on Darth Vader? Wanting to kill someone is not the same as having to kill someone. Also, losing does not always mean death.

 

[KarinsDad]

I cannot stand this modern insistence that all encounters in every published module has to be balanced exactly to the PC party. It's led to this crush-kill-death meat grinder philosophy that states that any obstacle too powerful for the party to kill in a straight fight is some kind of abomination set by idiot designers. Which is insane.

Insane? Please. Hyperbole much?

Published adventures should match PC capabilities unless they are explicitly called out as gritty in which case, a DM can choose to not run it or modify it.

That does not mean that there cannot be deadly encounters, it just means that there should be a line in the sand that is not crossed.

I play the game for fun, not to roll up new PCs because of subpar module design. Feel free to roll up new PCs all you want. Just because some 1E modules had kobolds in one room and powerful demons in the next does not mean that modern module design should do something so stupid. In fact, many early "dungeons" had levels to avoid this very problem.


DM: "You dummies. You should know not to attack a dragon."
Player 1: "But my PC's background explicitly tells me that I want to do that. The background that the module designers created for me."


Sorry, but bad design is bad design. If you want to play a gritty game, do so. Justifying a module designer doing so, meh.


IT"S A GAME. MEANT TO BE FUN.

Nothing wrong with PC death caused by really bad play or really bad dice rolls. Nothing wrong with deadly encounters. But encounters designed to kill the intended target party level? Bad design.

 

[Gradine]

Except these encounters aren't designed to kill the party. They are there to be circumvented. That's not bad design. It's just supportive of a very common playstyle that you don't appear to have any interest in. That's not a knock on you, but it's also not a knock on the design.

 

[Gradine]

I should note that at this point I'm defending the concept of "unbeatable" encounters in general, not the specific execution of them in Hoard and Phandelver. The latter I must admit I have not read, but I have read commentary suggesting that it is a pretty decent application of the trope (and no, a background taking you "you want to kill the dragon," does not mean "turn your brain off and suicide charge it the moment you see it," seriously the tiniest of nits to pick).

Hoard's is not this trope at all, but rather a scripted set piece, and I'm not going to blame anyone for disliking them. I've found, used sparingly, a set piece can be pretty effective, and I think a good DM could pull it off here. It's clumsily presented as is, that much is true. Most of the adventure I've read so far is, but I haven't seen much to convince me that it's so terrible that a small amount of work can't fix. But then I've just described pretty much every published module I've ever read. The dragon set piece, for instance, is completely optional.

 

[Tormyr]

Look, there is nothing wrong with a CR 8 monster in a level 3 adventure. It is just obviously not there to be fought. It is there to be circumvented in some other way. If the players try to kill it, it should become immediately obvious that they can't (if not before they even try), and they need to try a different solution. If they keep trying anyway and get themselves killed, instead of, you know, running away, I'd say that's a pretty stupid death on their part, no?

Just out of interest, how is the CR of a creature obvious to the characters in the game? By the time the level 3 characters attack the CR 8 green dragon, it has let off its poison breath and hit 2 of the characters for 42 damage taking them past their negative max hp. There is not time to find a different solution; no time to run away; no chance to make death saving throws. They are dead. In this case, the player has learned some meta information about the difficulty of that dragon, but the character did not learn anything, and there is no real reason for the next character to make similar decisions.

I agree that there are ways for the DM to put out hints of the danger, but sometimes the DM forgets to do so, the perception roll is fumbled, or for some other reason the information does not get to the characters. At which point, all that is left is an exercise in rolling up a new character.

I am not saying that having encounters of all types is wrong, but a lot of new DMs cut their teeth on published adventures, and they are not going to necessarily communicate the danger well enough when they should have. My 2cp.

 

[Gradine]

It's absolutely the DM's job to provide sufficient hints both about what's coming and what's to be expected of them. A module that includes such an encounter should also provide those tools for the DM and for the players. I'm not saying telegraphing is DMing 101, but it's a pretty valuable tool and I'd give props to a module that does a good job of teaching it.

 

[Hussar]

Insane? Please. Hyperbole much?

Published adventures should match PC capabilities unless they are explicitly called out as gritty in which case, a DM can choose to not run it or modify it.

That does not mean that there cannot be deadly encounters, it just means that there should be a line in the sand that is not crossed.

I play the game for fun, not to roll up new PCs because of subpar module design. Feel free to roll up new PCs all you want. Just because some 1E modules had kobolds in one room and powerful demons in the next does not mean that modern module design should do something so stupid. In fact, many early "dungeons" had levels to avoid this very problem.


DM: "You dummies. You should know not to attack a dragon."
Player 1: "But my PC's background explicitly tells me that I want to do that. The background that the module designers created for me."


Sorry, but bad design is bad design. If you want to play a gritty game, do so. Justifying a module designer doing so, meh.


IT"S A GAME. MEANT TO BE FUN.

Nothing wrong with PC death caused by really bad play or really bad dice rolls. Nothing wrong with deadly encounters. But encounters designed to kill the intended target party level? Bad design.

Ballocks. Complete and utter ballocks. Nearly the first encounter in Return To The Temple of Elemental Evil is a honking big blue dragon. Keep on the Borderlands is chock a block with encounters way above the pc's weight class. Good grief you have G1 Steading with a fairly large army of giants that are going to blort a party that tries to front end assault it. And that's one of the highest ranked modules of all time.

Sorry but you are flat wrong here.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Except these encounters aren't designed to kill the party. They are there to be circumvented. That's not bad design. It's just supportive of a very common playstyle that you don't appear to have any interest in. That's not a knock on you, but it's also not a knock on the design.

If there's no information that the party can obtain to tell them that they are not prepared for the battle, then it's bad design.

In D&D, the extremely basic premise is often : confront, loot.

Considering the game's history, that players expect an encounter presented w/o significant tells to be w/ their power range is pretty standard. You may not agree, and you are most certainly allowed to, but I would put forward that you are wrong*.

*By this I mean that your interpretation is based upon your personal preference and that it does not align with the "standard" interpretation.

If you play with a group of players who have "been trained" to always* attempt to gain information on foes before they confront them and that this information can be related to in-game power levels, then, indeed, you can use any level of power for encounters and it does not constitute bad design since it is assumed that players will be in a position to make an informed choice.

I would argue that this is not the case for most campaigns/encounters/situations/players. When players don't have the information to make an informed choice, presenting them with a situation for which there is a "right" and a "wrong" answer is, in modern design theory, pretty bad design.

As a example of my meaning: If your characters include "knight" types and you face them with a wandering goblin band from which they should hide to notice that the band is stronger than first appeared - you've just created a badly designed situation : if your players role play, the game ends. If your players break character through meta-game habits, you've "broken" the knight character(s) and rewarded him(her) for it. From my perspective, that's a lose/lose.

Having the game require specific approaches can be good, as long as it's explicit. I believe, that in D&D's case, it isn't - which can lead to many bad situations.

While I've not finished reading the DMG completely, I have not seen this addressed... which is a shame, as it is a core component of a great play experience! (IME)

 

[ad_hoc]

It's a dragon.

If I had players that didn't know what a dragon was I would explain it to them (or actually, the other players would explain to them how scary they are).

I have never played with a group that would even contemplate taking on a dragon at that power level.

Different strokes I guess.

 

[KarinsDad]

Ballocks. Complete and utter ballocks. Nearly the first encounter in Return To The Temple of Elemental Evil is a honking big blue dragon. Keep on the Borderlands is chock a block with encounters way above the pc's weight class. Good grief you have G1 Steading with a fairly large army of giants that are going to blort a party that tries to front end assault it. And that's one of the highest ranked modules of all time.

Sorry but you are flat wrong here.

Correct me if I am wrong, I haven't played those modules in a long time, but all of these you mention have "tells" (see MoutonRustique's post below yours). The players are given a lot of heads up info that they are supposed to approach certain encounters in a certain way.

That is totally different than in LMoP where a PC's background tells him that he wants to kill that dragon (or drive it off or some such), and HotDQ where people here on the boards are saying that PCs should walk into a town with a dragon flying overhead (because the module protects the PCs).

People. Make up your fricking minds! Either it's good play to avoid the super tough fights that can kill you (as per RttToEE and SotHG), or it's good play to take on the super tough fights that can kill you (as per LMoP and HotDQ).

But one of these two sets of modules have poor design. I think it is the latter set (LMoP and HotDQ). You seem to think that both are good (even though they are diametrically opposed, one has good tells, the other expects you to fight these foes).