D&D 5E Opinions on The Rise of Tiamat?

[painted_klown]

The only "bad" I can see is that if you are not using Milestone awards, your group will likely be woefully under level for Tiamat (unless you a) offer up lots of roleplaying awards or b) throw in your own extra adventures and encounters to supplement it).

I have a question spurred by this comment, if you all don't mind.
When saying they are woefully under level, are you suggesting I have them level up more frequently than their experience points would allow for?

I have read that the encounters in HotDQ are difficult as well.

Should I be tossing out extra levels here and there?


I assumed these would work like LMoP does. The book simply tells you when to have everyone level up. Honestly, I have yet to even track experience, as I am just following along in the book. I level them up when the book says, even if they didn't kill every single baddie that ran across the road in front of them.

Am I doing it wrong?

I ask in all seriousness as I really have no idea of what I am doing, but my players and I are having a blast, so I say that's ok. Run them through the adventures they request, and do my own (home brew) when the time comes.

 

[MerricB]

I assumed these would work like LMoP does. The book simply tells you when to have everyone level up. Honestly, I have yet to even track experience, as I am just following along in the book. I level them up when the book says, even if they didn't kill every single baddie that ran across the road in front of them.

Am I doing it wrong?

No, you're doing it absolutely right. The Rise of Tiamat actually explicitly says it uses the milestone system.

And, so far, it's been an absolute joy to run. We've finished the first two major quests, and about to come up to the second council.

Both Hoard and Rise benefit from a little ingenuity on the part of the people playing them - DM and players - as both have quite a lot of description of the various areas without forcing how the action will run. (Yes, there's an overall path for the players, but this is true of most adventures). Hoard really suffers from the system not being set when it was written, so some of the suggested monsters are inappropriate, but we've had a lot of fun with it.

Cheers!

 

[lkj]

I have a question spurred by this comment, if you all don't mind.
When saying they are woefully under level, are you suggesting I have them level up more frequently than their experience points would allow for?

I have read that the encounters in HotDQ are difficult as well.

Should I be tossing out extra levels here and there?


I assumed these would work like LMoP does. The book simply tells you when to have everyone level up. Honestly, I have yet to even track experience, as I am just following along in the book. I level them up when the book says, even if they didn't kill every single baddie that ran across the road in front of them.

Am I doing it wrong?

I ask in all seriousness as I really have no idea of what I am doing, but my players and I are having a blast, so I say that's ok. Run them through the adventures they request, and do my own (home brew) when the time comes.

The adventure tells you when to level them up. You don't have to track experience. The concern is that if you ignore the level up advice and instead track XP your characters might not advance fast enough to be ready for the final confrontation.

AD

 

[painted_klown]

Good deal, that's the kind of information I was looking for. Personally, I like the milestone system for advancing levels. I am running a home brew campaign with a couple of different players and am not tracking experience there either. I am just leveling them up when they complete certain milestones of the adventure.

IMO, it's nice to go that route if they are having difficulty with combat, or breezing right through it. In this case, they are having a lot of difficulty. It allows me to be able to reward them for doing stuff without having to "feed" them enough goblins to level up by XP.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

The adventure tells you when to level them up. You don't have to track experience. The concern is that if you ignore the level up advice and instead track XP your characters might not advance fast enough to be ready for the final confrontation.

AD

Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

There are a few episodes that are automatic level ups by the Milestone awards, that might not be if you itemized out experience.

I'm not saying any given way is wrong, just saying that the book is built for A, so B might have an unexpected result if you go that route.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

You mean, if the PCs bring all the friendly dragons inside with them? Dragon melee! Now you get to run a combat between dozens (possibly hundreds) of friendly metallic dragons forted up inside Tiamat's temple, trying to hold the entrance long enough to eradicate Tiamat's summoners and then the weakened Tiamat herself. Sounds fun but complicated.

Or, you could just bring a couple of friendly dragons with you on your critical mission, accept slightly higher casualties in the abstracted aerial melee outside, and call it a win.

The adventure explicitly calls out that the Chromatics outnumber the Metallics, so again, I'm not seeing why this doesn't lead to a) Reds/Blues/Whoever peeling off to attack the dragons getting close to the summoning, or b) the Chromatics outright overwhelming the Metallics and negating their contribution altogether, but your mileage may vary.

 

[GlobeOfDankness]

i ran hoard of the dragon queen and am a little more than halfway through running rise of tiamat. i think they're both really fun adventures if you have the skills to tweak them a little as you go.

 

[SkidAce]

You mean, if the PCs bring all the friendly dragons inside with them? Dragon melee! Now you get to run a combat between dozens (possibly hundreds) of friendly metallic dragons forted up inside Tiamat's temple, trying to hold the entrance long enough to eradicate Tiamat's summoners and then the weakened Tiamat herself. Sounds fun but complicated.

Or, you could just bring a couple of friendly dragons with you on your critical mission, accept slightly higher casualties in the abstracted aerial melee outside, and call it a win.

/tangent

In situations like this, I just calculate the average result of a battle between two, say dragon combatants. Assign percentages and go with it.

So if dragon A would normally (70%) beat dragon B in 3 rounds, after three rounds of PC combat I could roll some % and tell the PCs how its going.

 

[furysmuse]

We are in the middle of HotDQ right now. It's full of ups and downs, and various imbalances.
I highly recommend you read through the whole adventure first, just to give yourself an idea of what's to come, and setting yourself and your players up for the various successes and failures that will come.
I have mixed reviews from my players. Some of them LOVE the down-time - the town stops, the travelling, the role play that comes with it, and some of them find that tedious. There is a lot of room for this kind of play. So, it helps to know what your players are looking for from the game.
It's written in this odd narrative way, and important info can be buried in odd places, so keep your eyes peeled.
Some of the encounters are way below what your party needs to find it interesting, and some of them are so overpowered that there will need to be some creativity on both sides to make it through without a TPK.
My players have successfully removed themselves from a part of the story line so I get to write a new section to be able to re-insert them. so depending on your group, be prepared for things to go off the rails that have been so neatly aligned in the module.
Overall, its okay. There are some things that don't make a lot of sense, there is a lot of room for role-play, and roll-play, but its really essential to be prepared for a session.
I've begun reading tRoT, and I know my party is going to screw this plot line to hell too
It's going to be a blast!

 

[jayoungr]

i ran hoard of the dragon queen and am a little more than halfway through running rise of tiamat. i think they're both really fun adventures if you have the skills to tweak them a little as you go.

My players have successfully removed themselves from a part of the story line so I get to write a new section to be able to re-insert them. so depending on your group, be prepared for things to go off the rails that have been so neatly aligned in the module.

I'd love to hear more about the tweaks and changes you've made to HotDQ. If you're willing to go into more detail, would you post in this thread? I'm hoping to make that thread the place to go for ideas on how to change up the module.