D&D 5E TftYP - Sunless Citadel Debrief

[pukunui]

Hi all,

I've just finished running one of my groups through the 5e version of "The Sunless Citadel" from Tales from the Yawning Portal. I just thought I'd share our experiences.

First, it took us four sessions to get all the way through. I had between 3 and 5 players for each session.

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

1) One PC died in the very first encounter. The cleric went down the rope first, and the giant rats surprised her, and two of them got crits. Instakill.

2) The players took a liking to Meepo and befriended the kobolds. They got Calcryx back, although one of them was instakilled by her cold breath.

3) The PCs killed the hobgoblins and convinced the goblins to quit the place.

4) Belak went down really quickly. He spent most of his turns healing his allies. I've found that spellcasting druids do not make for good adversaries. A big reason for this is because so many of their spells require concentration. This makes them one-trick ponies to a certain extent. In this case, it didn't help that the suggested tactics in the book are rubbish: if he casts barkskin on himself, then uses his wand to cast entangle on the PCs, he immediately loses his barkskin, since both spells require concentration.

I also found that the vastness of the space meant that the PCs could snipe at him from a distance. This meant I had to keep Sir Braford close to him so he could use his Protection ability, although of course he can only do that once per round.

5) The weakened dragonpriest is probably OK if the party faces him at 1st level, but he's way too weak for five 2nd level PCs, especially since he starts prone in the coffin. I used full troll stats, and while he managed to drop two PCs to 0 hp, he wasn't able to last more than three rounds against five opponents, especially since two of them had fire bolt.

6) The sorcerer in the party used Night Caller to turn Balsag the bugbear into a skeleton. It proved to be more effective in combat than some of the PCs but ultimately it succumbed to magic missiles from Sharwyn (after it had been entangled by Belak and put to sleep by Sharwyn).

All in all, it was OK. The players really enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I liked it enough to want to run it again. I am looking forward to "The Forge of Fury". I've been wanting to run that one for ages now.


EDIT: Yes, I necro'ed my own thread. Skip ahead to post #17 for the latest.

 

[schnee]

it's not that amazing of a dungeon, but it was a good primer for a bunch of new players in our group. It taught the fundamentals of role playing like bargaining between hostile groups that are both big enough to slaughter you if you're not careful, letting the bad guy talk (lol Belak is a conspiracy theory crank), etcetera.

 

[pukunui]

Yeah, they didn't really let Belak do much talking.

 

[schnee]

Hah. Our party did, and now we're traveling around telling the local towns to burn all the saplings from the trees planted from those apples. Did that party figure that out? Or are twig blights now a permanent problem near the Citadel?

 

[pukunui]

Nope, they didn't learn about the twig blights' origin.

I should also mention that they convinced Yusdrayl to let them take Meepo away with them, and the very last thing they did was put Calcryx's new guards to sleep and then release her. (One of the PCs was a white dragon sorcerer, and he really didn't like leaving her a prisoner of the kobolds.)

Oh, and they burned down the Gulthias tree without getting the midsummer apple. They'd killed Sir Braford but only knocked out Sharwyn. They took her back to town, then went back to the citadel to take on the dragonpriest, so when they got back to town again, they learned that she'd died.

 

[Dax Doomslayer]

I've been dying to run Forge of Fury. Please let us know how that one goes. It is a fun read for me but that doesn't mean much sometimes...

 

[Kalshane]

I'm thinking if I ever run this, I'd allow the Midsummer apple to cure Sir Bradford and Sharwyn. Give the PCs a choice between taking the valuable apple as treasure or to free two NPCs from their bondage to the tree and inevitable death.

 

[jasper]

Good debrief. Hit the adventure league forum for my write ups of YTP. It may give ideas.

 

[Mistwell]

We just finished running through this and I had a blast (as a player)! Looking forward to Forge of Fury.

 

[James Gasik]

If the party takes the front way in, forge of fury has a fairly tough first encounter on a bridge. if they have magic weapons, much of the rest is fairly easy. There are swarms which can give some parties trouble, and the more powerful enemies are encountered alone. And then there's nightscale, who is a serious threat as a challenge 7 and uses very dirty tactics. Check the rules for her fight and be prepared to make rulings about them as they can have implications for the future.