Flexor the Mighty!
18/100 Strength!
The plot was kind of stupid, the intro was a prime example of plot immunity, and the whole setup was poorly put together.
I don't like how they statted up Tiamat, compare it to 2e and 3e she doesn't feel like a God.
So next year WotC can announce a 5-year Anniversary Edition with the editing mistakes fixed; and some sidebars - or an 'Upon Further Review' chapter - which address the problems (and suggestions) from these impromptu feedback threads !I have to say, for all of it's weaknesses, the book is still in print after four years.
And it’s a MacGuffin hunt where you have to try and stop the villains getting all five dragon masks. Which they inevitably get no matter how hard the PCs hide any one they manage to get their hands on.
Oops... didn’t see this was thread necro.
I also wonder if the old school adventure design and focus away from perfectly balanced combat encounters didn’t make people a little extra wary of this adventure.
This is probably the biggest issue with the entire story-line, really (especially with RoT but it happens in HotDQ once or twice too). This idea that if the heroes succeed it blows up the plot too early. Let them succeed! Or don't design your plot in such a way that the PC's succeeding in their stated objectives doesn't blow it up!
Editing issues aside, I've always found HotDQ to be the superior of the two adventures, and this is a big part of it.
IThere is a castle in a swamp where there are 2 other factions. If the PCs can get those factions to fight each other and sneak through the castle they can get through just fine. If they try to fight all the 'baddies' then they will get trounced quite thoroughly.
I remember this sort of thing from some of the 4E WotC adventure paths. I particularly remember the adventure set in Menzobaranzan. The problem for our party was that we were basically lawful good on a crusade to save the world and the module expected us to ally with various evil folks against various other evil folks. Fortunately 4E gave our party enough power and skills and we had enough cleverness to just tactically manouevre and slaughter our way to success.