Ashardalon

[fireinthedust]

The PCs should have more to go on than just "we hate big A". For the first one, they're just searching ruins.

I ran Sunless Citadel, and I like it a lot. Didn't know others were connected, but I can see how SC is a great 4e adventure mod. Goblin encounters in close quarters can be great, and the traps are entertaining. A number of the rooms are there only because the kobolds have a place to live, but if you're going to fight it out there, use them I guess. Some thoughts/suggestions:

1) Kobolds are there due to the temple and liking dragons. When the PCs kill off the goblins, you can have Kobold combat encounters when they turn on the PCs.

2) Gulthias can be a master vampire, and the Heroic Tier threat; he's not going to be around for this part, tho, and may not get released unless an NPC tells the PCs to destroy the tree to stop the evil from growing. Heck, you could have the adventurers at the bottom be vampire minions, if you like. If they don't burn the tree, or even if they do, maybe Gulthias wants to become organic again, and "grow" vampires or something.
That said, maybe there's a brother or bride who didn't get turned into a tree, who can take it; then re-use it, with stronger plant-monsters, or an evil dryad vampire spirit of gulthias.


I had this idea of the old temple being raised up by Big A, for the last stage of the adventure. Epic Tier, y'know? Dozens of dragons pop up and challenge the PCs at that point.


Keep in mind also that there are lots of good uses for dragons rather than as a big bad. Having some dragon guarding a vault the PCs need ot get into is great. I don't like the recent Draconic puppy-dog critters, personally, but classic dragons or ones with character class levels in 3e were fun reading.

Red Hand of Doom seems to be as much about fighting an army as it is about fighting a dragon.

 

[Spatula]

Thanks! So, if you would to a return to, what are the essential moments of the series? Parts one should not miss?

Sofar, I think there is the Gulthias Tree, Nightfang SPire and a fight with Ashardalon on another plane. I just can not see a lot of plot there. What is actually happening?

The PCs release Gulthias, kill him, kill Ashardalon later on, but what are Gulthias and Ashardalons motivations and plans?

Gulthias is the harbinger of Ashardalon or something. I don't recall much of his motivations in Nightfang Spire, though, other than him being an evil undead thing doing evil stuff. I think he's trying to bring Ashardalon back through the reanimated dragon heart.

In my Eberron campaign (I only ran Sunless Citadel and Nightfang), Ashardalon had made a bid to become a god (I think this motive might be in Bastion of Broken Souls, but I'm not sure) during the period when the hobgoblin empire was coming apart. Gulthias (whom I switched to be a hobgoblin sorcerer instead of an elven wizard) was a mortal vessel through which Ash conquered lands and forced humanoids to worship him. The Gatekeeper druids saw Ash as a big threat, and despite being still weakened from their efforts to imprison the Daelkyr, mobilized to bring the big red down. This culminated with the druid Dydd killing Ash. Dragon cultists ran off with the heart somehow and Gulthias tried to animate it with necromancy, which turned him into a vampire (as per Nightfang's backstory).

I never ran Bastion (not sure how I would modify it to fit into Eberron's cosmology, anyway), but if I did, there was a half-orc PC that would have been a good fit for the descendant of Dydd (the Gatekeeper druids were mostly orcs at that time).

But yeah, not a lot of plot there. The adventures were written to be disconnected and run separately if that's what you wanted. Still, the basics are interesting and basic enough to easily build off of.