D&D 5E Convince me to keep reading Princes of the Apocalypse (*significant* spoilers. Also my players keep out)

[Jester David]

There's no perfect solution.
If you go to a realistic scale where the alpha predators have a wide distance between their territories, then the scale of the adventure has to jump up, more travel is required, and the PCs will always be rested before encounters.

The Paizo alternative is usually giving some handwavy explanation. "The griffons were displaced from their home" or "the manticores are expanding their territory". But that wastes pages justifying the monsters without adding to the story, especially since there's a good chance the PCs won't discover the backstory. And if they do discover it, they may think it an important clue/hook and follow it. (Speaking from experience.)

I haven't read PotA yet. So I can't comment too much on the specifics. (My FLGS had a delay getting their copies. I might buy a copy for review, or I might not. I haven't decided.) But given what I've heard of its sandbox nature, it might be putting two encounters into a region, so the PCs will have better odds of having one encounter. They're not necessarily expected to have all, but only having the minimum number of encounters in a region means there's no choice: the only monsters are griffons, so the PCs fight griffons. Having 2-3 -some story relevant and some not- means the PC's choices have some impact in what they encounter and when.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some shaky bits in the adventure. WotC hasn't dedicated itself to adventures since, well, ever. And they don't have the same pool of good adventure writers as Paizo. They're relying on established talent more known for rules (or editing) than adventures. There's going to be a learning curve.

 

[graves3141]

As far as asking for help, why wouldn't they? I generally prefer adventures where there is no one to ask for help. I can easily fix that by moving the setting away from the Realms and into a more points-of-light setting (and I will if I run this). But I'd just like the whole thing to make sense.

I have yet to read PotA but can't the PCs, in just about any adventure, just go ask for help instead of dealing with the issues themselves? That's boring.

Unless the adventure takes place in another dimension or at sea or something, I don't see how that can be helped. However, I'm unfamiliar with the Pathfinder modules you mention that you say have solved that problem. I'm very curious, how have they done it?

 

[brehobit]

Jester Canuck,
That makes a lot of sense across the board.

 

[brehobit]

I have yet to read PotA but can't the PCs, in just about any adventure, just go ask for help instead of dealing with the issues themselves? That's boring.

Unless the adventure takes place in another dimension or at sea or something, I don't see how that can be helped. However, I'm unfamiliar with the Pathfinder modules you mention that you say have solved that problem. I'm very curious, how have they done it?

In Kingmaker, you are founding a Kingdom in the middle of nowhere starting at a very low level. And the folks who got you started in this direction have plenty of problems of their own. There is literally no one around who has the available resources to provide much help (though you occasionally get a bit of reinforcements from "home" early on and there are merchants that can be reached with some effort, none of those can really go out and deal with problems).

In the true20 game I played, it's classic Cthulhu and early on no one in the world will believe you, and toward the end no one in the world is qualified to help much. (Though I did get to call in a few airstrikes, game-wise they had minimal impact).

In the Red Hand of Doom you are more-or-less in the middle of nowhere and _you_ are, in effect, the called-in reinforcements. The nearest local town is busy defending itself (and you help). Toward the end you are among the most powerful folks in the area.

I think 5e makes this even more difficult because the power-levels scale so much less. 20 men-at-arms are actually a seriously powerful thing for quite a while (could take out an 8th level party in a fair fight I'd venture, where they'd be taken out by a 5th level party in 1st through 4th edition with little problem). So being the "only ones that can help" is harder to pull off in 5e. As such, I'd like to see them spend more effort on this, not less.

But, as I said, I'll probably just redo the fluff and put this in the middle of no where if I run it at all.

 

[SilverfireSage]

OK, based on the very favorable reviews here, I took an extra 40 minutes going home to find a store that had the new Princes of the Apocalypse adventure and dropped $52.00 (inc tax) on it since I have a rare free weekend where I can read it through. And after about an hour of reading, I'm pretty much of the opinion this isn't a very good adventure and I've wasted my time and money. I just want to raise my concerns and see how others feel they can be dealt with.

Again, this is a rant about certain issues, but rather than being purely a list of problems, I want to hear what others think and how they plan on dealing with these issues.
[sblock]

• My major issue with this adventure is how static it is. Everything happens in a fairly well developed and well traveled part of the world. Yet bad things apparently abound. And more so, there are all sorts of things just packed together in a way that reminds me of keep-on-the-boarderlands as much as anything.
  • Just in the first part (Sighing Valley) We've got gnolls, manicores, griffons, aarakocra, and two cult locations all easily within 10 football fields of each other. And a dead body. (And as a note, the map's scale isn't consistent!) This all seems unlikely.
  • It's unclear (so far) why, given a cult so evil and potentially powerful, the PCs can't just head to one of the "nearby" major cities (week away) and ask for help. I mean it sounds like they might be going there at some point. Does no one in Waterdeep care enough even if presented with significant evidence of what's going on? Now I'm hopeful there is a good answer somewhere in the module that I've not read, but it ain't obvious.
• Descriptions are sometimes sparse to the point I find it hard to follow what is going on.
  • What the heck is "the Eagle" on page 47? A self-reseting (non-magical?) battering ram? I'd really appreciate some better idea what's going on here.
  • How many people (total) are there at RiverGard Keep?
  • also at RiverGard, what are the commoners doing here? Where do they stay? It sounds like they know about the cultists and don't like them. So are they slaves? Do they know the those occupying the keep are cultists? I've no idea. It feels like they just got tacked into a wandering monster table.

[/sblock]

In general, this doesn't seem to be an adventure of the quality of most of the later Pathfinder adventure paths nor of the better modules from 2e and 3e (think of the Red Hand of Doom here). Maybe it's better than the previous adventures (reviews here kept me from those) but it still feels weak.

All that said, I'm planning on running a 5e module and I've dropped a couple hours and $50 into this. So I'd love to hear what others think and how they plan on dealing with the issues raised (or why they aren't issues...)

[sblock]Is this place fairly well developed? In the first part of their adventure, they go out of their way to describe how this isn't very settled, and that there's really only one large town for miles, Red Larch. It just happens to be a large town because it's the only one for miles, sort of like Denver or Salt Lake City. They describe the Dessarin Valley as "lightly settled" and "the Gateway to the North". The Dessarin Valley itself is fairly large, and while it does seem like a lot is packed into the Sunder Hills, it's only because the majority of that stuff is underground and out of sight.

The sighing Valley does seem fairly small, and I'm not sure why they wouldn't be able to find a Manticore so close by, but it's always hard to imagine scale when it comes to maps and real life. I could easily see a Griffon and a few Gnolls living side by side (it's only eight Gnolls after all, and they're likely afraid of being spotted by a griffon and the Knights), with the Aarakockra just sort of scouting in the area. For me its all about visibility, and that Valley has a lot of crags and mounds that could hide many things in a small enough area.

Yes, they are a potentially powerful and evil cult, but they're also in a remote area and they're secret. Most of them are underground or posing as something that they're not, like the Feathergale Knights (that also made me just notice a typo on the map, "Feathergate") or the Sacred Stone Monks. Nobody would really know about how powerful they were until it was somewhat too late. After they find the nodes and such, I would make time of the essence, and if they tried to go to Waterdeep it would be much too late. I would expect smart characters to figure that out as well. AFter all, there's nobody in the valley even remotely as powerful as them, and trying to travel two weeks to go to Waterdeep on the off chance they can convince someone this is scary, the Princes might already be unleashed.

It literally says "The eagle is a battering ram. The eagle resets when it swings back, locking back into place and resetting its activation lever." Seems pretty self explanatory. Its likely very heavy and the momentum allows it to swing back enough to reset.

Looks like twelve bandits and four crushing wave reavers in the Barracks, plus four in the gatehouse, three CW in the Water Tower, a Fathomer, four in the Moored Keelboat, three bugbears in the North Tower, a CW priest and two CW Reavers in the Chapel, Grimjaw and a fathomer and two CW reavers in K16, and I believe that's it. So, not including the eight commoners, about 40 people, give or take I missed a couple.

It says that they were kidnapped by the Crushing Wave cult and were brought there to clean, cook, and do laundry. They get flogged if they try to escape. Three of them want to be bandits. The Servants Quarters has six bunk beds. They likely do know about the cultists since it refers to them wanting to be Crushing Wave warriors. I have to ask, did you keep reading after the wandering monster table? I'm curious how you missed that.[/sblock]

Hope that answers some stuff.

 

[brehobit]

Hope that answers some stuff.

It does.

[sblock]I didn't read through all of the rooms and when scanning I missed the commoners in areas K17 and K18. I'd have much preferred there be more of a high-level overview of who is in each place rather than having to put it together by going through each area. It just feels too much like a dungeon rather than a keep. But yes, I should have seen that. And yeah, I can go through each room and add up all the encounters. I just feel like that is something they should have done.

The eagle just seems weird. I'm having problems with a mechanical device that does so much damage and resets itself. Conservation of energy I guess--it just doesn't seem possible. Perhaps it's because I'm an engineer. But so are the folks I game with, so they'd all call BS and start looking for magic (I think).

Also, the biggest city in the world ( I think?) is within 100 to 150 miles. So Waterdeep is probably 4 or 5 days away (at most) if I understand that world correctly. It's a while, but not a crazy distance at all. In the real world, a skilled rider on a good endurance horse can actually manage 100 miles in a day. [/sblock]

 

[SilverfireSage]

[sblock]Well it's more like a keep in that the wandering monsters and response to alerts are more connected than in a dungeon. And I think they might have missed something, I wouldn't make it reset if it succeeded in hitting someone.[/sblock]

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Cool, what about that do you consider a feature and why? I'd love to take advantage of the issues rather than have to work around them.

Personally I have never been a fan, so my traditional response was to replace the encounter with something ecologically appropriate or since 4e re-skin the monster into something that fit.

Now currently I am engaged in prep'ing Palace of the Silver Princess cause I bought it 30 years ago and never ran it, while I am changing the map somewhat and dropping some encounters, 'cause there's plenty I am keeping the monster mix 'cause its old skool and I can always say that all these critters are because the maguffin summoned them.

 

[Blackwarder]

[sblock]I haven't read the adventure yet but regarding the asking for help portion, I guess that it's not written in the adventure but in my game the entire sword coast recovering from the huge fight against the cult of the dragon, simply put their forces are depleted, couple that with the many arrow invasion of the silver marches and the major powers in the regions (who are all about 200 miles away, at minimum) and there simply any one to help the characters, Especialy a bunch of nobodies who claim that a bunch of cultists are about to bring the end of the world... Yeah, what's new?

And don't forget the background part of character creation, I don't know if the adventure have related backgrounds for PCs but even if they don't I strongly encourage you to use those to give the characters an incentive to try and solve this problem on their own.

One last point, why would the PCs suspect that there is something going on beside a bunch of crazy cultists lurking about? Again, I haven't read the adventure (still waiting for my copy), but I would imagine that by the time the PCs realize what's going on they would be competent enough to feel that they can tackle this by themselves and that time is of the essence.[/sblock]

Warder

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I think 5e makes this even more difficult because the power-levels scale so much less. 20 men-at-arms are actually a seriously powerful thing for quite a while (could take out an 8th level party in a fair fight I'd venture, where they'd be taken out by a 5th level party in 1st through 4th edition with little problem). So being the "only ones that can help" is harder to pull off in 5e. As such, I'd like to see them spend more effort on this, not less.

If you are referring to the Guard statblock in the MM and DM's basic rules, I don't think an 8th level party would have a problem with them if they knew how to fight at all. They would lose resources against them, and they might have to retreat if the guards were fortified and the party wasn't, but those guards shouldn't be able to take out the party under normal conditions.

If you are referring to a different stat-block, then I can't comment.