D&D Expeditions: Rage of Demons (spoilers!)

[MerricB]

G'day, all! I'm hoping to get some discussion going here about the D&D Expeditions adventures in the 3rd season - Rage of Demons.

This is likely to be a spoiler-heavy thread, but I'll begin by using a number of {sblock} tags to hide sensitive information.

DDEX03-01 Harried in Hillsfar
Levels 1-2, available to everyone for free through Dragon+. This one, unusually, is legal in home games.

I've played through the first four missions of this one - we ran out of time just before the end. Like most of Shawn Merwin's adventures, it's really strong. Five mini-adventures, which link together to provide an overview of some of the important themes of the season.

#1: [sblock]My PC was knocked out by a demon-goat, despite an AC of 18 and dodging. Not happy with my DMs lucky dice! The first adventure I found a bit challenging working out where to role-play and the dilemma of what to do with the pregnant goat is tricky; caused some tension within the party.[/sblock]

#2: [sblock]The DM needs to be really careful here that he or she doesn't kill the entire party with the Red Plumes. Well, possibly careful. Really argumentative players probably deserve it!

Arrizz turns up again in the next adventure, DDEX03-02.[/sblock]

#3: [sblock]This encounter can be tough. Jackalweres? Yikes! We ended up having two raging barbarians pinning them whilst we attacked them with silver weapons and inflict wounds spells. The tactics of the barbarians saved us here.

Probably one of the tougher parts of this encounter is to work out how to use the faerie dragon. They are an iconic part of Faerun (or at least they are for me, given that I started back with the Moonshae trilogy, and can really put the natural world to the fore. In our encounter, we hardly saw the dragon (though it was present and tried to trick us), because we were so dominant with the jackalweres. If we'd done poorer, it would have stepped in.[/sblock]

#4: [sblock]We aced the riddles, but the final combat was very entertaining. This is probably the most straightforward of the adventures, in my opinion. You could probably run this quite quickly. [/sblock]

#5: [sblock]Haven't played or run it yet![/sblock]

Well, those are my initial thoughts. More shortly. I ran DDEX03-02 last Saturday, and I have a bit to say about it (but it's late and I need sleep badly).

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

DDEX03-02 Shackles of Blood
This is one that I DMed recently, and it's one of the more challenging adventures to run. I'm not actually that fond of it. Discussion in the sblock below.

[sblock]Shackles involves the PCs being captured in the first (potential) combat encounter. It works plot-wise, but this is a far more railroaded encounter than you'll usually get even in OP. I knew about the potential for problems going in, so I made extra clear to the players during the briefing that they were NOT to fight the Red Plumes. Olisara in the briefing (page 8) lets the players know about the potential for a Red Plume attack, but then "Olisara suggests that if the characters encounter a group of Red Plumes who seem up to no good, it may be a good opportunity to find out where their alleged victims are being taken". I'd change this to explicitly say "let yourselves be captured", if you're running this with a group you're unfamiliar with. Then, instead of running the battle, just say "you fight well, but are overwhelmed."

Normally this would help with time pressure, but if you have a group that doesn't role-play much, this adventure may run quite short. All three groups at my FLGS that ran it last week took 2.5 hours to complete it (albeit with tables of 4 players).

Part 2 of the adventure is role-playing and more material to stop the PCs from escaping.

Part 3 of the adventure is massively complicated for a DM to run. It's one of the few times I've really wanted miniatures to run a 5E combat, and doing it in 3D would be even better. Perhaps next time! Incidentally, on my table the ranger used Speak With Animals to befriend the Quippers and caused them to eat the halflings... things were made much simpler thereby. (The halfling druid also used Speak with Animals, but kept failing opposed Charisma checks).[/sblock]

 

[MerricB]

DDEX03-03 The Occupation of Szith Morcane (level 5-10)
I found this an fun adventure to DM. The players found it very challenging...

[sblock]This adventure begins with the PCs travelling towards Elventree, and is written as the first experience they have with the town (this makes sense - most characters playing this adventure won't have played DDEX03-01 nor 03-02). I think the opening is a little weak, although you can have some good role-playing with the NPCs here if the DM allows. Openings that allow the PCs to go completely off-base are problematic. The bigger problem is the main hook for most PCs is to meet up with the NPC... who they meet, but then the NPC rides off to Elventree. Why don't they follow immediately? They're 5th+ level, they should have horses!

Once we get to the dungeon portion, we move into some incredibly deadly encounters. This is one area where the scaling advice probably should be modified: a large party of 5th level characters is going to find the monsters REALLY TOUGH. I had a group of six mixed level 5s and 9s, (APL 7), and this treated as Average. The same result would have come with a party of six level 5s. I think the AL need to be very careful about using high-CR monsters in these adventures.

It was nice to have some maps of the areas they were exploring, although details of the areas were scant and there were a lot of empty rooms.

The actual story being told is really strong, although there's not really that much freedom for the PCs. I think there are some moderate challenges for the DM in running this adventure. 3.5/5[/sblock]

Cheers!

 

[frupton]

DDEX03-02 Shackles of Blood
This is one that I DMed recently, and it's one of the more challenging adventures to run. I'm not actually that fond of it. Discussion in the sblock below.

[sblock]Shackles involves the PCs being captured in the first (potential) combat encounter. It works plot-wise, but this is a far more railroaded encounter than you'll usually get even in OP. I knew about the potential for problems going in, so I made extra clear to the players during the briefing that they were NOT to fight the Red Plumes. Olisara in the briefing (page 8) lets the players know about the potential for a Red Plume attack, but then "Olisara suggests that if the characters encounter a group of Red Plumes who seem up to no good, it may be a good opportunity to find out where their alleged victims are being taken". I'd change this to explicitly say "let yourselves be captured", if you're running this with a group you're unfamiliar with. Then, instead of running the battle, just say "you fight well, but are overwhelmed."

Normally this would help with time pressure, but if you have a group that doesn't role-play much, this adventure may run quite short. All three groups at my FLGS that ran it last week took 2.5 hours to complete it (albeit with tables of 4 players).

Part 2 of the adventure is role-playing and more material to stop the PCs from escaping.

Part 3 of the adventure is massively complicated for a DM to run. It's one of the few times I've really wanted miniatures to run a 5E combat, and doing it in 3D would be even better. Perhaps next time! Incidentally, on my table the ranger used Speak With Animals to befriend the Quippers and caused them to eat the halflings... things were made much simpler thereby. (The halfling druid also used Speak with Animals, but kept failing opposed Charisma checks).[/sblock]

[sblock] I would strongly encourage all DMs for this adventure to read the "suggestions / errata" document for Expeditions, found here. See the section under DDEX 3-2 on "encouraging the players to surrender". You definitely don't want to grind out that Red Plume fight as a DM.

The fight in Part 3 is indeed quite complicated, and I agree it works best with a map and minis.

[/sblock]

 

[Coredump]

Would these be better in separate threads?