D&D 5E DMing "Out of the Abyss"

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I've had 3 PC deaths in 2 sessions so far. 1 was killed by the ooze in the opening chapter, and 2 by an ambush on their resting position the 3rd day of their trek when a couple spored drow and some spored fire beetles over ran their position. I'm modding encounters on the fly when they are random since I've got 7 players going into it so I expect to have to do it. And if they sometimes just kick butt on the random encounters they are pumped up and having fun for the most part. They like to steamroll stuff in between getting steamrolled with the dice abandon them, which they frequently do, or when they do something foolish

A fickle mistress the dice are.

 

[CapnZapp]

There is some stuff to work with in the module. So far it's looking like monotonous, weak encounters strung together in a random fashion that my group will steamroll until their eyes glaze over waiting for something challenging.

You seem reasonable in other threads, so I'm gonna go ahead and ask what your beef is? What did you expect that you didn't get?

To me, it seems you would have rated the module higher if instead of two medium encounters you got seven hard ones? Or three double-deadly ones? But "combat difficulty" <> "storyline", right?

Or is your problem really the openness, the randomness?

Because if you treat D&D as combat-as-sport, it would seem 4th Edition (with its delves and strings of carefully calibrated set-pieces) would be a much better fit.

Otherwise, I would have thought you to be a sufficiently experienced DM to easily fix any problems with difficulty. Each time you roll for a random encounter, roll twice. Then double the number of enemies. Then roll again less than a short rest later, instead of waiting twelve hours. Reduce xp awards by two thirds. (Or nine tenths!)

And you're ready to go. Perhaps your players will thank you for the brutal slog they're up for

 

[werecorpse]

Two things.

1.I know they are demons but what is the motivation of the Demon Lords?

They get dragged to the Underdark by the summoning spell - then what?
Why do they stay? Is it 5e lore than demon lords can't usually come to the prime so this is a chance to explore? That seems a bit pathetic that demon lords can't plane travel at will?

I see Zuggtmoy has a plan - which is fine,
Fraz managed to get himself kinda stuck (he seems to be such a muppet - always getting bound into things),
Yeenoghu and Baphomet decide to it's a good chance for a cage fight
What are Demogorgon, Grazzt, Jubilex and Orcus doing? And why?

2. Does anyone else think the demon lords stats are less than impressive? I know 5e is meant to trim down information in a stat block but they really seem to lack magical power and physical punch - even Orcus' wand doesn't do anything extra when wielded by the big man himself (2d12 necrotic, ooooo I'm so scared)

 

[MerricB]

2. Does anyone else think the demon lords stats are less than impressive? I know 5e is meant to trim down information in a stat block but they really seem to lack magical power and physical punch - even Orcus' wand doesn't do anything extra when wielded by the big man himself (2d12 necrotic, ooooo I'm so scared)

I was curious to see what the original Orcus and Wand of Orcus did, and this is what I found...

Orcus
AC -8, MV 9/18, HD 12d12
85% resistance to magic, only harmed by +3 weapons or greater
at will-continual darkness, charm person, create illusion, cause fear, detect magic, read magic, read languages, detect invisible objects, ESP , cause pyrotechnics, dispel magic, clairvoy, use clairaudience, lighting bolt (12d6), suggest, polymorph self, create a wall of fire, telekinesis 12,000 gp weight, animate dead (19th level MU), project image, polymorph any object, shape change,
1/day-feeblemind, each symbol type, time stop
80% chance of gating in any demon of types I-IV

Orcus' Wand
immediately cause the death of any creature (save those at Demon Prince level or above) merely by touching its flesh. (50% chance if not used by Orcus)
- Move at Double Speed
- Cure Light Wounds 1/day
- Speak with Animals
- Serious wound of double effect 2/day

(The source for this is Eldritch Wizardry, btw).

Cheers!

 

[Coredump]

1) level the characters to 3 or 4 quickly. I have 7 people and all but one are level 3. This is an encounters group and due to d&d release issues we only had time to prep harried in hills far and ran that 3 sessions. .

How did they get to level 3 playing harried in Hillsfar?

 

[designbot]

DMG page 92 says "Any NPC that accompanies the adventurers acts as a party member and earns a full share of experience points."

Do you think the DM is intended to follow this advice in Out of the Abyss? It could cut the XP for each player character by a huge amount, but they seem to expect you to level up fairly quickly.

 

[Coredump]

That's exactly what my party did. They were taken with the little fellow.

I'm pretty sure my players would have let each other die, in order to save Stool....

 

[Hussar]

When is the last time your DM ran a module as it is written? My statement is not a problem native to 5E. Module designers in nearly every edition have done a poor job of designing challenging encounters. This problem is exacerbated in sandboxes using random encounters because parties that only experience two encounters a day get to blow off their best abilities to achieve victory without concern for preserving them for harder encounters. This happens in nearly every similar type of campaign. It happened when I ran Kingmaker after the PCs picked up a few levels. There has rarely been modules with seriously challenging encounters in any edition of D&D.

Yet, Paizo AP's are renowned for meat grinders (I'm thinking of Age of Worms for one) that are designed for highly optimised groups. I know when I ran The World's Largest Dungeon, I had 27 PC deaths (most of them permanent) in 18 levels and two years of play.

Again, when your experience doesn't line up with what people generally experience, perhaps it isn't the module that's the issue. There's a pretty common thread in all your criticisms of modules - you are the DM.

 

[Celtavian]

Yet, Paizo AP's are renowned for meat grinders (I'm thinking of Age of Worms for one) that are designed for highly optimised groups. I know when I ran The World's Largest Dungeon, I had 27 PC deaths (most of them permanent) in 18 levels and two years of play.

Again, when your experience doesn't line up with what people generally experience, perhaps it isn't the module that's the issue. There's a pretty common thread in all your criticisms of modules - you are the DM.

Generally experience? You mean yourself? I don't see evidence that your viewpoint is "what people generally experience."

Yes. I am the DM. Thus I can tell when the players are having a hard time with an encounter and when they are not. When I play I steamroll nearly everything unless the DM makes something specifically to defeat our party. DMs that run against our party have made some absolutely insane stuff to challenge our party. More than a few times it sucked because I knew it was made specifically to kill my character or our party. I can also understand a DM getting frustrated with a party steamrolling the game.

Don't try to sell me Paizo modules are "meat grinders." You don't have that evidence. Unless you've played more of them than I have, I think I have enough experience to know that assessment is wrong. There have been a handful of modules that are known as meat grinders. Age of Worms, Ravenloft, Tomb of Horrors, Rappan Athuk, Undermountain, and a few others. Most modules are not known as that or only certain parts in the module. Most of the time when people end up dead, they are relatively low level because low level characters are fragile. I doubt you have evidence that my experience does not line up with others, since that data does not exist, especially considering most parties play to what? 6th level? 8th level?

Please stop with the "This is only for your game." It isn't. A lot of people have parties that steamroll designed modules. Just because your party doesn't in no way means module encounters are well-designed. As a DM you should be able to look at an encounter and know how a party can deal with it off the top of your head including what spells they would use and what tactical options that would allow them to destroy the encounters. I see that all the time in modules.

 

[Bigassgeek]

DMG page 92 says "Any NPC that accompanies the adventurers acts as a party member and earns a full share of experience points."

Do you think the DM is intended to follow this advice in Out of the Abyss? It could cut the XP for each player character by a huge amount, but they seem to expect you to level up fairly quickly.

I'm not sure what the intent is, but I agree that splitting the XP an extra 10 ways would seriously slow the PCs' leveling progress! Personally, I'm not splitting experience points with the NPCs, but I'm also not leveling the NPCs as quickly as the PCs level. Right now, early in the campaign, some of the NPCs are on par power-wise with the PCs, but my goal is to have the PCs gradually outpace the NPCs in power. By the time they reach the halfway mark of the campaign, any NPCs still in the party will still be able to survive a battle, but will definitely be second-stringers.