D&D 5E Do You Tinker with Adventures to Make Them "Winnable"?

[Reynard]

The ten quests in Chapter One give no experience (per the adventure) after Chapter One.

Milestone leveling makes no sense in a sandbox adventure and the inclusion in Rime is a major mark against the adventure (which is otherwise pretty good). But YOU are the DM. If you see a problem in the adventure, it isn't just your right to change it to work for your group, it's your responsibility.

 

[Lanefan]

Because you're providing entertainment for a group of players who've taken time out of their schedules to play a game of heroic adventure. The occasional setback is fine, but when it's time and again "you can't complete this mission" you get players who are frustrated, who might begin thinking their hobby time would be better spent playing a video game.
The feel of D&D is to be able to delve into tombs, recover mysterious treasures, vanquish evil. It's not supposed to be a regular occurrence of "let's chalk up the last session or two as a learning experiment and come back in a few levels, spend another couple sessions getting back to this same exact spot and then deal with this low-level threat that has been inexplicably gated off."

I've bolded a couple of assumptions you're IMO wrongly baking in here. Not everyone plays for heroism, or to vanquish evil; oftentimes those outcomes are merely side effects - perhaps not even intentional - of the adventuring the game is truly about.

Further, a video game where you never fail is also going to become mighty boring in a hurry.

Here, if there's a door they can't pass then so be it; they can't go that way so instead they might as well go where they can, loot what they can, and make a note to maybe come back later with better door-removal tools...or leave it for someone else to do.

The last adventure I ran, the party had to bail back to town something like six different times in order to regroup and - often - recruit replacements for the characters that had died. That said, there weren't any hard-stop elements in that adventure such as the unopenable door example, just more opposition and danger than the party could handle on one run. Certainly a sense of accomplishment when they finally did finish it.

Starting with 4e, however, the concept of having to take more than one run at an adventure seems to have been largely pushed aside because having to retreat and try again is frustrating for the players.

You say frustration drives players away, and that's fine with me: a player who can't or won't handle some in-game frustration isn't someone I want at my table, nor is a player who has been conditioned to expect to be able to curb-stomp or immediately solve/bypass anything encountered.

 

[Lanefan]

But on the other side of the token, they should have the opportunity to succeed?

The opportunity, yes. Taking success for granted, certainly not.

Just saying that the adventure is explicitly set up to have only a couple of solutions, most of which are of higher level than the party.
So the original question I posed was: is it ok to change those solutions so the party can win?

My first answer is no, my second thought tends toward more situationally-dependent. If the element is unsolvable because the party lacks something obvious (e.g. it needs a wizard spell and they don't have a wizard in their lineup) then it's on them to fix it: go recruit a damn wizard.

Perhaps a situation where I might tweak it would be where through no fault of their own the one means of solution has somehow been destroyed. For example, if there's a door that can only be opened by a key hanging on the wall in room 15 and said key was melted by someone's fireball before anyone had even been within sight of it then I might dream up a plan-B solution.

 

[Lanefan]

But having the PCs just burglar a house and having the GM say "Tough luck, this old crone is in fact Baba Yaga in disguise. You're dead" isn't fun for anyone.

Heh - as a player I've in fact been in exactly this situation!

My PC went in as a Human. Came out as an earthworm...

 

[Lanefan]

The ten quests in Chapter One give no experience (per the adventure) after Chapter One.

Drop milestone levelling. Use xp as they're intended to be used.

Problem solved.

 

[Reynard]

Drop milestone levelling. Use xp as they're intended to be used.

Problem solved.

Milestone leveling has its place. I found it useful for Avernus, for example, because it suits level gated, linear adventures pretty well. I just don't think it is a good solution for sandbox games.

 

[The Green Hermit]

If I buy the module, and I run the module, and I change the module, and one of my players complains about it: which one of us is cheating?

Neither, because you do not know why your player read it in the first place.

 

[Retreater]

Here, if there's a door they can't pass then so be it; they can't go that way so instead they might as well go where they can, loot what they can, and make a note to maybe come back later with better door-removal tools...or leave it for someone else to do.

I can agree under normal circumstances. This particular dungeon was very difficult for them to find (it keeps changing location based on elvish magic). The evil caster behind the door was responsible for killing villagers.
So for them to leave the dungeon meant they a) would possibly not find it again and b) innocent people were going to continue to die.

The question about milestone vs XP is an interesting one. I think milestone can be a way around the writers not putting in enough material for a group to reach the recommended levels in other chapters. (I think it gave level 2 after a single encounter.)
I could "beef up" the adventure with side quests and random encounters, but it would really slow the pace.

 

[DammitVictor]

Neither, because you do not know why your player read it in the first place.

Not until he complains, I don't. When he starts complaining, I know that he expects the game I'm running to play out like the module he read-- he expects that his prior knowledge of the module is going to give him an advantage in-game.

If he never complains, he's playing the game regardless of his prior knowledge, and thus is not cheating.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Neither, because you do not know why your player read it in the first place.

Even if there were a justification for the player to read it, they are not justified in complaining you changed it.

Edit. Was to were. English is hard.