D&D 5E Dragon Queen Question: Why Not Interrogate the Cultists?

[mockman1890]

Hi all,

i'm running Hoard of the Dragon Queen and the party is approaching the middle section of the module-- the part where they spy on the cultist caravan going north.

looking over the adventure, I have a basic question I don't think is addressed: what's to stop the PCs just using divination magic/detect evil to figure out who the cultists are, then attacking, capturing & Interrogsting them? Is there anything written into the adventure to prevent this or account for this possibility? Maybe there is but I'm not seeing it.

jason

 

[MerricB]

The players know who the cultists are at this stage - or, if they don't, finding out won't be very difficult.

If the players interrogate the cultists, the cultists don't know more than "deliver the goods to the Carnath Roadhouse, where the half-orc Bog Luck will arrange things". The trouble with this tactic is that the cultists might lie. How would the PCs know the cultists were lying? (Actually, the cultists might not even know about Bog Luck, just that they need to deliver the treasure to the roadhouse).

So, you have the wonderful possibility of the PCs killing the cultists, heading off to Waterdeep, and losing track of the shipment.

The one exception to this is the Red Wizard Abzara Jos, who does know about Castle Naerytar. (The PCs have heard of Naerytar, but not that it's a castle - both groups I've run have assumed it was a person). But trying to get the Red Wizard to help you is tricky.

The fact is that a party *doesn't* need to accompany the cultists north if they can find the information in other ways. They'll miss meeting Jamna, as well as a couple of other encounters, but they still have all the normal road-trip encounters you might expect. And then they get to Castle Naerytar and resume the main plot.

Cheers!

 

[Staffan]

Well, detect good and evil won't do you any good, as it just detects the presence and location of various "unnatural" creatures, and has nothing to do with actual alignment. The same goes for the paladin's Divine Sense. But there are other abilities that serve similar purposes, like detect thoughts.

The easiest fix would be to just have the cultists being mostly ignorant - they're taking this stuff to Waterdeep where they'll be getting further instructions from local cultist cells.

 

[Coredump]

Cultists may only know they are going to Waterdeep, may not even know about going past that until they get to Waterdeep. Maybe their commander knows.... maybe not.

But then what.... You still need to keep heading north.


plus, there are a lot of cultists, an outright fight may not go in their favor. Especially if the rest of the caravan doesn't realize who the 'bad guys' are and only knows that the PCs are attacking part of the caravan.

 

[Riley37]

The trouble with this tactic is that the cultists might lie. How would the PCs know the cultists were lying?

Detect Thought, Zone of Truth.

Next question?

 

[MerricB]

Detect Thought, Zone of Truth.

Next question?

Neither of which work as you think. Go read their descriptions.

 

[Celtavian]

I don't think there is anything in the module disallowing that option. When we went through this module, it took a while to figure out who the cultists were. My gnome mage skulked about using minor illusion and searching wagons. Once we did determine who they were, we followed them as they did their business to the next encounter. There didn't seem to be anything to gain by interrogating them that didn't happen by following them. So we stuck with that.

 

[Riley37]

Neither of which work as you think. Go read their descriptions.

"On a failed save, a creature can't speak a deliberate lie while in the radius. You know whether each creature succeeds or fails on its saving throw." Getting the subjects to answer at all, let alone answer fully and directly, relies on methods other than the ZoT spell; but the spell is a 100% guarantee that what a failed-save subject said, is not a deliberate lie. This answers the question "how would the PCs know the cultists were lying?". QED.

You may be unfamiliar with military methods of systematic interrogation, such as comparing answers from captives interrogated separately. That doesn't reflect badly on you as an author; most people never get trained as interrogators. But when you say "How could PCs do X?", and you're not open to an answer, you meant the question as a rhetorical statement that "PCs could NEVER do X, there's no way, it's not possible", then that does say something about your DM style.

If PCs capture and successfully interrogate the cultists, then they have the problem of what to do at Carnath Roadhouse. If they can impersonate the cultists, a non-trivial task, then Bog Luck will see them and act according to plan. If the PCs become familiar with a small object or two, and plant those objects on the goods, then they can use Locate Object to see where those "tracker" objects subsequently end up. What would Bog Luck do if the goods showed up, but without the cultists who'd been assigned to transport them?

When PCs think of something the author didn't expect, that's another path towards a good story. Someone pointed out that the story you wrote is not an inescapable single-track railroad. Why not take that as a compliment?

 

[mockman1890]

Honestly, what's *really* the most illogical part of "Hoard" to me is why the cultists are bringing the treasure 1000s of miles to the north, just so it can be carried on a floating castle BACK TO THE SOUTH (based on the location of the Well of Dragons on the map... -_-)

 

[Staffan]

Honestly, what's *really* the most illogical part of "Hoard" to me is why the cultists are bringing the treasure 1000s of miles to the north, just so it can be carried on a floating castle BACK TO THE SOUTH (based on the location of the Well of Dragons on the map... -_-)

Well, the flying castle is in/near Parnast and the Well of Dragons to begin with - they go there via a gate from Castle Naerytar. And Parnast is on the other side of a mountain chain as well as undead-infested territory. It also makes sense if the cultists are conducting raids all over the Sword Coast and using Naerytar as a gathering point.

What doesn't make any sense is that the cultists go from near Greenest to Baldur's Gate, and then overland to Waterdeep. It would make more sense to go either via Berdusk and Scornubel if you want to go by land, or take a friggin' ship from Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep. No-one ever moves goods via muscle-powered transportation if they can help it. Before the Suez canal was built, trade between Europe and Asia (primarily India) went around Africa, a detour of some 4,000 miles, rather than using caravans across the Sinai peninsula.

So, a caravan from Scornubel to Waterdeep? That kind of makes sense, particularly if you intend to do a bunch of trading along the way. But from Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep? That's just silly.