D&D 5E Enhancing "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" (Practical stuff to try at your table!)

[Uller]

I'm now running this for my kids. Four PCs.

Episode 1: I left the dragon out of it. It just seemed unnecessary. I also had an NPC available with the Healer feat and 5 uses of a healer's kit. We only did three missions then the party was so badly beaten up I skipped to the duel.

I combined episodes 2 and 3. I let them level to level 3 and beefed up the stragglers and rearguard encounters. When the reached the camp Leosin had already escaped and the cultists had already packed up and left. Leosin asked them to check out the caves for him and meet him in town. Sneaking around the camp didn't seem all that fun to us.

 

[Steven Winter]

OK. Wow. My group is completely off the rails now. They uber-stealth into Castle Naerytar, killed Rezmir and escaped with the dragon mask and the sword and snuck off into the swamp.

They're really good at strategic stealth insertions and hit and runs. Now I have to figure out how to get them to the lodge since they have no knowledge of the portal and no reason to go back to the castle.

The reason they have to go back to Naerytar is that's where they abandoned the job. At the start of their journey north, characters were tasked by Leosin Erlanthar and Ontharr Frume with finding out where the cult was taking the treasure and what they were doing with it. It should be obvious to everyone that Naerytar is not the end of the line for the treasure, so they haven't answered either of those questions. Erlanthar would be disappointed (their rash action revealed to the cult the full extent to which its operations have been uncovered), and Ontharr Frume might outright accuse them of chasing personal glory instead of their mission.

What do they have instead? Killing Rezmir was a hollow accomplishment; she'll be replaced. The black dragon mask? It's an intriguing bauble, but no one outside the highest levels of the cult knows what it is or has even the faintest hint of its importance. It's unlikely that anyone examining it would understand its connection to Tiamat or that it's part of a larger assembly. Although it's not stated anywhere, this is a case where spells such as identify should disclose nothing but the simplest, least revealing info. (The mask is a relic of Tiamat, not a wand of magic missiles.) Furthermore, the cultists will do literally anything to recover the mask. Kidnapping, torture, mass murder -- No atrocity would be off the table, where regaining the mask is concerned. But they'll also be cagey about it, because they don't want to tip their foes to the importance of the mask. If the characters hang onto it, their lives will be in constant danger. They're not the only ones in Faerun who are really good at strategic stealth insertions and hit and runs. With all the wealth the cult commands, it can send the finest thieves (and assassins) in the multiverse against such foes.

When adventurers go "off the rails" (a phrase I use despite serious objections), the DM needs to lay new track to keep the ride progressing smoothly.

Steve

 

[pukunui]

Just doing some prep for Episode 2 for tomorrow, and this caught my eye: if unmolested, the kobolds take their food and move to a spot fifty yards away from the humans. That's 150 feet, or half the length of a football field. Which will make it rather difficult for the PCs to engage them all at once.

How did you guys handle this encounter? Did you have the kobolds stay closer, did the PCs split up, or what?

 

[cmad1977]

The Druid hit them with entangle and they failed their saves. The heroes wipe out the guards and moved to the kobolds who promptly died/surrendered/fled

 

[pukunui]

OK. Unfortunately the druid's player can't make it tonight, so I'm going to leave his character in bear form for the session. I might leave it though - it makes for an interesting tactical situation. "How do we deal with two groups who are so far apart?"

Other questions:

- The description for area 4 of the Dragon Hatchery makes no mention of whether or not disturbing the bats will attract attention from nearby areas. How did you guys handle this in your games? Did the kobolds in area 7 come to investigate? Or are they not bothered by the bats flapping about in a tizzy?

- Did you use the troglodytes in area 5? I realize the adventure gives me permission to leave it out, but given that I am using XP and I figure the PCs won't get enough XP from episode 2, I thought I should include the trogs as another opportunity for some XP, if nothing else. However, knowing my players, they aren't likely to descend into a trash pit without a good incentive ... and even then, if I put something down there that looks like it might be worth investigating, unless I make it really heavy, my wife will most likely just have her wizard use mage hand to retrieve it. Anyone got any ideas?

 

[stevenjcwinter]

If you think your players will chase after a dragon egg, the trogs could have stolen one and taken it into their tunnels. PCs could learn this from the roper, from kobolds, or from the stink left behind in the hatchery.

 

[GuardianLurker]

- The description for area 4 of the Dragon Hatchery makes no mention of whether or not disturbing the bats will attract attention from nearby areas. How did you guys handle this in your games? Did the kobolds in area 7 come to investigate? Or are they not bothered by the bats flapping about in a tizzy?

The Hatchery is one of the areas that got extensively reworked in my campaign. I did a number of things for areas 3 & 4:
1) Eliminated the safe paths down the sides (for 3), and hid the safe path under an illusion.
2) Hid more stirges in the bat colony, and also added a couple swarms of bats as well.
3) Added shriekers in area 3 (which set off the bats).
4) Treat the shriekers/bats as an alarm. Most opponents in the complex won't necessarily come an investigate, as they're mostly protection details, but will instead hunker down into defensive postures, setting up ambushes and traps.

- Did you use the troglodytes in area 5? I realize the adventure gives me permission to leave it out, but given that I am using XP and I figure the PCs won't get enough XP from episode 2, I thought I should include the trogs as another opportunity for some XP, if nothing else. However, knowing my players, they aren't likely to descend into a trash pit without a good incentive ... and even then, if I put something down there that looks like it might be worth investigating, unless I make it really heavy, my wife will most likely just have her wizard use mage hand to retrieve it. Anyone got any ideas?

In my campaign, I got rid of the trogs. To replace them, I split the lower cave in two. The south half is now a trash pit/otyugh lair. The north half is the drake hatchery. And the old drake hatchery is now the lair of a young adult blue dragon. (Who can fire her breath weapon right down/up either corridor from 9/10 cover, as all she has to do is poke her head over the 10-foot high ledge.)

As for the otyugh's treasure, make the light treasure something the characters can see (and even fetch with mage hand), that indicates something really heavy/valuable is at the bottom of the muck. Q: What's that gleaming in the muck? I use mage hand to fetch it.A: It's a platinum key hanging on a golden wire looped around a gold chain. There are some other broken wires still attached to the chain, indicating it might have once held more keys. When it dangles freely, the chain and key point towards the depths of the muck.

 

[JediSoth]

My players ended up ambushing the cultists they leapfrogged and killing them all in a spectacular display of what careful planning, high stealth rolls, and a bard with Rezmir's dragon mask who'd been collecting cultist robes can do. I had Snapjaw hold the lizardfolk back from the attack and once he found out the cult leaders in the castle were dead, he told the PCs everything he knew in exchange for their word that they wouldn't interfere when he led his people in a revolt against the bullywugs and took Castle Naerytar for the lizardfolk (I knew they were leaning toward going back to Waterdeep anyway). So, they actually ended up taking Greenest's loot back to Waterdeep!

Sure, I could have spent weeks detailing the journey of them dragging all that loot back, but Logistics and Ledgers just didn't sound fun to me, no matter how I spiced it up and they really have been clever and smart about how they've approached all these challenges.

I couched it in divinations and spy games, but basically, when they met with Ontharr Frume and Master Leosin again, they learned about the flying castle and were put on Waterdeep's griffons to go intercept it before it reached the Well of Dragons. AND they gave Hazirawn to Ontharr Frume for disposal. The only misstep they made was not having a plan for getting off the flying castle. They used feather fall and fly (from the bard's magic cittern) to jump off the griffons into the upper courtyard at night and when they hid from the patrolling vampire elf lady they realized they didn't have ANY idea who all was in the castle, how powerful they were, or how the heck they would escape if things went pear-shaped.

It was such a great "Oh Crap!" moment when they realized they'd just enacted the D&D version of the D-Day -1 nighttime parachute landings... without a ground invasion to back them up in the morning.

 

[DaveDash]

I've skipped most of this thread, but I thought I'd post some of my impressions so far as a player:

Chapter 1.
There was good and bad things about this chapter. It was fun, but I did feel like it did strain the suspension of disbelief at times. The whole Dragon thing felt very contrived, and I found the missions to be quite stupid. What kind of idiotic town doesn't store food in their keep? We're 1st level characters, why can't you send us some guards to help us? etc etc.
Cyanwrath at the end was a stupid encounter, so we decided to shoot him in the back and killed him after recovering our fallen party member.
None of us wanted to fight him in the first place but we were basically railroaded into it, because one of his prisoners was a new party member joining the group.
Being a spell caster low on resources and spending 80% of a chapter throwing around cantrips got a bit tedious after a while. Also the fact this started at night totally messed up our resting cycle for a while (we couldn't long rest until about 5am!).

Chapter 2.
This chapter was OK. The cult is way too small IMO, the numbers should be much larger.
I felt like we were railroaded into the ambush at the gate, which was basically impossible to spot (DC20!) and if the DM didn't "fudge" it by having the cultists jump down, it would have been quite deadly. I didn't even want to go in that way - I wanted to scout around the top first, but the module 'assumes' you go that way so we were kinda forced into it.
There was no foreshadowing at all (apparently we should have interrogated a captured Human cultists - we interrogated a Kobold) and we basically walked into a very deadly encounter almost impossible to spot. Bad encounter design right there.

Chapter 3.
Hard.
We are seasons D&D players with quite a bit of 5e experience by the time we came to this part, and it was still hard. We got through this part without any deaths but we were lucky. We ended up using the cultists traps against them using ball bearings into pits, caltrops, and things like that. We also made good use of choke points and the dodge action.
We parleyed with the roper, or that would have been a TPK right there.
Some of the placement of traps was a bit silly (in commonly travelled areas - also unguarded), but some others were good (under chests etc).
Overall apart from the difficulty of this area I didn't have an issue with it. Again though, being a spell caster I found running out of resources and having nothing left but cantrips a bit tedious after a while.

The festival in Eltruel was fun and I really enjoyed that, but it did seem silly that no one seemed to care the southern parts of the Sword Coast were being sacked and raided.

Chapter 4.
Absolutely terrible chapter that really strained the suspension of disbelief.
1. The CoTD is traveling with treasure wagons across land with minimal guards, what the?
2. Why don't they just take a boat since their cargo is so precious? It will be much faster and safer for them, especially since they have to go through the Marches of the Dead.
3. Why does no one care? They've sacked at least one important sword coast town and raided many more. The entire realms is acting like nothing has happened, yet it's up to a bunch of lowbie level characters to sort it out.
4. We've discovered what's in their caravans already, and considered completely throwing the rails off by getting the Flaming Fist involved from Baldurs Gate and have them all arrested, but decided to "play along" for the sake of the adventure.

This is probably the low part of the module. While it's still a fun game because of the banter and roleplay we have, I find it really strains disbelief.

Our DM is new to DMing, and as he learns stuff he is tweaking it more and more and making it better, but I've really felt some parts of this module have been poor. I also don't think it's very newbie friendly from a DM or players perspective. The fun from this game comes from all the good group banter we have and not the module itself. YMMV.

Yeah there's a bit of negative in this post (honestly, the Festival has been the only really positive part of the module for me so far - other than the good party banter), but I thought it's worth pointing out my experiences of this module from a players perspective so far.

I think the problem with this adventure is that it tries to show case too many different styles of mini adventures, instead of just focusing on a coherent story. Fix that and you've gone a long way to improving the module.
Also the player errata probably helps, because as a DM myself I find it a huge peeve walking into unspottablr encounters etc.

 

[pukunui]

The Hatchery is one of the areas that got extensively reworked in my campaign. I did a number of things for areas 3 & 4:
1) Eliminated the safe paths down the sides (for 3), and hid the safe path under an illusion.
2) Hid more stirges in the bat colony, and also added a couple swarms of bats as well.
3) Added shriekers in area 3 (which set off the bats).
4) Treat the shriekers/bats as an alarm. Most opponents in the complex won't necessarily come an investigate, as they're mostly protection details, but will instead hunker down into defensive postures, setting up ambushes and traps.

I'm thinking of taking out the stirges and just having some bat swarms instead.

In my campaign, I got rid of the trogs. To replace them, I split the lower cave in two. The south half is now a trash pit/otyugh lair.

I've thought about an otyugh. I suppose I could do that.

As for the otyugh's treasure, make the light treasure something the characters can see (and even fetch with mage hand), that indicates something really heavy/valuable is at the bottom of the muck. Q: What's that gleaming in the muck? I use mage hand to fetch it.A: It's a platinum key hanging on a golden wire looped around a gold chain. There are some other broken wires still attached to the chain, indicating it might have once held more keys. When it dangles freely, the chain and key point towards the depths of the muck.

That sounds cool! I might do that!

We're 1st level characters, why can't you send us some guards to help us? etc etc.

My group argued their case with Governor Nighthill and were persuasive enough so I had three guards go with them. During the ambush, the guards fared much better than the PCs due to the randomness of the dice, and the players joked that if their PCs all died they should just start playing the guards instead.

This chapter was OK. The cult is way too small IMO, the numbers should be much larger.

The cultists in the camp aren't the entirety of the cult. They're just one small cell plus some hired mercenaries and such.

I felt like we were railroaded into the ambush at the gate, which was basically impossible to spot (DC20!) and if the DM didn't "fudge" it by having the cultists jump down, it would have been quite deadly. I didn't even want to go in that way - I wanted to scout around the top first, but the module 'assumes' you go that way so we were kinda forced into it.
There was no foreshadowing at all (apparently we should have interrogated a captured Human cultists - we interrogated a Kobold) and we basically walked into a very deadly encounter almost impossible to spot. Bad encounter design right there.

Some of it has to do with the unfinished Perception rules. The adventure doesn't railroad you into the rearguard ambush, though. It actually comes right out and says that the PCs would be better off avoiding this encounter all together, so the DM is encouraged to make sure the PCs know it's there ahead of time.

Some of the placement of traps was a bit silly (in commonly travelled areas - also unguarded) ...

I agree that the placement of some traps is silly but the text does account for how the cultists and kobolds bypass them.

3. Why does no one care? They've sacked at least one important sword coast town and raided many more. The entire realms is acting like nothing has happened, yet it's up to a bunch of lowbie level characters to sort it out.

Partly it's because there is not internet in the Forgotten Realms. People aren't going to find out what's happening elsewhere as quickly as they might these days. Another part of it is that everyone is rather parochial. They don't really care what happens to someone else if it isn't also happening to them. Although that brings me to my next point, which is that the cult is all over the place, not just around Greenest. So maybe people seem like they don't care about what happened down south because they've got their own troubles.

Our DM is new to DMing.

That explains a lot actually. Despite what WotC might have wanted, the Tyranny of Dragons modules aren't really all that new DM-friendly.