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

[Talmek]

As I'm preparing Episode 4: On the Road for my group I wanted to drop a note that this episode seems to be the most polarizing (some love, a lot hate) of all of them so far. I have been reading across multiple forums and found that a lot of GMs dislike this as it's almost two months of in-game time of travel > encounter > repeat. After reading the episode, rolling dice and actually scheduling the encounters this feels like it could be really fun, and an opportunity to add quite a bit to the story rather than simply running it by the book.

If you plan on running episode 4 then I highly suggest pre-reading as far ahead as possible, making a small table for each tenday of time and rolling to see if you have an encounter. Then read and add to each encounter to make it your own, because in my opinion the 1-2 paragraphs provided do not nearly give enough information to actually run an encounter on the fly.

 

[pukunui]

I'd also probably throw in more of a guard presence around the cultist wagons, maybe disguised (maybe there is already and we don't know about it). You could even do something like have shadows pass over the cult wagons from time to time, or perceptive players spot something large in the sky every now and again, to add a level of suspense and uncertainly to the whole scene.

That's a great idea. Dragons are shadowing the caravan, keeping an eye on it. Love it!

Our DM didn't really telegraph that well either that the threat of the cult was being downplayed or potentially manipulated by cult insiders. It was more like everyone was acting like nothing really had happened, except Leosin etc.
Having those NPC's frustrated that people aren't listening and/or the fact that concerns have been raised, but the powers that be are taking too long to do something about it, would go a long way to keeping things sensible IMO.

Well, as you said, he's a new DM. Telegraphing can be hard to do sometimes.

After reading the episode, rolling dice and actually scheduling the encounters this feels like it could be really fun, and an opportunity to add quite a bit to the story rather than simply running it by the book.

My reaction after my initial readthrough of the episode was that it looked like a lot of fun. I like the encounters and will probably use all of them (though I think I'll will use "young green slaads" for the assassins just like was originally planned).

If you plan on running episode 4 then I highly suggest pre-reading as far ahead as possible, making a small table for each tenday of time and rolling to see if you have an encounter. Then read and add to each encounter to make it your own, because in my opinion the 1-2 paragraphs provided do not nearly give enough information to actually run an encounter on the fly.

Good plan.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Don't know if Steve has ever mentioned it as a reason for going towards the Mere in Ep 4... but it seemed to me one of the primary reasons was to get the Hoard plot up around where the Starter Set was located right as players finished it up, so they could easily transfer over to it should the DM want to use it.

 

[pukunui]

It certainly seems like a possibility, especially since the Naerytar episode is for level 5, which is the expected level for PCs who've finished up LMoP.

 

[JediSoth]

My group ended the adventure this past weekend. The ones who didn't get eaten by a dragon were trapped on Skyreach Castle with NO WAY to get off (other than falling to their deaths) and were low on resources after fighting two vampire spawn and a dragon with no where to safely rest, so the group voted to call it quits.

In hindsight, had I know all the problems I would encounter running this adventure, I would have done a LOT of things differently. It's one thing to read blogs about how one DM handles it, it's another to experience it yourself. All groups are different, so I could tell that my group's playstyle would avoid certain problems other groups were having. Instead, we had all sorts of different problems. I still like the idea behind Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Tyranny of Dragons, but if I had it to do over, I would NOT use Hoard of the Dragon Queen as an adventure, but rather use it as a source book to glean inspiration from and create my own adventure using pieces of it.

I also wouldn't make such an epic, world-shaking adventure start with 1st-level PCs. Forgotten Realms has always had a problem with "Why aren't the super-powered muckity mucks involved?", and this one suffers a bit, even as early as HotDQ with "Why aren't the authorities more involved." I know coalition building is part of Rise of Tiamat, but a lot of those elements needed to be introduced earlier to make it more believable. Plus, there are a lot of places in the book itself where a note to the DM would lessen the need to actually MEMORIZE the entire book and all your PCs backgrounds. In particularly, the PC with Draconic Lore should have been able to tell when they were approaching the dragon's lair, but nothing in the book suggests that such a roll is appropriate at that time (it's framed like just a cool bit of fluff text) and I forgot a small detail of character creation from 15 sessions ago (that's over 30 weeks). There are lot of things like that (like including the Dragon Mask in Rezmir's stats even though if you read carefully she's not even wearing it at their first potential encounter... where my PCs killed her in two rounds).

So now, my Forgotten Realms has been plunged into a draconic apocalypse. So sad. If the next campaign visits there, I shall adjust things accordingly.

 

[Uller]

It looks like we'll be tackling Episodes 5 and 6 soon. I've read them both and probably the thing that stands out most to me in episode 6 is I'm not seeing any real guidance on the whereabouts and activities of Borngray and Rezmir. A lot of the rooms have text that says something like "during the day this room is empty but at night there are 10 lizardfolk here." But I am not seeing any such text regarding the two primary villains. Am I just missing it? How did others handle them?

 

[MrZeddaPiras]

Rezmir sleeps in the third floor apartments in the south-east tower. Borngray's rooms are on the second floor of central tower. During the day they are around the castle apparently, doing stuff.

 

[Uller]

Rezmir sleeps in the third floor apartments in the south-east tower. Borngray's rooms are on the second floor of central tower. During the day they are around the castle apparently, doing stuff.

Yeah...I got that. I'm also running Princes of the Apocalypse...it does a much better job at giving you locations and activities of NPCs that are time dependent. No big deal. I'll just pick a location for each of the important NPCs and go with it...

 

[JediSoth]

The more I think about it, the more I'm amused that my players totally broke the adventure, then got eaten by the dragon at the end. It seems... just.

 

[pukunui]

It bothers me that by default, no one comes to investigate if the PCs spook the bats. Since they generally only swarm out of the cave at dusk and then return at dawn, then if they start making a lot of noise at some other time, surely that's cause for alarm?

I think I'm going to make it so that if the bats get spooked, I'll roll on the random encounter table to see what comes to investigate. I'll have them show up on round 2 or 3 while the PCs are fighting the stirges.