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Enhancing "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" (Practical stuff to try at your table!)
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<blockquote data-quote="JediSoth" data-source="post: 6652665" data-attributes="member: 13882"><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="JediSoth, post: 6652665, member: 13882"] 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. :D [/QUOTE]
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