D&D 5E Enhancing "Rise of Tiamat" (Practical stuff to try at your table!)

[robus]

Powerscore briefly describes an alternate ending scenario that I'm finding very appealing:

This episode details Tiamat's Temple and the Well of Dragons. The bulk of this episode details getting through the caldera to the temple as a massive battle rages. The dungeon, in my opinion, is very bland. There's a lot of fights with dragonsouls and guard drakes.

I ditched the dungeon. I kept the material on the Draakhorn and the treasure (both on age 82) and placed them elsewhere.

I ran a bunch of encounters outside, in the middle of the epic was with the cult. I had my PCs face cultists, Naergoth Bladelord (page 81), a dragon, a pit fiend and Rath Modar (who was by the Draakhorn). Each round I'd have something chaotic happen, like a chromatic dragon flying down to breathe on the PCs, or Leosin the Monk running up and kidney-punching a bad guy, or a frost giant ally pummeling a dragon, whatever.

This sounds a lot more fun and a lot more memorable to have that PCs fight their way through a chaotic battle to reach the temple and stop the return.

Has anyone tried anything similar? If you were to run it this way what problems would you try to steer clear of?

I would run it narratively I think. I don't want to be rolling initiative every time a new NPC enters the fray. I'm imagining a couple of giants taking the van and clearing a path for the PCs but they still have to fight off opportunity attacks that arise from their push.

Anyway it sounds cool...

 

[Sloblock]

Powerscore briefly describes an alternate ending scenario that I'm finding very appealing:



This sounds a lot more fun and a lot more memorable to have that PCs fight their way through a chaotic battle to reach the temple and stop the return.

Has anyone tried anything similar? If you were to run it this way what problems would you try to steer clear of?

I would run it narratively I think. I don't want to be rolling initiative every time a new NPC enters the fray. I'm imagining a couple of giants taking the van and clearing a path for the PCs but they still have to fight off opportunity attacks that arise from their push.

Anyway it sounds cool...

That sounds pretty awesome

I also changed the end and used the finale from the Dragon magazine Scales of war. Big fight on a platform suspended by flames.

I cut most of the fighting encounters and just had a big finale at the end.

For the dragon base the pcs were one of the 3 strike teams each with an objective.




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[jayoungr]

This sounds a lot more fun and a lot more memorable to have that PCs fight their way through a chaotic battle to reach the temple and stop the return.

Has anyone tried anything similar? If you were to run it this way what problems would you try to steer clear of?

When I ran this segment, the PCs deliberately planned things so they could skip the battle outside the temple. They had one of the metallic dragons drop them off right outside it so they could run straight in and get to Severin as quickly as possible.

 

[jayoungr]

Some links to other threads that may be of interest:

Metallic Dragon Council
Attack on Waterdeep
Rise of Tiamat and Thay (ideas on how to integrate Dead in Thay with Rise of Tiamat)
Demon Wall (side adventure idea)
What Do Townsfolk Know About the Seven Sisters?
The Nine Hells in Your Game
Faerûn's Vendors: A Flexible Vendor System for Magic Consumables
Warlock Patron: Jotun (could be especially fun if you run The Frozen Castle)

 

[pukunui]

My group has begun the final chapter. I took a page from Out of the Abyss and gave them some faction-aligned NPCs to help them out:

- 1 x human Harper spy
- 4 x human Lords' Alliance soldiers [AC 16 (breastplate + 12 Dex + Defense Fighting Style), 16 hp (3d8 + 3), Str and Con saves, and a shortsword as well as a spear]
- 2 x human Zhentarim thugs
- 2 x wood elf Emerald Enclave scouts
- 1 x shield dwarf Order of the Gauntlet priest

I've told the players that during this final battle, if they lose any of their squad members, they can spend inspiration to gain reinforcements, with the exception of the two Zhent thugs, who are a one-off since the Zhents aren't technically part of the alliance.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Fun idea. Having allies along should certainly help establish that the players are not unsupported. Are you going to do a battle scene, or narrate that off-screen and focus on a dungeon delve for the party?

 

[Charles Rampant]

TL;DR: Replacing Iymrith with Klauth for a mixed RoT/SKT campaign?

So last night I had my first session of Rise of Tiamat, after we ended Hoard of the Dragon Queen about a month early for various reasons. The first Council of Waterdeep was a monster of a session to prepare for: I must have spent six hours getting everything together. However it was worth it, since the Council went went and the players seemed really engaged with it. It seemed like the combination of narrative freedom (choose your mission) and in-world importance (a council of kings and ambassadors wants to hear what you have to say) gripped them.

Having been given three options (Giants, Varram the White, Draakhorn), the party selected Find Out What The Giants Are Doing as their first mission, and thus are off to the Eye of the All Father chapter from Storm King's Thunder. I'm pretty happy about this, since I think that the two adventure paths are stronger together, and the players clearly thought it would be really cool to get into the whole Giant side of things. Plus the dungeons in SKT are totally rad.

Now, my question here is what to do with Iymrith. Rise of Tiamat already has Blue Dragons in it, and having a Blue Dragon show up who isn't the one that attacked Greenest is rather narratively weak. By contrast, there are no named Red Dragons in the adventure, one of its major omissions. My eyes are drawn to Klauth, not least because he's right there in Storm King's Thunder, and I'm not using him (or his airship) for the campaign otherwise. In addition, Klauth as an arrogant and handsome 'Fire Giant' could be a lot of fun to roleplay. He doesn't have a whole history worked up of trickery and deceit, unlike Iymrith, however; he makes considerably less sense as the criminal mastermind responsible for getting the Giants out of the way for the Cult. Does anyone else have any thoughts? There is the Red Rage of Mintarn as well - Hoondarrh - but that's kind of just moving the deckchairs. The real question is - does replacing Iymrith with a Red Dragon work?


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[robus]

TL;DR: Replacing Iymrith with Klauth for a mixed RoT/SKT campaign?

So last night I had my first session of Rise of Tiamat, after we ended Hoard of the Dragon Queen about a month early for various reasons. The first Council of Waterdeep was a monster of a session to prepare for: I must have spent six hours getting everything together. However it was worth it, since the Council went went and the players seemed really engaged with it. It seemed like the combination of narrative freedom (choose your mission) and in-world importance (a council of kings and ambassadors wants to hear what you have to say) gripped them.

Having been given three options (Giants, Varram the White, Draakhorn), the party selected Find Out What The Giants Are Doing as their first mission, and thus are off to the Eye of the All Father chapter from Storm King's Thunder. I'm pretty happy about this, since I think that the two adventure paths are stronger together, and the players clearly thought it would be really cool to get into the whole Giant side of things. Plus the dungeons in SKT are totally rad.

This is exactly what I've done with my group and it's working very well (and I couldn't buy running SKT after ToD and suddenly have dragons, and their cultists, be the good guys)

Now, my question here is what to do with Iymrith. Rise of Tiamat already has Blue Dragons in it, and having a Blue Dragon show up who isn't the one that attacked Greenest is rather narratively weak. By contrast, there are no named Red Dragons in the adventure, one of its major omissions. My eyes are drawn to Klauth, not least because he's right there in Storm King's Thunder, and I'm not using him (or his airship) for the campaign otherwise. In addition, Klauth as an arrogant and handsome 'Fire Giant' could be a lot of fun to roleplay. He doesn't have a whole history worked up of trickery and deceit, unlike Iymrith, however; he makes considerably less sense as the criminal mastermind responsible for getting the Giants out of the way for the Cult. Does anyone else have any thoughts? There is the Red Rage of Mintarn as well - Hoondarrh - but that's kind of just moving the deckchairs. The real question is - does replacing Iymrith with a Red Dragon work?

What would your players make of it? Do they (the players) know enough about Klauth to not buy the switch? If so then I'd stick with Iymrith. Otherwise one ancient dragon causing trouble is as good as any other

 

[Ambrose Honeysuckle]

OK, this seems like as good a place as any to ask the question that's on my mind right now.

I'm prepping for the Second Council of Waterdeep. My PCs went to Oyaviggaton, took out Arauthator, rescued Maccath and won the allegiance of the Arcane Brotherhood, then went on a four-month side quest (a barbarian's not going to just let it go when she finds out the warlord who slaughtered her people has been spotted raising an army in the Surbrin Valley), then tracked down Varram the White and brought him back alive.

So now the possibilities are either (1) they go after Neronvain (hope they don't pick this one -- we use XP advancement, not milestone, and they're not ready to take on a green dragon yet), or (2) they go with Elia to the metallic dragon council (hope they do pick this one, because in that direction lie two more personal PC side quests).

Here's the problem: Elia herself. Here she is at the Council of Waterdeep, cheerfully inviting everyone to come to the metallic dragon council. Only she hates dwarves and is hostile if the party includes any. Well, first, our party contains two of them, and second, Connerad Brawnanvil, the guy she expects an apology from, is sitting right there while she's conveying the invitation! Am I the only one who realized that this straight-up doesn't make a lick of sense?

What solutions have other people found? The easiest one, probably, is to say that Elia isn't the silver dragon representative to the council after all, but rather a different silver dragon who was just sent as a messenger; it's the representative, not her, who's got a thing against dwarves. But that strikes me as kind of a copout, and I don't want to go that route if I don't have to.

 

[jayoungr]

Oops, I apologize for not responding sooner! I missed the original post somehow. Hope it's not too late. Have some XP as an apology.

Here's the problem: Elia herself. Here she is at the Council of Waterdeep, cheerfully inviting everyone to come to the metallic dragon council. Only she hates dwarves and is hostile if the party includes any. Well, first, our party contains two of them, and second, Connerad Brawnanvil, the guy she expects an apology from, is sitting right there while she's conveying the invitation! Am I the only one who realized that this straight-up doesn't make a lick of sense?

I don't think it's impossible to make it work. The easiest situation is not to make Elia "cheerful" about it. She's not unilaterally inviting the PCs to the dragon council; she's conveying with wishes of the council at large, wishes she may not entirely agree with. Maybe she invites the non-dwarf PCs cheerfully and accepts the dwarves through clenched teeth because she has to.

As for Connerad Brawnanvil, you could have Elia pointedly snubbing him during the council meeting. You could throw in a mention during the dragon council of to how the dragons have asked the dwarves multiple times in the past for apologies and/or reparations in the past, and they've always refused; now the dragons want the PCs to convince the dwarves to give in to their requests. Depending on how the council goes, you could play it as if the dragons don't actually believe the PCs will succeed.