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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 7033746" data-attributes="member: 54629">It's a long story. 1) While the description of the Mask of the Dragon Queen states that you only need two of the lesser dragon masks, elsewhere it says you need all five. I asked Steve Winter which was correct, and his response was: "Both, at the time they were written. In HotDQ, we weren't allowed to let PCs capture any masks, which was a dramatic problem. By RoT, Wizards came around to our thinking, sort of, but it was too late. The whole adventure is built around the idea that all 5 masks are needed to kick off the ritual."2) Later, when I confessed to him that I regretted letting my group get their hands on the black mask because they'd gone and given it to Lady Laeral Silverhand (from whom I reasoned it would be practically impossible to steal back), he replied: "Well, that's why we worked so hard trying to choreograph things to keep the masks out of the PCs' hands. Just having it stolen away despite all Laeral's inevitable safeguards would seem like cheating."He suggested I do something big, like have some Red Wizards actually kill Laeral to get it back. I went with a massive assault on the vulnerable Field Ward district of Waterdeep and a number of smaller attacks throughout the rest of the city, all designed to split and district the city's defences while the cult tried to a) assassinate the PCs and b) steal back the mask. In the end, the cult failed to kill any of the PCs, and I decided it would still be too cheap to allow the cult to have the black mask back ... I don't want the players to feel like nothing they do matters, but that still leaves me with the dilemma of how Severin is supposed to get his ritual going with only four masks.I know that having a mask is listed as one way to weaken Tiamat, so I suppose I could just ignore the idea that Severin needs all five. When they finally see the combined mask, it'll just be missing the black head.That being said, I'm begin to wonder if the whole "five masks combine into one mega-mask" thing is a bit too silly. Makes me think of those Transformers and such that could combine into a mega-robot. Maybe the Mask of the Dragon Queen should be a separate item to the other masks.</blockquote>

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