D&D 5E First Session of HotDQ - WOW, what a meatgrinder

[Thank Dog]

You said they all went down in one round.

No, I didn't. Please stop exaggerating to try and prove your point otherwise there is no point in discussing this with you.

That means you've never rolled a 1 for damage or missed? How convenient...

Never said that either.

You're in the middle of a town getting raided, and you're allowing your players to rest for an hour whenever they want?

The module states that the entire episode takes place from 9pm to 4am. So yes, the PC's can take short rests in-between sorties and still accomplish every mission within the time-frame.

I think I see the problem here, and why you think they were easy encounters.

And I think you need to re-read the module. It has allowances within it to run it for a 1st-level party that do not make it a slaughter-fest. I think a lot of people are missing or neglecting those aspects and are making it more difficult than it has to be. I also think there are a lot of players who play in a gung-ho fashion that results in PC death more often than needs be. It's a difficult, grinding slog, but it is not a guaranteed recipe for TPK's.

I think I'm done on this topic, though, as it looks like it's just going to become an argument rather than a discussion.

 

[KarinsDad]

Not sure where you're getting that figure from. Short of making a completely inept character, each PC should have a +5 to hit.

Our Ranger has 14 Dex and 16 Int. He multiclassed into Wizard at level 3.

At low level, the difference between a 16 main stat and a 14 main stat is measurable, but it rarely comes into play (5% fewer hits and 1 less damage for many creatures as you say which even a dagger can take out).

 

[Sacrosanct]

The kobolds are dead in one hit almost every single time. One round and there was usually only a cultist or drake left standing. Second round he was dead too. The DM rolling well and the PC's rolling poorly could skew that but at the end of the day, the law of averages means the PC's aren't really in that much danger unless they're very foolish about how they do things.

I also liked to use pack tactics whenever I could. Still didn't make much of an impact. The monk alone would take out two kobolds a turn. A sorcerer with burning hands once took out almost all the kobolds in an encounter in one go. Rolled well enough that even the ones that saved died. Dragonborn did much the same with lightning breath.

If you read the module, the PC's can sneak through the town fairly easily and only get spotted if two of them fail the very low DC 10 check. So more often than not, they got the jump on groups.

No, I didn't. Please stop exaggerating to try and prove your point otherwise there is no point in discussing this with you.


Never said that either.

Look at your quote above. OK, almost every time they died in one hit and usually they were all dead at the end of one round. And you did say the "monk alone would take out two kobolds a turn". So I didn't really exaggerate. Not when you did in fact say the monk killed 2 per turn. Also, when you factor in two dependent variables (hit% and # of HP inflicted), the odds of killing almost all of the kobolds in one hit and on the first round is still fairly unlikely.

The module states that the entire episode takes place from 9pm to 4am. So yes, the PC's can take short rests in-between sorties and still accomplish every mission within the time-frame.
.

I was talking about the four or so encounters you take before you even get to the keep. So I'll go back to my original statement. BH is good, but what do you do for the other 3 encounters?

I'll be honest, something just seems off about your description. Either the DM didn't play the monsters very well at all, or the numbers just don't add up. I went through that module as a monk, and I'm here to tell you, there was no way I was killing two kobolds every turn. Not even close.

 

[Desalus]

The module states that the entire episode takes place from 9pm to 4am. So yes, the PC's can take short rests in-between sorties and still accomplish every mission within the time-frame.

Actually, that is not possible if it's run as written. I posted this in post #47 (perhaps you didn't see that post):

There are six hours (9 PM to 4 AM) in this chapter. There are six ‘missions’ that are assumed to take one hour each (not including ‘Half-Dragon Champion’). If players are going to complete all the missions there is absolutely no time to take a one hour short rest. Given the situation of the scenario (village being pillaged) it also seems incredibly unlikely that any ‘good’ aligned characters would rest for an hour while innocent villagers are being killed.

And I think you need to re-read the module. It has allowances within it to run it for a 1st-level party that do not make it a slaughter-fest. I think a lot of people are missing or neglecting those aspects and are making it more difficult than it has to be. I also think there are a lot of players who play in a gung-ho fashion that results in PC death more often than needs be. It's a difficult, grinding slog, but it is not a guaranteed recipe for TPK's.

I really don't think there's as many allowances as you make it seem (especially in Encounters). I invite you to respond to my post #47 in this thread. If players aren't careful in particular situations, or DMs play out a scenario in a particular way that is disadvantageous to the players (I'm thinking of Sanctuary and the patrolling party in particular), fights can easily end in a TPK.

 

[Desalus]

We had a group of 6: bard, cleric, fighter, ranger, rogue, wizard. 2 healers (eventually 3 with the ranger). The DM said that she beefed up the encounters because of our numbers. We ran through 2 encounters before the keep, 1 in the tunnel, 5 outside again, the dragon, and the duel. We beat them all (except the dragon of course). But, to be fair, some of the reason for that is Lost Mines of Phandelver. We played one 7 hour session of LMoP and discovered that Stealth and Surprise is huge in 5E. So, 4 PCs had stealth (even the fighter who offset some of his armor's disadvantage)...

How do you think your party would have fared if 2/3 of your party had not specialized in stealth? Unfortunately if a group has a bunch of players that have disadvantage on their stealth checks they would probably end up fighting every random encounter with no surprise rounds in their benefit. The adventure seems heavily skewed towards rewarding stealthy parties with surprise and no encounters and penalizing un-stealthy parties with no surprise and lots of encounters. From what I can tell chapter 2 won't be any better.

 

[Thank Dog]

Actually, that is not possible if it's run as written.

Prisoners can be combined with Sanctuary or Save the Mill, giving at the very least 1 hour free for a short rest. But you're right, I had actually misread that to mean "1 hour of real time", as Encounters/Expeditions tend to have certain allotments of time given them and my first reading of the adventure was the Encounters supplement (11 hours before I had to run the first scenario, lol).

Still, given the following, I really don't think it has to be as lethal as people are claiming that it is:

• The cultists are mostly mercenaries who assume the PC's are also mercenaries unless given a reason not to.
• PC's have to fail two Stealth checks with a DC of 10 as a group before even being noticed by cultists.
• The PC's can use the Old Tunnel and walk down the stream to bypass all the cultists entirely in order to get to various locations.
• You can take at least one short rest in-between missions and still be able to do every mission.
• You do not have to do every mission.
• The kobolds and cultists all have low AC & hit points.

At the end of the day, I'm not saying it's not a potentially lethal scenario, however I am saying that I think some people are overstating how deadly it is. Aside from giving one extra short rest to the home group I've run through it, they did OK without any special allowances. Other groups haven't faired so well. We've seen (and I've read elsewhere) of groups that have blasted through it and who've TPK'd. All in all, I think that says it's a module with a highly variable rate of success and failure. What can I say other than I'm ok with that?

 

[Iosue]

IIRC, the module explicitly notes that characters don't have to take part in all the missions. As a matter of fact, it's extremely difficult to do so. As I noted in this thread here, the goal of module is provide many varied paths to leveling up by the encounter's end. If a party is very careful, rations its resources, and avoids fights as much as possible, and comes away with the minimum XP for all the missions, they end up with 399 XP. If the party gets into a lot of fights, they will blow their resources much earlier, but also earn enough XP to not need to complete all the missions.

Aside from the bookends of Seek the Keep and Half-Dragon Champion, there are two keep-based missions (Dragon Attack and Sally Port), two village-based missions (Save the Mill and Sanctuary), one that is in-between (The Old Tunnel), and a bonus mission that can be completed during any of the other missions (Prisoners). Each mission takes up an hour of game time. Except for the bookends, the missions can be completed in any order, with no mission having a set time. A short rest can be taken after every mission, which will give you four encounters - Save the Keep, Half-Dragon Champion, and two or more others, depending on how well they go. So the PCs can choose to be keep-based, or to go out into the village, or a mix. The Old Tunnel can be completed with only minimal resources used, by only taking out the rat swarms and hiding and letting the patrol go by, earning each PC in a party of four the minimum of 25 XP.

There's no in-game, in-story impetus to never rest. It's a long night, a long fight, rotating rested troops and tired troops is sound strategy, and just because the party is taking a short rest doesn't mean they aren't helping around the keep, tending to wounds, repairing arrows, and the like.

My take on the module is that it's designed to give you plenty of options for things to do during the attack, not send the PCs through a punishing gauntlet of missions with all their resources spent. It can be played that way, but it's not the only, or even the best choice. A party that does do that (and survives) is either going to have enough XP to get to Level 3, or be very close to it.

Incidentally, Seek the Keep is highly variable. It's got a minimum of 600 XP (150 XP per PC), either for avoiding all the checkpoints altogether (in which case, they pick up at least three more NPCs, for a total of 8), or for fighting only the minimum of enemies (eight kobolds in the beginning, and then 1 guard and 1 kobold at each checkpoint). OTOH, max enemies is 8 kobolds in the beginning, 1 winged kobold, 5 kobolds, and 4 guards at each of the three checkpoints, and one random encounter of 3 kobolds and an ambush drake chasing 6 villagers. A party of four surviving that will end up with 437 XP per PC, and probably have little in the tank for further missions. So how one approaches the Seek the Keep mission will have repercussions throughout the rest of the episode. In groups where relatively balanced encounters are preferred, the DM should probably only offer the simpler missions, and/or reduce the number of enemies. Of course, a pure sandbox DM might want to leave nothing unchanged and let the players make their own choices.

 

[KarinsDad]

How do you think your party would have fared if 2/3 of your party had not specialized in stealth? Unfortunately if a group has a bunch of players that have disadvantage on their stealth checks they would probably end up fighting every random encounter with no surprise rounds in their benefit. The adventure seems heavily skewed towards rewarding stealthy parties with surprise and no encounters and penalizing un-stealthy parties with no surprise and lots of encounters. From what I can tell chapter 2 won't be any better.

I think that we would have done a lot worse and ran out of resources a lot earlier.


In my 4E game, I had a bunch of NPCs that I called Tough Minions. Instead of a single hit taking them out, one hit bloodied them and a second hit took them out. I really despise the entire concept of minions, so I adjusted it for my game.

Low level 5E published modules are almost all about either fighting minions / tough minions, or it's about fighting tough or impossible bosses. At least so far. There doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground.

Now the thing about fighting minions / tough minions is that if you can get a round of surprise for a 6 PC team, you can take out 4 minions or 2 tough minions on average before the fight even starts. So yeah, surprise is huge and I think that groups that are not stealthy will fare worse in the currently published adventures.

Then again, it's not the training of Stealth that's really important, it's the lack of armor that gives disadvantage.

There's 3 components to Stealth:

1) Proficiency +2
2) Dex, usually +1 to +3
3) Armor, 0 or -5

Armor is the elephant in the room for making a group non-stealthy. Most PCs have a decent Dex and not being proficient doesn't really kill one's chances at being stealthy since only 10% of the time does a given non-proficient PC fail instead of succeed.

 

[Weezknight]

Finally got my chance to run my PC's through the "meat grinder." They are a party of 3 so I did scale the encounters a bit (6 Kobolds threatening the family, for example).

I have to say they did pretty well given the circumstances. They took some damage saving the family, but by using some bits of cover and ranged weapons they were able to knock a few down early before the War Priest and the Rogue got up close to take the rest out.

Getting to the Keep turned out to be a cakewalk, even with the family in tow. Rolled a great group stealth check to bypass a group of raiders breaking into a house. In the 2nd encounter the Cultist spotted them. The family and one of the PC's ran, but one of the other PC's stumbled trying to run. The Rogue used his deception to convince the Cultist that he was one of them and was giving chase to those who ran away. Some great bit of roleplay later, and they were off again, regrouping behind a house and gathering 2 more townsfolk to take to the keep. Again, stealth rolls ruled the evening as they picked their way up to the front gate, where they held off some encroaching Kobolds to let some more people inside before the gates closed.

The idea that looters were running rampant through town, along with the ominous, albeit lazy, blue dragon circling overhead made them decide to take things slow and stealthy. I thought it was a great pickup by the group, and saved them a lot of HP's that 2 of the characters couldn't spare this early in the encounter.

Coming off of 4th Edition, everyone was kind of thrilled that combat vs. 6 Kobolds lasted just 3 rounds and about 10-15 minutes. We had gotten used to 1 hour per combat.

My take is that, yes, Greenest in Flames can be a meat grinder (my PC's still have a long night ahead of them in the Keep), but it's only if the PC's let that happen. There are enough alternative paths at their disposal that they should be able to figure out a way to survive the night.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Declining the missions would work just fine for a home game but for Encounters that doesn’t exactly work out so nicely. If one group skipped parts of chapter 1 they would then be far ahead of other groups if they didn’t do the same.

That's pretty likely, anyway, since the missions aren't done in any particular order, and you essentially skip on when taking a short rest. Depending on how many short rests and how beaten up they get, a party could do more or fewer of the missions. The episode is even expected to last a variable number of weeks, so you might have tables running different episodes, not just different missions.

At my FLGS we have three tables running 5e, and one of them did decline most of the missions, took a long rest, and tackled the second episode while still first level.

How many players did you have in your groups? When we had seven players we steamrolled through ‘Seek the Keep’. However, on all subsequent missions, when we had 4-5 players, it always seemed like it took us at least four rounds to defeat our enemies.

6 the first night, 7 the third session, usually 4. I've had two players drop out, three join, and two of them drop out, and had two sesssions where he had to shuffle people due to a DM being unable to run. Not unusual for Encounters.

Compared to your group of players the group I played with sounds completely inept. More than half the time it seemed like my group would fail our attack rolls against kobolds and cultists. My core party consists of a gnome that rolls well but seems to attack with puny d4 or d6 damage weapon, a fighter that who multi-classed into a wizard at level 2 (so I’m not sure how good of a fighter the character is), and me who always forgot to make use of my fighter’s ‘Great Weapon Fighting’ style. For one session we had a druid that used all of his spells on ‘Seek the Keep’, a ranger for two sessions who rolled terribly (probably failed 70% of his rolls – seemed like his d20 was cursed), and a cleric for two sessions that quickly used up his healing spells and consistently failed at hitting with sacred flame.

Actually, my group had a rough time of it, too. You can't count on hitting, can be dropped in one or two hits, only have so many spells, &c.

Of our three tables the one that did best consisted of a human 'war' Cleric with DR via a feat-at-1st-level, and a bunch of ranged characters, the kobolds tinked against his DR while the party mowed them down.

If you have a bunch of players wearing medium or heavy armor with disadvantage, this doesn’t work out so well. With two fighters in the group you could easily fail the sneak check.

True.

Last session I ended up with a Monk, Rogue, Bard & Warlock at my table, and they sorted Episode 2 without any combat (except the Monk dropping one Cultist to use as a prop).