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Hoard of the Dragon Queen: As it Turns out, it's Pretty Good (so far)
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<blockquote data-quote="Mad Zagyg" data-source="post: 6365140" data-attributes="member: 47680"><p>A DM can choose to let the party level at some point throughout the night if he chooses, but the final paragraph of the episode states that if you are using the milestone experience rule, characters reach 2nd level at the <strong>end</strong> of this episode. That pretty clearly (and incorrectly) implies that the party should be able to defeat this first episode without leveling. The 7 hour time limit explicitly implies that they should also be able to complete it without a long rest.</p><p></p><p>The point of my OP was not to say that the adventure was "poorly written." The writing seems fine, even though this is not my preferred style of adventure. My post was to warn people interested in running it for their campaign-style home games that if you run the adventure as written you will almost certainly smoke your party. As all follow-up posts in defense of the adventure point out, DMs can easily tweak the mod to help the players survive in a variety of ways. The point is, you HAVE to.</p><p></p><p>If you run this adventure for your Wednesday Night D&D Encounters this won't be an issue at all because the group returns "refreshed" each week. This solves the problem at the expense of verisimilitude, and underlines the reason why I believe it was written specifically for D&D Encounters. I will note that I have become increasingly aware that a desire for verisimilitude is not a quality required in a huge number of gaming groups I see in person and online. Video-game style leveling mid-encounter is something that will never happen at my home game table. I don't intend that as a criticism of people who don't care about that sort of thing. Whatever works for you and your gaming group is cool with me. For me, the idea that just after finishing a fight my wizard sits down and realizes that he suddenly knows two or three new spells is just silly to me. I recognize that this issue isn't a hang-up for everyone and that's fine. The game rewards us all in very different ways.</p><p></p><p>To clarify, my OP is a warning to DMs that while at first brush the first episode might <em>look</em> like 7 encounters, but it's really more like 15 combats (some of which are fairly difficult). That's way too much for a 1st level party to handle without rest and recuperation. DMs running this for their home games can and should make appropriate changes to the adventure as written to present a more reasonable challenge.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mad Zagyg, post: 6365140, member: 47680"] A DM can choose to let the party level at some point throughout the night if he chooses, but the final paragraph of the episode states that if you are using the milestone experience rule, characters reach 2nd level at the [B]end[/B] of this episode. That pretty clearly (and incorrectly) implies that the party should be able to defeat this first episode without leveling. The 7 hour time limit explicitly implies that they should also be able to complete it without a long rest. The point of my OP was not to say that the adventure was "poorly written." The writing seems fine, even though this is not my preferred style of adventure. My post was to warn people interested in running it for their campaign-style home games that if you run the adventure as written you will almost certainly smoke your party. As all follow-up posts in defense of the adventure point out, DMs can easily tweak the mod to help the players survive in a variety of ways. The point is, you HAVE to. If you run this adventure for your Wednesday Night D&D Encounters this won't be an issue at all because the group returns "refreshed" each week. This solves the problem at the expense of verisimilitude, and underlines the reason why I believe it was written specifically for D&D Encounters. I will note that I have become increasingly aware that a desire for verisimilitude is not a quality required in a huge number of gaming groups I see in person and online. Video-game style leveling mid-encounter is something that will never happen at my home game table. I don't intend that as a criticism of people who don't care about that sort of thing. Whatever works for you and your gaming group is cool with me. For me, the idea that just after finishing a fight my wizard sits down and realizes that he suddenly knows two or three new spells is just silly to me. I recognize that this issue isn't a hang-up for everyone and that's fine. The game rewards us all in very different ways. To clarify, my OP is a warning to DMs that while at first brush the first episode might [I]look[/I] like 7 encounters, but it's really more like 15 combats (some of which are fairly difficult). That's way too much for a 1st level party to handle without rest and recuperation. DMs running this for their home games can and should make appropriate changes to the adventure as written to present a more reasonable challenge. [/QUOTE]
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Hoard of the Dragon Queen: As it Turns out, it's Pretty Good (so far)
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