D&D 5E How We Beat the HD, HotDQ, Spoilers

[DEFCON 1]

The problem people are having with your interpretation of the scenario, KarinsDad... is that you are attributing an emotional dominance to the Adventure Designers and the Dungeon Master for having this scene in the module and/or running this scene at the table... as opposed to it being the Non-Player Character that is showing an emotional dominance over the PCs. You're making it into a metagame "Look at me! Look how cool I am!" moment, as though the writers and DMs are so depressed in their lives that their only way to make themselves feel good is to include scenes into modules that will make players cry? And that the editors of the adventure are also so lacking in their lives that they allowed it to get through? And that every DM who runs this scene in this adventure also is so bereft of positivity that they need to kick their players down just because it can make them feel better? Is that really what you mean to say? Cause that's how you're coming off, and frankly seems pretty ridiculous.

I have absolutely no problem with you not liking this particular type of scene in an adventure (published or no). But to say that it's 1) bad design to include this scene (which isn't objectively true and only your opinion)... and 2) to attribute vindictive motives on the part of the writers for including it and for DMs for running it... that's just a bit much.

 

[KarinsDad]

I find this interesting since you party all but managed to kill the half-dragon.
All you showed the DM is that for you to be scared of overwhelming odds, the fish need to be even bigger.

Your party took a situation that was meant to be one PC risking their life and turned it into a possible TPK with collateral damage. That's on you, not the encounter or the designer.

Oh sure. Blame the player for not playing the way the scenario is designed for. Gotta love these armchair gaming decision sentiments.


Like Kirk said "I don't believe in the no win scenario".

Interestingly enough, when my wizard went out to try to save the villager, I was expecting everyone to eventually either fight from inside the fog (pack tactics took care of that), or run away back into the keep. I wasn't interested in beating 30+ kobolds as much as I was interested in saving the villagers. My wife, on the other hand, told me later on that her first thought was *Why the heck are we doing this?*. She thought it was suicide and even though she is playing a good aligned PC (and always does), saving the four villagers at the probable TPK of the party was not even on her radar.

There were a lot of jokes about "Hey, nice knowing you" and "Well, I guess we should shut the gate" around the table when my PC walked out.


And with hindsight (and now knowing that the scenario was designed to just beat up a PC instead of kill one), it's easy to sit in the armchair and make comments about how I changed it from being a single PC threat to a party PC threat. But that presupposes that the players know what they are supposed to do.

Sorry, but the first casualty of any encounter design is the designer's plan.

 

[KarinsDad]

I have absolutely no problem with you not liking this particular type of scene in an adventure (published or no). But to say that it's 1) bad design to include this scene (which isn't objectively true and only your opinion)... and 2) to attribute vindictive motives on the part of the writers for including it and for DMs for running it... that's just a bit much.

First of all, it is my subjective opinion that putting in massively powerful foes that are basically there to be only interacted with in one and only one way is bad game design. Yes, that is my opinion.

I don't see the need and I do see the harm. I don't see the need for the DM who accidently killed his PCs with the blue dragon because he didn't carefully read that the dragon did so many dice of damage with its breath weapon.

This is not just about the design of the module, it's about the propensity of bad module design to kill off PCs when that is not the intent of the designer. The first encounter in Lost Mines of Phandelver had NPCs who could attack, move, and hide all in a single round. And because of this, there were TPKs or partial TPKs in that first encounter. There was even a thread here on EnWorld where a group decided to never play 5E again because of it.

There were TPKs with the green dragon in LMoP because the PCs were encouraged to fight the green dragon and even one of the PCs had a background to strongly encourage it.

The harm is that PCs die and players might get annoyed enough to not even play the game anymore. Is that what we want with 5E?

So yes, it is my opinion that impossible or nearly impossible foes is terrible game design. Tough foes, but not unbeatable ones (or at least unbeatable without certain fairly common specific classes/spells/abilities and DM fiat to override certain encounter silliness).


And now that I know more about this particular encounter:

a) shame one PC into fighting or
b) shame most of the good aligned PCs because an NPC goes to his death or
c) TPK or partially TPK the party because the players refuse to be browbeaten in this way or
d) possibly have a group of PCs with just the right types of abilities along with a DM who is willing to blow off aspects of this nonsensical encounter and the PCs might eek out a win (where this last option is probably rare at most tables).

Sorry, but this set of choices is terrible encounter design. It's not about morality of PCs, it's about browbeating the PCs via morality and if that sounds like I am attributing vindictive motives on the designers, so be it. They might not have intentionally decided to create a rat bastard encounter, but that's what they ended up with.

Did they not playtest this? Did not a single player complain? Did not a single group of PCs go out and get TPKed?


At our table, the DM originally described that a dragon was flying above the town and the town was on fire and there was a serious discussion before we even got there as to whether us first level PCs should even go there. We were trying to roleplay our PCs, but had a difficult time justifying going anywhere near the town.

This is NOT good adventure design. The only reason our PCs went to the town at all was because of the metagame knowledge that this was a module designed for low level PCs. The very CONCEPT of low level PCs heading to a town that is under attack with a dragon flying overhead is totally ludicrous.

Talk about out of character. If we were really living beings in that situation, many of us would walk in the opposite direction as fast as our legs could take us.

Duh!

Just because someone writes something down in an adventuring product does not make it a good idea. This entire set of town scenarios was ludicrous from the very start for low level PCs.

You can disagree and that would be your subjective opinion.


Btw, I was also not impressed with the number of encounters that we had without a long rest. These are first level PCs. The only reason our group did so well is because LMoP taught our players how important the group stealth skill and a surprise round is. This is what my group learned about 5E with LMoP. Even our fighter who is disadvantaged with stealth trained the stealth skill so that he would not always miss a stealth roll.

 

[Jester David]

So what should the encounter have been?

How would you have rewritten things to introduce the party to the villainous half dragon? Not just by name but making the players personally hate him, but not putting him in a position where he will be instantly killed?
What revisions could have been made to the encounter?

 

[KarinsDad]

So what should the encounter have been?

How would you have rewritten things to introduce the party to the villainous half dragon? Not just by name but making the players personally hate him, but not putting him in a position where he will be instantly killed?
What revisions could have been made to the encounter?

Have a straight up fight with him, a lieutenant, and a few kobolds (i.e. being outnumbered is a sure way to make a fight swingy, action economy almost always counts). Have it in a location where he can escape, but be hard to follow. Or have him run away while a second wave of kobolds come in and hold off the PCs. And allow the PCs to do this at a point in time where they are not basically out of resources.

If you want a fight for an introduction, arrange for a real fight. One way to grab the attention of some players, though, is to have an NPC escape. Some players really want to stop almost every foe from doing that.


Alternatively, the idea that the players have to directly fight with him at second level is not really needed. Seeing him kill some villagers from afar and then getting up on a giant lizard and riding away is totally fine.

The first fight does not have to be at second level. It could be at level 4.

The thing about reoccurring villains is to make the players gradually go from dislike to hatred. Each time, the villain does something worse than the previous time.

Phase one: kill some villagers that the PCs do not know.
Phase two: kill some NPCs that the PCs do know and have interacted with.
Phase three: torture and kill some NPCs that some of the PCs care about.

There can be fights between these, but make it episodic in nature.

My problem was not that they introduced a super tough foe (although I do not necessarily like that). It was the railroading nature of the encounter where the PCs could not really affect the outcome (dirt nap, or TPK, or watch an NPC die). Our group got lucky because of our DM. Many groups will just watch a PC face plant. Meh.

If I wanted to be introduced to a cool reoccurring villain without being able to affect the outcome, I would watch a movie. I wouldn't play an FRPG. And I certainly wouldn't want to play a PC who sole job in that encounter is to take a dirt nap for story purposes.

 

[pkt77242]

Have a straight up fight with him, a lieutenant, and a few kobolds (i.e. being outnumbered is a sure way to make a fight swingy, action economy almost always counts). Have it in a location where he can escape, but be hard to follow. Or have him run away while a second wave of kobolds come in and hold off the PCs. And allow the PCs to do this at a point in time where they are not basically out of resources.

If you want a fight for an introduction, arrange for a real fight. One way to grab the attention of some players, though, is to have an NPC escape. Some players really want to stop almost every foe from doing that.


Alternatively, the idea that the players have to directly fight with him at second level is not really needed. Seeing him kill some villagers from afar and then getting up on a giant lizard and riding away is totally fine.

The first fight does not have to be at second level. It could be at level 4.

The thing about reoccurring villains is to make the players gradually go from dislike to hatred. Each time, the villain does something worse than the previous time.

Phase one: kill some villagers that the PCs do not know.
Phase two: kill some NPCs that the PCs do know and have interacted with.
Phase three: torture and kill some NPCs that some of the PCs care about.

There can be fights between these, but make it episodic in nature.

My problem was not that they introduced a super tough foe (although I do not necessarily like that). It was the railroading nature of the encounter where the PCs could not really affect the outcome (dirt nap, or TPK, or watch an NPC die). Our group got lucky because of our DM. Many groups will just watch a PC face plant. Meh.

If I wanted to be introduced to a cool reoccurring villain without being able to affect the outcome, I would watch a movie. I wouldn't play an FRPG. And I certainly wouldn't want to play a PC who sole job in that encounter is to take a dirt nap for story purposes.

So you want the dramatic big bad guy to have to run away? How does that make him seem big or bad? You are basically saying that you want a beatable big bad guy that you can chase off by beating, how does that make him into some big bad guy?

 

[KidSnide]

First of all, it is my subjective opinion that putting in massively powerful foes that are basically there to be only interacted with in one and only one way is bad game design. Yes, that is my opinion.

I think it's pretty clear that this was a massively powerful foe that could be interacted with in multiple ways. After all, you interacted with him in a different way. The blue dragon is similar. I've read several different ways in which PCs saw the scenario, didn't like their odds in a straight up fight and did something creative.

"Face terrible odds or do something creative" has been a part of my D&D experience for decades, so I like the idea of designers writing this type of scenario into a canonical adventure path. You seem to want this scenario to have more of a structured path to success. I get that as a play style. (It's a play style I used to prefer -- certainly, it's easier to DM.) But at the same time, I see this as adding a type of encounter that I felt had been missing from published D&D for some time. You seem to be reading some emotion context (e.g. "shamed into fighting", "humiliating the player") that I believe you experienced, but I don't think is inherent to the encounter. And while I understand how WotC could edit their games to prevent encounters that trigger this experience for you, I really hope they don't. To me, the positive experiences that come from this sort of encounter outweigh the negatives.

-KS

 

[Thaumaturge]

Have a straight up fight with him, a lieutenant, and a few kobolds (i.e. being outnumbered is a sure way to make a fight swingy, action economy almost always counts). Have it in a location where he can escape, but be hard to follow. Or have him run away while a second wave of kobolds come in and hold off the PCs.

My players would enjoy this significantly less than the module as written. They hate when an NPC is able "box text" escape.

A heroic duel against a superior foe to save the lives of some innocents? They'll enjoy that.

Thaumaturge.

 

[KarinsDad]

So you want the dramatic big bad guy to have to run away? How does that make him seem big or bad? You are basically saying that you want a beatable big bad guy that you can chase off by beating, how does that make him into some big bad guy?

That wasn't the only option I listed.

 

[Sacrosanct]

We just finished a gaming session playing this very scenario. My 13 year old son volunteered to fight him (he had no idea about this scenario or what would happen). He was a level 2 druid, and actually fought him as a brown bear.

He lost pretty quickly. Didn't feel humiliated at all. Was actually pretty proud of how he went about it. Sometimes it's not if you win or lose, but how you handle yourself in the process.


If my 13 year old can figure this out, I'm pretty sure it's not an objectively humiliating experience to not win