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

[The Hitcher]

Just came to say I enjoyed your story, but disagree with your contention that it's a bad encounter. Likewise for the dragon fights - so far nearly every experience I've heard from people playing all those fights is extremely creative and dramatic play. But hey, my Phandelver players just TPK-ed in a random encounter, and it's turned out to be the best in the arm for the game I could have hoped for.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Option 2 did not come up in our game. So the designers thought it would be heroic for the PCs to let some NPC smuck die instead?


Is the rest of the module "open" like this?

Fighter: "Hey guys, let's go back to Berdusk and sign on to caravan duty. These half dragons are tough."

Something like that is mentioned, actually.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Just came to say I enjoyed your story, but disagree with your contention that it's a bad encounter. Likewise for the dragon fights - so far nearly every experience I've heard from people playing all those fights is extremely creative and dramatic play. But hey, my Phandelver players just TPK-ed in a random encounter, and it's turned out to be the best in the arm for the game I could have hoped for.

The dragon encounter completely sold the group on D&D5e, and the guy that fought the Half-Dragon just added his name to his List of Cult of the Dragon members he wants to see dead...so the adventure worked for us.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

As for it being an impossible encounter, duh! The DM described 30 kobolds and showed us a picture of the half dragon.

Are you really incapable of making that connection at a table? 31 vs. 6? In 5E?


Sure, the half dragon could have been a wimp and the fighter could have gone and smacked him around, but would you really trust kobolds to not kill the woman if that happened? How long have you played D&D and trusted the word of an evil NPC?


And the DM did not tell us that we would have 10 archers helping us. Those showed up in round one and fired in round two, so we had no clue.

Adding the archers was just polite, since he doubled the number of kobolds in the written adventure.

And as a player, if I were drawing on past D&D experience, my mind would have went "blue scales...half dragon...blue dragons are lawful evil...alright then, deal's a deal".

When I ran it, I had the half dragon spell out the terms in VERY specific detail, because the guy accepting the challenge very nearly called for an attack after weighing the odds...his rationale being that getting the kids free was good enough.

 

[KarinsDad]

Adding the archers was just polite, since he doubled the number of kobolds in the written adventure.

I wonder if she added more kobolds because we were wiping through them so easily. I'll have to ask.

And as a player, if I were drawing on past D&D experience, my mind would have went "blue scales...half dragon...blue dragons are lawful evil...alright then, deal's a deal".

I probably could have done that 10 or 15 years ago. The memory is no longer that good.

 

[Derren]

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?

Not having this encounter at all because it is beyond Bond villain stupid.

There is no reason for this duel in the first place and no reason to let the defeated PC live. The entire setup is incredibly forced and artificial.

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.

That seems to be a common problem with this adventure line that it simply assumes that the players go along with the railroad because of metagame knowledge and thus it is totally ok to put in forced, overwhelming encounters but then pull punches for no good in game reason.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Not having this encounter at all because it is beyond Bond villain stupid.

There is no reason for this duel in the first place and no reason to let the defeated PC live. The entire setup is incredibly forced and artificial.

That seems to be a common problem with this adventure line that it simply assumes that the players go along with the railroad because of metagame knowledge and thus it is totally ok to put in forced, ovetwhelming encounters but then pull punches for no good in game reason.

I would suggest there are plenty of reasons why the half-dragon would want this duel, and then let the PC live at the end of it. However, my guess would be that what I would consider perfectly good reasons you would disagree with (seeing as how you probably know the scenario and have thought about it, and have thus far not come upon any that you have found valid.)

Suffice it to say... you and KarinsDad don't like the scene and/or the adventure. That's cool. It ain't gonna be to everyone's taste.

 

[KarinsDad]

Not having this encounter at all because it is beyond Bond villain stupid.

There is no reason for this duel in the first place and no reason to let the defeated PC live. The entire setup is incredibly forced and artificial.

It's NPC introduction under the guise of minor PC interaction. For some reason, the adventure designers thought that it was important to show, not tell. This approach is pretty heavy handed though.

That seems to be a common problem with this adventure line that it simply assumes that the players go along with the railroad because of metagame knowledge and thus it is totally ok to put in forced, ovetwhelming encounters but then pull punches for no good in game reason.

Are there any more of these overwhelmingly powerful "pulled punches" encounters in the module?


I see a pattern here. Push the tougher reoccurring villains onstage really early on for foreshadowing reasons. Instead of letting the PCs know about the reoccurring villains ahead of time, shove them into the PC's faces so that the players will get an emotional attachment to them.

The problem with this approach is that the monsters are so powerful that these artificial "pulled punches" encounters are the result. The monsters cannot truly be badass because it would TPK the party. And, the PCs cannot truly be allowed to shine because the monsters cannot truly be defeated, or they will not be reoccurring villains.


Interestingly enough, this is the first major DMing gig for my high school aged daughter. She ran a few one shots in the past, but this is the first time that she took the reins over as the DM for a longer term campaign. So if WotC's real intent with 5E is to get brand new players and DMs, here is an example of a brand new younger DM. My daughter recognized flaws in this module (or at least flaws to her) and decided to drop one of the major future pieces out completely.


So far, I'm not impressed with this adventure as the flagship adventure for 5E. It's just not polished. A lot of forced situations, a lot of super wimpy encounters, a few super powerful encounters, not a lot of NPCs to interact with (or at least, not so far in our game). When we talked to some of the NPCs, they did not even have names and I could see my daughter scrambling a bit to come up with quick names. It really feels as if they never playtested it and worked out the kinks. This is supposed to be the flagship 5E adventure and it just seems subpar so far (granted, we only got as far as the rear guard encounter).

I was also unimpressed with that encounter. Let's put the NPCs on hills with braziers lighting up the bad guys and have the PCs out in the dark where they can easily ambush the NPCs. And lets have most of the NPCs awake in the middle of the night. I do not know if my daughter changed up that encounter. Maybe it was supposed to be a daytime encounter and she added in the braziers because the PCs attacked at night. I don't know. I told her after the game how to spruce that up and make it challenging. Instead of having the light next to the tents, have the lights on the perimeter and a few guards patrolling inside the lights. That way, they can see out, but enemies cannot see in. That entire encounter was one of those guards saying "shoot me, shoot me". Weird. Our PCs were outnumbered 2 to 1 (12 bad guys) and one PC got heavily damaged down to 4 hit points. Most of the other PCs were hardly even touched. It was such a cake walk. In fact, my second level wizard could not even cast spells. He had already cast Mage Armor, two Detect Magics, and an Identify spell that day (the day after the fight with the half dragon), so he was pretty much a non-factor in the fight and the PCs still mopped up.

It really is like the encounters are simplistic in nature, sometimes a bit nonsensical, and maybe designed for brand new players, not for experienced gamers who are more apt to spot encounter flaws.

 

[KarinsDad]

I would suggest there are plenty of reasons why the half-dragon would want this duel, and then let the PC live at the end of it. However, my guess would be that what I would consider perfectly good reasons you would disagree with (seeing as how you probably know the scenario and have thought about it, and have thus far not come upon any that you have found valid.)

I find a lot of rationalization about published material by gamers on the forums. If it is in print, then it must be good and here are the reasons a), b) and c). Not that you are necessarily doing this, but I do have to ask if you are trying to be totally objective in your rationalization of this duel as a good encounter.

Is practically forcing a PC to take a dirt nap REALLY a good encounter idea? Or is it just an encounter idea that happens to be printed, and hence, the DM should just go with it? Does it really add anything to the game, or is it just a heavy handed way to introduce a reoccurring villain?

Suffice it to say... you and KarinsDad don't like the scene and/or the adventure. That's cool. It ain't gonna be to everyone's taste.

Agreed. But like I said in my last post, this adventure feels unpolished.


One of the things that appears to be happening is quite a bit of railroading. I always thought that for major published adventures like this, the authors should use a flowchart where there were multiple entrances and exits from each interaction.

The Lost Mines of Phandelver book seemed to do a fairly decent job of this type of thing with the town of Phandalin. The PCs had a lot of different NPCs to interact with, each of whom had their own goals and agendas. There was no set order in which the PCs had to approach the NPCs. They could do some missions, avoid others, and not even know of some.

But so far, HotDQ has appeared to be:

1) Go to a town where a dragon is flying overhead (WT?).
2) Have first easy encounter.
3) Move to second easy encounter (as directed by NPCs).
4) Go to keep (as directed by NPCs).
5) Talk to governor.
6) Go down tunnel (as directed by NPCs).
7) ...

12) Face off against a blue dragon (WT?)
13) Be forced into a lopsided duel with a half dragon (WT?)

Each encounter appears to be linearly following the previous encounter with virtually no ability to really go off the beaten path. I don't know if this is really true, or whether that is just my perception based on our game.

It just feels like a subpar adventure so far. To me. Obviously, YMMV.


And don't get me wrong. I am having a lot of fun with it. Playing with my friends and having a blast. That's one of the things about D&D. Even in a subpar adventure, the players can still have a lot of fun. I just feel that WotC missed the boat on having a great 5E flagship adventure and settled for a so so one instead. Still usable and still fun, but lacking in greatness in so many ways. Nothing in it so far that made me go "Wow, that was cool" , but several things in it so far that made me go "Wow, that was pretty lame" .

And trust me. I would SO much more want to say "Wow, that was cool". I might be critiquing this pretty harshly, but it's just because it has been somewhat disappointing compared to the quality of the 5E PHB, for example. Even Lost Mines of Phandelver with all of its first real adventure warts seems like a much better product.

 

[Derren]

Are there any more of these overwhelmingly powerful "pulled punches" encounters in the module?

No, they seemed to have been exclusive to the first adventure.

Here a long review about it (lots of spoilers)
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?358815-Hoard-of-the-Dragon-Queen-a-solid-D-effort