D&D 5E (2014) Murder In Baldur's Gate/Sundering adventures with 5E

[Shiroiken]

Both MiBG and LotCS were pretty awful in the context of Encounters, especially if you ran them with the Playtest rules, which were all over the map.

The Encounters setup does not do the adventure justice, but it was workable. I ran it for my local Encounters season, and everyone had a blast. Of course, we had a fairly regular group and I didn't follow the "encounters" setup of 1 event per session (we took 3 sessions just to get through the Intro). In the end I had to shotgun the party through events to finish on time, which I felt lessened the experience, but it was still really fun overall.

Oh, and there was a playtest packet changeover near the end, IIRC, so we ignored it for the season.

 

[jayoungr]

I've been wanting to run Murder in Baldur's Gate in 5E myself. Has anyone taken a crack at redesigning the unique monsters in that module for the final version of 5E?

 

[Rhenny]

I've been running Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle and all I've done is use 5e monsters. With a party of 5, I'm finding that it runs a little easier. I'm keeping PCs 1 level Lower than suggested for later parts of the campaign. I don't know about MiBG or Icewind.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Murder in Baldur's Gate was our store's favorite module in D&D Encounters to date. The players had a blast, and the support materials for the DM were fantastic.

What I did do was flesh out a number of the episodes that otherwise were scarce of events the PCs interacted with by running short dungeon-delves as well, while setting up another plot of intrigue beneath the streets.

We had a very active community on the dedicated Wizards Community subforum during the Encounters season, which produced a large number of useful additions. This included additional Events to flesh out what was in the module. Come to think of it, Merrick, you were quite active in that forum as well!

 

[casterblaster]

I want to get Ghost of Dragon Spear so bad. I just wished I knew more about what the adventures are like, most reviews avoid in depth descriptions to avoid spoilers. Anyone care to divulge?

 

[Rhenny]

I want to get Ghost of Dragon Spear so bad. I just wished I knew more about what the adventures are like, most reviews avoid in depth descriptions to avoid spoilers. Anyone care to divulge?

If you want spoilers, you can read some of the session reports I've written on the WoTC blogs. Overall, there is a lot in the adventure, but it is very linear. My group is ok with that, and I add some twists and side plots to make it more organic too. Lots of chances for interaction and roleplaying as well as exploration and combat.

http://community.wizards.com/user/1497701/blog

 

[rosing-bull]

I had the initial plan of adapting Murder in Baldur's Gate as a follow-up to Lost Mines of Phandelver and then moving from there to Legacy of the Crystal Shard. Though Lost Mines of Phandelver sort of fizzled out -- due to a long period of life getting in the way for my players and me -- the party has finally finished meandering along the sword coast and have ended up just outside of Baldur's Gate. Looking at it, I'm not particularly concerned about updating it from the playtest to the current 5e rules. And, after goofing off around Phandalin for a while, the party is already higher level than MiBG expects. But I reckon souping up the encounters won't be too hard for two reasons: for one, the adventure is pretty RP-heavy (which I love) with most combat being somewhat of a side note to all the plotting and intrigue, and two, 5e isn't that focused on intense encounter balance (another thing I love). What I'm more concerned about for my own game is how to fiddle with all of Legacy of the Crystal Shard's combat. Just add extra yetis, I guess.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Encounters setup does not do the adventure justice, but it was workable.

I wanted to go off and rant about how a module that's done for Encounters should be one that would be 'done justice' in that format - but, then I remembered, MiBG /wasn't/ done for Encounters, it was a regular product. We were just expected to buy it to have something to run at Encounters.

 

[Tormyr]

The Encounters setup does not do the adventure justice, but it was workable. I ran it for my local Encounters season, and everyone had a blast. Of course, we had a fairly regular group and I didn't follow the "encounters" setup of 1 event per session (we took 3 sessions just to get through the Intro). In the end I had to shotgun the party through events to finish on time, which I felt lessened the experience, but it was still really fun overall.

Oh, and there was a playtest packet changeover near the end, IIRC, so we ignored it for the season.

I did not have so much a problem with the weekly part of encounters, but getting it all wrapped up for both MiBG and LotCS within the 13 week time frame was a challenge because there is so much good content. So similar experience to you. And that isn't even playing everything. We let all of the plot lines the characters were not involved in keep going. Other DMs I heard had that issue with both those and Sword Coast (Dead in Thay to a lesser extent because you could essentially teleport players to the end.

 

[Tormyr]

I've been wanting to run Murder in Baldur's Gate in 5E myself. Has anyone taken a crack at redesigning the unique monsters in that module for the final version of 5E?

The unique monsters are very easy to redesign since they are pretty much stock characters. Choosing which CR to make them is more challenging. Take Silvershield for example. I would have to look at the expected difficulty of any encounters he is involved in to gauge where he should be, because the encounter building changed between Next and 5e. But as an example, most spellcasters have a CR 2/3 of their spellcaster level. As a 6th level cleric, he would probably end up around CR4. Using the stats in the Supplement and giving him 93 HP gets his defensive CR to 4, but he would need a few nice offensive spells (such as spirit guardians to get his Offensive CR to 4 as well. So it isn't too difficult, but it does require some updating ahead of time.

That being said, the format of MiBG means that encounter difficulty doesn't matter too much. Story-wise, the party essentially gets a long rest each night, and most days have only 1 combat encounter, if even that. The party can treat most encounters like a 5 minute workday if the DM lets them. Success in this adventure is achieved more through intelligence and successful skill checks than combat.