D&D 5E Problems with Tales from the Yawning Portal

[jasper]

Responses to James Gasik post.
I totally forgot about the poison. I suggest the monsters always have max hp and you add some more.
Room 20 I bought props for the protection amulets then just did not mention they were on the critter. As they don’t help a pc. Paladins could be turned in 1E.
Room 25 I have no problem with the dagger. This is totally sum up by the adventure having a lot of “screw you” things.
Room 35, broken magic item. I told the owner he could fix once he left the dungeon.
The tomb has more magic items than monsters.
Room 40. Monster is listed as Stone Golem by can only do 28 hp of damage. I suggest the dm cut the xp in half or more.

Summary of my writes running the book so far. LOTS AND LOTS OF MAGIC ITEMS. If you have 6+ players treat as a strong party regardless of math.
Sunless. Remember the dragon does not get liar actions. Enforce one check per person for secret doors. The map are bad, photocopy the 3E version.
Forge of Fury. Again bad maps except for the white arrows. Some of the maps are too dark.
White plume. Give all monsters max hit points if under 6 critters. Enforce the wandering monster checks.

 

[pukunui]

*A lot of encounters are vastly underpowered ...

Is this not mitigated by the inability to rest? The monsters might be underpowered, but when you're fighting your umpteenth one without having taken even a single short rest, that's going to make it harder, no?

this is an AL problem really

Seems like this applies to most of your complaints about the adventure. I don't play AL, and based on what you've said here, I'm rather glad of that.

*The Glyph of Warding: by the rules, can be triggered by, heh, reading it. Which you kind of need to do, and really, how does detect such a trap?

As per the spell description, you can detect a glyph of warding with an Intelligence (Investigation) check against the spellcaster's spell save DC.

Also, unique sword. Another AL gripe: so there's a lot of weird items in this book that aren't in the DMG. Some they bothered to put in the back of the book and give them a rarity. Others they didn't, so "since it has no stated rarity, you can't trade it". C- for effort.

That sucks. I would think it would be an uncommon item, since it's technically just a +1 longsword.

*Room 13: my group already had a brush with the badly written underwater combat rules at the end of Forge of Fury, during the Nightscale battle.

What is it about the underwater combat rules that make them badly written? They haven't really come up in any of my 5e games yet, but they seem OK on paper.

*Room 18: a random stretch of hallway full of 15 zombies. 15?! I mean, this is technically a proper challenge for the party, but...15 zombies? Except...these are no ordinary zombies! They're all carrying sewer plague! Yet another thing that spells are needed to clear. In a dungeon where you can't rest...oh did I mention that the super virulent plague manifests in one hour instead of 1d4 days?

You complained at the beginning that most of the encounters were underpowered, but now you're complaining because there's a souped-up version of sewer plague that makes the fight more deadly? You can't have it both ways, man!

*Room 24: so this is a classic trap. The walls close in. The room fills with sand. There's even a Will-o'-Wisp here to play the part of the Trash Compactor Monster from Star Wars! Just one problem. The time factor. 5 rounds before the trap starts up. 1 minute to give any penalties. 2 more to start trapping you in sand. 2 more makes it worse! 5 more before you die!

Other people have complained about this one. I don't know that it's a problem if you don't go into initiative.

*Room 32: opening a door unleashes a trap! It's 5 heavy crossbows, rigged to open fire...wait. Should the makers of the Shrine have crossbow technology? Earlier we found a "sword" made out of laminated wood and obsidian...in fact, how long has the Shrine been sealed? Who's been repairing these things, should they even work at all?

Good questions. D&D has always had anachronistic technology, though, and I guess magic keeps everything running?

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, it's something I forgot from earlier editions- a lot of encounters are bare bones because the writers intended a lot of random encounters to occur during the course of play. But the tables in the Yawning Portal are pretty weaksauce compared to what I remember having to put up with- the original "Out of the Abyss", D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth, has a random encounter with a lich. A lich! Just walking about the underdark, taking a stroll! ^-^

 

[pukunui]

Room 25 I have no problem with the dagger. This is totally sum up by the adventure having a lot of “screw you” things.

I have no problem with it either. I think it's more interesting than just a plain old +1 dagger would've been.

Sunless. Remember the dragon does not get liar actions.

I feel like this goes without saying. Calcryx is just a wyrmling, and she doesn't even have a lair. (Yes, she's made herself a little bed of treasure, but that room isn't *her* lair.)

The map are bad, photocopy the 3E version.
... Again bad maps except for the white arrows. Some of the maps are too dark.

Aside from the maps being too small and/or dark, have you noticed any actual errors? The first printing of PotA was riddled with map errors. So far I've only found one actual error on any of the Yawning Portal maps (the missing door in the hill giant steading).

 

[pukunui]

But the tables in the Yawning Portal are pretty weaksauce compared to what I remember having to put up with ...

I think this is a case of 5e being set to "easy mode" by default. The designers expect individual DMs to ramp up the challenge as needed for their groups. (It would be nice if they provided more guidance on how to do so in the hardcover adventures, like the AL does with its adventures, though.)

 

[James Gasik]

@pukuni

*The encounters: the real problem here is that the encounters are unbalanced. Some are super easy, some approach the proper levels of challenge, but don't make any sense- why is an encounter with a named, unique enemy less challenging than 15 random zombies?

You're right that the lethality of the Shrine would make the light combats more balanced, but the kicker is, the adventure doesn't say "give out xp for traps" (the book overall has this problem, a few traps/hazards award xp, but most do not). Now yes, in a home game, you could easily hand out xp as you saw fit, but the adventure gives no guidelines for this.

And in AL, well, I can only give out xp for monsters or when the adventure says to...

*Glyph of Warding states that the Glyph is nearly invisible and requires an Investigation check to be found. However, the Glyph's trigger can be (and in this case, most probably is, as the adventure doesn't specify) "seeing or reading the glyph". So how can I use Investigation to notice the Glyph is merely seeing it triggers it? (Another trigger allowed by the spell is "approaching within a certain distance").

I mean, unless it's intended that the player automatically makes the check before the Glyph would be triggered. That didn't strike me as the most intuitive interpretation of the spell when I looked at it before last session.

*the problem with underwater mechanics happens with the fight itself. The adventure tells you that Nightscale (the black dragon) lurks under the water of her murky lake, and only raises enough of her head and neck out of it to breathe acid. This gives her (according to the adventure) three-quarters cover.

So if raising her head out of water gives her 3/4 cover, then being totally under water should give her total cover, which broke the encounter because suddenly she couldn't be targeted by spells (and even area spells are blocked by total cover). Nobody wanted to get into the water because then she could attack them in melee.

When the Sorcerer actually did dive in to cast fireball, he almost flipped the table when I told him that, by the rules, a creature completely submerged in water has resistance to fire.

This does have the caveat that I could have been wrong to rule that being underwater grants total cover from those above it, but again, that call was based on the information the adventure itself gave me.

*If you're being attacked by a Will-o'-Wisp, then don't you have to roll initiative, trap or no trap?

ON LAIR ACTIONS-

It doesn't state taht Calcryx (or Nightscale for that matter) get Lair Action (even though you do face Nightscale in her lair).

However, I recently ran an AL mod (Shadows over the Moonsea) where (spoilers), you encounter a Wyrmling black in it's lair (a miserable cave in the swamp) and that dragon gets lair actions, so my assumption was that any dragon could/should?

 

[pukunui]

*The encounters: the real problem here is that the encounters are unbalanced. Some are super easy, some approach the proper levels of challenge, but don't make any sense- why is an encounter with a named, unique enemy less challenging than 15 random zombies?

Should all encounters be of the same difficulty? D&D has always been about having some easy, some hard, some in the middle ...

*Glyph of Warding states that the Glyph is nearly invisible and requires an Investigation check to be found. However, the Glyph's trigger can be (and in this case, most probably is, as the adventure doesn't specify) "seeing or reading the glyph". So how can I use Investigation to notice the Glyph is merely seeing it triggers it? (Another trigger allowed by the spell is "approaching within a certain distance").

Can you point me to the specific glyph in question? I'd like to have a look at it but can't find it with a cursory scan of the adventure.

*the problem with underwater mechanics happens with the fight itself. The adventure tells you that Nightscale (the black dragon) lurks under the water of her murky lake, and only raises enough of her head and neck out of it to breathe acid. This gives her (according to the adventure) three-quarters cover.

So if raising her head out of water gives her 3/4 cover, then being totally under water should give her total cover, which broke the encounter because suddenly she couldn't be targeted by spells (and even area spells are blocked by total cover). Nobody wanted to get into the water because then she could attack them in melee.

Ah, I can see how they might cause an issue.

When the Sorcerer actually did dive in to cast fireball, he almost flipped the table when I told him that, by the rules, a creature completely submerged in water has resistance to fire.

That at least makes sense, though.

*If you're being attacked by a Will-o'-Wisp, then don't you have to roll initiative, trap or no trap?

I suppose. But it's possible for the party to encounter - and defeat - the will-o'-wisp prior to entering the trap, in which case they won't be getting attacked by anything. But yes, I think the sand needs to flow faster.

It doesn't state taht Calcryx (or Nightscale for that matter) get Lair Action (even though you do face Nightscale in her lair).

However, I recently ran an AL mod (Shadows over the Moonsea) where (spoilers), you encounter a Wyrmling black in it's lair (a miserable cave in the swamp) and that dragon gets lair actions, so my assumption was that any dragon could/should?

Going by the rules for Legendary Creatures (MM, p 11), only adult and ancient dragons would have lair actions, since they're the only dragons that count as legendary.

 

[James Gasik]

[Edit]: Nevermind, I see it. I guess the writer of Shadows over the Moonsea missed page 11 as well.

The Glyph of Warding is on page 68, and I totally missed "if the crypt is opened by those who don't serve the god". Derp, here I thought it went off when read. It's still not clear what the curse is.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Oh man, my issues with Hidden Shrine, where to begin...

This post was a great read! I've not read this adventure yet, so I had to get my book out to follow it, but it was definitely entertaining. It sounds like most of your problems are due to the Adventurer's League format, and it's a shame that the adventure didn't at least have a handout provided by the League for the DM to clarify some of the more obvious issues on that front.

 

[pukunui]

[Edit]: Nevermind, I see it. I guess the writer of Shadows over the Moonsea missed page 11 as well.

I guess so!

The Glyph of Warding is on page 68, and I totally missed "if the crypt is opened by those who don't serve the god". Derp, here I thought it went off when read. It's still not clear what the curse is.

Well, the bestow curse spell has several options, so I guess it's up to the DM to determine which one is applied in this instance.