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

[hastur_nz]

I don't recall a Kelpie being a seaweed creature previously; historically it's a shape-changer demon/horse thing capable of looking like a human; the 5e version talks about its 'true form' but if the true form is seaweed that's weird IMO and not what the old Scottish legends say. Personally I'd say it's most likely to attack an adventurer in human or beast form, in which case it could be using Claws or suchlike? I can't see seaweed doing much damage, but if you really think it could a Whip is a good analogy, which is in fact Slashing damage.

 

[pukunui]

... the 5e version talks about its 'true form' but if the true form is seaweed that's weird IMO and not what the old Scottish legends say.

According to the description in the book, it's "a form of intelligent, aquatic plant life that resembles a pile of wet seaweed".

 

[Shadowdweller00]

According to the description in the book, it's "a form of intelligent, aquatic plant life that resembles a pile of wet seaweed".

It's one of those D&D pun-monsters "Kelp"ie. Sort of like Sea Lion.

 

[hastur_nz]

Ah yes... anyone who is going to run White Plume Mountain should be aware of its history, i.e. the designer just threw all of his weird and crazy ideas into a single 'adventure', as a pitch to get a job at TSR... he didn't expect that they would like it enough to actually publish it as-is.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

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

*A lot of encounters are vastly underpowered- this is a conversion of a 1st Edition adventure, and it shows: the traps are super-deadly, but a lot of the actual fights are barely a speed bump for Tier 2 adventurers. The only advice they give (and not even in the adventure itself, but in a "Hooks for the Hidden Shrine" article) is to "add one or two monsters". Gee thanks.

Mitigated by the inability to rest safely. When coupled with the fact that the PCs might not even realize that it's not safe to rest - as in, not try to conserve their resources, this is actually kinda nasty.

*Trapped in the Shrine: you can't get out. No going to town for you. Didn't buy potions or antitoxin? Oh darn.

Heavens forfend the poor widdle PCs should be put under pressure.

*Room 1: not that any of these enemies are challenging, but they only appear if the party decides to pick up little figurines and set them on the floor. My group just pocketed them all, lol.

*Room 8: oh no, don't touch the walls, you'll take acid damage! Except...nobody has any reason to touch the walls? Ooh, fake green slime! Someone might have to waste a spell on...oh yeah, this is an edition with at-will magic attacks.

Not every encounter needs to be serious challenge. Part of the fun of an adventure like this is just exploring and prodding things to see what happens.

Room 5: so you need 48 Strength to move a limestone block that deals 1 acid damage per turn you touch it, and it takes 10 rounds to move it. My party was really close to saying "screw this", lol. Also, science in D&D!

*The Battleaxe. No name. Powerful. Cursed. Unique rarity. Neat for a home game, trouble in AL. Also, why is there an option to "break" it's most interesting power? One of my Rogues removed the scroll thinking it was a map, message, clue, or just a spell scroll. Which is a reasonable interpretation...oops, he broke it. Which is sad because the Passwall might have gotten them out of the Shrine...

The real question you should be asking yourself is "why are the PCs pushing on the block in the first place?" Of course, a little application of critical thought should yield ways to push it without taking damage. The axe is powerful but almost impossible to find and comes with a hidden caveat. I like it, myself.

*Sleep Gas: What. Just...what. So ok, every round you have to make a DC 10 save. Fine. If you fail, you are poisoned, and fall asleep, ok, fine. For 5000 years! Which is admittedly hilarious, but the weirdness starts when the adventure says how you can be cured.

"If magic is used to cure the poisoned condition, the recipient is immune to the poison for one hour". My reading of this was that poison cures suspend the effects of the sleep poison for one hour. Several of my players immediately fired off "rules-argument.exe". Their way of thinking was that removing the condition just works, and ALSO makes you immune for an hour as a side benefit. My evidence to support my ruling was the next bit:

*A casting of Dispel Magic USING A SPELL SLOT OF 7TH LEVEL OR HIGHER can also end the effect. So many problems with this statement. I mean, first of all, none of the party members should have access to such a spell. This hearkens back to old D&D, where many "magical effects" in dungeons were randomly cast at super high level, to prevent players from doing anything about it. So poison removal grants "immunity for 1 hour", Dispel Magic "ends the effect". It's also conceivable that the Dispel is intended to get rid of all the sleep gas and anyone affected by it, but the text is very unclear.

No. This one's pretty simple - there are various spells and effects which can remove the "poisoned" condition without neutralizing the poison. Lesser Restoration for example. Then there are effects that can neutralize poisons - like Protection from Poison, or the Paladin's Lay on Hands ability. Oh the horrors, an adversity the PCs might not be able to cure immediately.

*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? More of a problem with the spell...oh and what a spell. Save DC 17- by the rules, this Glyph was cast by a very high level caster. And even then, it cheats, because it hits every person in the tomb with Bestow Curse. And then...the adventure has the nerve to not say what effect the curse has other than a vague "every cursed violator receives a visit from Tloques or some other agent of Zotzilaha seeking retribution" 4d10 days later. Unless THAT'S the curse?

My reading is that that IS the curse.

*Room 9: this one was hilarious. After making the check to realize that climbing up the statue would make it tip over, my Rogue asks "so how do we get the sword?". My reply "Well, that's just the easiest way to climb up. Nothing stops you from climbing the wall the regular way". Legacy of an edition where only Thieves could Climb anything, and with a set percentage to succeed based on your level.

...except that whether PCs can climb random walls without an Athletics check is entirely up to the DM. I don't know many people IRL who can climb bare masonry without specialized training, equipment, and/or exercise regimes, myself.

*Room 11: more slippery surfaces that don't really matter. A solo enemy who goes on at length about how badass he is, then pleas for mercy. LOL. Then...a swarm of rats. Except it's a swarm of giant rats...who are diseased (yeah this was mentioned by the OP, but it bears repeating. What were they thinking when they wrote this?).

No, it's a normal swarm of rats with the disease ability possessed by the diseased giant rat variant. Since the disease prevents nonmagical healing from even short rests, this is actually a potential threat. (Once in a blue moon if the swarm hits and the PC fails a lowly DC:10 con save; and if the PCs don't realize they've been diseased and don't have a ready cure).

*Room 20: a. single. wight. Come on, that's not an encounter at this point. Also, now I can gripe about the Amulet of Protection. So there's a few of these in the adventure, which basically say "nope, Turn Undead don't work on this guy". Again, this is a legacy of the olden days, when you had to have a Cleric, and the only real anti-undead power anyone had was Turning. Now of course, you don't need a Cleric, and they have more interesting things to do with Channel Divinity, so the only time they might try to Turn is when facing a room of undead...like, say, 15 zombies. Not for a lowly Wight.

Wights are pretty disappointing in 5e. They work...almost sorta well if they try hit and run tactics to drain a bit of max hp before fleeing, resting, ambushing, and running away again.

*Room 28: a. single. gas spore. Well, the purpose of the spore is obvious, make silly players go "oh , a BEHOLDER! Kill it, kill it!". Then it explodes, some damage is dealt, everyone laughs. I could add more spores, but since it's intended to represent the sun (which last I checked, we only have one of), doesn't make much sense. So this isn't properly an encounter at all, and the xp is negligible. I mean, I guess I could have the explosion alert nearby monsters and add a random encounter. Yeah, let's do that.

And then one or more PCs don't realize that they've been infected and perish horribly.

*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?

There are and have actually been a fair number of primitive cultures that made use of crossbows. We're not talking crossbows with complex mechanical gears like in post-medieval Europe, but still effective....trap maintenance is a common dungeon problem. Next you'll be wanting to know why the sleeping martial artists didn't perish long ago from bed sores, or how the zombies can break the laws of thermodynamics. Although this particular sort of place might have some sort of guardian spirit that keeps things in order to some degree.

 

[pukunui]

No, it's a normal swarm of rats with the disease ability possessed by the diseased giant rat variant.

Actually it is: "The swarm is made up of diseased giant rats."

 

[James Gasik]

Re-reading some of the quoted passages from my original post, I realize now that I was kind of frustrated with how my last session went, and I come off more salty/whiny than intended. All apologies, and thanks for everyone who has commented on them, it's definitely made me rethink a few things. I'm kind of stuck with upscaling the monsters (even the Wizards AL page suggests I "add one or two more" enemies per encounter) because since this isn't a home game, I can't award xp (or more to my preference, milestones) for anything other than monster kills (or the rare 'throw the PC's a bone' in the actual text).

Now, I have no problems digging into my archive of old adventures to update them/steal them remorselessly for ideas. Some of them are artifacts of a different age of gaming, and that's something to keep in mind. Rules and the way we play the game have changed, which is also a factor.

3-4 years ago, I tried converting an old favorite "White Plume Mountain" for 4e. That didn't go well, because WPM is heavy on exploration and bypassing hazards and traps. 4e was built to be better at running cool/epic battles than small encounters, and it was definitely lacking in ways when it came to the non-combat side of things, so it turned out to be a flop because I didn't keep that in mind.

My main issue with Hidden Shrine and the Yawning Portal book basically comes down to five things: I was promised 5e conversions for old adventures. I paid 50 dollars for this conversion. I foolishly agreed to run an AL table at my FLGS for this season, using said book. I ended up doing just as much work as I would converting old adventures my self. Few of my players are prepared to play old-school style, and literally seem to think that an adventure consists of a few feature encounters you're meant to win at the cost of hit points, then you get xp and treasure.

Some or all of these things are my own damn fault, lol, especially since I only started playing 5e late last year. But everyone here has been a lot more help than anyone else I've talked to about this, and I'm very grateful for that.

 

[jasper]

Map 2.4 page 49 Sinkhole too dark so the doors on Room 30 and 31 are unreadable.
Map 2.3 page 44 too dark.
Once I saw how bad the maps were I just got my old modules out and photocopied them.
Dead in Thay is going to be a bother.....

 

[jasper]

White plume mountain. CHANGE THE RIDDLE. CHANGE THE RIDDLE. CHANGE THE RIDDLE.
Either old farts like me have played in it, or the newer people have read yawning portal.
psst THIS is warning to my players that I have changed the riddle. You may want to put a link in your description to a riddle page.

 

[JonnyP71]

@James Gasik

Most of the problems you list look to be subjective, and based on a very different gaming mindset to that in which the adventure was written.

The original Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan was a 1E Tournament adventure, designed to be very deadly indeed. The 5E conversion is more survivable, but by 5E standards, yes it is dangerous - and it is MEANT to be. It is also one of the best, most flavoursome, most loving researched and well crafted dungeons ever published for an RPG.

It wasn't written with AL play as its primary concern, so your 'doesn't work well in AL' gripes really are somewhat invalid. If it doesn't fit with AL, don't use it. The same goes for all the Yawning Portal adventures.

Some of the conversions ARE a little wonky, so it's up to the DM to make little tweaks - the sand trap, give the players one turn per minute, or make the room fill faster - they idea is that they have 10 turns in which to escape.

Most of the encounters were 'speed bumps' in 1E too - the adventure is a race against time to survive before the gas kills them, and the general idea is that they should try to *avoid* unnecessary damage and spell wastage - there's no resting, few useful magic items, just a lot of stuff to slowly whittle you down or delay you.... and kill you if you screw up.