Zardnaar
Legend
My last 2 D&D have been around 4 and 6 hours long and we played on Thursday night and Sunday afternoon. I ran the short adventures Bad Moon Rising (BMR) and Noble Rot (NR) from Quests of Doom (QoD). QoD is a 5E book of 12 short adventures released by Frog God/Necromancer games and I bought the PDF for $20. The adventures average around 16 pages each and are comparable in length to the old Dungeon magazine adventures. Two adventures caught my eye as Bad Moon Rising is for 5th level PCs and Noble Rot is for level 5 to 8 PCs. QoD has the tagline 5E rules, 1E feel. The adventures are generic plug and play adventures. Each adventure took around 5 hours to play as BMR overlapped into the next session and NR was around 3.5-4 hours in length.
Bad Moon Rising.
Bad Moon Rising looked appealing to run for me as I liked the plotline and it has an interesting twist in the adventure. As the name hints the adventure is about werewolves. This adventure is mostly about roleplaying and investigation as there is only 4 or 5 combats in the adventure and they are spread over a large area so you are more or less only going to get 1 combat a day. The fights can be quite intense however as the 1st fight for example had 1 worg and 2 wolves per PC and the final fight can have several werewolves, a CR 3 NPC with a high AC, and several wolves all at once perhaps from ambush as well.
PCs that investigate everything get a very good magic item that increases the wearer’s charisma by 2. For my party I had a Sorcerer, Plaadin and ftr/warlock multiclass in the adventure. One has to be bale to locate said item however as it is not in plain view and it is not an obvious find. This adventure has some interesting NPCs in it, a decent location and plot twist and has quite a bit of information for PCs to uncover via investigation and it could make a great adaption to a Ravenloft adventure as well. It would not be difficult to dress this adventure up a bit and really get into the back story.
The twist while interesting has no real clues toward it however and the big reveal might need a bit of DM work to make it that much better. In hindsight I could have run the adventure better with more preparation and linking NPCs together. Still my players seemed to really enjoy the adventure although perhaps this was due to the Oath of Ancients Paladin being in his prime due to spell selection and class abilities such as detect evil, smite evil and the moon beam spell being very good.
Noble Rot
This adventure is shorter than BMR it seems or at least we got through it quicker mostly due to less roleplaying. There is not much in the way of NPCs for you to interact with at least socially. This adventure has an interesting location as it is set in an old winery and I linked it to BMR by having the Baron from that adventure ask the PCs to investigate the winery that has been taken over by a cult demon worshippers. I converted the demon lord to Jubilex, on Faerun Ghaunadaur would work.
This adventure has more combat than BMR and some of the encounters are very nasty with several new monsters stated out in the back of the adventure including slime zombies and a slime demon. Bad things can also happen to PCs in this adventure with ability score damage, infection and death being very real possibilities due to special effects form the new monsters. In 5E it seems only greater restoration and similar spells can restore ability score loss.
This is another adventure that turned out to be somewhat easy. I did not read the stat of the monsters very well and some key ones were vulnerable to fire and cold. My party had a fire Dragon Sorcerer in it, a ftr/warlock using armor of agathys (cold damage), and the Paladins aura had come online with a 20 charisma le sigh. Witout the Paladin in the party some interesting bad things could have happened to them. Monsters that hit for 1d8+1 damage and take 30 damage in return do not tend to fare that well, fireball deals 2d10+5X2 damage. Still it was fun watching the players faces light up when they noticed there class abilities had more or less been customized to them which was a fluke as opposed to being planned by myself. This adventure has a lot of slimes, oozes and jellys in it and the slime demon was very entertaining as if you flunk a con save when hit by it you are intoxicated.
Overall the PCs really enjoyed this adventure as well for various reasons. The risk of bad things happening was very real, one of them almost died and the various monsters inflict nasty conditions on the PCs and equipment. Not much in the way of magical loot to find but mundane treasure can be very valuable and the Baron from BMR gave them title to the chateau as a reward. The treasure as such is very expensive wine worth tens of thousands of gold- if one can find a buyer!!. Next week’s session off to the city to dispose of the loot.
Overlal two great adventures perhaps slightly on the easy side but my players do have some very high ability scores due to 4d6 drop the lowest being used with a moderate amount of character optimization going on as we use feats. No great weapon master or sharpshooter abuse and they focused a bit more on defensive options this time around with a Oath of the Ancients Paladin being used. I have been linking the adventures together and my campaign world is mapping itself as I have linked up my starting village of Wycliff to the Barons land in Roulune and the Chateau is located nearby.
So yes a bit of an old school feel with the adventures so far using 5E rules. My players enjoyed the adventures and I enjoyed reading and running them. As I write this I am printing off 3 more adventures from Quests of Doom (for level 6-8 PCs even) for this Thursday’s session. By level 6 the PCs have a magical mask granting +2 charisma, Gauntlets of Ogre Power and a +1 dagger as magical loot. Overall I really reall recommend Quests of Doom I like it better than Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
Bad Moon Rising.
Bad Moon Rising looked appealing to run for me as I liked the plotline and it has an interesting twist in the adventure. As the name hints the adventure is about werewolves. This adventure is mostly about roleplaying and investigation as there is only 4 or 5 combats in the adventure and they are spread over a large area so you are more or less only going to get 1 combat a day. The fights can be quite intense however as the 1st fight for example had 1 worg and 2 wolves per PC and the final fight can have several werewolves, a CR 3 NPC with a high AC, and several wolves all at once perhaps from ambush as well.
PCs that investigate everything get a very good magic item that increases the wearer’s charisma by 2. For my party I had a Sorcerer, Plaadin and ftr/warlock multiclass in the adventure. One has to be bale to locate said item however as it is not in plain view and it is not an obvious find. This adventure has some interesting NPCs in it, a decent location and plot twist and has quite a bit of information for PCs to uncover via investigation and it could make a great adaption to a Ravenloft adventure as well. It would not be difficult to dress this adventure up a bit and really get into the back story.
The twist while interesting has no real clues toward it however and the big reveal might need a bit of DM work to make it that much better. In hindsight I could have run the adventure better with more preparation and linking NPCs together. Still my players seemed to really enjoy the adventure although perhaps this was due to the Oath of Ancients Paladin being in his prime due to spell selection and class abilities such as detect evil, smite evil and the moon beam spell being very good.
Noble Rot
This adventure is shorter than BMR it seems or at least we got through it quicker mostly due to less roleplaying. There is not much in the way of NPCs for you to interact with at least socially. This adventure has an interesting location as it is set in an old winery and I linked it to BMR by having the Baron from that adventure ask the PCs to investigate the winery that has been taken over by a cult demon worshippers. I converted the demon lord to Jubilex, on Faerun Ghaunadaur would work.
This adventure has more combat than BMR and some of the encounters are very nasty with several new monsters stated out in the back of the adventure including slime zombies and a slime demon. Bad things can also happen to PCs in this adventure with ability score damage, infection and death being very real possibilities due to special effects form the new monsters. In 5E it seems only greater restoration and similar spells can restore ability score loss.
This is another adventure that turned out to be somewhat easy. I did not read the stat of the monsters very well and some key ones were vulnerable to fire and cold. My party had a fire Dragon Sorcerer in it, a ftr/warlock using armor of agathys (cold damage), and the Paladins aura had come online with a 20 charisma le sigh. Witout the Paladin in the party some interesting bad things could have happened to them. Monsters that hit for 1d8+1 damage and take 30 damage in return do not tend to fare that well, fireball deals 2d10+5X2 damage. Still it was fun watching the players faces light up when they noticed there class abilities had more or less been customized to them which was a fluke as opposed to being planned by myself. This adventure has a lot of slimes, oozes and jellys in it and the slime demon was very entertaining as if you flunk a con save when hit by it you are intoxicated.
Overall the PCs really enjoyed this adventure as well for various reasons. The risk of bad things happening was very real, one of them almost died and the various monsters inflict nasty conditions on the PCs and equipment. Not much in the way of magical loot to find but mundane treasure can be very valuable and the Baron from BMR gave them title to the chateau as a reward. The treasure as such is very expensive wine worth tens of thousands of gold- if one can find a buyer!!. Next week’s session off to the city to dispose of the loot.
Overlal two great adventures perhaps slightly on the easy side but my players do have some very high ability scores due to 4d6 drop the lowest being used with a moderate amount of character optimization going on as we use feats. No great weapon master or sharpshooter abuse and they focused a bit more on defensive options this time around with a Oath of the Ancients Paladin being used. I have been linking the adventures together and my campaign world is mapping itself as I have linked up my starting village of Wycliff to the Barons land in Roulune and the Chateau is located nearby.
So yes a bit of an old school feel with the adventures so far using 5E rules. My players enjoyed the adventures and I enjoyed reading and running them. As I write this I am printing off 3 more adventures from Quests of Doom (for level 6-8 PCs even) for this Thursday’s session. By level 6 the PCs have a magical mask granting +2 charisma, Gauntlets of Ogre Power and a +1 dagger as magical loot. Overall I really reall recommend Quests of Doom I like it better than Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
