D&D 5E Running Tomb of Annihilation as a hexcrawl at higher level

[Nebulous]

My players have metagamed pretty hard, they have jungle backgrounds, are explorers with high survival skills, so two people are rolling with Advantage each day, they will never, ever get lost, even at 2nd level. They can already create clean water and eradicate germs, and next level they will be able to cure any disease.

Really, why the hell doesn't Camp Vengeance have a 3rd level cleric? ANY DISEASE CAN BE CURED IN DUNGEON & DRAGONS with but a word. It's dumb, but that's the rule.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Really, why the hell doesn't Camp Vengeance have a 3rd level cleric? ANY DISEASE CAN BE CURED IN DUNGEON & DRAGONS with but a word. It's dumb, but that's the rule.

For just this reason. Most of the narrative tension in D&D can be removed through the use of magic. The reason the game includes these work-arounds is so that those players who don't want to deal with them because they don't find them fun or interesting don't have to. Why else have a 3rd level spell that can bring back the dead? Because some players don't find losing new PCs fun, so the game gives them an out at 5th level.

But narratively-speaking... these outs can really make many stories rather inane. As you and Zapp has said, with the right application of magic or class selection, any tension from "jungle exploration" can be effectively negated. Thus, as DMs we have to make the conscious choice to remove those outs from the game, or make those outs harder to come by.

Case in point, in my two Curse of Strahd games I removed Cure Wounds and Healing Word as spells available in the game because I wanted recovery in Barovia to be more difficult. Now, other forms of healing were still available (Lay On Hands, Goodberry, potions of healing, the Healer feat) so healing could still happen... but this out was more difficult to come upon, and was not as available in as much numbers as it would have been in a regular campaign.

I think ToA is trying to do the same thing. Some spells they say just don't work anymore, and some spells they don't make readily available by just not putting NPCs out there that have those outs available. Granted, they don't do everything for us... because every DM will have different levels of difficulty in mind when they run this adventure.
Now yes, in terms of the full scope of D&D magic (currently in the game because of the "fun" factor and not the "story" factor), not many places "make sense". "Logically" a camp in the jungle would include a couple spellcasters that could eliminate all the issues of exploration and survival... but what ends up being the point of the setting if you do?

To make this campaign different from the others, we DMs all really have to make changes to the availability and power of these outs to help support our narrative.

 

[Nebulous]

I think ToA is trying to do the same thing. Some spells they say just don't work anymore, and some spells they don't make readily available by just not putting NPCs out there that have those outs available. Granted, they don't do everything for us... because every DM will have different levels of difficulty in mind when they run this adventure.
Now yes, in terms of the full scope of D&D magic (currently in the game because of the "fun" factor and not the "story" factor), not many places "make sense". "Logically" a camp in the jungle would include a couple spellcasters that could eliminate all the issues of exploration and survival... but what ends up being the point of the setting if you do?

To make this campaign different from the others, we DMs all really have to make changes to the availability and power of these outs to help support our narrative.

You're very right. And I found myself getting very annoyed last night at the game. I had wanted the setting to be an enemy, but it's so easily sidestepped by skills and magic that it becomes easy.

So how can I adjust the "availability of these powers and outs" as you said to make the setting more dangerous? I don't want to nerf their abilities, they actually take great pleasure in knowing they are "beating Chult with the rules", but it still annoys me. I could alter the random encounter charts some.

d20 Encounters

1-2 Trex
3-5 Trex
6-7 Trex
8-9 Flumph
10-20 Dire Trex

 

[Croesus]

So how can I adjust the "availability of these powers and outs" as you said to make the setting more dangerous? I don't want to nerf their abilities, they actually take great pleasure in knowing they are "beating Chult with the rules", but it still annoys me.

Not sure if this will work for your game, but how about having the Soulmonger affect the terrain? In other words, Chult begins to actively work against the party - vegetation shifts, blocking paths; rivers flood just as they are crossing; waterways, trees, paths, even some ground landmarks move, making it very possible to become lost. Make Chult itself an enemy, or at least possessed by a malevolent force.

You could introduce this slowly. At first, they just notice some strange stuff with the vegetation. "Hey, wasn't that tree over there when we setup camp last night?" Over time the problems become more significant. This would give the characters yet another reason to address the Soulmonger, a reason that's not on such a tight timetable as the Curse (which I'm not a fan of).

 

[Nebulous]

Not sure if this will work for your game, but how about having the Soulmonger affect the terrain? In other words, Chult begins to actively work against the party - vegetation shifts, blocking paths; rivers flood just as they are crossing; waterways, trees, paths, even some ground landmarks move, making it very possible to become lost. Make Chult itself an enemy, or at least possessed by a malevolent force.

You could introduce this slowly. At first, they just notice some strange stuff with the vegetation. "Hey, wasn't that tree over there when we setup camp last night?" Over time the problems become more significant. This would give the characters yet another reason to address the Soulmonger, a reason that's not on such a tight timetable as the Curse (which I'm not a fan of).

hmm. I kind of like that. I could also bump the DCs to 20 and 25, such as when the forest and landmarks literally reform themselves.

Oh, and that reminds me, the players already think that there's not enough time to save Syndra, they expect her to die, so that's not too much of a time crunch. Which i prefer as well.

I could also say that there are extra bad heat waves, forcing Exhaustion automatically, or torrential monsoon rains. I rolled a lot on the Random encounter chart, but that got a little old already, I might need to cherry pick some encounters and flesh them ahead of time.

 

[ccs]

* Magic unguents or scrolls (or whatever) to alleviate this so strength builds can keep their heavy armor anyway has a MSRP of 3000 gp per month
* An item that fixes the issue once and for all is at 8000 gp MSRP. I suggest something like a Wand of Endure Elements (with seven charges, working much like other wands).

Thank you for reading,
Zapp

I would not do this.
That trekking through jungles/swamps/deserts etc is difficult & that certain actions/choices have costs & penalties is a feature, not a bug.
And Str builds are still viable - afterall, for most players the whole point is really just getting that +5 to hit/damage. That doesn't go away if your AC drops a few points.

 

[Arial Black]

d20 Encounters

1-2 Trex
3-5 Trex
6-7 Trex
8-9 Flumph
10-20 Dire Trex

The difference between a T-Rex and a Dire T-Rex is, of course, that the Dire T-Rex has arms.

 

[Nebulous]

The difference between a T-Rex and a Dire T-Rex is, of course, that the Dire T-Rex has arms.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You're very right. And I found myself getting very annoyed last night at the game. I had wanted the setting to be an enemy, but it's so easily sidestepped by skills and magic that it becomes easy.

So how can I adjust the "availability of these powers and outs" as you said to make the setting more dangerous? I don't want to nerf their abilities, they actually take great pleasure in knowing they are "beating Chult with the rules", but it still annoys me.

Me personally... I'm re-designing classes for this specific campaign.

The game itself will be an E6 style game (only levels 1-6). In terms of magic... I'm creating a singular 6-level spellcasting class based upon the Warlock chassis (so its all short rest driven). It merges the cleric, druid, and wizard themes together by having each "subclass" be based upon the different gods I am using (mainly the 4E Dawn War pantheon). And for each of these gods/domains, each one is getting its own spell list (about 8 spells for each of the 3 levels of spells.) Which pretty much removes the possibility of any particular PC gathering up all of the spells that remove the tribulations of jungle exploration.

If you want to be a spellcaster of Kord... your spells are mainly all weather, storm, thunder and lightning related. If you want to be a spellcaster of Sehanine... your spells are mainly all darkness, hunting and illusion related. In both (and all) cases, you're not going to be able to have Create Food and Water, Leomund's Tiny Hut, Absorb Elements, Locate Object etc. etc. at your disposal, because no single subclass domain will have all these spells in their list.

I mean... I suppose the players could get together and metagame their eventual spellcaster god selections out so that each of them could get these spells in total... but that also assumes they understand exactly the type of campaign I'll be running, which is no guarantee.

It's turning out to be a bit of work designing all these 6-level caster domain schools (as well as the 15 or so Battlemaster-esque swordsman schools that are replacing all of the melee class from the PHB)... but I enjoy the process of designing new systems and rules for each new campaign I run to help influence the game mechanically towards the way it will be narratively.

 

[Nebulous]

It's turning out to be a bit of work designing all these 6-level caster domain schools (as well as the 15 or so Battlemaster-esque swordsman schools that are replacing all of the melee class from the PHB)... but I enjoy the process of designing new systems and rules for each new campaign I run to help influence the game mechanically towards the way it will be narratively.

Yes, that DOES sound like a lot of work! But impressive. I'm stuck in the situation now where they're just using default magic and skills to waltz through the jungle, so my option really is to make the jungle MEANER.