Scourge of the Howling Horde [SPOILERS]

[Keith Robinson]

Or, alternately, it lessens the mystique of dragons, because, hey, they killed one before they were third level. *

* Yes, the Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury have the same problem.

I don't really agree with that assessment. In an adventure in my present campaign, I placed a wyrmling blue dragon in a room. The party (they were 2nd level) has already used the majority of their resources and really should have retreated, but they were stuck in the 'one more room' syndrome and eventually opened the door with the blue wyrmling in it.

It was messy, as the dragon seriously kicked their behinds. They were stuck in a 10-ft wide corridor and the dragon duly sent a bolt of its lightning breath down at them, immediately taking out a couple. I rolled a d4 to see when it would breath again (3 rounds) and it then started to tackle those that remained. Anyway, to keep this short, 3 rounds came around and the dragon was still on nearly 30 hit points (28, I think) and with only the dwarf to go before it was the dragons go again. It was going to use its breath weapon, which would have killed everyone and become my first TPK (even those that saved would have died).

So, what do you think happens? The dwarf criticals with his greataxe (x3) and rolls high damage, killing the dragon before it gets a chance the wipe them out. And the thing is, they all knew that they were going to die, but somehow managed to survived.

The mystique and fear for dragons remains well and truly alive amongst that particular bunch of players!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

/shrug

I'd rather not have players interacting with dragons in any scenario other than "run away!" until level 10 or so. I'd rather build up the mystique rather than scale dragons down for all levels.

Even the iconic BBEGs don't have aspects players can hope to beat until level 10 or so, even though it'd be easy to have, say, a Fragment of Orcus (even smaller than an Aspect!) at level 5 or below.

Different strokes.

 

[Hairfoot]

That's fair enough. Especially considering that it's "Dungeons & Dragons", not "Dungeons & Fearsome Beasts".

Dragons are special in an alll-the-way-back-to-Tolkien-or-even-further way. But the laws of natural selection still apply, and uppity wyrmlings can deal with adventurers, too. It's an occupational hazard.

 

[Nikosandros]

I briefly skimmed it... it seems to me that EL are omitted from the encounters. I was a bit surprised by that.

 

[delericho]

Dragons are special in an alll-the-way-back-to-Tolkien-or-even-further way. But the laws of natural selection still apply, and uppity wyrmlings can deal with adventurers, too. It's an occupational hazard.

True.

I'm inclined to think, though, that adventurers maybe shouldn't be dealing with a wyrmling, but rather a brood of them. Oh, and all the time, they should be wondering, "where's mommy?"

I do, however, like the idea of them facing a young dragon that's just starting out, at mayeb CR 7 or so.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Gold Roger]

I hoped for a Barghest (but replacing a dragon with a Barghest is easy). I'm far more interested in the adventures structure. NPC's and story can be replaced.

 

[Shroomy]

I briefly skimmed it... it seems to me that EL are omitted from the encounters. I was a bit surprised by that.

EL numbers are ommitted from the adventure, though if you are an experienced DM you can quickly tell that most encounters are EL 1. The text does explain the EL system without actually referencing EL numbers; the adventure text does recommend using the 4 encounters of EPL/day before resting and gives suggestions where the PCs may rest (and how to do it). The text also warns the DMs that they should approarch the higher EL encounters (an EL 2 encounter with a bugbear, a hobgoblin fighter, and the final EL 3 encounters with Noak the black dragon) with care.

I thought the weirdest thing about the adventure was that it ommitted the class levels of the goblins and hobgoblins in the stat blocks, as well as the HD line. Now, it wasn't too hard to figure that out, but it seemed weird to ommit two relatively important pieces of information. You'd think that low-level PCs would be utilizing HD dependent spells like sleep quite regularly.

After reading the adventure, I've come to the conclusion that it is a solid, introductory adventure for beginning players and DMs. It hits all of the expected tropes of a "classic" D&D module (helping a small village, exploring caves/dungeons, goblins, dragons, etc.), gives tons of advice on how to do things, and uses the "tactical encounter format" to make combats easier to run. I would use it if I was a DM newbie or if my players were completely new to D&D. More experienced players and DMs maybe bored or find the entire thing too cliche for their tastes; I know that as I read the adventure I thought of the much superior Dungeon adventure "Within the Circle" which had a similar plot on the surface, but had more depth and variation.

My grade, a B/B-. Not worth the full $15 if you are an experienced player or DM.

 

[delericho]

I thought the weirdest thing about the adventure was that it ommitted the class levels of the goblins and hobgoblins in the stat blocks, as well as the HD line. Now, it wasn't too hard to figure that out, but it seemed weird to ommit two relatively important pieces of information. You'd think that low-level PCs would be utilizing HD dependent spells like sleep quite regularly.

Isn't the number of hit dice listed next to the hit point total? If not, what are WotC thinking? I mean, I'm all for the new stat-block format, and am aware that there's still some tweaking needed to get it just right, but it's getting silly - they're now making it worse as they go!

 

[Shroomy]

Isn't the number of hit dice listed next to the hit point total? If not, what are WotC thinking? I mean, I'm all for the new stat-block format, and am aware that there's still some tweaking needed to get it just right, but it's getting silly - they're now making it worse as they go!

Nope, the HD total is not next to the hit points. They added a hp tracker to the stat blocks (a line of blank boxes corresponding to the number of hit points), which probably ate up that space.

 

[SteveC]

So I saw this on the shelf today, and was thinking about picking it up. It uses the new encounter format a lot more than Ravenloft did, and it looks interesting. Then I saw the price: $15. The book is just too thin to be worth that to me. You've essentially got one or at most two evening's play out of this, and it just isn't worth it for that. Upping the page count to 48 might have gotten me to bite (as long as there was more content) but alas, no.

I'd like to see if people really like the thing, because it sounds like something I could recommend to a newbie GM and players. Any thoughts?

--Steve