Tyranny of Dragons. Players gone Wild! Advise?

[jayoungr]

There's a lot of this adventure that doesn't make sense.

Some massaging is helpful, yes. Have you checked out the "Enhancing" threads for HotDQ and Rise of Tiamat? They have tons of suggestions on how to handle tricky bits:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...en-quot-(Practical-stuff-to-try-at-your-table!)
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...at-quot-(Practical-stuff-to-try-at-your-table!)

"Follow the treasure" is the mission. That's what they are doing. But since no actual speed is given for the castle, only "The wyverns can catch up because the castle is slow", it makes sense to "follow the treasure" not suddenly turn around and blow up the castle.

You could point out that the castle flies all day and all night, and the wyverns can't do that; they are going to get tired at some point. Finding a safe place to land in the castle would be the logical course of action. And then maybe letting your players catch a glimpse of the Red Wizard at a tower window would tempt them to go and have a chat with him?

Why would anyone except a crew of murder hobos turn around and decide to kill everyone.

They might not, and that's okay. Do note that the adventure also includes scenarios where the PCs capture the castle instead, or where Blagothkus crashes it either as himself or as a spirit. The book includes information on combat because that's the most likely way PCs will handle the situation, but the ending of the adventure is really quite open. (For example, my PCs befriended Blagothkus and then took over the castle fairly bloodlessly by dumping some of the hallucinogenic powder from Castle Naerytar into the cultists' food.)

But if you want to nudge your group, you could also have one of their contacts, such as Leosin or Ontharr, contact them via a sending spell and advise them to try to sabotage the treasure shipment as soon as they know its final destination, so as to prevent the cult from getting the treasure as a resource and delay their plans.

 

[Scott Graves]

You could point out that the castle flies all day and all night, and the wyverns can't do that; they are going to get tired at some point. Finding a safe place to land in the castle would be the logical course of action. And then maybe letting your players catch a glimpse of the Red Wizard at a tower window would tempt them to go and have a chat with him?

I mathed it out. Assuming the Monk (who is one of the smartest players most of the time) figures out to follow it by flying ahead to rest and hunt for the Wyvern while the castle passes over and keep that jumping ahead resting using the scope to keep track of it and such they can get close. The Monk has a helm of teleportation that he will use to teleport back, pick up the rest of the party and teleport them to where the Castle has landed to pick up more gold. I will play the monk's, ranger's and paladin's character traits against them. The Monk hates orcs and rarely passes an opportunity to murder them. The ranger hates slavery and the orcs will of course be using slaves to mine gold for the dragons. The paladin will see souls in danger and he will charge to the rescue. This will of course drag some of the cult into the fight and make it cool.

The orcs are mining gold under the watchful eyes of the Hill Giants who can't effectively use slaves to mine deeper into the veins. I plan to make the castle entrance to the mine caverns large enough to get that white dragon inside. Oh the evil I plan for them. I am making from balsa wood a winding staircase that will be between two and three feet high making it, in scale, 120 to 180 feet of battling death!!! Orcs coming up the stairs and orcs coming down from behind them! Oh they will PAY DEARLY for going off the path set down by them!! Pay I say!