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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6482095" data-attributes="member: 2011">The blue dragon in the moathouse???That wimp? <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />I DMed that three times. It was a tough fight, but one that all three groups handled. The Irontooth fight was harder than that and often resulted in PC death. Granted, a lot of groups out there had dead PCs or even TPKs from that dragon, but RtToEE has an NPC on the way to the moathouse that tells the PCs that there is a dragon there.Not quite as powerful as the dragons in LMoP and HotDQ. In RtToEE, it's a level 12 dragon with a 6D8 (27/13) line breath weapon (i.e. few PCs per attack) vs. 4th level PCs. In LMoP, it's a Level 14 dragon with 12D6 (42/21) cone breath weapon vs. 3rd level PCs and in HotDQ, it's a level 16 dragon vs. 1st/2nd level PCs (I forget the number of dice for this guy, but it doesn't matter, even a saving PC goes unconscious). Granted, PCs have a few more hit points in 5E than 3E, but on the other hand, so do the dragons.I thought you were talking stuff like the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief where the DM is cautioned on the first page about PC level and how many magic items the PCs should have, the PCs know ahead of time that they are fighting giants plus unknown allies, and the PCs arrive at dusk while the giants are partying. Btw, I've done the Steading quite a few times as well and just knocking down the door works totally fine. I had a group once fly up to the roof, blow up the throne room and then piecemeal the rest of the place later on since the toughest foes were taken out while the PCs had full resources. Extremely difficult fight of 30+ foes vs. the party, but magic makes all the difference (old style illusions, area effects spells, wall spells to block off an entire side of a room, old style darkness spell where the PCs fight from under it and can see, but the giants are in the dark and cannot see, etc.).Yes, there can be impossible or nearly impossible scenarios in many modules. The differences are with the "tells" and the setup. LMoP gives one PC a background that encourages him to fight the dragon which should rarely lose to a party of 4 3rd level PCs. The PCs go to a village, have a bunch of fights with twig blights and some other stuff, then they typically fight the dragon. After using up a bunch of their resources, they are expected to fight a dragon that probably heard them fighting and should be ready for them.In RtToEE, the PCs may or may not have a fight with a frog. Then they fight the dragon which can lose to basically fresh 4th level PCs (it happened multiple times in our games).HotDQ puts the dragon right in front of first level PCs and expects them to ignore it and enter the town anyway.Good design vs. bad design.Your point that there are extremely tough and even deadly fights in a lot of old modules does not justify bad design in this one.Btw, running tough encounters one shot is usually a lot tougher than running tough encounters as part of an ongoing campaign. Most players play one shot PCs a lot less effectively than they do PCs that they have been running for months or years. Also, magic items for one shot PCs tend to be standardized ones whereas campaign magic items often have more of a backstory and/or cooler abilities. It's just the nature of the beast. When the DM has a year of running a game, there are a lot of opportunities to add in cool magic items. For a one shot, it's usually some +1 or +2 items, some potions, wands and a few minor specials at best. Which makes the difference between an impossible fight and a deadly fight.Most low level modules (like LMoP and HotDQ) for a brand new game system are closer to one shot games than campaign games. The players and DM are not as familiar with the game system (i.e. fewer optimized PCs), there are no splat books for special abilities, the players have not played the PCs for months or a year in order to learn team tactics, etc.</blockquote>

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