D&D 5E Your Thoughts on Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle

[SilverBulletKY]

I was planning on running Hoard of the Dragon Queen after finishing Phandelver, but after skimming through Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, it looks to be a much more interesting and planned out adventure. Has anyone ran this and if so, what did you think?

 

[Uller]

I've run it. It was quite a bit of fun (actually we still have to play through the final encounter before we start our official 5e campaign). However, it was written for the playtest...monsters are MUCH tougher now. For instance:

SPOILERS!

Spoiler

There are 8 Vampires in the final adventure. In the basic rules, they are probably a bit more akin to Vampire Spawn. There is an adult green dragon in the third adventure that is weaker than the young green dragon in Lost Mines...and so forth...

You'll have to do quite a bit of work to match the characters. Also, we just leveled up TWO levels after each adventure (started the first one at 3, the second at 5, etc.) rather than tracking XP because it was really meant to just show case the rules at various levels.

 

[GameDoc]

Just so happens I started reading through Ghosts of Dragonspear yesterday and really liked it as well. I hadn't looked to see if the monsters can be ported over as is. When you say tougher, do you mean if you use monsters as written in the module, or do you meant their finally 5e equivalents will be tougher on 5e PCs?

 

[Uller]

Just so happens I started reading through Ghosts of Dragonspear yesterday and really liked it as well. I hadn't looked to see if the monsters can be ported over as is. When you say tougher, do you mean if you use monsters as written in the module, or do you meant their finally 5e equivalents will be tougher on 5e PCs?

I don't know. 5e PCs are a little tougher than playtest PCs (a few examples: Rogues have higher HP, do more SA damage, some wizard spells do a little more damage). The monsters all have more HP (gargoyles and ogres are good examples) and some are just all around tougher, especially any monster that is "legendary". I would imagine the final version of the monster that is the BBEG will be considerably tougher once the MM comes out than the one in the adventure.

Probably checkout the encounter building guidelines to adjust your encounters. Some monsters might have to be totally replaced...playtest monsters were known to be too weak.

Oh...and the hook for the final adventure is a total railroad....that's okay...it comes after a big time break. If you run your game as more of a sandbox, you could have your players wrapping up lots of loose ends or even starting a new campaign when they get the message that they are needed back in Daggerford...but if you are just running straight through...it's "follow the hook or the campaign is over" or so it seemed to me and my players. No one minded so much...we all knew we were playing through 4 preset adventures.

 

[GameDoc]

Thanks

 

[Arkon262]

I actually just started running my group through this two weeks ago. So far the encounters are very out of whack with the finalized monster math. Some monsters in the playtest that were say a CR equivalent of 1/4 are now CR 1 in the final DM guide that was published recently. I have had to rebalance many encounters.

 

[SigmaOne]

I actually just started running my group through this two weeks ago. So far the encounters are very out of whack with the finalized monster math. Some monsters in the playtest that were say a CR equivalent of 1/4 are now CR 1 in the final DM guide that was published recently. I have had to rebalance many encounters.

Aside from that, how did you find it? I'm not too worried about tweaking the monsters, myself; but I'm trying to figure out whether to run my group through that next, too.

 

[Rhenny]

I'm running it now, updating the monsters as best I can. We've had 6 sessions and we just started the 2nd chapter. I enjoy the story, but unless you add some side treks and improvise a little it is a linear plot. Some players buy into that fine, but others want more freedom.

 

[Arkon262]

So far it has been fun overall, although the starting story is a bit thin for hooking the players into the story.

 

[Quickleaf]

I was planning on running Hoard of the Dragon Queen after finishing Phandelver, but after skimming through Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, it looks to be a much more interesting and planned out adventure. Has anyone ran this and if so, what did you think?

I usually DM, but I played in this one for a bit. We only got to level 3 (with playtest pregens) and didn't finish it because schedules and travel got in the way, so my view is only on the starting point.


SPOILERS


I felt sympathy for our DM. He did a great job of adding personality to the NPCs, but two or three time the "this is a railroad, enjoy!" stick was staring us right in the face. Notably getting to whatever the lizard man-plagued fort was called was obvious not a choice, but was presented as one anyhow. Likewise with "volunteering" to go dragon hunting in the killer swamps. Gee, of course we lowly 1st level adventurers will go do that; great idea!

The scene with the "dworcs" had Chris Perkins written all over it, and I did crack a smile, but it was so ridiculous and left us scratching our heads: What in the hell does this bit of randomness have to do with anything? Despite our guide being a hard-ass about killing the "dworcs" I managed to conduct trade for intelligence in peace.

That was about it roleplaying wise (ah, and "neutral" lizard folk) for 4 sessions. The rest was pretty much hack and slash trudging thru swamps. The railroad was pleasant enough, if you're into that sort of thing. Personally, I didn't care for it. The other players, however, didn't mind so much.

The fights were actually kind of scary at levels 1 and 2. We lost a PC and had several down at one point to scary giant lizards. Also the harpy fight was just a PITA and quite dangerous when the DM played them smart.