Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 pauldanielj2 Nov 10, 2014 20:52:55	*spoilers*   So my players have worked their way through HotDQ up to the final episode, and next session they should be entering the flying castle. Overall, I think the adventure is actually pretty awful (more of a vaguely interactive, poorly-written, cliched novel than a real adventure), but that's not what I wanted to talk about.   What I'm actually thinking of is how the last episode plays out. The castle itself is basically invincible. I don't mean the physical castle, but rather the horde of ogres, stone giants, stone golems, et cetera, that could easily wipe out the PCs. The party is all level 7, which I believe is what the adventure intends, but they wouldn't stand a chance if they went the direct assault route. So it seems obvious that this is another railroad where the only "correct" solution is to negotiate with Blagothkus and get him to agree to steer the castle north instead of to the Well of Dragons.   That's all well-and-good, but the adventure says that he'll "lock himself" in the steering tower and leave the PCs to deal with the Cult. Okay. So, why? I mean, his 2 stone golems alone are tougher than the whole party, so why not send them to deal with the Cult? What about his army of ogres and his stone giant allies... do they all stand around picking their noses while this group of level 7 adventurers takes on the whole Cult?   Aside from that, there is a CR 13 vampire and a CR 13 white dragon present, both of whom I assume need to be "dealt with" in some manner. I.e. kill them. A CR 13 monster is worth 10,000 XP, but a "deadly" encounter for 5 level 7 PCs would be 8,500 XP, so either fight seems like a TPK waiting to happen without a LOT of luck.   I guess the obvious answer is that the PCs ask Blagothkus for help with the Cult, in which case he sends his giants and golems to wipe out the Cult while the PCs do basically nothing. That seems like a pretty lousy climax to the first half of Tyranny of Dragons.   How have others dealt with this final episode? Has anyone actually managed to play through it in a fun and plausible way?
#2 GEBELL Nov 11, 2014 10:24:07	The whole tyranny of dragons is looking to be a bust.  It's an interesting enough story, but it requires so much planning and changing by the DM, that for me it entirely undercuts the point of a published adventure.  If I'm doing this much planning,, why am I buying an adventure? anyway...   I haven't reached this point in the adventure yet.  But I have read ahead and seen this as a major issue.  I have a hard time picturing how the players play this castle.  For all the reasons you list.  Pitting NPC's against eachother is great, but it really takes the PC's out of the action, and not all groups will even try to go that route.   Also, are they spending days on this castle? My group will certainly try to rest (and need to if they fight pretty much anything).  It sure seems like they are 100% expected to fight and kill the dragon at an absolute minimum.  And it makes sense that a climatic in lair dragon fight would end this first chapter of an adventure all about dragons.     The first part of my plan was to have my party higher than lvl 7 when they got here.  I guess I was going to play it by ear and see how some of the combats in the castle went.  I was going to emphasize the sneaking around as best I could, and basically allow them to sneak around at will with minimal effort (ogres aren't the most perceptive).  I was thinking they might sneak around adn assault the dragon at full power, with prep for a white dragon, and maybe me not playing the smartest dragon ever - they win that fight, and everything else on the castle flees or is killed by the giant returning home.     and if you think HOTDG is bad... have you bought ROT yet?
#3 autolycus Nov 11, 2014 11:28:06	There's an excellent blog called Hack & Slash. It is currently in the process of an exellent re-working of HotDQ.   http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/
#4 pauldanielj2 Nov 11, 2014 13:46:00	I think I'm going to just remove the vampire from the episode entirely, and change the adult white dragon to a young white dragon with 2 air elemental allies. That should still be a very tough encounter for a level 7 party, but not a guaranteed TPK.   It is a little exhausting to be constantly "fixing" this adventure on the fly, but I'm hopeful that's reflective of Wizards pushing their deadlines (and thus skipping a heck of a lot of editing that should have been done) rather than being an indication of future adventure quality. Actually, the funnest session we had with HotDQ was on the road between BG and Waterdeep -- I squeezed in the adventure "Glitterdoom" by Goodman Games as a sort of side-trek, and without knowing they were playing something that wasn't actually part of the 'real' adventure, the players all pronounced that the best session of the campaign so far.
#5 Theros Nov 12, 2014 5:12:14	I’m running HoTDQ myself. I’m not sure I agree with your assessment of the final episode. The players have been looking forward to storming the gates for several sessions now. It’s true that the module leaves a lot of the particulars to the DM, but it’s not like your working from scratch. I always tailor my games to the play style of the players, once I read the entire story it was easy to connect the episodes together seamlessly. It’s only when I was only reading one episode at a time that the module started to break down.   The encounters at the cloud castle seem fine to me. I have a big party however (5 players), they’ve also hired several mercenaries from their time on the road from Elturel to Waterdeep. Using their affiliation with the Order of the Gauntlet to do some conscripting.   The white dragon will be a push over if it’s not flying. One of anything isn’t a challenge no matter how strong. The vampire will also not be a problem unless the party is running out of spells and abilities by the time they fight him. If the party has access to their stuff they’ll be able to easily  dps him down in a few rounds.   As far as getting the party into the castle in the first place. I suggest bringing in the harpers and order of the gauntlet to help. Even the Black Network (or whatever Gleamsilver’s thieves guild is called) all had a vested interest in stopping the cultists. Have them team up and do a full on invasion of the castle. Of course that’s the angle I’m using.   While I agree that the module doesn’t explain everything as written theirs more than enough content to make a kick ass campaign. It’s silly to blindly run the adventure without modifying it.
#6 pauldanielj2 Nov 12, 2014 21:02:13	You may well be right, but I'm doubtful those encounters will be as easy as you claim. For one thing, that would make the DMG basically wrong. If you have 5 level 7 PCs, a deadly encounter should be 1,700 x 5 = 8,500 XP total. You're claiming that a 10,000 XP encounter will be a push-over, which means that either the encounter building assumptions in the DMG are way off, or else somehow your party is very over-powered.    Also, why would the dragon not be flying? Sure, it's in a cavern, but the encounter states it will "cling to the ceiling", and the ceiling is high enough that it's effectively flying out of the PCs' reach while it's doing that. For the vampire, unless you're deliberately playing her wrong, she should be very deadly. The party shouldn't be able to "dps her down", because she would likely just charm one of them to fight on her behalf, mist-form and fly away until her regeration brings her back to full HP, then repeat the process until the party is all dead (or, more likely, all transformed into her new undead servants).   Plus, we're talking about a flying castle here. What sort of invasion is going to work? Unless the Harpers all have flying mounts, I don't see any sort of invasion being meaningful - the castle will just leave. Even if they do fly after it, it's defended by ballistas and an adult white dragon. I'd love to watch a squadron of Harpers on giant eagles dropping out of the sky like snow balls while Glazhael straffs them with his breath weapon.
#7 GEBELL Nov 12, 2014 22:04:47	I'd love to hear form someone who played through this thing.  I don't see how fighting this dragon after fighting a few ogres is anything but a super dangerous encounter.  Sure the dragon can't fully fly, but it has lair actions instead...
(Reply to #7) Tfuture	GEBELL wrote:
(Reply to #8) pauldanielj2	Tfuture wrote:
#10 MonsterEnvy Nov 13, 2014 15:43:32	GEBELL wrote:
#11 Forgive Nov 14, 2014 6:08:31	I'm not certain how to build encounters in 5e.  I thought I did, and I thought certain things would be deadly, but alas, they were not.   Just ran our game last night and they encountered the Inn on the road from Baulder's Gate to Neverwinter, the one with four assassins that are disguised as a judge and his retinue.  I was certain that they would kill one or more of the PC's, being that the players are lvl 5, and this is 4 challenge rating 8's.  However, the players slew them to a man without too much difficulty (one player fell in the initial attack, but survived after being healed by the cleric).   I'm excited to get to the Castle scene, no idea how it will play out, but I'm sure they'll be fine :p
#12 Theros Nov 18, 2014 8:03:54	pauldanielj2 wrote:
#13 Sorxores Nov 18, 2014 6:42:19	I am a player who just finished HotDQ last night. My DM was a novice DM so he followed the book at the letter. My group is composed of 6 players, I am the only optimizer of the group, stacking all the bonus I can in the party advantage. The other players are beginner player trying to do good, but doing a lot of mistake (optimization wise) both in tactital decision during a fight and during character creation, and one of the paladin would use the excuse of being "lawful Good" to play "lawful stupid" iinstead even at the detriment of the group (if we come out with a plan to talk with the cultist and convince them that we are cultist as well so they can lead us to our next target without any fight and granting us a surprise round, he would jump in front and kill them in front of the other cultist which blow our cover because "he is a paladin and he have to kill evil on sight").   But with the wizard keeping him in check (using hold person when needed) we managed to kill Rezmir during the surprise round, framing the assassination on the red wizard of Thay (Rezmir was a pile of Ashes, who could have done that other then the powerfull red wizard of Thay specially the one with a staff of fire?) Took a short rest in Rezmir quarter (investigating to find the reason why the wizard betrayed the cult) then took the white dragon (ok I will admit we got lucky when I crit twice on the surprise attack). Once equiped with Rezmir great sword and some the magical loot from the white dragon hoard, we ask the cultist to lead us to the castle owner. this is when our paladin killed our "tourguides" right in front of the vampire. This fight was pretty hard, the wizard already had used her spell lvl 2 to hold person the paladin twice, her spell level 3 on the white dragon, the vampire bringing the paladin down quickly, while I try to convince him that the paladin is a traitor and I'll deal with him when we'll reach the ritual site, but faile dmy deception and was force to fight the vampire. the vampire brought 5 of the 6 party member down, without any healer, I was the last one standing (the DM is scared of my character using Rezmir Greatsword and the spell Shield making me a tank who deal a lot of damage. With my last round of combat before falling on the ground I manage to force the vampire to run away in his mist form. I used a potion of healing on the druid, so he coul dhelp me put people back on there feet, find a hiding spot, explain to the paladin that if he was unable to control himself we would have to kick him out of the group, that he's zealous action here almost gave the cultist the capacities to summon Tiamat unopposed.   Then without any cultist help since now we are suspicious we manage to find the Cloud Giant and convince him to help us.   so other then the "Lawful stupid" paladin the group with various skilled did this fairly easily. IMHO the hardest part of this adventure was the first episode, where we need to do like 10 fights in a row with only 1 short rest once you reach the keep, fight a blue dragon who can TPK the party with a single breath even if the party succeed there save (half damage of 40 is still 20 and the max HP a character coul dhave would be a human barbarian with 16 Constitution and the though feat for a total of 17 HP with a human character with inpiring leadership and 16 Charisma for an additional 3 TempHp for a total of 20 HP (still fall to 0)
#14 Theros Nov 18, 2014 8:14:45	Hell of a story Sorxores, good job on that vampire. It’s never nice when players play Paladins as lawful stupid. It can make things awkward at the table. My players fight like a well oiled machine, but even my Paladin has had trouble roleplaying this module. If I was you I’d ask your DM to sort it out “out of game” or my character will sort it out “in game” (like a greatsword in the ribs).
#15 Jhishma Nov 24, 2014 14:51:16	I've been having a blast DMing this adventure! Mind you, I started playing D&D in 1980, so...   I have found that some on-your-feet-thinking is needed, but the whole story is right there in front of you. Episode 1 was fantastic - swarms of rats were handled intelligently by my players; dragon fly-by had its effect and a volley of arrows chased it away, so no problem (entirely within the character of the dragon, as described); and the fight with Cyanwrath had exactly the desired effect - the "champion" got the wind kicked out of him and the whole party really wanted revenge - PCs emotionally invested in NPCs - PERFECT.   Presently, middle of Episode: They're in the middle of Skyreach Castle, the last episode. In episode 7 they got the dragon cult banners from Talis, so although the castle flew away without them, they caught up to it, waved their banners flambouyantly at the ogres on the towers and landed with impunity. It was dusk and so the courtyard was graveyard quiet and filling with mist... They stabled their wyverns (dealing with the castle wyverns with a smart, quick illusion from the Bard) and walked back out into the fogged-in courtyard, bold as brass, and called for the servants to show them to their quarters. Instead of the castle page they hoped for, the vampire arrived...   The players were quite appropriately scared, but played it cool and with their banner and the hand sign, managed to keep the bluff going and the vampire led them to the cultist barracks, but not without totally creeping them out first! They continued the farse in the barracks until everyone was asleep. An hour before daybreak they murdered all the sleeping dragonwing cultists. A few woke up, but it was over so fast and the ice walls are so thick, they drew no attention.   At daybreak they ventured out and investigated the kitchen. Observing the scene, they demanded breakfast. The kobold, just wanting to get their chores done, are in no position to question confident, tough-looking adventurers, claiming to be on their side. So the party continued the deception easily. Cleverly, they also parked themselves in front of the barracks doors, intercepting all the food the kobolds brought and took it inside themselves, so as to at least buy enough time of discovery of the slaughter for as long as possible.   They saw two kobolds carry trays of food across the courtyard to the rooms of Rezmir and the wizards. They headed there, but got distracted by the stone giants. They made friendly conversation with the stone giant wife because the bard conveniently speaks giant and is very friendly. They continue on and find Rezmir in her room having breakfast. Very bad for Rezmir. They killed her too quickly - anti-climactic, actually. Then the cry went up. Rath and Jos arrived and the combat continued, with the players using Rezmir's room quite strategically as cover; then ogres arrived, which made it a littl more complicated, but manageable. The fighter began to close on the wizards, so I had Rath cast Dimension Door - he'll be back... Jos, however, was captured! The giants arrived and the PCs successfully negotiated, since they had already met and knew that the giants were suspect of this alliance with the cult.   Now they are being escorted by the stone giants to Blag's tower and that's where we left off...   I predict that they'll get Blag to agree to oust the cultists while they deal with the dragon. According to the book he'll be amenable to that. I may still have Rath cause some mischief before he makes his final escape. The vampire could possibly still be a problem, although her heart isn't totally into this new cult (which the players discovered through conversation with her on their way to the barracks).   The white dragon could be tough. I'm debating back and forth in my mind as to whether I should activate lair actions. I don't think this castle adventure was written with lair actions in mind, so it might be too deadly, but it would make it much more memorable!