Ok, so let me start out by saying that I am not all the way through the entore module with reading it all. I am currently reading Episode 6 but my players are about to start Episode 4. So, with that said, here is what I am seeing so far that just makes me really wonder what is going on here-
So, it says that the Cult of the Dragon uses Castle Naerytar as a hub for transporting the loot because of the portal in the dungeons of the castle to save them 700 miles of wagon travel to the Graypeak Mountains. Ok, if this is the case, why would they travel FARTHER to get to the Mere of Dead Men from the camp they had near Greenest in the first place? Now, I haven't scaled this out, but looking at the map, that would appear to be a longer trip than if they were to just go straight to the mountains.
Secondly, I am reading about the different areas of the castle itself and this just won't go out of my mind- how does anyone DM that whole castle if any one fight were to break out considering that it says that there is (roughly) 70-100 baddies any given time? As it is, I cut a bunch of encounters out of the Hatchery Caves because I cannot justify that if a battle breaks out that either "others just don't hear it" or because if the others do hear it, the players are screwed!
Again, I am not all the way through Episode 6 on reading yet, but it just doesn't make any sense to me. How did others run this? Any help here would be awesome! Thanks everyone!
~~~~~~~ your castle alertness problem: castles (and dungeons) are big places with stone walls & thick doors. It's conceivable that the further away you are from a noise the less likely you are to hear something. So start by making perception checks for the nearest groups, modifying for distance/intervening doors etc. Repeat process, with worse odds further & further out. For any rrsponders: take into account travel time & about 1 round to equip. But YES, triggering an alarm in a well fortified area is BAD. That's why good recon, a plan, stealth, surprise & quick, desisive, fights are really important to the attackers. DONT cut out encounters or opponents. DONT simply hand wave away possible responses/responders. Because if you do that then your players will simply not learn any stealth tactics or bother to PLAN assaults. They'll just walk into each room & treat it as a one offencounter..... The stolen loot is not the only thing that has ever been sent by portal. Sometimes you want to make sure that nobody can follow your trail, and teleport circles are notorious for not leaving tracks.
Also, if you are working on a long complex plan that is sure to draw hostile attention but requires many steps to be accomplished successfully, you do NOT want to lead "a bunch of meddling kids" straight to your main base.
Ok, both very good points and I thank you for that. I will def have to keep in mind the perception checks for all involved in the castle. And good point as far as "covering your tracks". I just have a hard time with areas like the Hatchery and the castle at times because I try to make way too much sense in a world where we shoot magic missles and see dragons flying around, lol. Thanks for the feedback!
Since the Cult's "main base" can fly it seems unlikely they'd care whether anyone discovered where it is. Personally I think it's just sloppy writing.
As far as Castle Naerytar goes, even though it's very much a tacked-on and unneccesary episode, it can actually be one of the more fun parts of the adventure. Putting the PCs into a situation where they can bring an angry horde of baddies down on themselves if they aren't careful is a good thing: It tends to get them to put away their metagaming and actually start to think. If they ally with the lizardfolk, or if they scout the castle out before approaching, they should be able to figure out that bullywugs make lousy guards. So, avoiding the frog-men is pretty easy, at least at first. After that, they need to be smart. The party I ran through HotDQ used the silence spell quite a bit when they had to fight to stop any alarms going off. They also made an agreement with the lizardfolk that if they killed Pharblex, the lizardfolk would drive off the rest of the Bullywugs.
My only advice is to play the castle realistically, and if the players do something stupid, don't be afraid to surround them with 40+3d10 angry bullywugs. Sometimes the only way to shake up a complacent group of players is a good old fashioned TPK.
One fun story I can relate is what happened when my players made it to the top of the tower with the observatory. Up to that point, they'd been very careful and had snuck around the castle without alerting anyone (using silence, hiding the bodies of the cultists they'd killed, using disguises, et cetera). In the observatory, the gargoyle guardians attacked them. It's a pretty tough fight, and the PCs managed to win mainly because the druid cast call lightning and used it liberally. The only problem is that no one could possibly fail to notice a dozen or so lightning bolts stiking the top of the castle's tallest tower, so at that point the entire castle knew something was going on. I had Borngrey organize his forces into waves and send them up one after another while the party -- now trapped in the observatory -- hunkered down to fight them off. It was a very tough fight, but they only had to fight cultists since they'd already allied with the lizardfolk. In the end, it came down to Borngrey and a few of the tougher cult members against a badly depleted party, but the PCs managed to pull off a victory.
Given that this question (first one) isn't dealt with in the book, I'd agree that it's another example of the overall poor condition of the adventure (http://community.wizards.com/forum/product-and-general-dd-discussions/threads/4130531), BUT:
Going solely by the map of the Sword Coast in the book, there's no road from Greenest or any other settlement on the coast to Parnast (the latter only has a road coming to it from the east). So it seems reasonable/obvious that it would be easier, and in some circumstances, less conspicuous to haul the hoard piecemeal and in disguise along the busy, well maintained trade route between the major cities along the coast than trek through the wilderness on the route the crow flies to the mountains where the Skyreach thing is. The latter would be difficult, hazardous and require a large, conspicuous force to guard it. This all is so given that they have a teleportation circle near enough (15 miles IIRC) to that trade route straight to the mountains. Plus, as someone mentioned above, carrying stuff along a busy trade route makes it harder to track - the challenging job the PCs are given.
'But the Skyreach Castle can fly'. Sure, but if it starts doing regular stops in populated regions like some kind of big icy DHL plane, subterfuge is lost and Harper type folks may start chucking fireballs at it. The book does mention that it flies hither and yon, but one could sensibly assume it only goes to far-flung, disconnected places like Parnast.
This reads like an apology for the book, which it isn't. All the map errors and overpowered encounters (2 CR 13 baddies at the castle, for example) etc make it a real pain in the ass to prepare. I've said that elsewhere on these forums, but I'm repeating myself because it *really* annoys me that WotC haven't said they're preparing a comprehensive errata.
I'm wondering the same thing...
The distance is killing me, except in my case I'm trying to connect the Lost Mines of Phandelver to HotDQ. And the distance in starting points is killing me. I'm even considering just cutting HotDQ short and replacing Greenest for Phandelver or Leilon nearby.
So at this point, I'm gonna drop the whole follow the Cults caravan in a giant circle gimmick and just play the most important parts of the story. Can anyone help me with this?
Pif I start with Phandelver or Leilon under attack instead of Greenest, what parts do I need to drop in order catch up with the game in a localized area (I'm thinking castle Naedyr? In the Mere of Dead Men)
Concerning the treasure being moved up the tradeway to Waterdeep instead of straight to Parnast. First, thier are no roads to Parnast, So moving a treasure wagons would take forever. Second a train of caravan wagons will atract a lot of attention off the main trade roads. Cruising the main trade routes in a flying castle is also going to attarct a lot of attention. So the cultist take a longer route than the Pcs to Baldur's Gate, why? Because rtaking a route through Elturel takes them east through terratory the had raided. The fair cities of Elturel and Scornbel would be watching for raiders from the east.
Regarding the Castle, the bullywugs are concerned about attacks from the lizard men. So play them smart, their are not going to send all resources to defend one point of the castle, there is an army of lizard ment to defend against right. That said, a fight breaks out in one room the next room is alerted. So either they respond and join the fight next door, or two the prepare an ambush for when they enter. Just remember they have a whole castle to defend, not eevryone is going to abandon thier post when an alert is sound. Some of the defenders are going to shore up the defensive of the areas they are in charge of defending. Keep thier strategy flexible, just because you as dm knows where the pcs are attacking in the castle, that does not mean all the defenders know where they are or that they are the only threat to the castle at that time. In short the defenders of the castle will be busy defending the whole castle not just where the pcs are atttacking.
I found episode 4 as an opportunity to explore some of my favorite from the monster manual as random enocunter and side quests. By my reckoning the players beat the cultists to Baldur's Gate by 40+ days, a month and tenday week. That gives us plenty of time to explore Baldur's Gate. I have two pcs with connections to Baldur's Gate, so I'm developing encounters around thier background. One PC Teras the Bard and fight announcer, had offended a young noble. Now that he is back he'll have to deal with the offended noble who wants Teras dead. I've also been a fan of Sahuagin, since AD&D, but I don't ever dm a scene with them or fought them as a player. So, while they wait for the cultists, Baldur's Gate is going to raided by Sahuagin at least the seaside homes and business. They are staying at the Slithering Eel Inn righ on the water.
I just got done reading Rise of Tiamat... The location of the Well of Dragons makes the whole treasure trip that much worse. You mean the cult takes the treasure from Greenest, through Baldur's Gate, all the way through Waterdeep, then over to Parnast in the East, and finally heading south again to a location only a few hundred miles from their original location when all they would have had to do was haul the treasure from Greenest, through Burdusk, Scornubel, and Darkhold (well traveled roads lead through all of these locations) and they would have been at the Well. Then they could have used that flying castle as a part of the Well's defenses.
Does anyone have a suggestion for an alternate location for the Well of Dragons that actually makes sense with the storyline as written? I'm thinking at the northern end of the Grey Peak Mountains. Since Parnast is on the other end of that mountain range, it kinda makes sense. Thoughts?
I think this might have been mentioned above. But I believe the main reason they don't directly transport the treasure to the Well of Dragons is that the caravans would be too easy to track.
The Cult isn't ready to summon tiamat. They don't have all the dragonmasks, wizards, priests, or treasure yet. Having the Lords of Waterdeep or Baulders Gate be aware of the ritual location would be too big of a risk to my thinking.
I redecorated the Castle to be more conventionally shaped and made it little bigger. Worked like a charm!
It should be mentioned that the Cult doesn't control Castle Skyreach or even use it as their main base. It's basically a sneaky airship for Razimir to deliver his treasure when the time is right. Otherwise Blogothkus (the giant captain) has that place locked down tight.
Here's my explanation/headcanon for the long route the treasure took.
Rezmir's army near Greenest is one of several groups of raiders gathering treasure for Tiamat's hoard, spread across different parts of the Sword Coast and Faerun in general. In order to get it all in one place, each raiding group would bring their treasure to the nearest portal stone taking them to Parnast. From there, they would use Skyreach Castle to take the combined hoard to the Well of Dragons. None of the groups would approach Parnast by road, as a step to avoid detection. The Cult also made sure to take a firm control of the town itself, to ensure their secret was kept.
Perhaps Rezmir's group was always intended to follow those same instructions. Each of the different groups having different destinations would confuse anyone who managed to connect the attacks, as the cult would have each of the portal stones they were using guarded or well hidden. No-one would know that actually it all went to the same place.
However, it's possible Rezmir did in fact plan to take her treasure directly from the Greenest region to the Well of Dragons, perhaps leaving behind the larger part of her raiders to draw attention, and allowing the wagons of treasure to make their way through the difficult, off-road terrain to the Well. Then Leosin and the PCs arrived and screwed things up. After chapter 2, it became clear that someone was investigating the Cult's activities near Greenest, so they couldn't risk leading anyone directly to the Well of Dragons. They went to plan B - go the long way round, hopefully losing any investigators, and use the portal stone in Naerytar Castle for further misdirection. After all, there's no way anyone could follow them halfway across the Sword Coast, discover the cult's subterfuge at the coach house, find Naerytar's location in the mere and breach its defenses, figure out how to activate the hidden portal, escape thei cult's agents in Parnast, and then infiltrate Skyreach Castle, right?
This post at ENworld gave me the answer I intend to use for my own game. People don't always do things the most efficient way in the real world either.
I find that a lot of the weirdness in the cult's plans gets explained away if you play up the rival factions and jockeying for power.
Why does Rezmir take the treasure waaaay out of the way? Because she takes it to *her* castle, where *she* can have oversight over the cataloging and appraisal of it. Who cares if there's a dwarf five miles from the Well of Dragons who can do it? Then the dwarf gets the glory, not Rezmir. And she justifies it by having a flying castle bring it in instead of using a ton of manpower to carry it over/through the mountains and into the Well.
kaitoujuliet wrote:
The Cult does some crazy sh!t, agreed. But the Cult isnt as dumb as one might think. Caravaning all that distance, runs the risk of as tracking bandits, ...possibly the Shadow Thieves, who are strong in the Western Heartlands and Baldur's Gate area. They could be attacked by monsters lurking around. Wear and tear on thier vehicles? Food?