Finished Running Rise of Tiamat

[TheOOB]

So my group just finished the Rise of Tiamat(which followed Hoard of the Dragon Queen), and I figured I'd share my thoughts and experiences, and maybe hear the thoughts and experiences from others. Naturally there are going to be some spoilers in here, but I'll try to avoid specifics. That said, if your currently a player in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Rise of Tiamat, maybe you shouldn't read this.

I was running a four person party. We had a vengance paladin(who later took a few fighter levels), a tempest cleric, a shadow monk, and a valor bard(who later took a few fighter levels). The party was fairly effective. Only one time did the party look like they were going to wipe, but they pulled through. No deaths during the entire campaign, but I should note our group is experianced and has been playing together for a long time, so I expect them to overcome tough challenges. The party and myself enjoyed the whole experience quite a bit.

The campaign had players level very fast. This was part because the vast majority of the chapters we completed in one session(I don't feel most of them had enough interesting stuff to make them last more than one session). The players complained about not having time to understand their current abilities before getting new ones, and I never really got a handle on their exact power level, constantly underestimating them.

While I felt the books were well made, HotD and RoT had very different feels. HotD was very railroady with little to no downtime. I literally had to manufacture opportunities for long rests that didn't exist before. It did have the advantage that it all felt like one continues story and made the pressure of time feel evident. RoT was, on the other hand, very episodic, each chapter fairly unrelated to the others. I get the intent that there were supposed to be side adventures I was supposed to make and add in, I usually didn't because I felt it would ruin the pacing of the story.

HotD was fairly hard, the last session in paticular, while RoT was easy by comparison. Apart from several combat free chapters(which I don't mind), Xonthal's tower was painfully easy, and in Death to the Wyrmspeakers part 2 my party fought every single enemy in the first room, EVERY SINGLE ONE(poor choices on their part), and still won handily(though having made arrangements to negate poison damage helped a lot). Part of this was magic items, HotD was very stingy(save for the legendary sword at the end). RoT was a little more generous, and I made the mistake of letting players buy items at waterdeep based on the suggested price in the DMG(a note, never let players just buy items from the DMG, and the suggested prices in there are worthless, ignore them). Still, the foes just didn't keep up with a high level party.

By the end the foes started to feel a little samey, cultists and dragons made up the majority of foes, but the fights remained fun. I found myself using a battlegrid more and more, and by the end I only didn't use it for minor fights and in fact if the fight was extremely minor we'd just roleplay it and not bring out the dice(read most of Xonthal's Tower).

I felt the overall story had a lot of weight, and the faction mechanic in RoT was really really fun, even if my party won over every single faction.

Now for the things I didn't like

I've mentioned Xonthal's Tower before, but I'll mention it again, every combat encounter was embaressingly easy by that point, and filled with stupid trial and error puzzles. Further, the entire chapter was pointless to the overall story.

Several points during the RoT told you to do something, but not how. The cult strikes back chapters should have had adventures planned around them since they give levels, but they just tell you to make an encounter and put it somewhere, which is annoying

The last adventure is stupid and annoying, and I basically didn't use it. There is almost no info and what should be where and what encounters there should be, for the grand finale it felt very confusing and underdeveloped. It didn't help that Severin, the big bad, didn't even really appear in any way before.

Overall, I thought HotD was great, and RoT was good, and both impressive considering how quickly they came out. I'm soon going to be a player in Princes of the Apocalypse, and I'm very excited.

Anyways, I'd love to hear about any of your experiences, and if you have any questions about the campaign or how I ran it just ask.

[zinycor]

Am running HotDQ and my and my players are having a good time on it, but now that I've read RoT i didn't like it one bit... I found it quite boring and badly written.

A very big problem for me is that the first chapter has a big load of new characters on the council, they are full of exposition, but no adventures around that, so lots of exposition for no good reason :(. And on the dragons, that's again another council, with each dragon having a particular view, but not much more.

Too many NPCs, too much exposition, too litle to do with them.

How did you work around that? wasn't it a problem? was it?

[TheOOB]

Am running HotDQ and my and my players are having a good time on it, but now that I've read RoT i didn't like it one bit... I found it quite boring and badly written.

A very big problem for me is that the first chapter has a big load of new characters on the council, they are full of exposition, but no adventures around that, so lots of exposition for no good reason :(. And on the dragons, that's again another council, with each dragon having a particular view, but not much more.

Too many NPCs, too much exposition, too litle to do with them.

How did you work around that? wasn't it a problem? was it?

The council of Waterdeep presented an interesting problem, I'm not confident enough in my acting ability to play 11 different people arguing with eachother and the players. I handled the councils as sort of between session things. I explain who all the councilors were, and how they reacted to each of the players actions. The council is less an adventure in itself(though it could be if your group is more community theater than mine), but a mix of status report and adventure seed, and that I like. The council also represents the first time the players spend a significant amount of time in a major city, which is a good time for them to spend all their copious amounts of gold(though don't just let them crack the DMG and start buying, learn from my mistakes).

Metallic Dragons arise I liked, because it was an adventure that actually made the players think and act in a way they're not used to. It's the one adventure that actually made them think of the specific consequences of their actions on a larger scale. The later mission to Thay was mess less well designed, because there wasn't specific mechanics or topics that needed to be covered, and a lot of really unfair checks and saving throws.

But if you don't like the councils, just do them quickly before a session begins(or after one ends). You can even just print out the sheet in the back of the book and tell the players how their actions are affecting the factions.

[Seruvius]

I haven't run or played either yet, but I intent to start DM-ing HOtD soon. Just from reading over it I agree that it seems a bit of a railroad but a well decorated and designed railroad at least, so it doesn't seem too bad. I will be running it for new players, so a bit of railroad is probably a good thing to start with at least.
RoT reminds me a bit of RHoD from 3.5 (Tiamat revival and draconic minions in both? similar? Nooooo, never.) in that there seems to be a lot of room for the DM to move encounters around. I agree that the assassination encounters and the councils in seem a bit meh. The councils are very tell but don't show and the assassinations just seem like "heres a thing, do it yourself then give them a level." I think that with some extra padding around them, the assassinations could be really quite good.

With your feedback on the whole Xonthal outing(and the maze did look strongly trial and error just from reading it), I am thinking of leaving it out and using the time spent there to make both Severin and the assassinations tie in a bit better. Not quite sure how yet, but i like the idea of tying it in to the councils as well, especially the draconic council. Maybe reskin the first assassination attempt as the PC's being attacked on their way to the draconic council (aerial combat on a dragons back with a flock of lesser evil dragons coming for you.)
Or maybe have one of the attempts refluffed as the PC's being given a golden opportunity thanks to either the zhentarim or the harpers spy networks to assassinate severin as he is doing something important or other. This backfires as the info was planted by severin and he wanders of cackling to himself while the PC's fight his own ambush on them, which is one fo the various assassin encounters.
Just throwing around some ideas to try and tweak some of the failings. I do agree that as you said, ing eneral they seem well designed, but with room for improvement IMO.

[Rallicus]

I made the mistake of letting players buy items at waterdeep based on the suggested price in the DMG(a note, never let players just buy items from the DMG, and the suggested prices in there are worthless, ignore them).


Wait... are you saying you allowed your players to buy magic items from the DMG? If so, that'd be explain a lot about the players' drastic rise in power.

Either way, interesting read. I've never had the patience to run an adventure path in its entirety. HOTDQ turned me off on the first chapter and I never really gave it a chance... it was pretty clear they had no idea what they were doing when they wrote that first chapter, because I'm pretty sure 5e wasn't even finalized at that time (they had no idea about encounter building, iirc, and so they based them on CR).

I'm wondering if Rise was a decrease in difficulty, or if its an inherent trait of 5e's mechanics (honestly encounters have been increasingly difficult to make in my own campaign as the party progresses in level; single, CR-appropriate [or higher] encounters are too easy, while multiple monster encounters are bogged down and tend to drag on...). If you did allow them to buy magic items that obviously plays a part as well.

Let us know how Princes turns out.

[Callin]

What a coincidence my party just finished RoT today as well. I agree the Tower was crap, the dragon council... we failed the mess outta that. We refused to get the items and play their games and pettiness.

What we fought for the finale was nothing near what the book suggested. It was only 3 of us so the DM cut out many of the monsters and dragons. All in all it was an OK adventure but I feel it was not well meshed together.

[TheOOB]

What a coincidence my party just finished RoT today as well. I agree the Tower was crap, the dragon council... we failed the mess outta that. We refused to get the items and play their games and pettiness.

What we fought for the finale was nothing near what the book suggested. It was only 3 of us so the DM cut out many of the monsters and dragons. All in all it was an OK adventure but I feel it was not well meshed together.

One thing I noticed the the adventure always rewarded the players for acting like selfless heroes. You have to give quite a bit to the dragons to really start pissing off the other factions. I'd say the dragons are worth it, but RoT never actually states what the factions do /sigh

In the last adventure I actually threw in the last assassination attempt on a bridge to the temple(they flew dragons to there, I ignored the lava tunnels). They then fought in a hige chamber with Severan Rath, a ton of mages and some demons. Once the number of mages dropped below 5(they correct figured out to kill them first, the bard casting fireball in high level slots), the rest was just clean up. Since they got every faction though I felt they deserved a victory lap. Had they missed factions I would have added more/tougher encounters.


Wait... are you saying you allowed your players to buy magic items from the DMG? If so, that'd be explain a lot about the players' drastic rise in power.

That was part of it, though they never got anything as good as Rezmir's sword which HotDQ gave them. Part of the lack of difficulty was that they kept fighting the same foes, cultists and dragons, and they got good at fighting them, and part of it is that the foes don't scale well, an adult dragon stops being a challenge after your 4th one. Also very few adventures had more than 3-4 encounters tops, so the party never really had to fight overly low on resources. 5e characters, especially high level ones need 5-8 encounters before they are well and truely tapped out.

The magic item thing contributed to power, but it was also hard to arbitrate. It's hard to start using the rules in the book when items like a broom of flying are supposed to cap out at 500gp.


With your feedback on the whole Xonthal outing(and the maze did look strongly trial and error just from reading it), I am thinking of leaving it out and using the time spent there to make both Severin and the assassinations tie in a bit better. Not quite sure how yet, but i like the idea of tying it in to the councils as well, especially the draconic council. Maybe reskin the first assassination attempt as the PC's being attacked on their way to the draconic council (aerial combat on a dragons back with a flock of lesser evil dragons coming for you.)
Or maybe have one of the attempts refluffed as the PC's being given a golden opportunity thanks to either the zhentarim or the harpers spy networks to assassinate severin as he is doing something important or other. This backfires as the info was planted by severin and he wanders of cackling to himself while the PC's fight his own ambush on them, which is one fo the various assassin encounters.
Just throwing around some ideas to try and tweak some of the failings. I do agree that as you said, ing eneral they seem well designed, but with room for improvement IMO.

By the end I was just telling the players every time they picked wrong and ignoring the encounters(the dao encounter was literally the only one they took any damage in), and I had to drop massive hints at the end. And 90% of the foes in the tower were Cultists from the MM, which were not tough at 2nd level.

Honestly, while I liked the plot, I feel like RiT was rushed out so players could jump right to it after HotDQ.

[MadBear]

As one of TheOOB's players I can say that despite a few bumps, this campaign was a great intro to 5e. I think HOTDQ was defintely the more fun half, but RoT definitely had its high points (It was fun to be treated like heroes in RoT).

I will say that the vengeance paladin is a really ridiculously strong character in this campaign. When I first grabbed the Great weapon fighting style, we let me reroll all the attack dice that rolled 1's & 2's. That decision was quickly reversed when it became clear that it made my nova'ing ability ridiculous (when we fought the green dragon&speaker, I was able to charge it with haste and between my 4 attacks (2 normal + haste + bonus action from great weapon feat), I downed it in 1 turn using almost all my spell slots rerolling all those 1's & 2's). So if you're on the fence about it, I strongly recommend not allowing that.

[JFahy]

[I was thinking of a different feat. Nothing to see here. Move along.]

[JFahy]

[Vague spoilers.]

My group has just finished Metallics Unite and is currently in a somewhat-alarming fight in Elturel against cultists...and frost giants, who have taken the theft of Skyreach as an excuse to do some raiding...and Neronvain the Green, who is directing the cult's attacks outward from the High Forest to spare his people.

The general idea of the campaign is holding up, I think, but I wish they had done a couple more editing passes to unify things more. There are components like rescuing Maccath the Crimson, or Xonthal's Tower, or even the delegation to Thay that as-scripted feel kind of inconsequential. (I've rewritten quite a bit to make motivations and connections clearer, and when it's all over around the end of the summer I'll either revisit this thread or start a new one and spew forth my experiences.)