TheOOB
2015-06-21, 01:35 AM
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.
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.