Hoard of the Dragon Queen

[Rigdraf]

Hey guys,
I am running a 5e campaign, hoard of the dragon queen. This is my first time as DM. The party composition at the moment is a rogue a monk and possibly 2 wizards. Is this going to be an issue? Should I insist one of them be a melee tank like character?

[A Fat Dragon]

If you feel the party’s build is going to be an issue, than alter some of the encounters I’d possible. Higher health, lower damage enemies, as all of them are pretty high-damage classes. You could ask them to switch, but be ready to accept the fact that they might not want to switch their classes.

[Cespenar]

In my experience tanks are pretty important in this edition. In the end most encounters can be softened up by enough cleverness and strategy, but in a long campaign, eventually your HPs and resistances will be tested, and AC doesn't always cut it.

Advise them that if they feel like it, a tank would be very helpful to the group in a tactical way. Don't force them, though.

[bc56]

Don't force the players to switch characters. That's a jerk move, and it will just irritate them. Let them play any classes they want. The classes are fairly well balanced too, so it's not a huge problem. Since there's no healer, just add more health potions to the treasure.

[mephnick]

Any problems you have will be with the adventure itself. It has major high and low points in terms of difficulty. I highly, highly suggest starting the characters at level 2. The first chapter is really tough, especially with frail, resource dependent characters.

[DarkKnightJin]

I tend to ask what the party is going to be, before I solidify my pick.

In the case of your party, OP, if I were one of the Wizards, and I wanted to play something like that..
I might switch my character to an Arcana Cleric.
I'd still get a Wizard vibe, but I wouldn't be as squishy. And, of course, I'd be able to get someone to their feet if they go down, thanks to Healing Word.

[Vogie]

If you don't want to change the PCs' characters, nor the encounters, you can always add a DM/PC that can act as a simple tank or simple healer.

[The Shadowdove]

We are on the last chapter for our Hoard of the dragon queen playthrough that we are doing for a podcast.

We've gotten up to the last chapter in 11 3hour sessions.

Three players.

Originally A ranger, fighter, and paladin.

The ranger died, so we replaced the player and character for fun.

Now it's wizard, battlemaster fighter, ancients paladin.

Having heavy meleers definitely helps, even just one would have helped a lot

I haven't held many punches actually. However, some of the encounters have been very obviously deadly. Which made them more exciting.

If you aren't going to have a heavy frontliner, your players are going to have to be beyond strategic, as well as experts of subterfuge. Perhaps a bit lucky as well.

Good luck!

If you want any advice on streamlining the adventure to remove fluff that may make it a bit boring or tedious, let me know. I spent a lot of time prepping and planning to remove elements that might bore players or listeners.

-dove

[Innocent_bystan]

... remove fluff that may make it a bit boring or tedious ...


This.
The adventure as written has some fairly boring passages.

[mephnick]

This.
The adventure as written has some fairly boring passages.

That entire caravan chapter was ugh.

[The Shadowdove]

That entire caravan chapter was ugh.

That's one thing I read over and over again while preparing the chapter.

Many groups said that chapter 4 is where they started to fall apart and suggested skipping most of it.

I spent a good bit of time reading guides and deciding what to trim/leave in. Most of the encounters are pointless. But it's definitely possible to emphasize a few npcs and keep only relevant or particularly fun encounters, while still capturing the essence of the long journey.

It takes some narration, but I strongly recommend telling of how long the journey is instead of making a party play 6-12 sessions of just caravan travel.

We did it in one 3-3.5hr session and enjoyed ourselves.