Red Hand of Doom with Purely Martial Team?

[Essence_of_War]

I was interested in running some of my players through the Red Hand of Doom with a mostly martial characters. Namely a Crusader tank, Warblade weapon master type, Swordsage mobile striker, and a Ranger/PsyWar archer type.

I've heard that RHoD is really intended for a tank/skillmonkey/blaster/healbot team, but will I run into any impassable snags with a martial team? Are there any particular encounters to watch out for that are very dangerous without the relevant casters?

[evil-frosty]

I suggest you read some of the campaign journals right here on gitp those should help a lot. Some encounters can just be mean like the one with the behir. Some areas heavily assume that their are spellcasters in the party to make things easier but those parts are then just hard without said casters. It should be doable just expect a lot of nears deaths and deaths.

[Essence_of_War]

Nice, I've seen some of those floating about.

Could you recommend any particularly good ones?

[Fizban]

AslanCross's was great. He had two martial adepts in the party, so there's that too. The only problem would be that he heavily modified the module, rebuilding and beefing up almost everything to challenge the extra large and decently optimized party. They still had two or three deaths though.

[Leon]

Everything is doable with any mix of Classes - you as the Dm just need to be mindful of a group without the traditional selection of classes and adapt how you run things or allow for that style of playing

[AslanCross]

AslanCross's was great. He had two martial adepts in the party, so there's that too. The only problem would be that he heavily modified the module, rebuilding and beefing up almost everything to challenge the extra large and decently optimized party. They still had two or three deaths though.

Thanks for the plug. Now I don't have to indulge in shameless self-promotion.

If your party is all martial, you'll probably be able to breeze through the initial areas easily. Martial adepts are stronger than the optimization level the module assumes, so your party will easily grease the softies like the Hell Hounds.

Once you get to the dragon battles and the caster battles later on, though, the melee characters will start to feel they need caster support.

While I did dramatically increase the power level of some creatures (Abithriax went up to CR 13, for example), I did follow the same party composition assumption that the module made (one or two melee characters, at least one healer, one blaster, and a skill monkey).

Without casters, the dragons and wyrmlords will prove to be very difficult to handle. They'll also be so tapped out after Azarr Kul (assuming they manage to dispel his self-buffs and turn his Clericzilla switch off) that they might not survive the Aspect of Tiamat's initial breath attack.

[Eldariel]

Off the top of my head, Dragons fly so an all-martial party should probably try and get some means of flight and ranged weapons for everybody. Also, there's a few pesky encounters that involve quite strong magical defenses on some opponents; the party should probably strive and have some way to dispel or penetrate magical protections (for the purposes of the campaign tho, someone with Pierce Magical Protection would go a long way).

And of course, they need to see to being able to heal themselves out of combat but that's more or less taken care of with UMD (or Ranger; they can use Wands of CLW without work, after all) and some Wands. As ToB-types, opponents like the Behir and the Hydra, while impressive, should be something they can handle. Roots of the Mountain, Shadow Jaunt, etc. - there are some tricks ToB-types can use to deal with many of the annoying disabling martial attacks monsters employ, and the various control-type attacks can cut down to a Hydra's attack power. Not to mention they can probably output enough damage to reasonably be able to slay such creatures in melee.

Everything is doable with any mix of Classes - you as the Dm just need to be mindful of a group without the traditional selection of classes and adapt how you run things or allow for that style of playing

Don't you mean "You as a DM can alter things to make them doable with a party lacking certain capabilities"? I mean, I can right off the bat come up with a thousand things you can't do with one class but can with another. But it's mostly up to the DM what the party faces.

[woodenbandman]

I mean, I can right off the bat come up with a thousand things you can't do with one class but can with another. But it's mostly up to the DM what the party faces.

So don't make the party do those thousand things.

[Eldariel]

So don't make the party do those thousand things.

Precisely what I'm saying. It's not a matter of "any class can do anything", it's a matter of "make sure players don't have to deal with something they can't deal with". What I quoted sounded like "Yeah, no matter what classes, the players can deal with anything" which of course leads to problems like facing stuff they can't deal with.

[Saintheart]

*Obligatory and shameless plug for my guide for DMs on RHOD, in my signature. Even contains links to the better campaign journals, too!*

[Draz74]

This actually sounds like a really interesting experiment. How well can Tier 3-4 classes get along without spellcasting in a fairly well-rounded adventure?

I didn't get past the first phase of the adventure when I ran RHoD, but offhand I think it seems doable. I second Eldariel's comments, though: someone should focus on getting Pierce Magical Protection, and everyone who's not good at ranged combat should make sure they have a way to fly.