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  1. - Top - End - #61
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    Well, this brings on a couple of larger meta questions we debated back in the old handbook thread, which I might rehash by saying -- what exactly is the point of the Victory Point count anyway?

    The handbook breaks down the totals, but as with the distances to be covered by the party, you really have to be an abject failure at just about everything to not have 40 VP after the final fight with Kharn.

    Just killing Kharn, Saarvith, Koth, Ulwai, and Abithriax nets you 24 VP, i.e. over the halfway line. And these guys are all guaranteed to show up at Brindol even if you missed them elsewhere. You pick up another 10 from saving the walls, putting out fires, holding the Dawn Way, and killing Skather - again, encounters that are pretty much put directly across your path. So we're already at 34 VP. If you convince the Lords not to be complete fools strategically, there's another 8 VP right there, it's over, you have more than 40 VP and could - if your party's strong - literally go straight to Brindol, kick back for four weeks, and then win the whole campaign that way.

    You don't have to forge any other alliance, you don't have to kill any dragon other than the red who shows up, and you still win it ... albeit the encounters are a lot tougher, presumably, what with the Ghostlord fully on board and having to deal with 5 level bosses at once in the final battle when you should have been cut down to one if you were going out doing lots of stuff. Rhest, the Stone Lion, hell, even bringing down Skull Gorge Bridge itself are all completely optional.
    I think I have a good solution to the value of killing the commanders. Any commander who survives long enough to participate in the Battle of Brindol is worth only half the number of VP - they aren't available for any sort of regrouping or second assault, but they also were present to lead prongs of the army in the initial attack, making it far more effective than it would have been without them.

    You should probably exclude Kharn and Abithriax from that penalty since the party doesn't really have an opportunity to eliminate them before the battle - but maybe you could drop some hints of opportune moments when the party could plan a surgical strike to try to knock them out early.

    (Also - and this is mostly just amusing - it looks like the party can earn fully 38 VP without killing a single dragon or Wyrmlord by completing everything else with maximum success.)

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    And as said, the VP count itself is not really that granular in terms of outcomes. Over 40 VP, you win. Less than 40 VP, you don't. I accept the logic that not every decision needs to have a graduated or granular outcome, hell, hitpoints are the simplest method of telling us that, whatever the tactics chosen, eventually an encounter has to stop so everyone can go home. But the count is so written with utter incompetence or failure in mind that in practice it's very difficult for parties to fail (although - and I do concede this, to my amazement - it is not impossible to lose RHOD in this way. Jon_Dahl's campaign in the handbook is precisely that, albeit that was a fail party with a capital F written in neon.) It's a count that tries to make the campaign look like something other than linear when, in reality, it isn't. Not meaningfully, at least to my mind.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    Again, there've been homebrew suggestions on how to address this weakness, and they really come down to turning the VP count into either an indication of levels of victory - ranging from outright destruction of any future hobgoblin threat to pyrrhic victories where the hobgoblins will have to be dug out of the western end of the Vale over the years to come - or by making the VPs a kingdom-building resource to be spent after the game for a notional continuation of the campaign where the players become the lords of Vraath or something.
    I think you could do levels of victory in a way that's meaningful for the PCs long-term beyond just a resource to spend for material gain.

    Let's use 40 points as the baseline for simplicity. I'm ignoring the actual cap on how many points there could be, because you can tinker with that anyway.

    • 25: Catastrophic failure. The Red Hand completely overruns Brindol, slaughtering most of the city's defenders and half of the civilian population while sustaining minimal casualties. The city walls and many important structures remain intact, and the Red Hand has a strong bastion from which to conduct operations against Dennovar. If the PCs fall back to Dennovar with the survivors, they find themselves quickly run out of the city. Word of their failure spreads across the country, and they're greeted with varying degrees of skepticism and sometimes outright hostility wherever they go.
    • 30: Defeat. The Red Hand overruns Brindol. A few thousand civilians manage to escape to Dennovar, and Brindols rulers make the difficult decision to burn as much of it to the ground as they can to deny the Red Hand a strong bastion where they can entrench and regroup for further expansion eastward. Many of the survivors blame the PCs for the city's fate.
    • 35: Stalemate. The attack turns into an extended siege, and while eventually the Red Hand breaks from running out of food, the people of Brindol fare equally poorly. Large portions of the city burn. Thousands of human soldiers die in combat. Thousands of civilians starve. Thousands more die of disease from squalid conditions. While thousands of hobgoblins perished as well, there are still thousands more who could regroup and attack the Vale again in the future. The PCs are largely forgotten, those who would have recognized their contributions having been among the first to perish.
    • 40: Pyrrhic victory. Brindol repels the Red Hand, but at grave cost. The city is badly damaged, with whole districts razed to the ground. There are thousands of casualties among the defenders and thousands more dead civilians. The PCs have made many friends among the surviving defenders, but most of the populace is too preoccupied with picking up the shattered remnants of their lives and families to feel gratitude.
    • 45: Expensive victory. Brindol repels the Red Hand, and while the victory costs a horrific number of lives, the city is still mostly standing. While the city's rulers hail the PCs as heroes and grant the greatest reward they can spare (which isn't much), reactions among the populace range from tepid to outright resentful, with many impoverished survivors asserting the PCs put their own survival ahead of the city's defense.
    • 50: Sound victory. Brindol repels the Red Hand. The city sustains some damage, but nothing catastrophic. There are many casualties, but there are still plenty of hands to rebuild. Most of the civilian population is spared. The PCs are hailed as heroes and rewarded handsomely.
    • 55: Resounding victory. The Red Hand breaks itself against the walls of Brindol. The city sustains minimal damage and few casualties. The PCs are forever enshrined in memory as the city's saviors. Word of their achievement travels far and wide, attracting favorable attention from rulers of great cities like (assume Forgotten Realms) Silverymoon and Waterdeep - as well as a few individuals who are major world powers in their own right (elder good dragons, archmages, etc.). Doors open to them wherever they travel. The rulers of Brindol grant the PCs a sizeable cut of the weapons and armor recovered from the fallen hobgoblins; sold judiciously over time in the right areas, this works out to tens of thousands of gp each.

    Essentially you tie not just their material fortunes but also their reputations to the outcome. There's also the potential warm fuzzy value of saving everyone and experiencing their gratitude - or the sour taste of being run out of town.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    And there's also my ... agnosticism ... over whether you're "meant to", or whether it adds to the experience, to be telling the players about the VP count as you go or not. How did you wife handle this one when she ran it, and how did the party receive it, if I might ask?
    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    (EDIT: I have an unexamined hunch that VPs might be more meaningful if they can be lost or spent during the overall campaign for the party's personal benefit and at the cost of the Vale personally. e.g. expend 2 VP, but pick up some resource that helps only your group personally and puts some lovable NPC at risk. I think this only works if you make the party aware it's a deliberate choice they are making to spend VP for some advantage at the risk of harm later on, or to the wider campaign victory. There seems to be something in making these kinds of choices, but I haven't really thought about it in much detail beyond the thoughts I had about the Audience with the Lords.)
    I was vaguely aware that there was a points-based system because she mentioned it to me at home during prep, but nobody else knew about it, and I didn't know any details, including where we were relative to where we needed to be.

    I think it would be a really awkward break in the fourth wall to spell it out in full to the players. You could do a decent abstraction by having the players receive intelligence/scouting reports about the army and its morale, provisions, etc., but then that makes it really hard to use VP as hard currency for trade-offs as suggested above. You could still do that as an abstraction, however: "You can take this potent magic item for yourselves, but then Captain Ulverth will be less effective leading the defenses from the front" or "You can claim the mercenary gold for yourselves as a reward for your services thus far, but then there won't be any money to hire the Shining Axes."

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    This will tie into Fiz's observations that if you're going to have fail conditions for the party, then you have to give some sort of opportunity to make them up. Which RHOD sure does - in spades - but I am still uncertain about whether the VP count is eve needed or whether it should be tinkered with on that aspect.
    I think you could adjust the thresholds for VP-based outcomes to account for the level of difficulty you want for the campaign. Maybe establish the difficulty level during Session Zero. Requiring a minimum number of VP for a positive outcome essentially does create fail conditions - they're just overly generous, and as you say there are tons of ways to make up for them.

    That said, squeezing the timeline based on early successes also can reduce the opportunities for later success without really being punitive. The party earns a lot of Victory Points early on (because you award VP for each town evacuated), and those are cemented, but they have less time to earn other points later. I think successfully evacuating towns provides a great excuse for that and isn't overly punishing given how generous the time allowance is in the first place.
    Last edited by jmax; 2022-08-03 at 07:30 AM. Reason: Add two-word labels to the outcomes.

  2. - Top - End - #62
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by jmax View Post
    I think you could do levels of victory in a way that's meaningful for the PCs long-term beyond just a resource to spend for material gain.

    Let's use 40 points as the baseline for simplicity. I'm ignoring the actual cap on how many points there could be, because you can tinker with that anyway.

    • 25: The Red Hand completely overruns Brindol, slaughtering most of the city's defenders and half of the civilian population while sustaining minimal casualties. The city walls and many important structures remain intact, and the Red Hand has a strong bastion from which to conduct operations against Dennovar. If the PCs fall back to Dennovar with the survivors, they find themselves quickly run out of the city. Word of their failure spreads across the country, and they're greeted with varying degrees of skepticism and sometimes outright hostility wherever they go.
    • 30: The Red Hand overruns Brindol. A few thousand civilians manage to escape to Dennovar, and Brindols rulers make the difficult decision to burn as much of it to the ground as they can to deny the Red Hand a strong bastion where they can entrench and regroup for further expansion westward. Many of the survivors blame the PCs for the city's fate.
    • 35: Stalemate. The attack turns into an extended siege, and while eventually the Red Hand breaks from running out of food, the people of Brindol fare equally poorly. Large portions of the city burn. Thousands of human soldiers die in combat. Thousands of civilians starve. Thousands more die of disease from squalid conditions. While thousands of hobgoblins perished as well, there are still thousands more who could regroup and attack the Vale again in the future. The PCs are largely forgotten, those who would have recognized their contributions having been among the first to perish.
    • 40: Brindol repels the Red Hand, but at grave cost. The city is badly damaged, with whole districts razed to the ground. There are thousands of casualties among the defenders and thousands more dead civilians. The PCs have made many friends among the surviving defenders, but most of the populace is too preoccupied with picking up the shattered remnants of their lives and families to feel gratitude.
    • 45: Brindol repels the Red Hand, and while the victory costs a horrific number of lives, the city is still mostly standing. While the city's rulers hail the PCs as heroes and grant the greatest reward they can spare (which isn't much), reactions among the populace range from tepid to outright resentful, with many impoverished survivors asserting the PCs put their own survival ahead of the city's defense.
    • 50: Brindol repels the Red Hand. The city sustains some damage, but nothing catastrophic. There are many casualties, but there are still plenty of hands to rebuild. Most of the civilian population is spared. The PCs are hailed as heroes and rewarded handsomely.
    • 55: The Red Hand breaks itself against the walls of Brindol. The city sustains minimal damage and few casualties. The PCs are forever enshrined in memory as the city's saviors. Word of their achievement travels far and wide, attracting favorable attention from rulers of great cities like (assume Forgotten Realms) Silverymoon and Waterdeep - as well as a few individuals who are major world powers in their own right (elder good dragons, archmages, etc.). Doors open to them wherever they travel. The rulers of Brindol grant the PCs a sizeable cut of the weapons and armor recovered from the fallen hobgoblins; sold judiciously over time in the right areas, this works out to tens of thousands of gp each.

    Essentially you tie not just their material fortunes but also their reputations to the outcome. There's also the potential warm fuzzy value of saving everyone and experiencing their gratitude - or the sour taste of being run out of town.
    This is FANTASTIC, and much more in-depth than my mind initially jumped to when you two first mentioned ‘degrees of success.’

    Adding to the discussion of Victory Points and whether players have knowledge of them or not, I will throw my 2 coppers in. When I played RHoD in 2006, the DM only told us about the existence of the VP after the Battle of Brindol was completed. When I ran a reskinned version of RHoD in 2011, I did the same; only told the players about the VP’s after the conclusion of the climactic battle. I’m getting ready to run another reskinned RHoD in the coming months, and I plan to do the same, again.

    I’m a big proponent of using RHoD as an excellent framework that can be reskinned to taste. My previous run of it was for a gestalt Viking campaign, where I leveled things up slightly, and swapped out every single monster for something else, turning it into a Tanarukk/troll army with demonic support. This time I’m going to take a bit of Warhammer inspiration, and make it a horde of Beastmen (using ibixians from MM3) for my by-then 7th level party.

    I’m trying to remember what things I might have done to change the feel of the Red Hand from a Lawful evil regimented army to a Chaotic evil horde, but it’s been a decade, and I’ve had kids since then… sleep deprivation can sap your memory pretty bad. 😜

    Any thoughts on what minor alterations to make to change the feel of the army from regimented to a chaotic horde?

    I am going to change up the theme of the locations. Rather than Drellin’s Ferry being on the edge of a boggy forest, Drellin’s Valley will be a mining town in a mountainous region. Instead of a bridge, the party will be able to take out a mountain road with a landslide. Like I said, RHoD is a great and flexible framework that can be adapted to taste.

  3. - Top - End - #63
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    EvilClericGuy

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by ksbsnowowl View Post
    I’m trying to remember what things I might have done to change the feel of the Red Hand from a Lawful evil regimented army to a Chaotic evil horde, but it’s been a decade, and I’ve had kids since then… sleep deprivation can sap your memory pretty bad. 😜

    Any thoughts on what minor alterations to make to change the feel of the army from regimented to a chaotic horde?
    "and I’ve had kids since then…"

    Really, what more inspiration for a CE horde do you need?

    Joking aside, maybe less organization when pursuing combat with the heroes. More melee, more buffing spellcasting/less distance spellcasting, and less ranged weapons.

    If bosses get killed, the horde stalls while the new leadership establishes their bonafides.

    More of a personal retainer relationship between the leaders, their champions, and named monsters.
    I have a blog; come see what I've created: https://thewhiteminotaur.wordpress.com/
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  4. - Top - End - #64
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    ClericGuy

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by ksbsnowowl View Post

    Any thoughts on what minor alterations to make to change the feel of the army from regimented to a chaotic horde?
    Temple of Elemental Evil (1st edition) is the best representation of an organized chaotic evil force I've seen in D&D.

    Basically it expresses as factions and rivalries. It was an alliance of two very different evil deities, plus a couple opportunists (one a favorite of a third evil deity, the other a wizard+assassin team who had their own agenda). The main temple was completely secret, invented four other religions to be the front-men and they all competed with each other. Everybody gave lip service to the boss while trying to gain power and prestige, but often undercut each other, sometimes even (usually those competing poorly) setting up back-channels to the PCs to get them to clobber a rival.

    With Tiamat, the obvious thing would be to have the Red Hand wyrmlords and their closest followers all be in competition with each other, and perhaps each identify with a particular chromatic dragon, ideally the one they're seen working with most often. Perhaps the arcanists like blue dragons (they favor lightning bolts, and their dragon wields a wand of fireballs), the vanguard troops (goblin riders, manticores etc) Green as Vrath's group was a vanguard, the Rhest types (mindbender, various dragonspawn, ogres/giants) favor black dragons, and the top military leaders and priests (they keep summoning hellhounds) red, and the spies/monks/infiltrators white dragon - we do after all never encounter a white dragon so perhaps it is smarter than the others and more stealthy, and never risks itself against pc's which would be a kind of cool twist. Have encounters where two groups are going for the same objective when the PCs interfere. As PC's gain victories that faction weakens within the horde, and perhaps they try to enlist the powerful PC's to level the playing field or alternately they organize angry assassination attempts with the remnants of their faction.

    Given that the bugbear wyrmlord is an arcanist who favors lightning and is assigned to a vanguard group, possibly the reason that wyrmlord is in a keep and his green dragon is elsewhere is an expression of his dissatisfaction with being assigned to a bunch of stupid Greenies, and the Manticore+Minotaur are there to keep an eye on him for Ozzy. It would also explain how that wyrmlord is perfectly willing to bail on his entire force with no qualms, using them to buy time while he gathers his gear and flies off. Being a high cha sorcerer, he probably got that garrison to trust him, which might lead to bitter recriminations of any survivors "how could we have trusted a Blue?"

    This might not be super obvious to the PCs if nobody speaks goblin and this only plays out in combat encounters, where coordination between factions goes poorly. Interrogations could reveal some of this but it could be made more obvious as some factions sacrifice others to the PC's to make escapes, or betrayal between factions starts using PCs as tools of choice.

    Anyway just spitballing some ideas. When thinking chaotic think of a philosophy of "competition breeds strength" and chaotic evil being "If I'm not strong enough to keep my subordinates in line I don't deserve to lead, and I can't respect my subordinate if he doesn't try to betray me from time to time to get my spot."
    Last edited by Seward; 2022-08-01 at 05:09 PM.

  5. - Top - End - #65
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by ksbsnowowl View Post
    This is FANTASTIC, and much more in-depth than my mind initially jumped to when you two first mentioned ‘degrees of success.’
    Glad you like it! I hadn't intended to put so much into that, but I sort of got carried away :-P

    Quote Originally Posted by ksbsnowowl View Post
    I’m a big proponent of using RHoD as an excellent framework that can be reskinned to taste. My previous run of it was for a gestalt Viking campaign, where I leveled things up slightly, and swapped out every single monster for something else, turning it into a Tanarukk/troll army with demonic support. This time I’m going to take a bit of Warhammer inspiration, and make it a horde of Beastmen (using ibixians from MM3) for my by-then 7th level party.
    That's an interesting idea. I can see that working really well. It sort of reminds me of the way Brandon Sanderson talks about some of his early novel work, in which he moves entire plot arcs and character groups around between settings if something isn't working well with the big picture but it has really solid elements. I'm probably butchering that description something awful, but it basically seemed to boil down to treating characters and plots as modular pieces.

  6. - Top - End - #66
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Planetar

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by jmax View Post
    Glad you like it! I hadn't intended to put so much into that, but I sort of got carried away :-P.
    Please get carried away more often, this is great material that I'll be trying to work into the handbook somehow. :) It may take the form of a 'breakout' GoogleDoc or similar, covering both "breaking the fourth wall" and "keeping VP hidden" subjects, but it does deserve to get some specific recognition.

  7. - Top - End - #67
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    Please get carried away more often, this is great material that I'll be trying to work into the handbook somehow. :) It may take the form of a 'breakout' GoogleDoc or similar, covering both "breaking the fourth wall" and "keeping VP hidden" subjects, but it does deserve to get some specific recognition.
    Ok, I've got a few more things for you:
    1. Award ad-hoc Victory Points for majorly degrading the Red Hand army in ways not mentioned in the module. For example, my druid used Ulwai's staff of Control Weather to rain hailstones on the army throughout the entire night before battle. Big, nasty hailstorm - the kind of hail that totals cars and seriously damages buildings. The officers in their posh command tents were fine, but none of the rank-and-file soldiers got a decent night's sleep before the battle. Another option I held in reserve but didn't deploy (I think my wife asked me not to use it) was using a charge of the staff to lay a dense fog over the whole city if the Red Hand army attacked at night (which they did), using a wand or five of Fire Eyes to let the defenders on the wall see through it so they could spot ladders, siege towers, etc. Hobgoblins have darkvision, so fog would neutralize their sensory advantage in darkness. I would assert that each of those could be worth one Victory Point each.
    2. Award ad-hoc Victory Points for major contributions the PCs make during the Battle of Brindol that aren't mentioned in the module. For example, when the Red Hand army made it's show of force forming up in full strength beyond arrow range and cutting loose with the intimidating drumming, I dropped Call Avalanche on one of their blocks, killing nearly a thousand soldiers and causing enough havoc to disrupt the drum show. (Remember what you said about 5th-level spells during the Battle of Brindol? Yeah, that.) It made a meaningful dent in the enemy army, and it also provided a measurable shift in the balance of morale. That could also be worth a Victory Point - maybe even two, one for the kills and one for the morale impact on the troops on both sides.
    3. I think I mentioned this earlier - I'd also give Victory Points for successfully evacuating towns. Probably one point per town for getting the people to evacuate and another point if there was enough time for the evacuees to get their foodstores out. Successful evacuations mean more defenders for Brindol, and evacuating the food denies resupply opportunities for the Red Hand army while also bolstering Brindol for a longer siege. As a downside, though, the army's time to reach Brindol is reduced by one day per Victory Point earned this way (one day that would be spent slaughtering the populace and another that would be spent pillaging the food), getting them to Brindol that much faster and therefore potentially denying the PCs opportunities to earn Victory Points elsewhere.


    And of course from the beginning you might adjust the number of Victory Points needed for each level of result depending on how much you're adjusting the opportunities and how hard you want to make the whole arc. I would definitely use intelligence/scouting reports to keep the PCs informed of the state of affairs in an abstract way.

    Examples:
    • "The Red Hand army is cranky, demoralized, and hungry. Discipline is starting to degrade, and several hundred soldiers appear to have deserted. However, they're still marching at a good clip, extra motivated by diminishing food stores - at their current speed, they'll likely reach Brindol in ten days."
    • "The hobgoblins' spirits are high. They've successfully sacked three towns and captured enough food to keep them going at full rations. They'll likely reach Brindol in two weeks, well fed and rested and eager for war." (Depending on how brutal you want the hobgoblins to be, maybe they've taken prisoners for meals on the go.)

  8. - Top - End - #68
    Pixie in the Playground
     
    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by jmax View Post
    I think you could do levels of victory in a way that's meaningful for the PCs long-term beyond just a resource to spend for material gain.

    Let's use 40 points as the baseline for simplicity. I'm ignoring the actual cap on how many points there could be, because you can tinker with that anyway.

    • 25: The Red Hand completely overruns Brindol, slaughtering most of the city's defenders and half of the civilian population while sustaining minimal casualties. The city walls and many important structures remain intact, and the Red Hand has a strong bastion from which to conduct operations against Dennovar. If the PCs fall back to Dennovar with the survivors, they find themselves quickly run out of the city. Word of their failure spreads across the country, and they're greeted with varying degrees of skepticism and sometimes outright hostility wherever they go.
    • 30: The Red Hand overruns Brindol. A few thousand civilians manage to escape to Dennovar, and Brindols rulers make the difficult decision to burn as much of it to the ground as they can to deny the Red Hand a strong bastion where they can entrench and regroup for further expansion eastward. Many of the survivors blame the PCs for the city's fate.
    • 35: Stalemate. The attack turns into an extended siege, and while eventually the Red Hand breaks from running out of food, the people of Brindol fare equally poorly. Large portions of the city burn. Thousands of human soldiers die in combat. Thousands of civilians starve. Thousands more die of disease from squalid conditions. While thousands of hobgoblins perished as well, there are still thousands more who could regroup and attack the Vale again in the future. The PCs are largely forgotten, those who would have recognized their contributions having been among the first to perish.
    • 40: Brindol repels the Red Hand, but at grave cost. The city is badly damaged, with whole districts razed to the ground. There are thousands of casualties among the defenders and thousands more dead civilians. The PCs have made many friends among the surviving defenders, but most of the populace is too preoccupied with picking up the shattered remnants of their lives and families to feel gratitude.
    • 45: Brindol repels the Red Hand, and while the victory costs a horrific number of lives, the city is still mostly standing. While the city's rulers hail the PCs as heroes and grant the greatest reward they can spare (which isn't much), reactions among the populace range from tepid to outright resentful, with many impoverished survivors asserting the PCs put their own survival ahead of the city's defense.
    • 50: Brindol repels the Red Hand. The city sustains some damage, but nothing catastrophic. There are many casualties, but there are still plenty of hands to rebuild. Most of the civilian population is spared. The PCs are hailed as heroes and rewarded handsomely.
    • 55: The Red Hand breaks itself against the walls of Brindol. The city sustains minimal damage and few casualties. The PCs are forever enshrined in memory as the city's saviors. Word of their achievement travels far and wide, attracting favorable attention from rulers of great cities like (assume Forgotten Realms) Silverymoon and Waterdeep - as well as a few individuals who are major world powers in their own right (elder good dragons, archmages, etc.). Doors open to them wherever they travel. The rulers of Brindol grant the PCs a sizeable cut of the weapons and armor recovered from the fallen hobgoblins; sold judiciously over time in the right areas, this works out to tens of thousands of gp each.

    Essentially you tie not just their material fortunes but also their reputations to the outcome. There's also the potential warm fuzzy value of saving everyone and experiencing their gratitude - or the sour taste of being run out of town.
    This is BRILLIANT. I had a very vague version of something like this already in my mind, because I wanted that 'degrees of success' for my group, so this is really helpful for clarifying what those degrees of success could actually look like. I strongly support this being added to the handbook!

  9. - Top - End - #69
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by Satirical Bard View Post
    This is BRILLIANT. I had a very vague version of something like this already in my mind, because I wanted that 'degrees of success' for my group, so this is really helpful for clarifying what those degrees of success could actually look like. I strongly support this being added to the handbook!
    It occurred to me that another really interesting change/customisation can be made from this list of outcomes while the campaign is progressing is that the course of the Battle of Brindol itself can be altered or varied depending on how many VPs the characters have by the time the Red Hand shows up.

    If you hit every mark prior to the Battle, then by the time the Battle of Brindol starts parties can already have up to a maximum of 53 VPs. So depending on whether the party's got 15, 25, 35, or 40+ VP before the Battle changes the Battle of Brindol encounters themselves. For example:

    >=15 VP - you have the Battle of Brindol with extra horror. Streets of Blood is the party holding an intersection with two waves hitting them at once. Abithriax's rampage is over the Cathedral of Pelor and its field hospital outside on the lawn ... which he's burning. The 'Save the Walls' encounter is at Brindol Keep after the Brindolese have retreated to it as a last ditch defence, and the Final Battle is Kharn breaking down the front door of the keep. Skather's assault is more like trying to combat a predator as he ruthlessly hunts a stranded wagon full of loveable NPCs.

    25 VP - default RHOD Battle of Brindol by the book; the Red Hand breaks through as it does in the original book and the final battle is on the steps of the Cathedral of Pelor.

    35 VP - the Brindolese kill the second bunch of giants without the wall falling. Skather's encounter remains unchanged, but the red dragon assault, Streets of Blood, and final battle are all contests for one of Brindol's gates rather than streets or Cathedrals. (This one closely resembles the flow of one of my own campaigns, and I can vouch it does work.)

    40+ VP - the Brindolese kill the second bunch of giants without the wall falling and hold the second gate. The red dragon assault is a desperation assault on Brindol's well-defended keep to try and shake the defenders' resolve, Streets of Blood is on a section of Brindol's wall rather than on a street, and the final battle is a last desperate attempt by Kharn to rally his wavering troops at the gate (or indeed on the section of wall where the PCs are.) Skather's encounter is a hide-and-seek trying to track down and kill the assassin before he escapes, having failed to kill any of the leadership.


    This then dovetails with the idea that different VP results have different outcomes to the overall result of the game, as well as rewarding the PCs for their tactical, campaign-based choices earlier on. Sure, it means a bit more work, but it also makes the campaign more, well, personal to the party.

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    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    That makes a lot of sense, and builds on what's already in the book with regard to the 4th and 5th waves of Streets of Blood hinging on the outcomes in Rhest and the Ghostlord's Lair, as well as the absence/presence of the various wyrmlords and dragons (and the Ghostlord himself).

    But given I assume 95%+ of parties in games running basically by-the-book will have completed the set missions, with the only real variable being whether any wyrmlords or dragons escaped and can reappear in Brindol, I'm not sure it's necessary to have too much work prepared for all the potential alternative scenarios, but your rough framework is definitely helpful as a reference point.

    On the reverse side, it seems to me that the Battle is unwinnable by a regular party if it involves fighting additional wyrmlords, dragons, razorfiends, ghost lions, bonedrinkers, and a freaking lich!

    I also wouldn't necessarily want to have a high VP count allow the PCs to bypass the encounters largely as written, mainly because I think the story needs that sense of overwhelming force and desperate resistance. And given PCs won't know they are fighting on the walls instead of the streets as a reward, it only really makes sense if the encounter is then made easier. But at that point, we run in to a dilemma of game design, which is that an easier combat is not really a reward for players, because epic battles are more engaging, fun and memorable than easy battles!
    Last edited by Satirical Bard; 2022-08-03 at 04:25 AM.

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by Satirical Bard View Post
    That makes a lot of sense, and builds on what's already in the book with regard to the 4th and 5th waves of Streets of Blood hinging on the outcomes in Rhest and the Ghostlord's Lair, as well as the absence/presence of the various wyrmlords and dragons (and the Ghostlord himself).

    But given I assume 95%+ of parties in games running basically by-the-book will have completed the set missions, with the only real variable being whether any wyrmlords or dragons escaped and can reappear in Brindol, I'm not sure it's necessary to have too much work prepared for all the potential alternative scenarios, but your rough framework is definitely helpful as a reference point.

    On the reverse side, it seems to me that the Battle is unwinnable by a regular party if it involves fighting additional wyrmlords, dragons, razorfiends, ghost lions, bonedrinkers, and a freaking lich!

    I also wouldn't necessarily want to have a high VP count allow the PCs to bypass the encounters largely as written, mainly because I think the story needs that sense of overwhelming force and desperate resistance. And given PCs won't know they are fighting on the walls instead of the streets as a reward, it only really makes sense if the encounter is then made easier. But at that point, we run in to a dilemma of game design, which is that an easier combat is not really a reward for players, because epic battles are more engaging, fun and memorable than easy battles!
    I think I misstated myself there - I wasn't saying to bypass the encounters, just change the windowdressing somewhat, change the location mostly. In a Brindol that's almost completely ready for the assault, the Streets of Blood encounter happens at one of Brindol's gates, rather than down a street.

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    Orc in the Playground
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    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    It occurred to me that another really interesting change/customisation can be made from this list of outcomes while the campaign is progressing is that the course of the Battle of Brindol itself can be altered or varied depending on how many VPs the characters have by the time the Red Hand shows up.

    If you hit every mark prior to the Battle, then by the time the Battle of Brindol starts parties can already have up to a maximum of 53 VPs. So depending on whether the party's got 15, 25, 35, or 40+ VP before the Battle changes the Battle of Brindol encounters themselves. For example:

    >=15 VP - you have the Battle of Brindol with extra horror. Streets of Blood is the party holding an intersection with two waves hitting them at once. Abithriax's rampage is over the Cathedral of Pelor and its field hospital outside on the lawn ... which he's burning. The 'Save the Walls' encounter is at Brindol Keep after the Brindolese have retreated to it as a last ditch defence, and the Final Battle is Kharn breaking down the front door of the keep. Skather's assault is more like trying to combat a predator as he ruthlessly hunts a stranded wagon full of loveable NPCs.

    25 VP - default RHOD Battle of Brindol by the book; the Red Hand breaks through as it does in the original book and the final battle is on the steps of the Cathedral of Pelor.

    35 VP - the Brindolese kill the second bunch of giants without the wall falling. Skather's encounter remains unchanged, but the red dragon assault, Streets of Blood, and final battle are all contests for one of Brindol's gates rather than streets or Cathedrals. (This one closely resembles the flow of one of my own campaigns, and I can vouch it does work.)

    40+ VP - the Brindolese kill the second bunch of giants without the wall falling and hold the second gate. The red dragon assault is a desperation assault on Brindol's well-defended keep to try and shake the defenders' resolve, Streets of Blood is on a section of Brindol's wall rather than on a street, and the final battle is a last desperate attempt by Kharn to rally his wavering troops at the gate (or indeed on the section of wall where the PCs are.) Skather's encounter is a hide-and-seek trying to track down and kill the assassin before he escapes, having failed to kill any of the leadership.


    This then dovetails with the idea that different VP results have different outcomes to the overall result of the game, as well as rewarding the PCs for their tactical, campaign-based choices earlier on. Sure, it means a bit more work, but it also makes the campaign more, well, personal to the party.
    Yeah, I was thinking something along those lines but hadn't articulated it. It's sort of where I was going with the wyrms and wyrmlords being worth only half VP if you kill them at Brindol instead of before, but I do really like changing the stakes for each of those encounters. This is really solid.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    I think I misstated myself there - I wasn't saying to bypass the encounters, just change the windowdressing somewhat, change the location mostly. In a Brindol that's almost completely ready for the assault, the Streets of Blood encounter happens at one of Brindol's gates, rather than down a street.
    It doesn't have to be just window-dressing. If you're doing levels of victory based on my template, you can either amplify the amount of VP for winning those encounters or grant half credit even if the PCs lose or skip them. Those encounters are worth 10 VP total, So if you start out with 40 before the Battle of Brindol even begins and get half credit even for flubbing them, you automatically end up with at least 45 VP (expensive victory) even if the PCs take a nap and sit out the whole battle - the city is just that much better shape. If they at least manage to take out Kharn, they hit at least the 50 threshold (sound victory), and if they kill Abithriax as well, they still get the best outcome (55+; total victory).

    That also has some other interesting implications, because it lets you do some things concurrently and force the PCs to choose which threats to attend to personally - without compromising their overall victory.

    EDIT: I added two-word labels to each of the outcome levels for easy reference. I recommend including those in the handbook.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jmax View Post
    That's an interesting idea. I can see that working really well. It sort of reminds me of the way Brandon Sanderson talks about some of his early novel work, in which he moves entire plot arcs and character groups around between settings if something isn't working well with the big picture but it has really solid elements. I'm probably butchering that description something awful, but it basically seemed to boil down to treating characters and plots as modular pieces.
    Interesting. I didn’t know Sanderson had said/done that, but I can see how it would have worked well in writing his Cosmere setting.

    Regardless of if your description was accurate to Sanderson’s work process, the description is appropriate for how I view Red Hand of Doom. The bones of the adventure are REALLY solid; I’m sure many of us see it as the best D&D module ever written. The adventure all (except the Fane, perhaps) works really well. The story Baker and Jacobs wrote is good. But the story and the framework of the adventure are different halves of the whole. The story can be changed while leaving the solid framework intact. Strip away the “window dressing” of hobgoblins, dragons, and Tiamat, and you’re left with a great starting point to craft your own adventure, flavored to taste.

    Think of the adventure as a generalized flow chart.
    Ambush on the road —> semi-remote town —> wilderness —> Army’s forward scouting base (Vraath Keep) —> secondary forward base/choke point (bridge) —> attack on remote town —> Army raiding & pillaging/Party evacuating towns —> army movement toward climactic battle location —> investigate secondary, off-the-beaten-path location where Army is breeding monsters for the main assault —> find blackmail item —> meet/recruit potential allies —> investigate tertiary location indicated on map, base of blackmailed Army ally —> solve Big Bad Evil Ally blackmail situation —> audience with the Lords —> climactic battle —> investigate Army home base —> deal with fiendish interlopers and BBEG.

    Treating it in this manner allows you to see more possibilities, and opens up how you can utilize the adventure. It can be adapted to a wildly-different campaign world/map very easily.

    Last time I largely stuck to that flow chart. There were setting/flavor alterations that changed it up a bit, though. Some were just map-influenced differences (Rhest was now on something akin to the Svalbard archipelago; the party had to take a longship to get there), while others changed the framework structure a bit more.

    The semi-remote town (Drellin’s Ferry) became two semi-remote towns about 3 days’ travel apart, separated by a ravine with a bridge. The party’s “home base” (‘Drellin’s Ferry’) was the smaller of the two towns, and the party was worried about slowing the army reaching the second, smaller town, figuring the first town was a lost cause, so evacuated what they could of the first town, then collapsed the bridge between them, then tried to put up resistance (cue ‘Massacre at Drellin’s Ferry’ waves of bad guys).

    Another big change was that this area of my world was peppered with menhir circles, much like the Forgotten Realms’ Yuirwood. I had incorporated the Master of the Yuirwood PrC as an ancient order in the region, as well as the Menhir portal rules (FRCS and UE). The trollish Tanarukk army made use of the malfunctioning portal activation aspect of the menhirs to their advantage to speed their travel somewhat. Most of the Red Hand’s movement occurs off-screen anyway; doing this added more tension if the PC’s discovered it, and gave them one more opportunity to slow the army (assassinate the half-elf hostages the army is going to use to activate the menhirs?)

    Those are the big changes to the framework I made to the first 3 chapters of the framework. Slight alterations to structure, lots of alternations to the flavor and ‘window dressing,’ and it was a completely different-feeling campaign than RHoD as written.

    This upcoming time the setting flavor will be a lot more similar to the published adventure than last time (though still different, being a chaotic horde of Beastmen), but I’m going to make a lot more changes to the framework.

    I’m starting them at 7th level, regular, non-Gestalt characters. I’m going to completely omit the Rhest and Ghostlord side-quests and storylines (thus, they’ll still be ~9th level for the ‘Battle of Brindol’), just because that’s all the time I want this campaign to run for this time (and it will help disguise the similarity when I do run RHoD as written in a few years). Skull Gorge Bridge will be split into a border fortification on the mountainous edge of the country the Party will be defending, with a separate (relatively nearby) mountain pass that the party will be able to block via an avalanche. I’m planning that the party will clear out the Beastmen from the boarder fort, then help hold that fort as the ‘massacre at Drellin’s Ferry’ encounter vignette. Then I’m planning for their Drellin’s Ferry remote town location to be the location for the ‘Battle of Brindol,’ but fully realizing they may chose to abandon it to pull back to ‘Dennovar’ (which is the city they’re currently adventuring in, Brindinford from Speaker in Dreams). Basically I’m just leaving the possibilities open.

    As I mentioned before, I’m taking a lot of inspiration from Warhammer’s Beastmen for this army horde. In that lore, basically there were Chaos meteors that crashed down and caused the mutation of humans into Beastmen within the regions that were struck. For my iteration, the ‘Fane of Tiamat’ will be in the region that was recently struck by a meteor. It was a human mountain town that had a Svirfneblin community underneath it. The Fane will be the surviving halls and tunnels of the Svirfneblin settlement, now broken open and exposed by the crater from the meteor strike. I will be modeling much of it off the 2e Hellgate Keep adventure location. The party will have to assault it to learn the truth of the horde’s origins, and stop them from rebuilding their numbers…

    This got longer than I intended, but I hope it illustrates how adaptable Red Hand of Doom can be. Adjust the framework a bit, and completely reskin the adventure, and you can rerun it with the same group, and there’s a fair chance they won’t even notice you are ‘rerunning’ the ‘same’ adventure.

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    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by ksbsnowowl View Post
    Interesting. I didn’t know Sanderson had said/done that, but I can see how it would have worked well in writing his Cosmere setting.
    Details: brandonsanderson.com: Warbreaker Prime


    Quote Originally Posted by ksbsnowowl View Post
    Regardless of if your description was accurate to Sanderson’s work process, the description is appropriate for how I view Red Hand of Doom. The bones of the adventure are REALLY solid; I’m sure many of us see it as the best D&D module ever written. The adventure all (except the Fane, perhaps) works really well. The story Baker and Jacobs wrote is good. But the story and the framework of the adventure are different halves of the whole. The story can be changed while leaving the solid framework intact. Strip away the “window dressing” of hobgoblins, dragons, and Tiamat, and you’re left with a great starting point to craft your own adventure, flavored to taste.

    Think of the adventure as a generalized flow chart.
    Ambush on the road —> semi-remote town —> wilderness —> Army’s forward scouting base (Vraath Keep) —> secondary forward base/choke point (bridge) —> attack on remote town —> Army raiding & pillaging/Party evacuating towns —> army movement toward climactic battle location —> investigate secondary, off-the-beaten-path location where Army is breeding monsters for the main assault —> find blackmail item —> meet/recruit potential allies —> investigate tertiary location indicated on map, base of blackmailed Army ally —> solve Big Bad Evil Ally blackmail situation —> audience with the Lords —> climactic battle —> investigate Army home base —> deal with fiendish interlopers and BBEG.
    That is a really interesting way to do it. It sort of reminds me of how people say all movies from the last several decades follow the same basic formula - and yet it still manages to produce significantly entertaining movies that (often) feel novel.



    Hmm. Now I want to read Way of Kings Prime.

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by jmax View Post
    That is a really interesting way to do it. It sort of reminds me of how people say all movies from the last several decades follow the same basic formula - and yet it still manages to produce significantly entertaining movies that (often) feel novel.
    I think it certainly warrants entry in the adaptation section, and it's going in there shortly.


    As for the whole discussion on VPs, I've condensed it all down into a GoogleDocs document right here, with all the good stuff in it, and I'll get it into the Handbook shortly.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    I think it certainly warrants entry in the adaptation section, and it's going in there shortly.


    As for the whole discussion on VPs, I've condensed it all down into a GoogleDocs document right here, with all the good stuff in it, and I'll get it into the Handbook shortly.
    This is excellent! I have a few minor comments that would probably be easier to make as actual comments on the actual document, so I'm asking for Comment access (the request always comes in as asking for Edit, but just give me Comment so I can't fat-finger anything by accident). That will also let me put in draft edits to tighten up some of the writing in my Levels of Victory.


    Have you considered using Google Docs for the whole handbook and just linking it from the main thread? There are a couple of benefits to that:
    • Most notably that you never have to worry about another Great Forgetting. I don't think Rich would ever deliberately purge the GitP forums like Wizards of the Coast did with theirs, but good IT infrastructure management takes real time and money, and sometimes Stuff Happens that nobody intends.
    • Having a single document or set of documents that just get linked around means you avoid duplication of information - and therefore you never have to worry about keeping multiple copies synced up, especially from someone (including you) mirrors your handbook to another board.
    • You avoid the limitations on post and thread length.
    • It's much easier for people to download the handbook for offline use and still keep all the formatting and such.
    • It's just plain easier to make a nice document quickly and keep it nice.
    • It's much easier to incorporate contributions from multiple people.

    There are some potential downsides. I don't know if it's still the case, but back when I had crappy hardware I had problems opening very long Google Docs on my computer. With everything optimized for mobile now, I think that shouldn't be an issue, but if it is, that potentially excludes people who can't afford modern toys. My gut feeling is also that posts show up better in search engines than Docs, mostly because my Shapechange handbook only shows up in Google searches as the post and not the document - but I also just realized that I never invoked "Publish to the web", so that could be it. I just tried that, so we'll see in the next few days if anything changes once I update my post/signature links.

    Anyway, just food for thought with regard to publishing medium.

    EDIT: "Publish to the web" in Google Docs turns it into an HTML render and loses a lot of nice formatting and the handy navigation pane on the left. Bleh. You really need that navigation pane to get around my Shapechange handbook efficiently, so I'll probably just leave it as a vanilla Google Docs link.

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by jmax View Post
    This is excellent! I have a few minor comments that would probably be easier to make as actual comments on the actual document, so I'm asking for Comment access (the request always comes in as asking for Edit, but just give me Comment so I can't fat-finger anything by accident). That will also let me put in draft edits to tighten up some of the writing in my Levels of Victory.
    I've opened it to comments outright, so you should be able to scribble there.

    As for putting the whole handbook on GoogleDocs - I'm certainly considering it. I've got at least one other handbook out there (Critical Hits Handbook) so it's possible.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    I think it certainly warrants entry in the adaptation section, and it's going in there shortly.
    I’m flattered. ☺️

    As for the whole discussion on VPs, I've condensed it all down into a GoogleDocs document right here, with all the good stuff in it, and I'll get it into the Handbook shortly.
    You mentioned in that doc (I think from jmax) about altering the Streets of Blood to the top of the city wall if the party has a sizable number of VP’s before the battle of Brindol. I can attest that this approach absolutely works; I did this in my Norse-themed Viking RHoD campaign a decade ago (the one with the Tanarukks), largely because the location of the climactic battle in my campaign adaptation wasn’t at a normally-populated place with streets and lots of buildings. But there was a wall.

    This is a good example of how mutable RHoD can be. Just analyze each encounter, and distill it down to its most basic elements.

    The first time I ran RHoD, the Blackwater Causeway Hydra encounter was changed to a Shambling Mound as the party followed tracks from the Marauder Ambush site through a marshy area, toward Vraath Keep. I did this because I had restricted real-world mythological monsters that were not from Celtic or Scandinavian folklore from even existing in that world. It was a flavor choice for that campaign, but it meant no hydras.

    This upcoming time, the Blackwater Causeway encounter will be on a mountain road heading up toward a pass over the mountains. The scenery is changed out, and I plan to change the monster to something more appropriate to the terrain. Maybe a chimera or something a little goofy, like a half-dragon displacer beast (probably the latter). I specifically want to avoid using a hydra, as I plan to run a ‘clean’ version of RHoD for this same group in about 2 years. The encounter as written has lots of difficult terrain involved to slow movement, though it may not come into play, as the hydra approaches to attack the PC’s, but will attack with reach if the PC’s position themselves to allow it, lining the front edge of the walkway.

    That encounter has:
    • A slippery pathway that might require Balance checks.
    • Difficult terrain to slow movement if the party leaves the path.
    • A monster that has 6 fairly damaging attacks (+8 attack bonus, 1d10+3 damage).


    Altering this to mountainous terrain, you have a mountain road covered in pebbles and scree that causes similar skill check requirements (plus, I think natural cave floors increase Balance and Tumble DC’s by +2, IIRC; this disused road would be in similar condition), and I’ll set it up as a road cut into the slope of a mountain, so there is a drop off on one side. The drop off isn’t a sheer cliff, but a slope covered in scree. The flying monster will initiate combat by bull rushing one PC off the edge, inflicting a small amount of falling damage, and requiring DC 2 Climb checks to ascend back to the road (DC 0 for a slope too steep to walk up, +2 for the scree). There would also be a scree-covered upward slope on the other side of the road.

    For the monster, I may go with a Chimera, a CR 7 monster with 5 attacks (at +12 or +10 to hit) and varying damage that works out to an average similar to the Hydra (8.5 damage per bite, vs. 7.8 average per attack, plus a weak breath weapon). Yes, it’s a CR 7 Chimera vs. a CR 5 Hydra, but keep in mind my party will be 7th level at the adventure start, rather than 5th level.

    You can obviously completely eject any encounter and replace it with one or two encounters that don’t in any way resemble the encounter you’re replacing. But the pacing and challenge of the encounters as written are pretty good. There’s no reason to create encounters from whole cloth (unless you want to), when you can deconstruct the provided encounters and use their structure to inform your encounter-building choices, just as you can deconstruct the whole adventure, and build your reflavored adventure on that existing framework.
    Last edited by ksbsnowowl; 2022-08-05 at 03:23 PM.

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    I added a Suggested section with recommendations on what to do if the PCs die in or before the Battle of Brindol. The module assumes that the PCs live to fight and prevail against Kharn because "the only other outcomes are ignominious retreat or their bloody deaths at Kharn's murderous hands." However, this module isn't only about the PCs - it's an epic, not a dungeon crawl. I feel like the PCs' contributions should still matter even if they don't live to see them. If nothing else, it at least avoids an anticlimactic non-ending, and it allows you more flexibility to let the PCs feel the consequences of ignoring the wyrmlords and the Ghostlord instead of going through contortions to keep the Final Battle from being too tough.

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by jmax View Post
    I added a Suggested section with recommendations on what to do if the PCs die in or before the Battle of Brindol. The module assumes that the PCs live to fight and prevail against Kharn because "the only other outcomes are ignominious retreat or their bloody deaths at Kharn's murderous hands." However, this module isn't only about the PCs - it's an epic, not a dungeon crawl. I feel like the PCs' contributions should still matter even if they don't live to see them. If nothing else, it at least avoids an anticlimactic non-ending, and it allows you more flexibility to let the PCs feel the consequences of ignoring the wyrmlords and the Ghostlord instead of going through contortions to keep the Final Battle from being too tough.
    All updated now and in there. Thanks for all of that!

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Well, for want of anything else to do and just in case someone might be able to use this for their own campaigns:

    I adapted the Elsir Vale map for a winter-ish environment. It's below (warning, the file is 4.75 Meg so may take a few minutes to load. And it's a big map too.)

    Spoiler: Big picture
    Show


    I hand-drew this map using some Jared Blando techniques, then did some very basic image adjustments in Photoshop. This is for another RHOD campaign I have in mind, really written for my own homebrew setting in which winter never ended - but it might assist. It's not labelled with town names if people want to give theirs setting-appropriate names. Haven't coloured it since it works better with my endless-winter setting.

    In terms of the geographical features - which I would name since they're probably not clear beyond the obvious stuff - there's some differences between the original Elsir Vale map and this one.

    In the northeast and northwest corners, the weird, lined formations are actually meant to represent glaciers.
    In the southwest corner, I replaced the Thornwaste with an iceberg-choked bay. I had in mind the Ghostlord lives on a remote island in this bay and it's his endlessly-cold presence that keeps the bay from thawing.
    In the southeast corner, I replaced the plains near Dennovar with another bay that's free of icebergs, i.e. Dennovar becomes a port rather than a random second city in the Vale whose presence is not really touched on in the default book.
    The Vale now has a much bigger wood in its centre which serves to isolate some of the towns a bit more. This could make for at least one or two interesting choices if, for example, the players want to balance speed against safety on how the Shining Axes get from the Hammerfist Holds to Brindol.
    In the north end, Lake Rhestin I had figured hasn't frozen over despite being smack bang between two glaciers because of some sort of volcanic/hot springs activity that keeps the lake perpetually just above 0 degrees. Or maybe there's no explanation except magic for it. Reinforcements come down the Old Rhest Trail from, say, another coastal principality further up.

    The Dawn Way is the finely dotted line running from east to west. I had in mind the trade coming east to Drellin's Ferry is basically furs, ivory, etc, gathered from hunters working the glacier in the northwest which supports a plethora of crazy, harvestable wildlife.

    Anyway - I hope people like the map and hope someone finds use for it. Elsir Vale in a setting-neutral Arctic environment.

  22. - Top - End - #82
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Not sure if anyone has pointed this out already (I may have simply overlooked it), but scaling the adventure for parties of difference sizes (or even for different levels) is actually quite easy with some simple math. You can even do this to create a hybrid of the two presented options in Post #11 rather than going with only one or the other (the benefit being you can sandbox it AND scale it to the party).

    The Scaling Formula Explained
    In 3.x D&D, the CR to APL conversion is 2 * x = x+2 (so a pair of CR 3 creatures is a CR 5 encounter). With mixed pairings, CR x + x-3 = CR x+1 (so a CR 5 creature with a CR 2 creature is a CR 6 encounter).

    Pathfinder retains this exact same formula, it just simplifies it with an XP budget (which can be found on the PF-SRD: Gamemastering page) that can be used interchangeably with 3.x for GMs whose eyes glaze over when trying to comprehend the "3-1: encounter numbers" chart on pg. 49 of the 3.5 DMG.

    Unaffected Awards: You do not have to use XP values as they are written in Pathfinder (that is, you can still use 3.x D&D's relative XP values for awarding XP). Instead, you can just budget your encounter using the XP values presented in the Pathfinder by thinking of the listed XP values as "encounter points" or something to that regard, which I will use as the terminology (or simply "points") in this post henceforth to avoid people playing 3.x becoming confused by "XP Points" being different values.

    Adjusting for Varying Party Sizes: With that being explained, it's worth noting that when dealing with parties of varying sizes (anything that's not 4 player characters), you can simply adjust the point value of the encounter by -25% per player below 4, and +25% per player above 4, more or less indefinitely.

    Examples of Use
    Let's say hypothetically we want an encounter with goblin wolf riders that will come out to APL+1 (whatever the party's level is +1, so if the party is 5th level, it's a CR 6 encounter, and so on). We also want to scale it for the number of players in the party, more or less regardless of how many of them there are. If our party is 5th level, we look at the PF-SRD: Gamemastering page and see that a CR 6 encounter is worth 2,400 points. That's 600 points worth of enemies per player (so 600 points worth of enemies would be a CR 6 encounter for a single 5th level player, while 4,800 points worth of enemies would be a CR 6 encounter for an 8 player party).

    You can use this method to very quickly "paint" enemies, traps, and hazards into an encounter from a "palette" of enemies (such as a monster manual or NPC gallery present in an adventure). Having a few variants of the types of enemies that are available can be helpful when scaling for higher or lower levels and/or for parties of larger or smaller size.

    For example, the narrative of goblins riding wolves is the core of the above encounter. However, in its weakest form it might just be 2nd level goblin warriors riding wolves (as described above). Of course, for higher level parties it might be the army's elite cavalry consisting of 4th level goblin warriors riding on the backs of worgs instead of wolves. You might also fill in the gaps and mix stuff up in encounters as well, such as adding a cleric to a band of hobgoblin fighters when scaling for a larger party (adding a bit more tactical depth to the encounter at the same time).

    When scaling for boss encounters, having a few variations of the generals at different power levels can be helpful as well. For example, you could have a bugbear sorcerer at 4th, 6th, 8th, and 10th level for whether or not the character is faced early in the campaign or late in the campaign, or to use when scaled for different sized parties. When scaling for larger parties, adding minions to the boss (such as giving the bugbear sorcerer a set of hobgoblin retainers, or a pair of goblin apprentice sorcerers) is generally a better method than simply increasing the level of an individual foe.

    For certain encounters against major foes, such as a certain dragon on a bridge, you might also consider adding activatable "traps" to an encounter that could allow players to leverage an advantage against a foe that is too strong to face at their level, making it a bit more of a puzzle encounter, or both. For example, if you happen to fight a dragon on a bridge at a level earlier than expected, you could scatter a few ballistae along the edges of the bridge that were to be moved across by the army. These ballistae, built using the core trap rules, could be separated into different locations and activated by the player characters to inflict some major damage the dragon (a trap that launches a giant bolt with a +20 to hit, for 6d6 damage, with a DC 0 detect, DC 0 to disable, and a manual 1 round reload is a CR 3 trap and can poke a dragon really good).

    Adding things like move-able cover objects (such as battering rams with tower-shields on them that can be wheeled around to prevent the dragon from breathing on them from the protected direction (until the rams are dissolved by the breath weapon) would be another example of a way that rather than changing the power of the enemy you change the circumstances of the battle.
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  23. - Top - End - #83
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    ^^^^

    The above are not only really helpful and appreciated comments for running RHOD, but also generally in 3.5. Many thanks for the time and thoughts!

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    ^^^^

    The above are not only really helpful and appreciated comments for running RHOD, but also generally in 3.5. Many thanks for the time and thoughts!
    You're very welcome. IMHO, probably the greatest adjustment that Pathfinder brought along was simplifying some of the more esoteric aspects of the game. I have many good things to say about 3.x, including that the encounter scaling works quite well. However, the way it was explained - while accurate - is extremely hard for most people to understand (I myself struggled to comprehend it when I was younger). Approaching the game using an encounter budget is a lot easier for most people to visualize and comprehend.

    In fact, with the knowledge gained over the years as to the meta for 3.5 (such as crafting magic items using XP costs not actually hindering PCs at all due to the way XP awards work in 3.x and sometimes even pushing the crafter ahead of the rest of the party in XP as a result), I personally believe that adopting the Pathfinder experience system (and adjustments to magic item XP costs) is a good choice for otherwise normal 3.x games. It just works better.

    Just For Gits and Shiggles
    Incidentally, if for some reason people would rather not adopt the Pathfinder system because they like the idea that creatures and challenges are worth more or less XP relative to their level, that is actually quite easy to patch back into Pathfinder if so desired, because the 3.x adjustments follow a specific formula, and this formula can be applied to any XP value in the game. I don't actually recommend doing this and I'll explain why at the bottom of the post.

    The formula for scaling XP values is as follows.
    Increased CR XP Multiplier Reduced CR XP Multiplier
    Level XP × 1 Level XP ÷ 1
    Level +1 XP × 1.5 Level-1 XP ÷ 1.5
    Level +2 XP × 2 Level-2 XP ÷ 2
    Level +3 XP × 3 Level-3 XP ÷ 3
    Level +4 XP × 4 Level-4 XP ÷ 4
    Level +5 XP × 6 Level-5 XP ÷ 6
    Level +6 XP × 8 Level-6 XP ÷ 8
    Level +7 XP × 12 Level-7 XP ÷ 12
    Note: Levels 1-3 in 3.x treat CR 3 and below monsters as having their full XP value.

    For example, if you wanted to calculate the relative XP value of an Ogre Mage, a CR 8 creature for a 4th level party, you would take the ogre's XP value (4,800) and multiply it by 4, making the XP award 19,200 XP, granting the same amount of XP as overcoming a CR 12 encounter. In essence, the XP award has been made relative the threat the ogre mage.

    ♦♦ Here's Why I Don't Recommend Actually Doing This ♦♦
    Pathfinder actually keeps pretty much the exact same rate of advancement as 3.x, just their system handles it a lot more cleanly. The XP charts in 3.x are basically Current Level × 1,000 XP = Experience to Next Level (so 1st level needs 1 × 1000 = 1000 XP to reach 2nd level, 2nd level needs 2 × 1000 = 2000 XP to reach 3rd level, and so on). What this basically amounts to with all the crazy scaled XP is that if the party faces off against equal CR foes, they will level up in about 13.3 encounters. If that same party faced APL+4 encounters, they would level up in about 3.3 encounters.

    Pathfinder literally baked in the monster scaling into the XP system with no scaling required. It's the exact same result.

    For example, in 3.x you need to amass 4,000 XP to go from 4th to 5th level, or 16,000 XP for a party of 4 PCs.
    In Pathfinder (assuming the fast XP track, which is the OGL compliant equivalent of the 3.x track) you need 4,000 XP to go from 4th to 5th level, or 16,000 XP for a party of 4 PCs.

    The amount of XP the 4th level 3.x party would earn fighting a CR 4 creature in 3.x would be 1,200 XP. So it would take about 13.3 encounters to level up.
    If the same party faced off against a CR 8 creature, they would earn 4,800 XP. So it would take about 3.3 encounters to level up.

    The amount of XP the 4th level Pathfinder party would earn fighting a CR 4 creature in 3.x would be 1,200 XP. So it would take about 13.3 encounters to level up.
    If the same party faced off against a CR 8 creature, they would earn 4,800 XP. So it would take about 3.3 encounters to level up.

    They literally baked the scaling into their standard XP systems, because they just scaled the amount of XP needed to go from level X to Y to match the XP scaling of the monsters, rather than the other way around. This means that rather than reducing the XP value of an orc versus a higher level party, the orc is just naturally worth far less XP relative to the XP needed to reach the next level than they would have in 3.x, so that the relative % of XP to Next Level remains the same, except you don't need a funky chart to tell you about it.

    If for nothing else, you might use this as a way of predicting whether or not you're using enemies that are too strong relative to the PCs even if they are within the encounter budget, especially as it pertains to scaling for party size. For example, if you've scaled for a doubled party size (x2 XP budget), you would notice that you could fit a single creature with a CR of APL+2 in the encounter's XP budget. But doing so is perhaps a bad idea. An ogre mage will generally have a much easier time dealing with a party of four 4th level characters than a single 8th level character (it's cone of cold could very likely throw the party into critical condition or dead immediately). Often times higher CR foes tend to have much beefier numbers and statistics relative to the PCs, and it's quite possible that the value of their numbers will be diminished as a result (it doesn't matter how many PCs are in the party if they can't actually hit the foes or bypass their spell resistance or evade their big damage AoEs, etc). This is why I typically recommend when scaling for parties, only add more equal or lesser strength foes rather than fewer stronger foes.
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  25. - Top - End - #85
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    I don't think making the battle of Brindol the end of the story is good. It's the dramatic high point of the adventure but that doesn't mean it should be the end. That's like saying LOTR should end with the Pelennor Fields battle.

    What I DO think is that after the highwater mark, it should feel like the world has changed. This is why the suggestion to have planar disturbances and a warped, hellish landscape near the Fane of Tiamat is great. The time for subtlety is over.

    I don't think the nonlinear nature of the Fane dungeon is a problem; for the final hurdle, it's fair to give the PCs a straightforward "can you beat this". What I would do is embrace that and streamline it, cutting away the initial 'living quarters' section of the dungeon. I don't think we're interested in that stuff at this point. This is a cavernous temple of Tiamat, nothing more. Have the entrance lead right into the big cave with the wyverns.

  26. - Top - End - #86
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    It's been a hot minute since I ran the Red Hand of Doom (easily over a decade), but I've GMed it a couple of times and pretty much everything I remember about it that was great was up to the battle of Brindol. The adventure just feels so much more coherent up to that point. After that there's like a swamp, some evil druid lich guy, James Jacob's hobgoblin waifu, some sort of undead critters nobody knows what are, some random junk and there's a temple or something with an aspect of Taimat? The temple with Tiamat actually feels like the only thing that isn't some random filler, which is kinda sad 'cause everything leading up to the Brindol battle is pretty solid.

    1. You got some cool ambushes.
    2. You have some cool locales (old fortresses, a fight on a bridge).
    3. A fun variety of enemies (hobgoblin goons, goblin wolf riders, clerics, sorcerers, hydras, etc).
    4. Not one but two climaxes (the raid on the town and the Battle of Brindol).

    I can honestly understand why people would want to end it there. There's so much afterwards that just feels...bleh. Or feels like it was put in just to show off some splat book material. Dunno if that counts as a marketing ploy or an attempt to create an illusion of depth or interest. Either way I find it rather unsatisfying.

    The thing is though, it really wouldn't take that much work to "fix it". In fact, I can think of a few ways to fix the adventure module without actually removing that content but making it much more in the realm of an open world sandbox and optional side quest material.
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  27. - Top - End - #87
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Quote Originally Posted by Ashiel View Post
    The thing is though, it really wouldn't take that much work to "fix it". In fact, I can think of a few ways to fix the adventure module without actually removing that content but making it much more in the realm of an open world sandbox and optional side quest material.
    That's kind of the point of this thread, we'd be delighted if you could share! :)

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Sure. I'll need to see if I can find my book. I'm not really sure where I put it since when I checked yesterday it's not with my hardbacks. If you don't mind me not lifting content directly from the book itself and instead going off the narrative bits from your thread as a reference, I could simply rebuild any mechanical bits as needed and talk more about the macro-details of the campaign.
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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    the brindol battle is after the swamp and the lich tho

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    Default Re: The (New) 3.5 Red Hand of Doom Handbook for DMs - Major Spoilers! - PEACH!

    Yep. Sure is. I had completely forgot. I think that actually exemplifies my thoughts on it as well. There's a lot of stuff that's basically super forgettable and/or not very interesting. My memory had pretty much glossed over the fact there was a lot of stuff between the battle at Drellin's Ferry and the Brindol siege. To be honest, I'd probably not even remember the lich druid and hobgoblin bard if it wasn't for the fact that I remember the out of game discussions between our group talking about how random it seemed (and a few comments about the bard writeup being dumb).

    Honestly, I dunno what the deal is with JJ and his bardic waifus, but I tend to roll my eyes just as hard when an NPC is described as being <paraphrased>"I'm super beautiful even though my whole race is ugly"</paraphrased> as I would if a PC did the same (the fact the art actually does look super ugly is kinda comical).
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