Has anyone picked up the new Hoard of the Dragon Queen module to go with their PHB?  I'd like to hear some thoughts or reviews on it if you have.

I didn't balk at $50 for the Player's Handbook, but $30 for around 90 pages has me more cautious...

About to go pick mine up - wound up putting it on order when I grabbed my PHB last Friday.

I like it.

It is 94 pages. Sturdy paper and not glossy like the PHB.


Spoilers:




One page with new background info, one page of new magic items, and six pages of new monsters and NPCs. Winged kobold (urd) is back! A mix of all edition monsters: half-dragon, drake, and urd.

Eight episodes starting with a village under enemy attack and ending in a cloud giant castle in the sky.

XP is included but can waived and simply level PCs up once for each episode except for one.

Great art, great maps.

The adventure is well written, includes mysteries the PCs must unravel to understand what to do next, has great combats, and really interesting NPCs.

I haven't played it yet. But I could easily see it becoming a classic. It has tightly focused campaign area in which the action takes place. NPCs that be villains or allies. High stakes. Lots of PC choice. And new stuff to use.

Kobold Press is given equal credit with Wizards and even has a page of ads in the back. Mike Mearls gives them kudos in the intro.

Quote from: Kravell;778456One page with new background info, one page of new magic items, and six pages of new monsters and NPCs. Winged kobold (urd) is back! A mix of all edition monsters: half-dragon, drake, and urd. . . Great art, great maps.

All this sounds hopeful, but I've mined out the part I'd like more information on.

Do you think the maps and encounters would be useful outside the module?  For example, is there a tavern map that would be useful as a sort of generic template I could use down the road?

Still flipping through (work day), but I dig the paper stock (of all things). The image of Castle Naerytar is really moody and striking to me (p 43).

There's a few nice, portable locations I think - the ruined Castle Naerytar, along with a roadhouse, a hunting lodge, and a flying castle.

I dig the story.  Cultists stealing treasure to give to a dragon is a classic.  There are some rad locations and a lot of cool monsters.
Nice art.  I dig the backgrounds to personalize it.  I'd recommend it if you are into adventure path type modules.  I'm not totally psyched though.  The maps are hard to read, kinda murky, though they do look really cool.  There are no keys for the numbers on the maps!
Also I think some parts could have been explained and broken down better to be useful at the table.  

SPOILERS



I DMed the opening episode last night.  The opening scene involves a running series of encounters with kobolds and raiders as the heroes try to help townspeople to safety in the keep.  There was a neat idea in there that there will be 3 encounters +1d6 townspeople and +1 encounter of 1d6 kobolds and d4 Cultists for each time they avoid a fight.  Then there is also a short random encounter chart that is not otherwise used on the preceding page.  The chart has various groupings of foes and townspeople. I sort of discovered all this buried in the paragraph as I prepped and ended up just rolling on the encounter table 3 times plus again for the time they avoided a fight.
All in all, it was a bit confusing, seemed like something an editor could have cleaned up.
Then, the Dragon Fight.  Adult Blue Dragon attacking the walls 12d10 breath weapon!  Epic!  The ranger shot it for a lot of damage as he was protected from Fear by a protection from evil spell, aaaaaannnd it was late and I had the dragon turn and breath on the party... sorta had to retcon that TPK.  It didn't feel good, but I sorta made a terrible mistake.  Oh well.  My fault.

Quote from: Durn;778651Then, the Dragon Fight.  Adult Blue Dragon attacking the walls 12d10 breath weapon!  Epic!  The ranger shot it for a lot of damage as he was protected from Fear by a protection from evil spell, aaaaaannnd it was late and I had the dragon turn and breath on the party... sorta had to retcon that TPK.  It didn't feel good, but I sorta made a terrible mistake.  Oh well.  My fault.

Ok, I find that a weird encounter in the first chapter. Even the way the language parses seems odd - essentially, it seems to be don't have the dragon target the PCs with the breath weapon (or they're toast, even on a save).

...sigh...

You didn't make a terrible mistake, the PC's made a terrible mistake thinking they could take on an Adult Dragon without some form of magical protection against it's Breath Weapon.

Yeah death may have introduced a speedbump into the all-important story of the PC's, but that's why god created fast chargen rules, right?  

If some or all of the party got wiped, then surely there must be other worthies out there.

All you did was rob the players of their vengeance and let them know they're playing in Video Game Land now.  

We got this! We're PC's! Attack!

ymmv, etc...

Quote from: Durn;778651I dig the story.  Cultists stealing treasure to give to a dragon is a classic.  There are some rad locations and a lot of cool monsters.
Nice art.  I dig the backgrounds to personalize it.  I'd recommend it if you are into adventure path type modules.  I'm not totally psyched though.  The maps are hard to read, kinda murky, though they do look really cool.  There are no keys for the numbers on the maps!
Also I think some parts could have been explained and broken down better to be useful at the table.  

SPOILERS



I DMed the opening episode last night.  The opening scene involves a running series of encounters with kobolds and raiders as the heroes try to help townspeople to safety in the keep.  There was a neat idea in there that there will be 3 encounters +1d6 townspeople and +1 encounter of 1d6 kobolds and d4 Cultists for each time they avoid a fight.  Then there is also a short random encounter chart that is not otherwise used on the preceding page.  The chart has various groupings of foes and townspeople. I sort of discovered all this buried in the paragraph as I prepped and ended up just rolling on the encounter table 3 times plus again for the time they avoided a fight.
All in all, it was a bit confusing, seemed like something an editor could have cleaned up.
Then, the Dragon Fight.  Adult Blue Dragon attacking the walls 12d10 breath weapon!  Epic!  The ranger shot it for a lot of damage as he was protected from Fear by a protection from evil spell, aaaaaannnd it was late and I had the dragon turn and breath on the party... sorta had to retcon that TPK.  It didn't feel good, but I sorta made a terrible mistake.  Oh well.  My fault.

Player stupidity is not your fault... Don't blame yourself for their error in judgment in thinking they could take on an ADULT BLUE DRAGON! It is a Challenge 16 monster with 225 HP, AC 19, and Legendary status... Don't coddle them, let them learn from their mistakes. Hand-holding only makes it worse in the long run...

What level were these brave heroes that called out the Dragon?

Quote from: YourSwordisMine;778749Player stupidity is not your fault... Don't blame yourself for their error in judgment in thinking they could take on an ADULT BLUE DRAGON! It is a Challenge 16 monster with 225 HP, AC 19, and Legendary status... Don't coddle them, let them learn from their mistakes. Hand-holding only makes it worse in the long run...

Yea, ditto, regardless of the strange set-up on the scenario. Having them learn it regardless does sort of set/reset expectations.

I also took a closer look at that encounter, given the designers didn't fall out of a tree.

It's essentially a sort of timed combat / skill encounter. There's no chance of winning it, really, but the goal is to inflict 24 hp or more (or a crit) which will cause it to disengage. In the meantime, it strafes the Keep using its breath weapon to take out maximum number of defenders (not "fight the party").

The dragon in question, Lennithon, is also noted as "Lennithon doesn't consider this to be its fight, and it isn't keen on tangling with adventurers for another's benefit." The dragon's not particularly interested in tangling with adventurers - which, given NPCs don't "Know Level" makes some sort of sense. ("Oh right, there's some unknown adventurer heroes in the Keep and you want me to suss them out. Thanks. Sure, yea, I bet they're not the same guys who took out Blackwyrrm. You see a banner? No. Great. Hail Tiamat ...").

I think it might be useful to running the encounter to project some sort of disdain, arrogance, and intent to the dragon's actions and imagery. And, when it finally turns on them because they take too long, one learns something about poking dragons ... or when they manage to get in the 24, and it leaves, they get to wonder did they really drive off that shark?

I think the encounter, given its lethalness, could have used a bit more meat in describing how to conduct. I don't know it's a major flaw to the adventure.

I also get something of a Dragonlance vibe from it - I know DL isn't particularly well thought of in some circles for a number of reasons ... I just mean the whole Tiamat Rising, Dragons, Half-Dragons, and Draconians (I mean, Dragonborn) gives me nostalgia (I was playing D&D the first time around, you know).

I may just have a few Dragonborn explode or fossilize when they die just to frack with some of my older players.

Quote from: Durn;778651The maps are hard to read, kinda murky, though they do look really cool.  There are no keys for the numbers on the maps!

I found the lack of keys for the maps annoying myself, especially for the less-location based portions (like the 1st chapter) where the number references in the text weren't particularly called out via bold / color / etc.

The scale on the maps is also variable (per map, not within the map) from 1 square being 20 feet (the small castle), 10, or 5 feet (the last seems the most used). Not an issue, but definitely a take note item ... the Castle did seem a little small to me until I saw that scale.

I don't think the maps are muddy in terms of poor reproduction; I think what's going on is that they're subtly (or not) trying to indicate it's not a default battle-map game.

Quote from: Kravell;778456Eight episodes starting with a village under enemy attack and ending in a cloud giant castle in the sky.

XP is included but can waived and simply level PCs up once for each episode except for one.

Great art, great maps.

The adventure is well written, includes mysteries the PCs must unravel to understand what to do next, has great combats, and really interesting NPCs.

I haven't played it yet. But I could easily see it becoming a classic. It has tightly focused campaign area in which the action takes place. NPCs that be villains or allies. High stakes. Lots of PC choice. And new stuff to use.

Kobold Press is given equal credit with Wizards and even has a page of ads in the back. Mike Mearls gives them kudos in the intro.

I highly doubt that any adventure divided into episodes, with a defined ending has any meaningful PC choice included at all.

While I'm all for letting players learn their limitations the hard way, I do have a problem with how this scene was set up. There's a monster you can't possibly beat that is scripted to to kill NPCs and scare the NPCs. Not only is it too much like a cut-scene for my liking, but it has the potential to go all kinds of wrong. It's bad adventure design on a par with villains who are scripted to recover an item and escape with it.

So I don't see it as an old-school versus new-school thing. Are there any old-school D&D modules where 1st level PCs are attacked by a 12+ HD monster at the very outset of the first session?

Quote from: Haffrung;778840While I'm all for letting players learn their limitations the hard way, I do have a problem with how this scene was set up. There's a monster you can't possibly beat that is scripted to to kill NPCs and scare the NPCs. Not only is it too much like a cut-scene for my liking, but it has the potential to go all kinds of wrong. It's bad adventure design on a par with villains who are scripted to recover an item and escape with it.

So I don't see it as an old-school versus new-school thing. Are there any old-school D&D modules where 1st level PCs are attacked by a 12+ HD monster at the very outset of the first session?

It's kind of like someone heard about old school play sometimes involving monsters that cannot be defeated but (not having any experience with old school play) interpreted that tidbit into the cut scene nightmare we see here.