Ben Stovall Blog

Category: RPGs

  • Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 10: Oyaviggaton

    Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 10: Oyaviggaton

    When I first ran Oyaviggaton in 5th edition’s infancy, I found the dungeon a bit repetitive and unchallenging. In my opinion, a party of 8th-level heroes have well-outgrown combat encounters with kobolds, and trolls have shifted more toward minion-tier than being challenging on their own (though, it looks like now the module references the Ice Troll statblock added in Rime of the Frost Maiden, which looks a bit better). Its saving grace was Arauthator, with a challenge rating of 13 he’d be a challenging fight for many tables at 8th level, but with the other encounters proving so trivial, they might arrive with most of their resources intact and dispatch the dragon easily. (After all, dragons in base 5th edition dealt a lot of damage but couldn’t sustain much themselves.)

    With my adjustments to the plot of the module, my party was arriving to Oyaviggaton at 11th or 12th level rather than 8th, and they were covered in powerful magical items. One CR 13 dragon and several kobold encounters weren’t going to cut it. A duel with one CR 5 gladiator wasn’t going to cut it.

    We had to make some sweeping adjustments here to address both of these issues.

    Resetting the Scenario

    In the module, Oyaviggaton is home to the white dragon and the tribal Ice Hunters. The former is a deadly foe known as Old White Death, and the latter are unwelcoming and unkind, with their people having been enslaved by Arauthator for generations. Additionally, the Draakhorn was last seen on Oyaviggaton, and it has been taken away to the Well of Dragons, which isn’t the first or final time that an item our heroes are sent to collect is already out of their hands.

    So, first up, we gave Arauthator a promotion into an ancient dragon. My party would’ve mopped the floor with an adult dragon at their level, so he got a valuable elevation (and he still died shockingly fast, more on that later).

    Second, I wanted to change the Ice Hunters pretty substantially, too. One of the players at my table is the guy who ran Rime of the Forstmaiden previously, and one of his regrets was he didn’t use the werebear very much during his run. I’m also fond of werebears, so I decided that the tribe on Oyaviggaton were lycanthropes living in self-imposed exile. They were in control of themselves, but they remained away from civilization all the same. They visited Oyaviggaton yearly for a coming-of-age ritual, and Arauthator pressed them into his service. Rather than having laired on the iceberg for generations, I decided he’d come at the behest of the Cult of the Dragon, who wanted to place the Draakenhorn there (more on why in a moment). These warriors, the Urrasa tribe, were unwelcoming not because they served the dragon faithfully, but because they witnessed what became of Maccath the Crimson’s allies and they wish to spare our heroes from that gruesome fate.

    Lastly, the Draakenhorn is here on the iceberg, but it is well defended. The purpose for its stationing here is that an artifact on the stolen Hosttower of the Arcane in Arauthator’s lair is adversely affecting magic. Prolonged exposure is completely muting one’s connection to the weave. It’s why no one has heard from Maccath the Crimson; it’s why the Urrasa tribe has grown somber from the silence of the ancestors.

    Now, this last adjustment wasn’t as necessary as some of the others as fallout from the restructuring of the module. However, I really enjoyed the episodes of Critical Role exploring Eiselcross and dealing with the weirdness of magic there, and I had a fun idea for a puzzle-based dangerous encounter that’d help break up the monotony of fighting dragons and dragon servants all the time.

    So, altogether, we have a pretty decent dungeon of 4 encounters: a trial of strength by the Urrasa tribe, the ancient white dragon, the Netheril Accumulator I invented, and the defenders of the Draakehnhorn.

    Arriving at Oyaviggaton

    After the council reconvened and set them on their new task, our heroes were teleported to Oyaviggaton by the apprentice of on the wizards on the council, Taern Thunderspells. This apprentice was a new NPC, an orcish woman named Tsorina. Through this NPC I was able to give an in-character reaction to the weirdness of magic and provide a new tension: the heroes could not teleport away from the island until they dealt with the accumulator (not that they knew why magic was so strange here, yet). Tsorina, not a wizard for battling in the field, started freaking out. They calmed her down and made their way to a distant firelight on the horizon.

    These fires were those of the Urrasa tribe. After a brief social encounter, the three leaders of the tribe invited the heroes up to the Ridge of the Lost. Here, they tested our party’s strength, then revealed the gruesome reminder the White Death had installed here: the frozen corpses of their tribesmen who tried to flee and Maccath’s allies, the only other outsiders to have come to Oyaviggaton in many years. With their fortitude proven, the chieftain gave them a heading for Arauthator’s lair.

    Then, on a roll of a natural one and an eight on a d8 for a random encounter, they were ambushed by the dragon himself in the snowfields. Despite my intent to escape with Arauthator, the Owlin ranger pursued the beast himself. He nearly died for it, but survived with a mere 2 hit points and managed to take the dragon down. He’d flown far ahead of the party in this chase, too, so it’d have been lights out if he hadn’t secured the kill, perhaps permanently.

    The heroes continued on to the dragon’s lair, where they found the kobolds were not reverent followers of the dragon but were slaves themselves who celebrated his demise. Within, they met Maccath the Crimson who’d lost her ability to cast spells from her exposure to the accumulator but was still an expert in arcane matters.

    The Netheril Accumulator

    Atop the stolen Hosttower of the Arcane was the arcane mechanism exerting pressure upon the weave across Oyaviggaton. This battle consisted of three “Lodestones” that needed to be simultaneously deactivated (within the same round). Each lodestone had 300 hit points, but due to the collected arcana, they had taken on something like a personality and would expend their accumulated magic to defend themselves. To deactivate the lodestones, a character needed to spend their action performing an arcana check whose DC was equal to the lodestone’s current hit point total divided by ten. So, an unharmed lodestone had a DC 30 check, while one with 131 hit points left had a DC 13 check.

    These lodestones became much more dangerous the lower their hit point totals were, however. The table below was my reference for the encounter.

    Lodestone HitpointsBehavior ModeAction Adjustments
    250 – 300TerseThe lodestones use cantrips, and spells of first or second level.
    150 – 249AngeredThe lodestones gain the use of spells of 3rd, 4th, and 5th level.
    80 – 149FrightenedThe lodestones gain the use of spells of 6th and 7th level.
    1 – 79PanickedThe lodestones gain the use of spells of 8th and 9th level.
    0DetonatingAt 0 hit points, the lodestone explodes.

    The lodestones didn’t roll initiatives, instead they acted on steps 20, 15, and 5.

    And their explosion was an apocalyptic threat (at least for Oyaviggaton). If any were reduced to 0 hit points, then after one round (unless stalled by some miracle), it would erupt in a burst of pure arcane energy. All creatures within 30 miles would need to make a DC 15 Intelligence saving throw. On a failed save, they were Stunned and would suffer 30d10 force damage. Any creature reduced to 0 hit points by this damage would be reduced to ash. Creatures that succeed on the save take half damage and are not stunned. Additionally, magic items would’ve had to make a saving throw or cause a secondary detonation based on their rarity (like that moment in EXU: Calamity at the start of the 4th episode).

    Luckily, my players heeded Maccath’s warning and did not break any lodestones. One almost got to use a 9th level spell, but they completed their checks right before its turn. Oh, and each time a successful check was made, that lodestone was pacified until the end of the round.

    Maccath couldn’t do much to defend herself in this battle, but she added an incredible +13 to her arcana checks and she was willing to aid our heroes. So were a pair of kobolds they’d befriended, but they died pretty much immediately. (They were using the baseline kobold statblock; after the Owlin ranger convinced them to join the battle, they were doomed.)

    Attacking the Draakenhorn

    With the accumulator fixed and the dragon defeated, our heroes decided to rest overnight to recover before battling over the Draakenhorn. This had its own consequences. An additional enemy joined the retinue defending the horn: a fresh simulacrum of Rath Modar, equipped with knowledge of our heroes and their abilities. With the planned Blue Abishai here, that placed two powerful spellcasters opposed to the heroes. They also had to contend with ice trolls, and the commotion drew an unaligned Remorhaz to the battle.

    Our heroes prevailed, though a failed Wisdom saving throw allowed the true Rath Modar to observe them once again, and it was a great opportunity to showcase an abishai’s abilities to them, as one was soon going to be a major threat, but more on that next time.

    As always, thank you for reading! I’d meant to get another post out between this and the last one, but. Well. I’ve been playing a ton of Midnight. Even this post was drafted close to last minute! Here’s hoping I find the time between now and next month to get some other posts up.

    Good luck out there heroes.

  • Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 9: Statblocks

    Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 9: Statblocks

    The most consistent way I adjusted this module during our run of the campaign was tweaking and modifying the various statblocks present therein, especially once the 2024 rules released and I allowed many of my players to rebuild their characters with the new rules. Since 2014, there’s been a non-negligible amount of “power creep” in the game’s rules. Many subclasses that were printed in sources added later into 5e’s lifespan had more built-in power than those found in the old PHB. Then, with the 2024 ‘Handbook, many classes got major buffs to their throughput; spells changed, and many other features were edited in various ways.

    In this new set of core rulebooks, the Monster Manual was the last book to released. With the PCs feeling more powerful than ever, it was going to take some work to make appropriately challenging encounters from those written before 5th edition had even been published. Luckily, I have more than a decade of experience running this game (hell, this edition), so I knew a few healthy ways to rewrite these statblocks.

    Early Game Examples

    When my table played the earlier sections of the module, the 2024 books were still forthcoming. As such, we didn’t have the same number of major changes in those first dozen or so sessions, but there were still monsters I wanted to adjust.

    Ambush Drakes and Ambush Drakes (B)

    In the statblock provided by the module, an Ambush Drake has Pack Tactics and Surprise Attack. The latter grants the ambush drake an additional 2d6 damage if it hits a Surprised target in the first round of combat. This, added to its usual bite damage of 1d6+1 would average out to 11. Most PCs at level 1 have somewhere around 9 – 13 hit points. If one were to use the creature’s CR to build an encounter, and use two of these in battle against 4 level 1 PCs, it’s quite likely two of those PCs are unconscious before getting a turn, especially if using the 2014 Surprised condition.

    Naturally, I don’t think that’s likely to make a very good encounter. It could be dramatic, sure. You could, if using the scenario I described in my post on how we opened this module, have the Ambush Drakes kill some traveling civilians instead of the heroes. There’s ways to use the statblock as it exists without creating a bad experience for your players, sure.

    The thing is, I also wanted to have these Ambush Drakes have the limited ability to do a weak dragon’s breath. So, I made the alternate statblock “Ambush Drake (b)” which kept Pack Tactics but lost Surprise Attack, and instead gained a once-per-day breath weapon determined by the drake’s color that dealt 3d6 damage halved by DC 11 Dexterity saving throw.

    The encounter I ran in that first session was 1 Ambush Drake, 2 Ambush Drakes (b), and 1 Guard Drake. A quite difficult encounter, but one for which my players had an ally and not all of the attacks were coming for them; some landed on horses, some on other travelers, etc. If I’d needed to, I could’ve adjusted the difficult a little down once more by choosing to use Ambush Drakes with breath weapons target the damage types my players had resistances to; we had both a Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer with Fire Resistance, and a Fire Genasi character. With no adjustment to the statblocks, this fight could’ve been tweaked even further to reduce its threat.

    The Grey Hag

    The next homebrew statblock didn’t show up until my party battled the boss of our added homebrew dungeon while in the On the Road chapter. See, the thing about my games is I use hags pretty much every campaign. Maybe it’s confirmation bias, but I think I run them well. My players still talk about Edith Marshcradle, who they battled near the beginning of a campaign that began back in November 2020 (couldn’t appreciate VTTs more for helping us through that year). As we’re getting closer to beginning my next homebrew campaign, one of my players has asked multiple times if there will be more hags in it; hell, I shoehorned one in here, in the module about the Dragon Queen getting summoned up from Avernus.

    Point is, I’ve used hags a lot, and I wanted to make a unique encounter for my players here. I took inspiration from the boss battle with Auntie Ethel in Act 1 of Baldur’s Gate 3, and gave this Grey Hag the ability Divide and Conquer. As an action, the hag created 1d2+1 semi-illusory duplicates to aid in overwhelming her foes. Each had 1 hit point and dispersed into mist when defeated, but otherwise shared the Grey Hag’s statistics. Each duplicate acted on its own initiative, but they could only cast cantrips or strike with their claws. They all appeared within 20 feet of the Grey Hag’s original position when created, and as part of the same action, the true hag could appear anywhere within that radius herself. I, additionally, gave the Grey Hag a bonus action she could use to swap places with one of her existing duplicates, to ensure she could escape her foes without needing to spend her action to create more of them or losing her ability to cast a leveled spell and strike with her own claws.

    This fight proved fun, and a bit uniquely challenging for my party at the time as they were not yet 5th level and no one had access to Magic Missile which would’ve changed the tenor of this battle dramatically (just as it can in the fight with Auntie Ethel, come to think of it).

    Mid Game Threats

    As they tipped over into the second tier of play, I knew I could create even more challenging monsters for them to battle. The first monster they battled here that I had a unique spin on was the lizardfolk in Castle Naerytar I named Blessed Ulithara. This ultimately wasn’t too in-depth of an adjustment; I merely allowed her to select spells from both the Sorcerer and Cleric spell lists as a result of her dragon blessing. Instead, I wanted to highlight the adjustments made to a couple recurring cultist villain: Rath Modar.

    Rath Modar’s Simulacrum (Skyreach)

    In creating the simulacrum for their encounter in Skyreach castle, I kept in line with the Simulacrum spell rules, and determined a number of spell slots the construct had used in conquering Skyreach Castle that he simply wouldn’t have. This allowed me to limit the ability of a spell caster I really wanted to buff up for the final battle of the campaign, while also giving a good challenge to my party when they faced him. As such, despite buffing Rath Modar up to a 16th-level caster (more on that later), this simulacrum of the red wizard had nothing higher than 1 6th-level spell slot, had only 1 4th-level spell slot remaining, and had spent a 1st- and 3rd-level spell slot prior as well.

    When the encounter began, I spent that 6th-level slot on Summon Fiend, but instead of using the spell as written, I just used it to explain the presence of 4 Hellhounds included in the encounter. I, additionally, made Rath Modar (prime) an Evocation wizard instead of an Illusionist, and I allowed the simulacrum to Overchannel once per day as well. The intent there was to show my players what kind of wizard Rath would be when they faced him, to ensure they got information from battling his simulacrum, just as Rath was getting by observing it.

    Oh, I also only gave the simulacrum a homebrew item, the Amulet of Shared Sight (mentioned previously!) instead of Rath Modar’s usual equipment.

    While on this leg of their adventure, my party was also accompanied by Talis the White (B1), whose statblock I had to rebuild since I wanted her to be a wizard as well, instead of a cleric. It wasn’t much more than an adjusted spell selection, though, so no header for her.

    There was, however, one other encounter I adjusted in Skyreach Castle: Rezmir.

    The Juvenile Dragons

    As I reached this part of this post, I realized I brushed right past revisiting the Cultist Camp and investigating the Dragon Hatchery earlier in this series! It certainly makes sense I did; I ran the dungeon mostly as written. The exceptions were that I pulled Frida Maleer and Cyanwrath out of the dungeon to ensure they were saved for later, and I had the party encounter a Black Dragon Wyrmling in the hatchery room, along with two previously hatched eggs.

    Along with some documents and Frida’s underling, the hints here were that the cult was trying to accelerate the growth of dragons to have more resources at their disposal in amassing the wealth they needed to summon Tiamat. My party didn’t quite fit the puzzle together (and I wanted this to be more of a lingering thread, anyway), which allowed the presence of two dragons beside Rezmir in Skyreach Castle to be quite the surprise!

    Now, I didn’t want to drop even two young dragons into this encounter. My party was only around level 7, if my memory serves. That would’ve probably killed them. However, a pair of wyrmlings with Rezmir would’ve been a bit too easy for my table as a boss encounter. So, we made a statblock right in the middle: juveniles.

    We’ll use the blue one I made for the example here. Instead of a wyrmling’s 6d6 breath attack or young dragon’s 10d10 breath attack, we instead had one that dealt 6d10. Dice pool equal to the wyrmling, dice value equal to the young dragon. Additionally, I kept it at 2 attacks for its Multiattack action, but to-hit bonus was settled at +7 (right in the middle), and the damage values were closer to that of the young dragon’s. The juveniles, having magically aged, were also still primarily running on instinct. Without Rezmir’s commands, they behaved more like beasts. They were only, like, two months old after all.

    Climax Enemies

    I did adjust many of the foes my party would come to encounter in the climactic battle in the Well of Dragons as well (see above allusions to the evocative* Rath Modar), however, most of the changes there tied quite directly into the way I designed that final encounter. So, between that and this post being plenty long already, we’ll save that information for when I write about that finale. (*Yes, I know it’s a bad pun.)

    As always, thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes!

  • Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 8: The Contingency

    Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 8: The Contingency

    Upon their return to Waterdeep, my heroes were given another few days of downtime as Silverhand called the Council back to the city for their next meeting. This served the double purpose of allowing me to ensure the Cult of the Dragon could have time enough to shift into position for their counterattack.

    In the last few posts, I’ve been alluding to this contingency. This plan I’ve had in place to ensure the Masks of the Dragon would fall back into the hands of the cult to allow for our eventual battle with Tiamat. With the Black and Green masks in the vault beneath the Temple of Bahamut, things must seem quite squared away.

    During the second meeting of the Council of Waterdeep, our heroes reported their success and failure in obtaining these masks, and the councilors breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that two of these artifacts were locked away. Time would be on the side of the world in opposing the Cult of the Dragon, and eventually they would break with their plot foiled.

    Then, the Draakenhorn sounded.

    One piece of the lore in the Forgotten Realms is Ahgharion’s Dragonward. Waterdeep is protected from dragon attacks by a permanent magical ward that requires the blessing of the staff’s wielder to overcome. In our reworking of the module, the Draakenhorn shattered this ward, and allowed the cult to strike.

    The Raid on Waterdeep

    In an instant, five disparate dragons strafed the city, razing city blocks with their breath alone. Simultaneously, a Sending spell reported to Lady Silverhand that the Temple of Bahamut was under attack. However, the Council had a more immediate concern, as they too were targeted by this attack.

    With our heroes in the middle of the room, a traitorous nobleman opened the way for the cult to attack the councilors. Here, we had a wave-based encounter which had the primary tension of the party needing to defend the council members from the cult’s attentions. Each round, we rolled to determine who the cultists were primarily trying to kill, and the party had until the end of the round to try and prevent a councilor’s maiming (or worse). I added a new section to the Scorecard for the failure state of this encounter: if any council member suffered the cult’s attentions, it would’ve been a major hit to their approval of the party. My players, bonafide gamers that they are, conquered this encounter with no councilors suffering a wound.

    In the aftermath, my party needed to make a difficult decision, one of pragmatism versus heroism. Dragons continued strafing the city’s districts, killing hundreds of people every moment. Alternatively, the cult’s leadership was attacking the Platinum Vault to reclaim the Masks of the Dragon. My party debated the options for a handful of minutes, as their allies continued to weigh-in on both sides of the issue. I also made it clear that whatever the party decided, there would be someone sent to address the other danger. Cyanwrath would led a team to oppose the dragons should our heroes choose otherwise; Brok would lead Harpers to the vault to try and stop the cult if they choose to fight the dragons.

    In the end, our party’s sorcerer couldn’t abide leaving the people of Waterdeep to the danger of the dragon attacks without their intervention.

    So, with Cyanwrath at their side, they ventured out into the city and fought some dragons. We had escalating battles here; the party fought one young dragon, then two young dragons, and then they fought one of the twin adult dragons from the Mere of Dead Men, with a timer on when the other would intervene if they did not vanquish him in time. I once again employed my Heroic Vignettes mechanic here in between the first and second fights (with the ambush in the council room, this was two fights on either side of the vignettes). They triumphed in all these encounters, and the raid on Waterdeep came to its end.

    Resuming the Second Council Meeting

    A Sending spell reached our party to ask them to return to the council chambers once they were able. Our heroes worked to rescue people in danger for some more time, and eventually, with the dragons defeated, they saw the people of Waterdeep rally to one another’s aid, and they returned to the council. On entry, they saw Brok with a grievous wound being tended to in the entry hall, and he rasped out an apology as they checked on him.

    My party of course deduced early on that without their intervention, the masks would be lost. The council confirmed that consequence at their return. With that, the council felt a confrontation at the Well of Dragons would prove inevitable, though Silverhand wasn’t ready to surrender the opportunity to forestall the apocalypse just yet. With the capture of Skyreach Castle, the cult would surely still need to amass some other fortune for their ritual. A chance to steal another mask may yet present itself.

    Possessing a mask would prove impossible without the Dragonward, however. And the Dragonward would be a fool’s construction so long as the cult retained the Draakenhorn. Marshal Ulder Ravengard felt they still needed to prepare for the cult’s dragon allies in the event that the battle would come to pass, and thus our party had their two objectives: venture to Oyaviggaton to capture the Draakenhorn, and entreat with the metallic dragons at the Platinum Dragonmoot to oppose the cult’s chromatic dragons.

    Hopefully, they’d have time enough to pursue these ends, before Tiamat could be brought into the world …

    Bleak start to the year, huh? Hopefully this can serve as something of a refuge to the news flying around these days. As always, thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • D&D: Decisions and Choices in Character Creation

    D&D: Decisions and Choices in Character Creation

    At the beginning of this month, I began a new campaign with my weekly table. We’re back to a homebrew setting and adventure after our run of Tyranny of Dragons; one I’ll be delighted to write a bit about in a future post. Today, however, I’ve got some thoughts about the ways character creation and customization changed in the 2024 Player’s Handbook I wanted to puzzle out.

    Namely, there’s a new tension in the choices presented. One that’s easy to miss on first glance or even on a first build with this version of the rules. To understand it, though, you need to know what exactly has changed.

    Back in 2014, when 5th edition first began, it retained a lot of traditional holdovers that have only become more unpopular in the last decade. Twelve years ago, when you were creating your D&D character, your chosen race had certain attribute bonuses assigned to it. You know, elves have a bonus to their dexterity, orcs have one to strength; things that have become so misaligned with the game’s current culture it’s shocking they were ever there to begin with.

    This changed in 2020 with the release of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. In that supplement, we were given the option to reassign these bonuses however we’d like. This proved a popular change, one that my own tables never dispensed with for our all campaigns and one-shot adventures prior to 2024. That’s not to say that there weren’t plenty of grumpy old fats on the internet upset about the elimination of that … “texture.” The best of them, I think, were upset to lose the tension of a choice in character creation (and the worst of them we won’t waste any time on). As in, in the 2014 rules, if one made a half-orc wizard, you were specifically accepting a disadvantage to pursue your character fantasy.

    And that is the tension that’s come back around in the 2024 PHB – not due to any preassigned heritage based bonuses, but with bonuses to our attributes provided by our selected backgrounds.

    Now, December wasn’t my first brush with these adjustments. When the updated PHB dropped, I let my players rebuild their PCs at their discretion in between sessions. The DM of my monthly game with my Warcraft guildmates did the same, and my sporadically meeting table I host for my family has only been using the new PHB’s rules.

    Thing is, in those situations, we didn’t really experience the tension. Not immediately, anyway. For both of my tables, I let my players just select whatever combination of feat and attribute bumps they wanted, effectively using the Custom Background rules that we now have from the new Dungeon Master’s Guide. My own character in my guild’s game is defined so entirely by his history as a soldier that I settled on it pretty early; it provided the attribute bumps I wanted, but, to be honest, I practically never use its origin feat and would’ve preferred something like the Guard background’s Alert. I settled with that trade-off, however.

    All this is to say: I wasn’t ignorant of this tension. I’d merely delayed the need to interrogate my own thoughts on the matter until now. As we neared our Session Zero, one of my players was considering two character concepts. One was a monk who he imagined as having something like the old Folk Hero background. That one didn’t survive the transition between 2014 and 2024, though; the closest one to it would be the Farmer background in the PHB. My player’s issue was that he definitely wanted to boost his Dexterity and Wisdom for that monk, not his Strength.

    That is where I think there’s a line here. A lot of the time when we’re building our D&D PCs, we’re making decisions. We’re deciding we want to play a certain class, a certain species, have a certain personality, etc. Then, we come upon the new backgrounds and the game is asking us instead to make a choice. That if we want a specific origin feat, we’d better be happy with one of the attribute sets assigned to the same background(s) it’s attached to (to say nothing of the given proficiencies). (Alternatively, hopefully we’re happy picking the human species for an additional origin feat.)

    I don’t know if Backgrounds is the right place to ask people to make a choice over a decision, though. Maybe WOTC doesn’t either, since they codified a work-around themselves.

    Any alternatives that come to mind seem like poor replacements, too. Like, if they’d instead made these 1st level bonuses provided from your class, that limits the many avenues in the game that let us play with an alternate primary stat, like the Dexterity focused paladin subclass from Heroes of Faerun, or playing a Rogue or Cleric PC that primarily attacks with a weapon through True Strike and thus doesn’t need a good Dexterity or Strength score.

    These bonuses are meant to help prop up a character to perform their primary focus. They’re bad-luck protection when rolling stats, or it’s the bonuses that allow your primary attributes to truly excel over the other ones when using Point Buy or Standard Array. It’s just inelegant.

    But, hey, who says it needs to be?

    It’s healthy for the game to have both choices and decisions. Choices can help us flesh out characters we’ve already made several decisions about, and the decisions we make inform the choices that are meaningful to us. I see a lot of value in both ends of that spectrum. Perhaps in a future edition of the game, we’ll have some other way these attribute boosts are created, or the starting budget for point buy will change, or the standard array numbers will shift around, or maybe we’ll move away from 4d6k3 as the default for rolled stats. Who knows.

    As always, thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 7: The Tomb of Diderius

    Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 7: The Tomb of Diderius

    It’s a common experience in D&D that we DMs make magic items we don’t fully understand the ramifications of. In this run of the module, nothing surprised me more than an Amulet of Shared Sight my players looted off of the Rath Modar simulacrum they defeated in Skyreach Castle. When I made it, I thought, “This will be a fun way to let the party understand that Rath Modar watched them kill his simulacrum.” Then they used the damn thing all the time to let their allies scry upon them.

    Such was the case after they defeated Neronvain. My party used this amulet to inform King Melandrach, and with a king’s resources at his disposal, a court wizard arrived swiftly to bring them to the king’s palace. The stayed overnight in the palace, resupplied, and asked that the wizard take them as close as he could to the Tomb of Diderius so they could try and rescue the Zhentarim agent before her fall.

    A side-effect of how I presented this quest made my party feel the pressure of a ticking clock to a degree I didn’t fully intend. Don’t mistake me, I’m glad my players were invested enough in the campaign that they pursued their quests with haste; I just hadn’t considered the extent to which I accelerated their actions with the situation I presented. Either way, after a quick teleport, my party arrived in the ancient debris of a long-crumbled town outside the Tomb of Diderius.

    Scrapping Ss’tck’al

    I didn’t care for the Yuan-ti dungeon the first time I ran this module. Besides being a bit out of leftfield, it also contains what would end up being some repetitive encounters for this run of the module, given how I changed Castle Naerytar.

    The Tomb itself also contains some design choices I find are more aligned with an adversarial DM’s style. As an example, the last time I ran this module, my players were worn out by the time they reached the room filled with Bearded Devils. These fiends have express orders to attack anything that leaves from a chamber to the side, so they don’t attack the party when they first arrive here. My table at the time decided to try to take a short rest in this room, with the exception of their barbarian. He, uninjured, decided to explore the room the Bearded Devils were watching, and discovered the Wraiths and Specters within. His party tried to aid him, but unfortunately, the specters killed him before they could intervene, and the Wraith turned him into another specter. This was one of the only permanent deaths I’ve had at a table in all my years running D&D, and afterward, the Bearded Devils followed their command and attacked the wounded party as they tried to flee with the corpse of their fallen ally.

    That, of course, all happened over ten years ago. Were I to encounter a similar situation again, I’d definitely do a lot differently; I’d call for an explicit Insight check to understand the devil’s motivations; I’d give more clues that something nefarious was behind that door the barbarian entered alone; I’d have had a disclosure during session 0 about character death and ensured we were all on the same page about such things. Live and learn, right?

    This isn’t to mention that I’ve completely changed the scenario here. There’s no question that the White Dragon Mask has been taken inside the tomb; there’s no need for divination pool, no need for gathering information at Boareskyr Bridge, and with my party’s teleport, no need for roadside travel or random encounters. Ultimately, I needed an entirely new dungeon.

    The (New) Tomb of Diderius

    After absconding with Varram’s mask, the Zhentarim agent fled into this old and ancient tomb home to a terrible curse of my own making: Lich’s Breath. I reimagined Diderius as a wizard of a long-forgotten age who defeated a powerful lich. However, in that creature’s death throes, it laid a curse upon Diderius and all his allies, one that would see them eternally undead, and that their touch would spread the curse to others. To save his homeland, Diderius led his warriors away, where they settled and built the tomb that would house them all. With the aid of a Hallow spell, the undead were trapped inside forevermore.

    Lich’s Breath was a simple enough curse. Any time my players began their turn within 5 feet of any of the cursed undead, they needed to make a saving throw against the curse. It wasn’t a terribly high DC, but a few still fell prey to its effect, though they wouldn’t know it immediately. Instead, they only felt an unwelcome chill settle upon them, and after time, they’d see a slight green glow upon their eyes in their reflection. Luckily, we also had a cure on hand: Holy Water. Imbibing Holy Water forced a character to make a Constitution saving throw (one which they could elect to fail), and on a failure, they suffered 1d6+1 radiant damage and felt the curse leave them.

    This revealed that our Zhentarim agent only fled within because she must have had no other options. Over the centuries, the undead had been lulled into inaction; something close to peaceful rest, stirring only when their tomb was plundered. Thus, our rogue agent was able to proceed through the dungeon with relative ease, whereas her first and second pursuers faced greater and greater danger, and our heroes faced the worst of the lot (more on those two pursuers in a moment).

    When my party entered the dungeon, they discovered the entryway mostly empty. Therein, there were two defeated undead and tablets that revealed the story of Diderius and his people. They realized the defeated undead within were slowly reconstituting and decided to smash one’s skull and consecrate the remains with Holy Water to try and prevent it. I improvised a small encounter with an Allip in response – to try and stave off my party thinking their goal here might be to permanently eliminate the undead.

    Mostly because their first (planned) encounter within the tomb wasn’t meant to be a battle, but a mad dash through a horde of undead to reach a safe space on the other side: a shrine to a forgotten goddess that had its own hallowed ground and an ever-filling bowl of holy water. With a truly absurd number of undead on the board and a hallway stretching just over four-hundred feet, the party needed to engineer some creative solutions to get through the horde. This is a type of encounter I’ve been experimenting with for a while; this version of it worked pretty well, but if I were to run the module again in the future, I think I’d decide to do something else instead. Perhaps a wave-based encounter and multiple rooms in sequence, rather than one long hallway. (Talespire did a lot for making this encounter function at all, too.)

    In the hallowed shrine, my party managed a moment’s rest. Then, they discovered the sarcophagi of Diderius’s Honor Guard. There were eight sarcophagi within the room, but three of the undead had already risen and been defeated by those who’d entered the tomb before our heroes. So, our party battled five of the undead warriors made from a retooled Knight statblock, edited to be undead, have more hit points, deal bonus necrotic damage instead of radiant, gained a recharge 6 Life Drain attack equivalent to a Wraith, and a Zombie’s Undead Fortitude. This gave us a good encounter, and the threat of having to battle an additional three of them if the party decided to rest again urged them further into the dungeon, rather than back into the hallowed shrine behind them.

    Back-to-Back Boss Battles

    In the following room, they met Varram. Our White Wyrmspeaker found himself utterly stuck by a door proposing a riddle – a riddle he figured out quickly, but one that required more than just the answer. My party didn’t approach quietly, so Varram turned and faced them down with a mighty enchanted axe and his Orb of Dragonkind (White). I intend to have future post in the series devoted to the ways I tweaked statblocks for this run of the module, so I’ll save  the specifics for later. Ultimately, my party succeeded, and they too answered the riddle quickly.

    The door read, “I am a shadow which rests upon thy shoulders like a heavy, dragging cloak. By thy own agency am I donned. In thy ear I whisper of the words unsaid and the roads untraveled. Haunted by me, perhaps evermore, I may still grant thee perspective or absolution, if thou might quiet the darkest of my musings. Speak aloud my name, and this door will open.” After a few guesses, my party landed on “Regret,” and I confirmed the answer by saying they hadn’t heard it clearly before, but when they’d entered, Varram had been saying the word over and over.

    The trick was that one needed to consider a regret as they spoke the word, and rather than open, the door simply became immaterial to the speaker. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed employing a puzzle with a simple solution, but one that requires a bit of roleplay from the players to fully solve. One by one, my players spoke of one of their character’s regrets, and they were able to enter the true Tomb of Diderius.

    Within we battled a Mummy Lord, a creature of a CR well beyond what my party could theoretically handle at their level, but one they conquered all the same, given the lack of additional enemies in the room and well rolled saves against the Command casts from his Legendary Actions. An upcasted Chromatic Orb dealing fire damage absolutely rocked him, too.

    With his defeat, my party proceeded to the final room of the tomb, a private space Diderius had here as he waited for the end of his life. Within, they found a final inscription from Diderius, musing over his terror of mortality having given way to his fear of this tomb one day being plundered and leading to the spread of Lich’s Breath. He implored any who entered to look into a mirror and check for the signs of the curse before leaving, and this was his final gambit. It was a Mirror of Life Trapping, which successfully snagged one of the members of my party. When they left, they ended up taking the mirror with them, having discovered in their work to free their ally that several other would-be graverobbers had been ensnared within the mirror, and many of them (if not all of them) were cursed.

    Ultimately, my party arrived too late for the Zhentarim agent. Having hurried into the tomb before Varram’s arrival was another rival of both his and my players: Talis. With the mask stolen, she pursued the thief and reclaimed it to become the White Wyrmspeaker herself, leaving a note to taunt Varram. That allowed our sorcerer to recognize the handwriting, and know who’d gotten the best of them here.

    This had always been the way I intended to end this dungeon; hell, in the module the mask is already back at the Well of Dragons by the time Varram uses the Divination Pool in the tomb. However, had my players elected to act with pragmatism, I think I’d have given them the chance to oppose Talis here in this small room to try and take the mask for themselves. I think she’d have had the upper hand with the spells at her disposal, and preferably she’d still teleport away before she could be slain; that still would give the party information on the new White Wyrmspeaker, who they’d be certain to encounter again in the future. And, hey, if they somehow pulled it off, well. The next post in this series will reveal my contingency. Stay tuned.

    As always, thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.

  • Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 6: The Ruin of Altand

    Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 6: The Ruin of Altand

    Over the course of the last five posts in this series, I’ve talked about the ways I adjusted this module as I ran it for the second time. So far, most have been pretty minor overall. I preserved some characters, I threw in additional dungeons or changed the encounters therein, and I was more thoughtful with how to express the tension of the On the Road chapters. Yet, structurally, the module’s mostly run along the tracks it gives you, hasn’t it?

    This is where that changed.

    The council’s first meeting was not spurred on by the distant sounding of the Draakhorn (or Draakenhorn as it came to be known in my campaign). Instead, when my party had first moved through Waterdeep, they’d briefly met Remallia then, and she alluded to the eventual formation of the council. With Brok there to vouch for them, she asked that the party specifically discover the ultimate destination of the stolen gold and what the cult intended to do with it. Having now returned with both pieces of information and a Mask of the Dragon, Remallia wanted them to join her at the meeting. More specifically, she wanted them to become the Council’s Executors: their clandestine agents in opposing the cult and preventing their success.

    As the day approached, she laid the groundwork for that charge, and the party prepared to sell themselves in the meeting. In addition to the criteria on the scorecard in the module, I added several other items to affect each faction’s affinity: whether my party dressed as warriors or politicians; whether they ceded the Mask of the Dragon they found to the Platinum Vault beneath Bahamut’s temple in the city; their reaction to the council implying they might pick other adventurers instead of them. These all had different reactions from each faction, but they aren’t particularly necessary for the adjustments made to the module or the existing scorecard structure. (I just wanted to have additional reactions to the party’s decisions.)

    The party proved successful and accepted their first task from the council. Rather than sending them to Oyaviggaton to handle the Draakenhorn (since we’re saving that for later; more on why in a future post), we instead had the choice between which Wyrmspeaker to pursue first: Neronvain or Varram.

    As in the module, the man most wronged by Neronvain is resistant to the party’s involvement. However, to spur them into more immediate action, the delegate of the Emerald Enclave revealed that Neronvain and his dragon Chuth had razed the village of Altand a mere two days before the council meeting. Alternatively, an agent of the Zhentarim had managed to steal Varram’s mask, but she had to flee into a dungeon to avoid being captured by the Wyrmspeaker. Without the party’s intervention, she might not last much longer.

    Deciding they couldn’t let Neronvain and Chuth roam free and continue their massacre of the elves, they ventured first into the Misty Forest.

    The Ruin of Altand

    Altand doesn’t get razed in the module – at least, not to the extent that I razed it in this campaign. With Altand, I had a problem to solve. See, I mostly run my games with experience points rather than milestone. That’s usually never a problem, but here, since I’d brought Neronvain’s chapter forward in the module and it was the first the party chose to pursue, I decided to add a dungeon here. Rather than run a series of social encounters with a particularly obstinate elf (at least that was how he’d come across the last time I’d run this module), we had a ruined village to explore. Within the village were several special encounters; an ettin collecting spoils with his hounds (dire wolves); a large group of kobold looters; the mad specters of the slain villagers; and a grovewarden blighted by the dragon’s poisonous breath. Once defeated, the ettin disclosed that there were two more of his kin in the dragon’s lair; the party spared and captured one kobold and paid him to lead them to stronghold; and the party got their first taste of how dangerous the dragon’s breath would be from the blighted grovewarden, as I simply added a 30-foot radius exhalation attack to a treant’s statblock with damage equal to that of an adult green dragon.

    This proved to be a fun dungeon that showed the party firsthand the devastation left by Neronvain’s raids. It helped cement that choosing to contest him first to prevent more attacks like this was a great decision. It also made them question their promise to King Melandrach. As in the module, I disclosed that Neronvain was Melandrach’s son, and he asked them to return Neronvain to him alive.

    After dealing with all four encounters, my party secured a campground and took a long rest. In the morning, their kobold ally led them deeper into the Misty Forest, and eventually to Neronvain’s hidden stronghold. On the path, they were spied upon by critters corrupted by the dragon’s lair – for flavor, I described a squirrel’s eyes flashing and turning into a draconic green as it observed the party over their second night in the woods. Once at the waterfall that obscured the entrance to the lair, the party released their kobold prisoner/guide and paid him for his time. In return, he promised to use an additional wealth of gold given to him to try and keep the other kobolds of his warren from rushing to the stronghold if called.

    Neronvain’s Stronghold

    As in the module, Chuth awaited my party in ambush in the first room of the dungeon. Now, despite being a little underleved for a CR 15 dragon, my party’s damage output gave them a good chance to kill Chuth before he could retreat to the final room of the dungeon; and, due to a looted Crossbow of Warning, they were not under the imposition of the Surprised condition when Chuth ambushed them. So, we made a few light adjustments to this battle: first, the water was laced with a poison such that any wounded character would suffer 1d8 poison damage at the start of their turn if they were in the water. The major benefit here was Chuth had both a superior swim speed and immunity to this effect, disincentivizing pursuing him into the lair proper. Next, the water was murky enough to greatly obscure Chuth when submerged, allowing him the opportunity to hide from my potent ranged attackers. Lastly, as Chuth began to flee, a group of cultists rushed into the room from its other exit and began attacking the party with crossbows and spells. This diverted enough of their attention that Chuth was able to retreat, and he was on the verge of death when he did so.

    The last cultist alive surrendered to the party, and from him they were able to learn about the layout of the dungeon. I made some small changes to it, reducing it down to six total rooms. I basically cut rooms 3 and 4 from the layout in the module. I moved the Ettins to room 5 and made it the storeroom, and made room 7 a prison where the few survivors of Altand were detained. This room provided a social encounter, where my party needed to negotiate with a cultist warden holding the prisoners hostage to bargain for her life, one at knifepoint.

    In our run of the dungeon, my players used the robes of the cultists they defeated to sneak by the barracks (with the aid of Pass Without Trace). In the storeroom, they convinced the two ettin to allow them passage in exchange for their pick of the spoils in the storeroom. Lastly, the heroes successfully de-escalated the hostage situation, allowing the one cultist to flee and saving all the hostages. I’d run this cultist as someone choosing to abandon the cult after Altand, and not someone that would stab our party in the back by rallying the others after this encounter. I preferred this outcome for two reasons: one, my party was trying to get through the dungeon to pursue the dragon before either could rest and recover, and two, I didn’t want to run every member of the cult as a lost cause. The party had already spared and were on the road to redeeming other NPCs that began with the cult; I didn’t want that to only apply to named characters.

    From there, they ascended to Neronvain’s chambers. As in the module, there was a secret passage connecting this room to Chuth’s lair, and shortly after the fight began, Neronvain fled to battle beside his dragon. His two bodyguards remained and the party split themselves between these two encounters, half in pursuit, the others serving as their rearguard. This nearly made their rematch with Chuth deadly.

    Chuth, near his hoard, had recovered a great deal after their first battle, but he was not a full health. Unfortunately, neither were our heroes. The battle was condensed around the entryway into this room, and in the conflict our sorcerer fell unconscious into the poison water. His allies were able to slay the dragon immediately afterward, though, and they pulled him from the water before he died in it. The party proceeded to successfully capture Neronvain, and handed him over to King Melandrach.

    Thus concluded the first half of our adjusted Death to the Wyrmspeakers Chapter. Originally, I had both this and the following dungeon in the same post, but it ended up being much longer than I thought. Instead, the post about the Tomb of Diderius and Varram will wait until early January.

    As to the reasons behind this major restructure of the module’s path, I’ll go into further detail in a future post in this series. For now, suffice it to say that I wanted to party to get their hands on all the Masks of the Dragon they’d have the opportunity to loot (easily) before the second meeting of the council.

    As always, thank you for reading! Good luck out there, heroes.

  • Utilizing Rests in D&D

    Utilizing Rests in D&D

    Over the years, D&D has often been spoken of as a game that employs Attrition. One that makes its boss fights difficult by having its players dwindle in resources over a handful of encounters prior to the major fights. When you enter a dragon’s lair, you might expect to fight whelps, kobolds, lizardfolk, or other monsters before you get to the main event. Oftentimes, it feels impossible to find a moment to use the game’s mechanics for recovery in these situations. Players might think, “If we rest for an hour in this room, won’t it be likely that some of the dragon’s minions happen across us? Maybe they escape our notice and warn the dragon! We can’t afford to rest.” And it isn’t an unfair thought.

    But to some degree these rests and the resources they recover are an important part of how each class is balanced in the game. Classes with bigger hit die are getting more hit points back; for Fighters, Action Surge absolutely rules, and getting it back on a short rest is part of their ability to maintain their throughput throughout the day whereas a full caster likely isn’t getting many of their spell slots back (if any) on a short rest.

    However, if the party is in a dangerous location with enemies abound, how should a DM determine how risky a rest is? If there’s never a gamble, why does it require as much time as it does? If it is a gamble, why are they so important for the game’s balance? There’s a place where the verisimilitude of the world brushes up against the mechanics of the game here.

    Let’s see if we can’t reduce that friction a bit.

    Why is a Short Rest an hour long?

    Across forums and boards on the internet, one of the first things it seems many DMs will do is reduce the duration of a short rest. If it’s only 15 minutes, the party will feel like they’ve got a better chance of remaining undetected; of being able to move on before their enemies can react to where they’ve set up. Hell, I’ve got that Heroic Vignettes mechanic I’ve used a few times to achieve something similar.

    There’s a reason they settled on an hour, though, right? They could’ve written it to be 15 minutes in the book if they wanted. I think it’s primarily to mitigate the duration of buffs from spells and items. There’s a handful of effects that last longer than an hour; for the most part, however, that’s the full duration of a spell. So, completing a Short Rest is likely to end any such effects.

    It also gives the enemies enough time to react in some way. Maybe they don’t come after the party; the heroes have likely set up some kind of barricade or otherwise improved their position. Even if they haven’t, it’s a reasonable assumption for their adversaries to have. Their foes, however, may not be caught unawares any longer, even if the party eliminated every opponent in their battles so far. There’s always some sneak or sorcery that might allow the monsters that information, after all.

    I think, ultimately, for the sake of the rules it makes sense to codify a Short Rest as taking an hour to complete. However, as DMs, I think we might be better served if we consider a Short Rest to take approximately an hour. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more. Maybe even contingent on how beat up the party even is. That gives us a little leeway. Maybe the party binds some minor wounds and it’s not even half an hour in the world of the game, but mechanically, it still removes those effects that wouldn’t last beyond an hour.

    Should we apply this idea to Long Rests?

    I think, in some cases, we should! For all the talk about attrition over the years, I’ve personally had some of the most dynamic and engaging encounters when my party is fresh from a Long Rest. At the time of writing, my table is battling in the climax of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign I’ve been running; I didn’t run them through a dungeon before it, and it’s been a blast so far (we had to end the session only two rounds in, it’s been a wild fight)!

    In a previous campaign, my party managed to sneak a rest within a dragon’s lair with the aid of some clever spells and a very high deception roll, and they fought the dragon fully rested. Now, it certainly requires a bit more work on the DM’s side; that dragon was accompanied by an abishai and a handful of whelps, her CR was a bit higher than the party might otherwise encounter at their level, and she used her flight to remain out of reach when she got low, forcing the party to deal with those minions before pursuing her.

    When your party is at their full effectiveness, you can hit them with the biggest challenges, things they might not be able to handle otherwise. However, there’s still a lot of value in forcing encounters after the party’s been run ragged.

    Denying Rests

    My job lends itself to throwing on some music or playing some videos as background noise. As a result, earlier this year, I rewatched Critical Role’s Calamity miniseries. Both now and when it originally aired, one thing that really surprised me was that the party never took a rest. There was simply never time for one.

    However, the party in the game wasn’t actually going to get a whole lot from a Short Rest. They were lousy with full casters; their only martials were a Rogue (who dodged the most damaging moment in the campaign) and a paladin (which doesn’t get much back on a Short Rest). Healing would’ve been the most significant part of any rest the party might’ve achieved, and in the end, they pulled through without one.

    Evoking that level of desperation, of making hard choices when the chips are down, that’s worth pursuing. It just needn’t be the goal of every adventure. In fact, a mixture of this style of breakneck dungeon, one with plenty of rests, or major encounters just after a rest gives everyone their chances to shine; to make their choice of class feel that much more impactful. Take it as one more thing to consider when planning adventures in the long term.

    As always, thanks for reading! Good luck out there, heroes.

  • Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 5: Masks of the Dragon

    Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 5: Masks of the Dragon

    Both when I ran this module at the beginning of 5th edition and as I was preparing to run it again now, I always had this distaste for the way the module advises us to withhold the Masks of the Dragon. The few times they’re within the party’s reach, it wants you to use a magic chest to teleport it away, to reveal it to be a fake, or otherwise deny the party their victory.

    I think that sucks. I think if my players have overcome these Wyrmspeakers, they should get that tangible reward for doing so. When I ran the module back in 2014/2015, my party looted the Black mask from Rezmir, and in my current campaign, they did so again.

    However, these masks are stated by the book to be a necessary component to the ritual to summon Tiamat. I’ve seen it interpreted that this just means that at least one mask must remain in the cult’s possession, but I frankly prefer it to mean that they need all five. This competes with my desire to allow the party to obtain them; if they’ve got them safe in their bags, how can I ensure the cult obtains them to summon their god? After all, as much as the characters want to prevent Tiamat from being summoned, my players absolutely want to throw down with the Dragon Queen of Avernus. She’s on the cover! We’ve got to fight her!

    So, how do we square this circle?

    How’s About a Curse?

    That seemed the most straightforward to me. When my current table vanquished Rezmir and claimed her mask, they were able to Identify it and learn its properties. I didn’t hide the curse from them at all, I gave them the full text of the item as I’d written it.

    Mask of the Dragon (Black)

    Wondrous Item, Requires Attunement by an evil creature.

    While attuned to a Mask of the Dragon, its bearer gains potent bonuses based upon the color of the mask. These items are necessary for the ritual to bring Tiamat into the world from Avernus, but they also corrupt any who possess them.

    This horned mask of glossy ebony has a skull-like mien. While in possession of this mask, any time you complete a rest, you must make a DC 12 Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, you must attune this item. If you are already attuned to three items, you select one that you immediately lose attunement to, replacing it with this item. If your alignment is not evil, it changes to become so (your alignment returns to normal once you are no longer attuned to this item). While attuned to the mask and wearing it, you gain the following benefits:

    • Damage Absorption. You gain resistance Acid damage. If you already have Acid resistance, you instead gain immunity to Acid damage. If you already have immunity to Acid damage, you retain it and additionally heal for half of the Acid damage you would take whenever you would suffer acid damage.
    • Dragon Sight. You gain darkvision out to 60 feet, or to an additional 60 feet if you already have that sense. Once per day, you can gain blindsight out to 30 feet for 5 minutes.
    • Dragon’s Tongue. You gain the ability to speak and understand Draconic. You additionally gain advantage on any Charisma check you make against Black Dragons.
    • Water Breathing. You can breathe underwater.
    • Legendary Resistance (1/Day). If you fail a saving throw, you can choose to succeed instead.

    This item is Cursed. To remove your attunement to this item, you must first be the target of a Remove Curse spell, cast at 5th level or higher. While you are cursed by this item, you are jealous and protective of it. You do not want to let it leave your sight. Members of the Cult of the Dragon are unaffected by this curse.

    The curse may be removed from this item if it is targeted by a Remove Curse or Wish spell cast at 9th level. However, once it has been in the possession of a chromatic dragon for 7 days, it regains its curse. Some creatures are immune to the Charisma saving throw this items requires – any clerics or paladins sworn to Bahamut and metallic dragons may possess this mask without worry of succumbing to its will.

    The benefits of the item are exactly those conferred by the mask(s) in the module. The information on the curse, the item’s importance to the ritual, and the final paragraphs are the only additions I made.

    Now, this is close to perfect. It lets my party secure the item and make meaningful, tangible progress toward preventing the cult’s goals. But, even this minor curse, makes it nearly unusable. My party had no paladin or cleric (and none of them are secretly metallic dragons), so they’d be making this save each time they rested. It’s not a hard save, but the ranger who held onto the mask for their first long rest after collecting it failed the save. It influencing your character’s actions is pretty detrimental, but I think the real trouble comes from it forcing its way into a character’s attunement slots, despite the item’s clear power. They’ve likely got the items they want attuned on, right?

    Well, I solved that part of the problem, but I made a whole new one, didn’t I? Now, the party wasn’t gaining a cool magic item they could use for conquering these tough bosses. I didn’t want the byproduct of future-proofing this item (more on that in a future post) to be denying them a cool reward for beating their foes.

    So, How’s About a Second Item?

    Following the advice of a poster on /r/TyrannyOfDragons, I added an additional relic to the ritual inspired by an existing item, the Orbs of Dragonkind. These I envisioned as an optional component for the ritual; something the cult wants to retain, but not something they cannot afford to lose. (And Tiamat will be gaining a buff corresponding to the orbs the Cult of the Dragon still has, but we’re a few weeks out from that climactic battle and many of my players read this blog, so we’ll unfortunately be saving what that is for the final post in this series.)

    The orbs themselves are quite powerful. Honestly, probably a bit too powerful. However, the ones my players have gained were all used by the Wyrmspeakers in battle beforehand, so they felt the bite before they earned the boon. Here’s an example of what they do:

    Orb of Dragonkind (Black)

    Wondrous Item

    This unbreakable glass orb contains a swirling dark mist sparkling with specs of glittering dust. When staring into its ever-churning depths, on might see the flit of a dragon’s silhouette darting through the storm. While in possession of the orb, you may use a bonus action to invoke its magic, gaining the following bonuses for one minute:

    • +1 AC as black scales sheath your arms and shoulders
    • +1d8 acid damage to your weapon attacks
    • +1 to your spell save DC
    • Resistance to Acid damage

    Additionally, you gain the following action until the magic fades:

    Acid Breath (Recharge 6). Exhale a 20-foot line of acid. Each creature in the area must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 33 (6d10) acid damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

    When activated by a Wyrmspeaker of the Cult of the Dragon, this bonus action additionally heals the bearer for 70 hit points. Once the orb has conferred these bonuses, it dims and cannot confer these bonuses again until the following day at dawn.

    I think if I were to run this module again, I’d change the activation to provide the damage resistance, and then one of the other effects at the player’s discretion. As is, it’s rare someone benefits from the damage on their weapon attacks and their spell save DC anyway. Perhaps I’d let the AC bonus gain the breath weapon, too, since it might be the least selected option if they were competing. (Maybe wrap the weapon damage and spell DC together as Draconic Fury, and the remaining two as Draconic Majesty … hm.)

    Regardless, at the time of writing my party’s collected three of these from their adventures; even the one time they were too slow to claim a Mask of the Dragon (more on that in a future post), they still got an orb during their quest.

    So, there we have it. No bait-and-switch on the Masks; when the players earn them, they get them. Keeping them, however, remains a tough prospect, since I’ve got my thumb on the scale with that curse to get them to hand it off to someone who won’t be corrupted by it. To make up for that denial, we’ve got a nice secondary item that still will affect the final battle for their successes in retrieving them.

    (Look, I know it’s a bit of a run-around to get back to almost exactly where we’d be if the party either never looted a mask or if they weren’t mandatory for the ritual, but I’ve got something up my sleeve, alright? Stay tuned for the next posts in the series!)

    As always, thank you for reading! Good luck out there, heroes.

  • Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 4: Two Castles

    Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 4: Two Castles

    One facet of this double-book adventure that makes me wonder if the two books were written much in conversation with one another is the incredibly brief section Hoard of the Dragon Queen contains about Waterdeep. After months of travel with a caravan whose ultimate destination is Waterdeep, the module spares only six paragraphs for the city, and they’re basically all about how quickly the cult chooses to move through the city and in what direction. Now, it is still the party’s objective to follow the amassed wealth to its ultimate destination, but given that in Rise of Tiamat Waterdeep becomes a linchpin location the party returns to repeatedly, I wonder if this module should’ve at least contained a little bit of information on the city itself?

    Perhaps WOTC hoped DMs would buy the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide in addition to the module if they needed more guidance on the default setting, or they wanted to leave things vague enough for one to transplant the module into a homebrew setting (though personally I think that would be better printed to be ignored, rather than withheld). Either way, the module doesn’t present Waterdeep as much of a playspace when the party first ventures through it; instead, it’s just one more brief blip on their road trip north. At least it’s almost the last one.

    Between Waterdeep and the Mere of Dead Men lies Carnath Roadhouse. This small waystation serves as a depot for the resources being used to rebuild the road between Waterdeep and Neverwinter, and also a clandestine place for the cultists to try and lose any stubborn adventurers. Now, between being a little weary of more time on the road (and also obtaining so much information from Frida Maleer/Frulam Mondath with Detect Thoughts), my players more or less skipped Carnath Roadhouse. They had a brief stop, engaged a little with Bog Luck, and managed to find the tunnel out into the Mere before the cultists caught up to them. (Yes, caught up. With Longstrider uses and a much more agile group, the party got out ahead of the cultists and beat them to the Roadhouse and the Mere, but this is not without its own consequences and challenges; more on that later.)

    I don’t feel we lost much in glossing over the Roadhouse. I think it can be a decent enough hook for a session or two, but even the module itself doesn’t consider this particularly monumental – it’s the one chapter in Hoard of the Dragon Queen that doesn’t provide a level to your party if you choose Milestone Advancement. It is more or less one inn and one encounter, so it’s not the most integral thing. It’s almost more like a road event from chapter four rather than a full chapter on its own.

    And that let us move forward into a proper dungeon.

    Castle Naerytar

    After so much time spent on the road, the module finally remembers the game’s core elements once the party enters the Mere of Dead Men: dungeons and dragons. Twin dragons live within the Mere, and they masquerade as a singular dragon of incredible speed, coordinating attacks on distant locations to appear impossibly swift. These dragons are aligned with the Cult of the Dragon thanks to Rezmir’s persuasion, and they’ve shaped much of the situation within the swamp once the party arrives.

    For the dungeon, we have Castle Naerytar (which we held as an ancient name for the place, but renamed by the cult to Castle Umberstone), a sinking old fort whose sole redeeming qualities in the eyes of the cult are the cheap labor of the dragons’ enslaved lizardfolk and the teleportation circle in the basement.

    In the module, the party is meant to be presented with an option to help liberate these lizardfolk from the cult’s harsh yoke and that of the cult’s gleeful allies, the bullywugs. Now, I personally like lizardfolk a lot more the bullywugs, and I decided to make a slight change here. I exchanged the frog-folk for a second tribe of lizardfolk, ones who’d been in service to the dragons (but not knowing there were two) for generations: the Death-Hiss tribe. Then, the module’s original lizardfolk were called the Wizenroot tribe, and both were visible in their allegiances. The Death-Hiss, having long served the dragon(s) and several of their leaders being gifted with dragon’s blood or scales to grant them magic or armor, they had taken on the aspect of their masters: dark scales, sunken features, skull-like miens. The Wizenroot, meanwhile, were mostly green in scale and haler in appearance. These tribes had lived in quiet rivalry for many years, until one of the Wizenroot betrayed them in exchange for draconic sorcery – a lizardfolk I named Blessed Ulithara.

    My party quickly struck an accord with the Wizenroot tribe, and prepared to assault Castle Umberstone. Their allies, however, couldn’t prepare to aid them in a full-on assault until after the cultists would arrive, negating the lead the party earned from their earlier actions. Rather than wait for those reinforcements to arrive, the party snuck into the castle (I have too many PCs that can fly), had a small dungeon crawl to get into position, and then we ran a wave-based encounter of them trying to distract the guardsmen of the castle until Jemma Gleamgold could throw open the gates and allow what few Wizenroot soldiers were nearby to flense the Death-Hiss from the fortification. This, obviously, isn’t anything like how the module would have you run this dungeon, but it proved an exciting combat for my players, and resulted in the death of an NPC ally that broke their hearts. (Not Jemma.)

    The leader of the Death-Hiss tribe remained beneath the castle in the tunnels below during this commotion, and we retained enough of a dungeon crawl in the tunnels as the last holdouts of the Death-Hiss were slain. Then, our heroes used the teleportation circle.

    Skyreach Castle

    In the second post in this series, I explained most of my table’s tour of the Hunting Lodge in this campaign. We spent even less time in Parnast, however. Accompanied by Talis, the party feared they might have an angry abishai after them, and after only an hour of their time in the village, they watched Skyreach Castle begin to take flight. (They rested overnight at the lodge, and Rezmir didn’t want to take any chances after the forces at Naerytar failed to check-in.)

    My party immediately activated their various means of flight and gave chase. And, in Skyreach, I once again made some pretty substantial changes. First, rather than Blagothkus simply going along with the cult’s wishes in hopes that the dragons amassing power might spur his kin to action, he’d become their despondent prisoner. Shortly after allying with the Cult of the Dragon, Rath Modar (and his simulacrum) assisted in capturing Skyreach for the cult, and he used dark sorcery to gain command of Esclarotta’s spirit as it became the new steward of Skyreach. Too frightful of their ability to harm his wife’s spirit, Blagothkus surrendered.

    As our party approached Skyreach, they heard her voice, urging them forward. “Enemy of my enemy, be welcome. Find Blagothkus in the Grand Tower. Grant him your aid and rid Skyreach of its usurpers. I will hide you from the sentries.” Talis expressed concern for listening to this strange voice, but followed the party to their chosen destination.

    Freely, I admit the following changes are much more specifically to my taste (and that of my table), but rather than retain the whole dungeon with its myriad encounters with cultist warriors, ogres, and kobolds that would only be dangerous in excessive numbers, I instead used this scenario to allow the party to act as a clandestine strike force. Blagothkus shared with them a map of the castle, and expressed that once the cult’s leadership – Rezmir, Sandesyl, (the simulacrum of) Rath Modar, and Glazhael – were vanquished, he could rally the ogres within the castle to eliminate the cultists and grant them sanctuary. I gave the party the unlabeled copy of the map from the module, and explained which rooms these targets could be found within. (Almost all were where the module would place them. I moved Rezmir into the larger room beside her chambers and reimagined it as a throne room, but otherwise, little changed here.)

    One by one, my party snuck through the castle to these various encounters (using the tunnels to Glazhael and Rezmir, then flying down to Rath Modar’s balcony) and vanquished them each in turn. The vampire, they managed to burn within her coffin before night fell by exposing her to the sun, and Blagothkus’s forces exterminated the cultists, who failed to mount much of a counter offensive with their leadership eliminated.

    And, with that, we reached the end of Hoard of the Dragon Queen and the first half of his module. From the various notes and documents in the castle, from the spirit of Esclarotta herself, the party discovered the destination of all the stolen gold and were on their way back to Waterdeep to begin the next leg of their adventure, with a Mask of the Dragon in hand.

    One which an Identify spell had given them a lot of information on … But that’s a tale for another time.

    Sorry for the delay since the last post; there’s been quite the string of games since then, huh? The last season for the War Within began and, as usual, I was playing a ton for a few weeks there to get all the new gear. Just as that settled down, we had the sudden release of Silksong! which I really did at times doubt we’d ever see. And then Hades 2! But, as of writing this, I’ve wrapped all those up … just in time for Legion Remix on warcraft.

    … Look, let’s hope I get something else out this month, but no one hold their breath, alright?

    As always, thanks for reading! Good luck out there, heroes.

  • Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 3: The Long Road

    Reworking Tyranny of Dragons 3: The Long Road

    When I first ran Tyranny of Dragons 10 years ago, no chapter provided as many headaches as On the Road. Back then, I was running the module almost entirely as written – we added a handful of optional things over the course of the entire campaign, tied into the character backstories (as I often do at my table), but that was well after we got through this chapter.

    For the uninitiated, the fourth chapter of the module asks the players to follow the Cult of the Dragon all the way up the Sword Coast, from Baldur’s Gate to Waterdeep and beyond. During that trip, your party of heroes is expressly meant not to hinder the cult. Their mission is to discover where all this stolen gold is going; not to prevent it from reaching its destination. It suggests they should hire on as guards, gives you a handful of resources for NPCs and events (with a couple it states must take place), and tells you this trip should take about 2 in game months.

    Now, unless you choose to abstract almost all of this travel, it’s unlikely you’ll get through the whole thing in one game night. And, if you do skim over it, you’re cutting one of the eight chapters in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen book (remember: these were once sold separately), and 10 pages of content of a 94-page module (including the pages of appendices). You are cutting characters that have more information on their personality in their sole paragraph than some of the cult’s villains possess (i.e. Frulam Mondath). You’d be disengaging with one of the module’s few opportunities to interact with cultists without the threat of imminent violence. (Probably. We’ll get to that.)

    All this is to say, I don’t think you can really afford to cut it, but … it’s also one of the most boring adventure beats ever written?

    This module begins with a dragon attacking a village that your level one heroes drive off. Then it asks them to spend two months on the road to follow the stolen gold? And it doesn’t save any of its interesting characters introduced to the party in Greenest for this chapter? Only two named members of the Cult of the Dragon* exist in this chapter: Rezmir and Azbara Jos (*allied to the cult, technically). Rezmir is meant to remain in their wagon and unseen, and the module explicitly says Jos does not mingle with other travelers and seldom speaks to anyone.

    So … what’s supposed to happen, exactly? Is the tension of this chapter meant only to be “are your players going to forget that they’re not meant to screw with the cultists?”

    Let’s Talk About the Events

    On the whole, the events the module provides are pretty good. Of the twelve “optional” events, I used 4 pretty much as written, one with a change to its enemies, and another that I made a major change to and turned into a whole dungeon (more on that later). I think any of them could provide a decent hook for a session, or at least half of one. However, of these, almost none of them feel like they mean anything to the module’s “main quest.” Like, only Contraband and Payback wrap back into what the party is doing in any way whatsoever. That’s not necessary, of course, but it does mean that these can’t fill the void left by an utter lack of central tension in this chapter.

    As for the “planned” events, there’s Recognized! (which isn’t one of the “mandatory” planned events), which is triggered as a consequence for the party being blasé earlier in the adventure, skulking about the camp long enough that someone in the caravan recognizes them. The module considers a failure state of this event being that the cultist shares that information, and says that it can’t be permanently solved without murder. (It even has the gall to say if your good-aligned PCs don’t like that option “that’s roleplay.” Uhh, maybe finding an entirely different solution is roleplay?)

    Then, it has three events that happen after Jamna Gleamsilver (an agent of the Zhentarim) joins the caravan. The first is Unwanted Attention, which is less of an event, and more of a Perception check that tells the players the new gnome in the caravan is being a little odd. Then, there’s Who’s Your Friend? where Gleamsilver plants a bone sliver in their oatmeal to try an create a relationship with them by pretending to save their lives. Lastly, there’s Murder Most Foul, where in the morning, the camp awakens to discover a dead body (belonging to a cultist), where the party gets accused of the murder given an assumed animosity, but it was actually Jamna Gleamsilver who couldn’t stop herself from trying to steal some of the gold the cult is transporting.

    On my current run of the module, we made major changes here. First, there was no need for Recognized! because, rather than pretending the cult wouldn’t recognize the heroes of Greenest who stole their hostages right out from their camp, we had both parties entirely aware of each other the entire time. The cultists would’ve loved to have the party removed from the caravan, and they were looking for any excuse to force them out. The party, meanwhile, had reason to interact with the commonfolk of the caravan, building up their reputation among them, and each event we ran built them up as heroes of the caravan, making them more respected with each success. Additionally, we had preserved Frulam and Cyanwrath (as slightly/greatly altered characters, check out the previous post in this series), and allowed them to be the mouthpieces of the cult on the road, which let the party interact with characters during the two months they’d be traveling.

    Then, we didn’t end up having Jamna Gleamsilver murder someone for treasure, though I ran her other two events as written. Instead, the party’s own actions gave us a moment of confrontation with the cult, and led to some emergent moments where they were able to deal a blow to the Cult of the Dragon without being ejected from the caravan.

    And, genuinely, I think that mattered a lot. When I ran this module previously, my players were absolutely dying to do something against the cult. We had a PC try to steal some of their gold, get caught, and publicly punished and ostracized for their actions. Over the real-life months we were working through this road trip, the players itched to do something against their enemies; they didn’t like that their goal was to sit around and wait for the module to progress to the next step. The module hadn’t given us a central tension – and I hadn’t diagnosed that issue when I first ran it.

    The Event That Became A Dungeon

    I mentioned briefly that one of the events I changed and expanded into a dungeon. I knew I wanted a dungeon in the middle of the road trip from the beginning, and I wanted to throw a wrench into the event, too. So, I adjusted Roadside Hospitality, which has two doppelgangers join the caravan and try to lure someone out and potentially replace them, into one of my favorite enemies in D&D: a hag.

    An unassuming old lady joined the caravan and took immediate interest in a pregnant mother traveling alone to live with her sister in Waterdeep after her husband’s recent death. Now, my table knows me, and they clocked this from a mile away. However, I was able to employ my NPC, who berated the party for their rudeness. That got them to back down long enough for the kidnapping to occur and the dungeon to materialize.

    From conception, I’d had a plan for this dungeon. As I mentioned in the last post in this series, I’d expressed in session zero that some members of the cult could be rescued from it. For this dungeon, I’d known from before session 0 I’d be attaching either Cyanwrath or Jhos as an ally to them for the duration, depending on who they had more affinity for. Alternatively, if they’d entirely rejected the possibility of saving either, I thought it might be fun to attach Frida (edited Frulam) or Rezmir to the party as tense allies for the dungeon. Given the events of our game, Cyanwrath joined them, committed himself to pursuing heroism, and that all led to further events in the campaign. Our party rescued the mother and that grew their renown yet again, which built them up in the eyes of the caravanners which made it harder for the cult to–you get the gist.

    The point is this: with a couple of small changes earlier in the module, we were able to salvage this months-long road trip into something engaging by simply finding a central tension. We spent ten sessions from August to December traveling from Baldur’s Gate to Waterdeep, and it wouldn’t have worked half as well without these changes. This video from Matt Colville dives deeper into central tension, and it’s something I’ve kept in mind for adventure building and fiction writing ever since.

    As always, thank you for reading! I genuinely think so many of the adjustments I made to this module were in pursuit of making this chapter better. It nearly killed our table when I ran it originally; I guess I felt challenged to find a way to salvage it. At least for my table. And, well, that’s who I’m running the game for!

    Anyway, good luck out there, heroes.