My players and I are just finishing up the Library of Last Resort, and I was just looking for any advice or problems with the next adventure from veteran DM's of it. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
My players and I are just finishing up the Library of Last Resort, and I was just looking for any advice or problems with the next adventure from veteran DM's of it. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Get ready to make up the stats for lots of dragons. Other than the named dragons, none of the other 32 have stats, so you have to use your own. If you own the draconomicon, this is immensely useful as you can just adopt a few stats from the dragons in there. I ended up making a cheat sheet for every dragon encounter. Be aware that if your party is packing high level spell-casters, most of the party will be Windwalking past every encounter you might have planned. Be prepared for this tactic.
This sounds like a daunting module, but I've had more fun running it than any so far. It's like something out of an epic movie..The biggest design gripe I've heard many comment is the perspective 3/4 maps in the citadel. Study this a LONG time, and even alter parts as you see (except vault). It can be quite hard lining up the window the party windwalked into on the map...I spent had to spend five minutes of game time trying to figure out what room some of the windows lead to.
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........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ...............And watch out for the unexpected from your players in this wide-open situation-if the PCs have Darl Quethos's wand of Charm Monster from 'Last Resort' and are of loose morals, as mine are, then they can possibly (and did) win over the hill giant rebels to their cause-in my case they even charmed Charlgar to their side and, with the Fabler eagerly singing their praises to the Riftcrawlers, reignited the 'hill giant revolution'. The idea of a 'side trip' to the Riftlords Palace, especially if much of the draconic host is defeated piecemeal or flees after its leaders are slain, should be considered in advance, so as not to have to delay your game or strongarm the PCs away from such a tempting target after a relatively weak haul of cash from the Citadel. (again, if the PCs are of such an avaricious disposition)Finally a larger party or higher-level one will need tougher opposition-the 'Scaling the Adventure' sidebar has been a pretty good guideline to me in this case... Plenty of music from Jerry Bruckheimer movies (or the Matrix:Revolutions score)wouldn't hurt either...
Excellent, thanks for the suggestions and heads-up. I've got a larger than average group so I'll defenitely have to scale up some of the encounters - and indeed, my players always seem to have a way of surprising me with their tactics and choices!
Thanks again guys.
Note also that if you like actually using the correct miniature to represent the dragon that's attacking, you're probably out of luck with the choices WoTC gives with D+D minis. There are no large black dragons and no huge greens or blues... I had just about every other chromatic color for large size except black, so rolled up stats for a minor dragon strike. The strike consisted of a Juvenile Red Dragon, an Adult White, a Young Adult Blue, a Young Adult Blue, and two Adult Fang Dragons, and a Mature Adult Black (Huge). I'm running with six players, and they killed all but one dragon, who got away.
Xyzanth seems like the real badboy of the dragons, and I'm getting ready to attack my PCs sunday with him while they camp. This is my temporary solution to 'Windwalk' before the dragons start recruiting beholders to blanket the area with anti-magic. (It's hard to get six PCs lots of xp when they windwalk past everything)Consider also giving a dimensional anchor effect to Dragotha's phylactery, so they actually have to fight old Brazzemal...that's totally what I'm gonna do.
As you can tell, I'm a little twitchy about Wind Walk
As far as Dragon minis go, there's a bunch of counters in Dragon 308 for dragons of various size/colors. Certainly cheaper than buying all those minis.
As you can tell, I'm a little twitchy about Wind Walk
As far as Dragon minis go, there's a bunch of counters in Dragon 308 for dragons of various size/colors. Certainly cheaper than buying all those minis.
Thanks for the Windwalk link...I agree, this spell is taking all the fun out of it. Good suggestions there!
As far as the dragons go, I'm just using what I got, but I honestly think 3D minis is the way to go if you have it... Much more intimidating (though far more expensive...stupid 50$ red dragon mini)
I plan on using my gargantuan black (and blue, when they arrive) dragon minis for several of the bosses, and the colossal red for Brazzemal. I'll be damned if I'll let size rules ruin what will be a phenomenal physical setup of an epic battle against numerous dragons. A year from now, my players won't remember if Brazzemal was colossal or gargantuan, but they will remember the moment I drop that mini on the battlemat for the first time.
And the barbarian in the group would never let them Windwalk past dragons, bless his sweet heart.
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For added challenge, try replacing the Marilith guardian with the classed marilith scout/dervish/shadowdancer from WotC fight club on their website. My PCs had finished off all of the draconic leaders except Brazzemal and had both keys and a night's rest, but the CR 22 marilith version nearly took out the whole party of six, using the original tactics in the scenario. Brazzemal's CR 23 threat was much less by comparison.
Thanks again for the suggestions. I'm just doing my prep work now for tonight's session and your help is much appreciated.
And a special thanks to you Ring of Five, I have indeed replaced the demon with the pumped up version - chuckling evily all the while!
And a special thanks to you Ring of Five, I have indeed replaced the demon with the pumped up version - chuckling evily all the while!
You are welcome, Niko77! Let me know how it went...
RoF