I'm running Red Hand of Doom(awesome adventure by the way, James) and am about to run the Skull Gorge bridge encounter. My party is six 5th level Pathfinder characters.
The major opponent in this combat is a young green dragon. Per the RHoD book, this opponent is CR5. The Pathfinder version is CR8 and quite a bit nastier (a few less hit points, but a much better chance to hit, more attacks and more damage per attacks). I'm fairly certain that even this monster alone would be a TPK for six 5th level characters, to say nothing of the rest of the encounter.
Would you just run this using the 3e stats? Or am I missing something. I hate to make it an even younger dragon, since it won't then be size Large.
I remember that encounter well, it was great!
The dragon did a few fly-by manoeuvres before being coaxed to the ground by readied ranged attacks and a web spell if I recall correctly.
Basically we didn't have to fight the dragon at the same time as assaulting the bridge, and being made into pin cushions by those tricky archers!
Run it with the 3.5 stats but possibly give it some extra hit points if the encounter looks like it'll be too easy.
a CR8 Dragon against 4 5th level characters may be a very tough fight, but against 6 PCs, it should be a difficult but winnable fight. Just run the encounter as it is scheduled ...
Six 5th level characters should be able to handle a CR7 encounter as well as four 5th level characters should handle a CR5 encounter. I would suggest powering down the Pathfinder version a little, and using that.
Problem is, it's six 5th level characters against a dragon, hobgoblins and hell hounds. In the open.
As written for 3.5e, it was a EL 10 encounter. With the increased power of the Pathfinder version of the dragon, I think it puts this fight out of reach of the characters.
Problem is, it's six 5th level characters against a dragon, hobgoblins and hell hounds. In the open.
As written for 3.5e, it was a EL 10 encounter. With the increased power of the Pathfinder version of the dragon, I think it puts this fight out of reach of the characters.
Ah. Then the characters will need some seriously good tactics to break up the encounter is all I can say. What I would do (as a player) in such circumstances is snipe at the hobgoblins from some cover (I understand there is a wood nearby?) until they respond, then ambush any that try and and chase you down, breaking down the one encounter into a string of smaller ones.
Actually, though, the circumstances can work in their favour - if they engage the hobgoblins closely, the dragon cannot use it's breath weapon without wiping out the hobgoblins and hell-hounds. That either restricts the dragon or else deals with one of the party's problems for them.
BTW, this thread is VERY SPOILER-HEAVY FOR RED HAND OF DOOM, if it wasn't already obvious.
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Use spoiler tabs please.
BTW, this thread is VERY SPOILER-HEAVY FOR RED HAND OF DOOM, if it wasn't already obvious.
RHOD does rock pretty hard, though.
Red Hand of Doom is probably my favorite adventure of all time. And I have been reading adventures since the mid 1980's.
Also: Thanks for the kind words! It's cool to see folks are enjoying this adventure! :-)
I secured quite a few character deaths running the RHOD back when this came out,
An excellent adventure, although sadly tied into the early trends displayed in MM3...
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Red Hand of Doom was probably the first adventure in the 3.x line that I read and actually felt excited about running.
Sadly, I've only run the first chapter so far, including the Gorge.
Ozzy was meleeing with Valeros on top of one of the towers. Things weren't going well for Val... until he scored a crit and I pulled out my trusty Crit deck. Poor Ozzy got permanently blinded! It was quite awesome.
And yes, those archers are nasty if left unmolested.
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RHOD rocks. Easily the best 3.x module I've run, and one of the better pre-fabs I've ever had the joy of DMing. Actually had players broach the topic of running it again just a few months afterwards!
I still run 3.5 material with little conversion (CMB mostly, notes on any feats/spells that have been changed). It hasn't affected the challenge of my games and keeps the balance of adventures as they're written. I'd use the dragon as written, just use pencil or a notecard for any changes.
Sorry about the spoilers. I didn't think of that. Well, I've decided to run the 3.5 version of the dragon and simply beef up the numbers of the minions to account for the increased numbers and healing capacity of the PC's.
It may not matter, as my players seem determined not to get into this fight. Sigh.
Sorry about the spoilers. I didn't think of that. Well, I've decided to run the 3.5 version of the dragon and simply beef up the numbers of the minions to account for the increased numbers and healing capacity of the PC's.
It may not matter, as my players seem determined not to get into this fight. Sigh.
** spoiler omitted **
Maybe you should gently remind them that by partaking in an adventure path they have to, at least to a certain extent, accept a little rail-roading.
Also, any casualties at this point in the story may make latter parts more viable, and survivable...
A couple years ago, I ran a big campaign focused on the Red Hand of Doom. I loved most of it, and I have to say that it was the first published adventure that made me appreciate pre-made adventures. I had always been a home-brewed kind of GM before RHOD.
The one thing in the adventure that I didn't care for,
Plus, I set the campaign in my homebrewed world, and Tiamat wasn't a deity. (Neither was Bahamut.) So I changed a few things, that turned into a lot of things. But the basic framework remained intact, once I got into the adventure proper.
I actually started the game at level one, and had the players fight desert gnolls and a rival adventuring party as they chased a great lost, mysterious treasure hoard. Found within the hoard was a mysterious red stone.
After some research, they learned that there was five of these stones scattered about, the other four colored blue, black, white and green. Additional research discovered that they were the final remains of a great, near-immortal dragon called Tiamat, and something wanted to bring them together, to resurrect the beast.
The red stone fell out of their hands, of course. They chased the red stone across the lands and eventually into the Elsir Vale, where the RHOD actually kicked off. They came in from the East, so they got a preview of Brindol and Dennovar as they spread the news about their quest. Then the party hit most of the key parts of the adventure and played through it pretty much as written until they got to the
The stones, as they grew in power, mutated nearby creatures, which I used to explain the Spawn of Tiamat creatures. Azar Kuhl also wasn't born a half-dragon, but was mutated by his prolonged exposure to the blue stone.
I had most of the stones already collected by the Wyrmlords, with the white one still missing, though located somewhere in the Elsir Vale. The entire reason for the horde was to find it, collect it, and bring it back to its sister stones.
It ended up being located in the Brindol chapel, which gave an additional reason for the assault upon Brindol. In the far past, the original Tiamat was destroyed by a good dragon called Bahamut sacrificing itself to empower a bunch of sonic weapons -- the only energy that hurt Tiamat. The bells of the tower kept the white stone guarded and warded.
Well, the party found the white stone and pulled it out, and the horde discovered its wherabouts. The Battle of Brindol was underway.
To the party's credit, they stopped the horde and prevented it from seizing the white stone and turned the tide. Then they went to the Fane of Tiamat to deal with Azar Kuhl.
This was where I completely derailed the RHOD adventure. Instead of the maze-like dungeon with a final ritual to interrupt, they found the long-petrified corpse of Tiamat (enormous, hollow and filled with spawn out of the higher-numbered Monster Manuals). I was somewhat disappointed in myself with the final dungeon since it lacked imagination, but the campaign was getting rather long in the tooth, and needed to come to a close. So, they cleared out the corpse of Tiamat, fought the Wyrmlord, shut down the stones with sonic energy, and fought a baby Tiamat (basically, the Aspect of Tiamat since it was the last encounter and I had the miniature).
All in all, though, a fine adventure that I shamelessly gutted and abused to fit my campaign. :)
The one thing in the adventure that I didn't care for,
** spoiler omitted **
I have not read the adventure but perhaps ...
Keeping a horde of troops standing around idle is hard to do, undisciplined hordes are just that - undisciplined. Once you have an army raised, honed, and ready to go, you have to use it or the troops go stale, start fighting among themselves, diseases set into the camp, sanitation and food become a problem ... in short, you have to use an army once you raise it. Your timing being off with unexpected delays in other events is the reason for many a failure on the battlefield.
The one thing in the adventure that I didn't care for,
** spoiler omitted **
I have not read the adventure but perhaps ...
** spoiler omitted **
Extremely good point, Dabbler. Pretty obvious, really.
I suppose the thing I dislike the most about it is the fact that the (thing the PCs are meant to stop) is hanging uncompleted until they show up to stop it. Everything else in RHOD had this great ticking clock that urged the party onward and punished them for taking too much time dallying. Effective tactics and successes could buy them more time.
But at the end, this nebulous doomsday is completely unconnected with the rest of the adventure that is triggered only when the PCs show up and encounter it.
Thus, my big change was to ultimately give the horde a reason to march -- the macguffin they were seeking. Had the horde succeeded, the chase would have been on to stop the bad guys. Showing up to interrupt the ritual would have felt less... convenient, because the horde just got the final piece of the puzzle. As it turned out in my campaign, though, the horde was broken and the assault on the horde's fortress was a cleanup operation against an enemy in retreat.
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Stalwart,
The second and third time I ran RHoD (and what does *that* tell you?) I, too, felt that the endgame ought to be presaged a bit.
1) I began the campaign at first level, cleaning out the human remnants of the Tiamat-worshipping cult from their lair. So, when the party realizes who's behind the army, they can recall back to their earliest days of adventure and know where to start their hunt.
2) Throughout the adventure, I threw in a couple of side adventures that hinted at the summoning. In the context of the army, those incidentals didn't make sense. But they were clues to something bigger, behind that.
Nice.
I still have hopes of being a player of RHoD one of these days. I actually bought it and sat on it for about a year without reading it, hoping I could convince someone else to run it for me.
I'd like to see what someone else does with it, especially updating it to Pathfinder and perhaps swapping out monsters to things in the Bestiary.
So many adventures, so little time...
So what presagements did you use that hinted at the summoning?
The one thing in the adventure that I didn't care for,
** spoiler omitted **
I have not read the adventure but perhaps ...
** spoiler omitted **Extremely good point, Dabbler. Pretty obvious, really.
I suppose the thing I dislike the most about it is the fact that the (thing the PCs are meant to stop) is hanging uncompleted until they show up to stop it. Everything else in RHOD had this great ticking clock that urged the party onward and punished them for taking too much time dallying. Effective tactics and successes could buy them more time.
But at the end, this nebulous doomsday is completely unconnected with the rest of the adventure that is triggered only when the PCs show up and encounter it.
If it wasn't for Schrodinger's plots, the world would be destroyed a hundred times over.
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So what presagements did you use that hinted at the summoning?
1) The Ghostlord recalls that the creature placed in his lair to watch over him (a behir in the module-as-written, which I changed to a Bluespawn Godslayer, as behir hate dragons) was accompanied by its master, a blue half-dragon warrior, who dared to address the Ghostlord as an equal. He called himself Azarr Kul.
2) Summoning spells grow progressively more "tilted" towards law and evil. By the time the battle of Brindol comes around, summoning celestial creatures imposes a -2 caster level, and summoning fiendish creatures is correspondingly easier. A DC 25 Knowledge (the planes) result concludes that someone, somewhere in a 50 mile radius, must be conducting the Ritual of Tiboquoboc, the legacy of a mad geomancer who knew how to tilt the orientation of a region's planar alignment. Someone must be trying to gate in something evil and massive.
3) (This one's a little more complicated). Instead of Abithriax the Red Dragon, I had the invading army use a rage drake, a draconic relative of the true dragons. And I had one strike team of the army break into the Brindol museum during the siege, steal a suit of armor made from red dragon scales, and escape with it. The party had already met with a green dragon and a black dragon. (They would eventually go toe-to-toe against a blue dragon and a fiendish gelatinous white dragon.) Someone wanted the scales of a red dragon, and the only reason that Knowledge (arcana) could provide indicated a great focus for a powerful summoning.
(The reason there wasn't a red dragon involved the campaign after the Red Hand of Doom: the Githyanki were planning to invade, and they were already sweeping through the lands, looking for red dragon allies / mounts.)
4) Early on, the party has to cope with some blackspawn raiders. Just before the siege of Brindol, most of them are drawn off (to serve as outer guards in the Wyrmsmoke mountains). The hobgoblins see this as slacking and cowardice, and aren't shy about attributing any patrol defeats to the blackspawns who, oh dear, found that they had business back west when every soldier counted.
Those were the hints.
Thanks! Sounds very interesting. I think I'll steal some of it!
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I ran RHOD for a group online over a period of about two years. Lots of fun!
From what I remember of part 1, I thought the toughest encounter was actually the manticore. Those tail spike volleys are brutal, especially if they are targeted against lightly armored PCs (easy to do for a flying critter).
As for the Skull Gorge encounter itself, it sounds like you have two issues:
1. Getting the PCs to the encounter.
One way to play it is to step up raids against the town. While the PCs may have little trouble against a scouting party or two, they may not be around for every raid, or able to get there in time to avoid significant damage and death of villagers.
If this does not motivate them to go north on their own, you might have the council of DF decide to evacuate anyway...but in the process, have them task the PCs with scouting the enemy army (with a promise of reward from Brindol if they succeed). After all, if the Red Hand army is as large as the PCs seem to think, knowing specifics about the force will be invaluable in days to come.
2. The encounter difficulty.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Skull Gorge encounter, while tough, allows for a significant PC advantage. Primarily, the PCs will likely be able to observe and scout the forces there, and when they attack, they can do so with surprise, a full spell load, and specifically prepped against what they will likely face. An advantage like this could easily reduce the effective EL by 2 or more. For example, my group prepped a wind wall spell to be used as a readied action to negate at least one breath from the dragon. I also found that the hobgoblins and hell hounds were pretty insignificant as a threat against the characters; the dragon was the only real challenge. Finally, the forest gives the PCs the option to retreat if the battle goes against them, especially since, as the Red Hand force are tasked with guarding the bridge, they can ill afford a lengthy pursuit against fleeing foes.
It's worth noting too that although your dragon is higher CR and somewhat tougher than that in the adventure, the PCs as Pathfinder characters are generally a bit tougher too--more feats for the fighter, more hit points generally and particularly for the arcane casters, etc.
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Red Hand of Doom was probably the first adventure in the 3.x line that I read and actually felt excited about running.
Same. Only RHOD and Pathfinder have really ever got me excited about anything other than my own campaign homebrews (despite grumbling players saying they preferred my campaign world to Golarion :(.
On the subject of the dragon, i'd leave it as it is; with the Pathfinder version of the dragon. Your pathfinder characters are ALSO more powerful than their 3.5 chars.
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As regards the motivation of the bad guys in RHOD...
Anyhoo, my take.
To address the post about Tiamat not being a deity in their game world, they actually addressed something similar on the WotC website for an Eberron conversion. They associated Tiamat with the Demons from the Dragon/Demon Wars. She wasn't a deity, but a greater demon. You still use the aspect instead of her actual stats, because if she is destroyed she would be banished for 100 years.
Also: Thanks for the kind words! It's cool to see folks are enjoying this adventure! :-)I am a huge fan of this adventure! Does anyone know if there are some larger versions of the fane of tiamat and ghostlords lair maps which I could use to make dungeon tiles from. I have ones for almost all the other maps and they help with these encounters
Also: Thanks for the kind words! It's cool to see folks are enjoying this adventure! :-)I am a huge fan of this adventure! Does anyone know if there are some larger versions of the fane of tiamat and ghostlords lair maps which I could use to make dungeon tiles from. I have ones for almost all the other maps and they help with these encounters
I have both of these maps finished with CC3 with the exception of the inner sanctum which is still a bit crude due to my players never going to the fane.
However, AFAIK WotC doesn't have a nice Community Use Policy so I don't think I can legally share them. :/
You could just scale up the ones from here, though.
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When I was a player in RHOD, we recruited the Wood Giant, Warklegnaw, to help us. So, it was a melee ranger, a cleric, a wizard, a barb, the NPC Rgr/Rog and the Giant. We cake walked this fight.
I would say run the fight as is.
GNOME
Yes... there are a few cases that can happen like that in RHoD if the DM ins't paying attention. I foolishly allowed my players to take the Fay Hertiage feats back in 3.5, one which grants Charm Monster a level before it normally comes into play. Needless to say between the combined efforts of a Druid and Fayish sorcerer they charmed a hydra (those who've run it know the one I'm talking about) and then persuaded (Wild Empathy FTW) it to tag along with them to the first main encounter. Mr. Snuggles ate the majority of that encounter including messing up some manticores.
Although I did get my payback...
They chased the bugbear incharge into one of the inner rooms. When they went to open the door he hit them with a readied Lighting Bolt, for which they were perfectly lined up. So I zapped the whole party. :D
Then I got them again when they were defending the small village. In a big opening brawl against a raiding force they got strung out around the field and ended up in another beautifully line for a Lighting Bolt from a Hobgoblin.
The bridge encounter had a similar outcome. The sorcerer got lucky and talked the dragon down to their level for a parlay. At which point the rest of the party ambushed it away from its minions. It was still a bit brutal but the PCs had good control the encounter.
That seems to be the key to the bridge, as long as the PCs can figure out how to assault and take position advantage away from the defenders all goes well.