Hoard of the Dragon Queen set in Blackmoor.

[Mythlym]

One of the things I dislike about 5E is the whole idea of a set rate of advancement based on 1-20 in 12 months. With groups like mine that are prone to playing 1-2(average is probably 2) days a week for 6-12 hours each time that rate is boosted to be more like 1-20 in 3-6 months.

I don't like the characters basically going through one long adventure and maxing out. I want dozens of longer adventures and many more small ones in that characters adventuring career.


Since it appears that I will not be using the adventure paths anyway, I might just redo the exp and leveling tables to fit what I want.

[Rafael]

In Germany, there's a word for making something worse in an effort to improve it. "Verschlimmbessern". :wink:

I think especially game designers in general are very prone to that, and with D&D, level advancement,
and multiclassing (and planar structures, for the hell of it) are the areas where people tend to go nuts like that.


Personally, what I saw from 5e was that it was fairly beginner-friendly, and not as static as 4e - but also that these were its only real virtues.
I think veterans of the hobby might find themselves fairly underwhelmed, especially when comparing 5e to Pathfinder, or C&C.


I'd like to hear about your games, though. Havard, running Blackmoor?

[RobJN]

"Verschlimmbessern". :wink:

How did you know my middle name? :mrgreen:

[finarvyn]

One of the things I dislike about 5E is the whole idea of a set rate of advancement based on 1-20 in 12 months. With groups like mine that are prone to playing 1-2(average is probably 2) days a week for 6-12 hours each time that rate is boosted to be more like 1-20 in 3-6 months.

I don't like the characters basically going through one long adventure and maxing out. I want dozens of longer adventures and many more small ones in that characters adventuring career.


Since it appears that I will not be using the adventure paths anyway, I might just redo the exp and leveling tables to fit what I want.

One interesting thing to note is that HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN actually comes with two sets of options for XP and level advancement.

(1) Collect XP as per the rulebook. (Some of the game sessions have XP "caps" so that you can't advance too quickly.)

(2) Hand out levels at certain benchmarks (typically at the end of an "episode" which is a collection of game sessions) so that characters get to an approprite level when they encounter certain bad guys.

If you're in Adventure League play you need to use option (1) but for home games option (2) is kind of nice. Option (2) is really similar to the way I've DM'ed my home campaign for years.

[Havard]

That is interesting Fin! I really want to keep my 5E campaign low-level for a long time. Even though I tend to enjoy high level campaigns, I am in no hurry to get there since this is a new ruleset both for myself and my players.

I'd like to hear about your games, though. Havard, running Blackmoor?

I have a thread about my 5E game here!

We have only had a couple of sessions though, and mainly we have been keeping everything fairly generic. I have some ideas for moving it towards Blackmoor later down the line. So far I am really enjoying the new edition. It is definitely my favorite among the post TSR editions and D20 variants.

Since it appears that I will not be using the adventure paths anyway, I might just redo the exp and leveling tables to fit what I want.

You will not be using it at all? A possible middle way could be what I usually do which is to steal parts of published adventures and put them together to fit my own needs and those of my players.

Some thoughts so far on converting the HOARD OF TIAMAT series:

Tiamat: What do we do with her? Keep her a unique hellish dragon queen? If so, what is her relationship with the other Dragon Gods of Blackmoor? Could she be the even more evil sister of Watchworks?

Red Mages of Thay: Early Arneson campaign had "Red Mages". I'd say these would either be replaced by evil elements in the Wizards Cabal or perhaps better Thralls of Coot.

Harpers: The Silent Guard tends to fit this well, or just the agents of the Regency Council in general.

Zhentarim: There are a number of groups these could be replaced with. Either Thonian Knights, or Skandaharians would work well. Even Afridhi with some tweaks.

What else needs to be converted?

-Havard

[Rafael]

I have a thread about my 5E game here!

We have only had a couple of sessions though, and mainly we have been keeping everything fairly generic. I have some ideas for moving it towards Blackmoor later down the line. So far I am really enjoying the new edition. It is definitely my favorite among the post TSR editions and D20 variants.

Sweet!

I myself am not DMing anything right now, except for some supposed con gigs in April.
Later in the year, I will pick up the mantle again, but I haven't quite decided what to run.
Thieves' World, maybe, as I'd like to run a city-based campaign; some of the cities for Kalamar d20 look pretty good as well.

[finarvyn]

That is interesting Fin! I really want to keep my 5E campaign low-level for a long time. Even though I tend to enjoy high level campaigns, I am in no hurry to get there since this is a new ruleset both for myself and my players.

A couple more thoughts and comments about DRAGON HOARD and experience points:

(1) The first couple of "episodes" are broken in that you can't really award by-the-book XP or characters will level up too quickly. There are lots of low-level monsters to kill and it doesn't take many XP to advance early on. The "fix" they made was to cap out the XP early on. You cap out at 300 XP in the first episode no matter how many creatures you kill.

(2) An offshoot of #1 is that each episode typically takes several game sessions to play, and it's possible that you may cap out after only one session so it's possible that you many not earn any XP at all for a session or two. They do this for "Adventure League" play so that if someone missed a session they wouldn't be behind forever.

(3) Another factor to consider later on is that there may be almost no treasure. As 5E doesn't give XP for treasure any more, this can make some games a little odd. You kill stuff, move on, kill more stuff. Takes some of the role playing away in a few sessions.

(4) There are some episodes which can drag out forever. These are the "dungeon crawl" ones and I really enjoyed those because of the minimal prep needed for me to run each session. 8)

(5) There are other episodes with multiple missions one can try, and I suggest doing pretty much all of them. In "Adventure League" play the players sometimes were in a hurry to move on, but for a home game I'd want to explore everything to maximize the value of the module.

(6) Wherever possible, be stingy with allowing the party to take a short or long rest. Many of the classes can totally recharge with a short rest, then it becomes tough to challenge them. When they start to use up their resources, the game becomes more interesting in my opinion.

My advice to you would be to use a level progression system similar to that mention in my earlier post. HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN is supposed to take characters from level 1 to level 7-8, so if you give a level for each "episode" you aren't far from the mark. I think they suggest you skip awarding a level somewhere around episode 5. You wouldn't want to slow things down too much more than that, or characters might be undergunned against some of the monsters. On the other hand, this is often a function of party size. Some of the encounters seem too easy for my group at the game store, so maybe slowing down level progression isn't a bad thought after all. We're in episode #7 and are 5th to 6th level, and I'm finding that the characters can do a lot of damage when rested.

Hope that helps.