Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the first adventure book, is highlighted in particular as being a bad adventure. Tons of groups around the internet seem to hold this view, and major complaints are that it is a railroad, there is a lot of missing information, the storyline has lots of dull moments where nothing of consequence happens, and its encounter balance is out of whack. My favorite shakedown of the module is on the Power Score blog here. He is considerably more even handed than most commenters and even defends the adventure against some unfair complaints.
That being said I agree with a lot of the complaints, but I really think that the module can be a lot of fun with the right amount of retooling.
My goals for this exercise is to make this adventure better by:
- Making the villains more engaging, thematically linked to the overarching dragon threat, and with a deeper plan.
- Adding more loot, magic items, and rewards for the players. After all, this whole module is about chasing a dragon's hoard and if followed as written, the players are as poor paupers at the end of this adventure as they are in the beginning.
- Avoiding the dull, uninteresting caravan ride
- Giving the players more agency and options with which to make it through the storyline
So let's get right into it
Better Villains
First things first, the Wyrmspeakers are boring dullards, the named villain NPCs in this module are boring dullards too, their plan is stupid, and half of the adventure is fighting mercenaries for hire instead of true believer Cultists. That all has to change.
In Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the coolest villains are Langdedrosa Cyanwrath and Rezmir, but they are called "Half-Dragons". Why? Was it because this book was written before 5e was fully designed, and the writers were unsure if the Dragonborn race would make the cut? Well, now we know that Dragonborn are part of the setting so let's make the villains Dragonborn instead of "half-dragons". 4e retconned the Forgotten Realms' "half dragons" into the Dragonborn race anyway.
In fact, turning the main villains into Dragonborn suddenly opens up a trove of options to be taken from 4e. Dragonborn followers of Tiamat are described in the Draconomicon, with such names as Sellswords, Exemplars, Blood Reavers and War Masters. The highest level of evil Dragonborn are called Annihilators and are taken as consorts of Tiamat herself. All this can be worked into the campaign. Langdedrosa Cyanwrath is the first badass evil Dragonborn the players meet, but he's only a level 6 champion, so he certainly shouldn't be the last.
Rezmir, now as a black Dragonborn, is the main "villain" of the module even if she's not the strongest monster in the final dungeon. Tracking and overcoming her should be the main point of the adventure, and she's decently powerful as written with a magic sword and several other magic items. Instead of having her become an incidental kill in Castle Naerytar or Skyreach Castle, she should be a gloriously deadly encounter for the players and should make her stand either atop Castle Naerytar, or on the first level of Skyreach Castle.
But killing dragons and dragon-like beings can get boring in repetition, so more variety in enemy types should be added. In this regard the published adventure module does well enough, but a lot of encounters end up against generic "cultists" who all look human, or are assumed so since they only get one portrait of a human male in a cultist outfit. Different races should be added to the cultists, or under the cultists thrall. Greedy, evil Dwarven mercenaries, Halfling cut-purses and criminals, Elven, Half-Elven and Half-Orcish bandits and thugs should be added into their ranks. The dungeon encounters created in this module are actually decently varied, with lots of weird little enemies scattered about, so I wouldn't change much except to add a few random monsters here and there.
The final two named Wyrmspeakers of the module, Frulam Mondath and Talis the White, are totally boring. They don't do anything - Talis waits around in the Hunting Lodge for a chance to betray the Cult and help the players, and Frulam Mondath sits in a caravan until the players finally catch her and shake her down for information.
I was going to break down a way to improve those two, but I found a much better analysis (and longer, though that one's a close call) here.
Improving the Encounters
I want to start off by saying that the encounter at Greenest is awesome. Its a great way to start an adventure and instantly engages the players. They came here for Dungeons and Dragons, and by gawd a dragon is attacking a town. I have one player in particular who loves dragons, so partly as an inspiration from her, I would focus this whole adventure more on the dragons, and less on random assassins and mercenaries.
Even at the outset a problem can arise - the players might want to join the Cult of the Dragon. My players did this and apparently they're not the only group to have attempted so. I kind of had to force them to play the heroes but I wonder if its possible to have them play otherwise. Instead of saving townsfolk, they'll be trashing houses for loot, killing peasants and trying to break into the Keep. The encounter in the tunnel could be played the same way, but instead the players are trying to *break in* to the castle to let the Cult of the Dragon kill the mayor.
However, there's an easy way to get them back on track. My players are notoriously greedy and when the Cultists demand that they give up their stolen loot, I'm fairly certain my players will rebel. And there's a lynchpin to this which will allow players to properly hate the cult: Langdedrosa Cyanwrath the "boss" encounter at the end of the chapter. This could play out very similarly to the module as written, where Cyanwrath challenges any cultist wannabes to a duel. Obviously he beats them, then humiliates them and doesn't allow them to be part of the cult. That makes an easy ticker for the players to want revenge and to come back to the spirit of the adventure.
Of course, if your players aren't overtly evil, then there's not a lot in this chapter I would change. Lennithon is a great set piece battle, I would have him just fly away when he gets bored or his obligation to the cult is up, and its easy to move through the rescue encounters at a breakneck speed.
More Loot, Treasure and Rewards
My players are notoriously greedy. To keep them happy the best way is to keep a steady drip of loot going throughout the campaign. In this adventure, they are supposed to chase stolen treasure to be amassed in a great dragon's hoard, but... the module doesn't actually give them much treasure at all. A major design goal for 5e was to reduce the necessity of magic items for players at higher levels. I think the designers over corrected, and now the players don't get any magic items until the end of the module. That has to change.
For one, the Cult of the Dragon is looting all valuables from the town of Greenest, and players in that first encounter should be more concerned with saving their own hide, and those of NPCs, than with looting everything in sight. Greenest should be mostly encounter focused, BUT there should be rewards at the end. Some minor rewards are given in the module itself, but the best thing would be to implement a plot hook - the mayor mentions that he has little to give because the Cult stole everything, but if they track the Cult down, they can be rewarded from the stolen loot. Instant lead in to Chapter 3.
However, Hoard of the Dragon Queen has many bait-and-switch moments, for example where players get to a treasure chest only to find that all its contents have been magically teleported away. I don't like to play bait and switch tricks on players (much) so its best to have actual monetary payoff. For example, the Cultists' camp in Chapter 3 should have actual loot that the players can then "liberate". A simple low level monetary treasure and nonmagical treasure from the DMG would suffice.
Chapter 4 in the Dragon Hatchery should have treasure too, but this is also when players get their first taste of magical items. By the book, this place should be abandoned, yet it still has a full office for Frulam Mondath, a shrine to Tiamat, and 3 NESTING DRAGON EGGS. Who abandons dragon eggs and just leaves them lying around??? Also, Langdedrosa Cyanwrath remains as the final encounter in this area, neatly capping the first Act of the story arc with a final boss fight. He should have magic weapons and equipment, which would focus on his deadliness as the final encounter. In my game I replaced his greatsword with a +1 Lifedrinker Greataxe.
A deeper discussion of the dragon eggs will be mentioned later, as I consider them to be the biggest wasted opportunity in this whole campaign
Avoiding the Dull, Uninteresting Caravan Ride
By far the worst chapters of this book are the two that deal with chasing the Cultist caravan along the Sword Coast. There's not a whole lot for players to do in this chapter and it seems like just a set up for a bunch of random encounters. Also, despite following the entirety of the looted hoard, the players don't get their hands on any of the treasure. A simple restructuring is to allow many Cult caravans to arrive from all different parts of Faerun, heading to be pooled into a single hoard in Skyreach Castle. The players should learn that there are multiple caravans, and that by confronting successive ones, they will slowly gain the information needed to track down the position of the hoard. This changes the whole situation from a passive "follow the hoard and try not to get killed and/or spotted" to an active "chase down the hoard and neutralize as many cultists as you can find" adventure. It also makes it easy to tie in all the random encounters into the main plot of the story - the random assassins at the tavern or the two doppelganger women can now be undercover cultists, trying to trick and kill the players through guile.
The Caravan ride itself has two stopovers in Neverwinter and Waterdeep. No information about these cities is given in this module, and the assumption is made that the DM already knows about these places, or will buy other WotC products for the background. The problem was that when this module came out, the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide hadn't been published yet, and I had no previous knowledge of these cities. Also, locations as large and storied as Neverwinter and Waterdeep can be the basis for whole campaigns themselves, and if I or my players had known anything about the cities the whole adventure could have been completely derailed by spending it in one of the large towns. And finally, visiting these two cities does nothing for the campaign, once you leave the city you are back to a boring caravan ride, the same thing you were doing before you entered, and this happens twice. Instead, the best option is to just cut the stopovers out of the plot entirely, and allow your players to conduct town activities such as shopping and carousing with traveling merchants or other members in a friendly caravan.
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