I am very far behind these session reports and I think that from here on out, I am just going to share tidbits that are interesting from a gameplay perspective - what works, what is not working, and what is working but could be improved upon.
The party eventually got to the wastes and had some encounters. The ranger is still forgetting to use his Primeval Awareness skill, as it is not an always on skill, it is not passive perception. Unfortunately, that player built a very broken, overpowered ranger that is sheer death at range, but he has not realized that doesn't make the character invincible or the best at everything in all situations. He has not found that the characters' limits, discovering them and overcoming them or muddling through somehow is where the fun is in our little game. Oh well, it keeps him happy thinking he has found ways to thwart me.
The party was overly cautious entering the lich's lair, and just wouldn't go charging about after minion monsters like I hoped they would. Not a problem, just an observation, and maybe they're a bit more cautious than previously thought. At least, when they know a 20+ CR monster is somewhere close by and they're not even 10th level yet. They did almost die when I hit them with 6 Flameskulls at the same time while they were wandering about the lich's lair, those things need a boost to their CR.
The party dealt very well with the lich, mostly by putting a muzzle on the 2 socially inept characters. Notice I said "characters", not "players", and I meant it. Not every character can be great in all situations, as I previously mentioned, and you have to acknowledge that, both as player and as DM. I did have them scared of the lich, though, it helps if you're not too fussy about reading vital stats direct from the Monster Manual to the party.
This next part is where The Red Hand of Doom (the campaign we are playing, if you had not figured it out yet) let me down - my players were far too efficient in their travelling hither and yon, and so their was a huge lull between this part (negotiate with scary lich) and the next part (survive the siege of the major city in the area). The timeline provided is overly generous towards weaker or less focused parties, but my players had almost 2 whole weeks of sitting around and waiting for the bad guy army to show up and do their thing. Also, if you have played the adventure you'll recognize this next bit, the "victory point" mechanic does neatly codify the contributions the party is making to the war without having them do something completely stupid like fight the army of hobgoblins all by themselves. However, most of the failure states in the adventure would require the big bads to be complete cowards and run at the very first sign of trouble, or the party suffers a TPK and fails entirely anyway. If your party is still alive and have won most of the fights they get into, they'll win the war (at least the ground combat portion). I am not sure what I would do differently, maybe trickle more rumors to the party and let them figure out where to go and what to do in what order, give them more smaller, special forces style missions to accomplish, like interrupting supply lines, and tracking the command elements of the army. Something.
Having thought about it a bit more, I think with more prep time than I have it, many of the smaller vignettes provided by the original authors could have been offered up to the party. The spy could have been in the major town and the party could have spent a day or so just chasing her down, following clues, almost catching her before she slipped through their grasp, more clues, a lucky break, and a final showdown. The party getting captured, or at least part of the party getting captured, and their escape or jailbreak by the rest of the party would work well here as well. I want to do a very deep scrub of the whole adventure and really bring it into its own in the 5e ruleset.
The adventure has a bunch of hill Giants acting as living catapults, trying to open a breech in the city's defenses. I had to jigger it so they were throwing their rocks from behind an earthen wall. My ranger player has completely tweaked his character to be death at any range, including out to the 600 foot max range mark of the longbow. I wasn't letting him sit there and plink them to death, and wanted to get the rest of the party involved, otherwise they would have sat there safe while the ranger shot. Yes, the wall would have crumbled before the ranger slew the last hill giant, allowing a large chunk of the hobgoblin army into the city - which eventually happens anyway - but this was too early in the siege, and my players would have sat back and let it happen. Sometimes they just aren't reckless enough.
The adventure has a great scene where a ninja sniper almost kills the good lord of the city, with the party right there and they (the party) have to go fight him/her in a coffin maker's shop. There isn't a fantastic hobgoblin ninja in 5e, so I reskinned a summer eladrin. I have found that to be the easiest thing to do all this time translating 3e to 5e, find something in the CR range that is close to what I'm looking for, tweak a few things here and there, call it good. There is no need to rewrite everything, find something that is close and tweak it. Having just written up some zombie wyverns, I really wish that 5e had kept templates from 3e. What a fantastic system that was, it made the original 3e Monster Manual twice as long as its page count suggested, just by being able to apply so many supplied templates to so many monsters. And yes, there isn't much difference between a human skeleton, an orc skeleton, a dwarf skeleton, and so on, but a human skeleton is different from a hill giant skeleton is different from a dragon skeleton (not a dracolich, mind, but an actual dragon skeleton) is different from a bulette skeleton and so on and on. I smell a project for the future. Admittedly, the authors of 5e have not left us all completely in the dark, providing examples of these wildly various monsters (zombie beholders and half dragon veterans, to name a few), but full on templates would have been so much better. Or even better, release a book with all the variants possible. I'd pay for more monsters to throw at my players.
This edition, like almost all editions of D&D, has a real problem with mass combat. Yeah, yeah, I too backed Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers Kickstarter, and it has a very bare bones mass combat system. I want more detail, though, and may have to look into adopting a medieval fantasy tabletop wargame to do the job, give the players something to do when these things come up. The one I have played the most is Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but I have been tempted into taking a peek at their rivals, Mantic's Kings of War. WHFB is the longest running fantasy wargame out there, but KoW is generic enough that I feel I would do the least amount of tweaking to it. I could be wrong, who knows? May even try one of the historical wargames, and throw in spell casters just for fun. Something else to check into.
That is it for this post. I am almost caught up to where we are in game sessions, but it has been a busy couple of sessions with lots of lessons learned on both sides of the screen.
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