In episode 1 the Cult of the Dragon attacked the town of Greenest in search of gold, silver, and other valuables. The Human Cultists were accompanied by Kobolds, Drakes and even a Blue Dragon. Thanks to a daring band of adventurers, the town and many of the locals were saved. The evildoers eventually retreated; carry what loot they could as they fled south. The PCs took a much needed, and well deserved rest before following the cultists to retrieve what possessions they could and discover more about what motivated these attacks.
Note: I’ve decided to adjust the way I denote the title of these posts. Since the adventure is divided into episodes (chapters) I felt it made a lot more sense to indicate what episode my post covered. With different groups completing episodes at different speeds this should make it easier for DMs to find notes on the exact session they want.
As we continue to attract new players at Hairy T North in Toronto we’ve had to open another table – that brings us up to six. The numbers broke down like this: table 1 (DM Craig) six players, table 2 (DM Hillel) had five players, table 3 (DM Tim) had six players, table 4 (DM Derek) has six players, table 5 (DM Chris) has six players, and table 6 (DM Wayne) had four players. That’s six DMs and 33 players. We had to move into the space where folks play Magic and ask the Magic players to cram into the space where we used to run D&D Encounters.
My table had the following PCs, all returning from previous weeks: Tiefling Bard, Drow Sorcerer, Tiefling Warlock (formerly Tiefling Bard), Halfling Rogue, Elf Rogue, Dragonborn Fighter. The Halfling Rogue was still level 1, but the rest of the PCs were all level 2.
Episode 2: Raider’s Camp
Tracking the Raiders
The day after the attack on Greenest, Governor Nighthill walked the streets of his town assessing the damage. In daylight things weren’t as bad as first thought. Many building were damaged and looted, but few were actually destroyed by fire. For the most part it was just scorched walls and roofs. Things were bad but they could have been so much worse had the PCs not been there to intervene.
After the PCs awoke, Governor Nighthill invited them to a town council meeting. With the townsfolk safe for now, the next priority was information gathering and possibly recovering some of the stolen property. The Governor asked the PCs if they would be willing to follow the path of the raiders. It was a potentially dangerous task, so he agreed to pay each of them 250 gp. A tidy sum meant to offset the risks.
The Halfling Rogue made a convincing argument for a heftier payout, but the Governor stood firm. He suggested if the Rogue felt the task too dangerous that he was welcome to help the carpenters rebuild the town while the heroes took on the perilous assignment. This shamed the Rogue into compliance.
The Governor asked the PCs to find out the following details:
- Where the raiders’ camp is located.
- How many raiders are there.
- Who are their leaders.
- What’s motivating these attacks.
- Where do they plan to strike next.
He added afterwards that he’d be grateful if they could recover any valuables that were stolen from the town, but this was secondary to the info gathering. Material possessions can be replaced. The PCs agreed, resupplied as needed, and headed south after the Raiders late in the afternoon.
The people of Greenest estimated that there were close to 200 raiders who participated in the attack. Although some raiders were killed at least 150 of them fled south when the fighting ended. The path they made was not subtle. The PCs had no trouble following it.
Stragglers
After a couple of hours of trekking through the countryside, up and down the rolling hills, and walking through the tall grass (that had been trampled), the PCs spied a thin plume of grey smoke in the distance ahead of them. It was too small to be from a burning structure; more likely it was a cooking fire. The PCs proceeded more cautiously until they found the source of the smoke.
In a small, bowl-shaped valley the PC easily spotted a group of raiders who’d stopped to make dinner. The heroes took precautions to hide in the grass that had not been trampled as they observed. The raiders group was made up of five Humans and 10 Kobolds. No scouts or sentries were posted anywhere that the Rogues could spot. Fifteen opponents were too many for the party to fight easily. They decided to wait for it to get darker and see if anything changed.
After a short while the Bard realized that the Kobolds and Humans didn’t seem to be getting along. The Kobolds kept to themselves and the Humans did likewise. Both sides seemed to throw insults at the other frequently. The party decided to use this animosity to their advantage.
One of the Human Cultists was manning the cook fire and called everyone over to eat. The Humans and Kobolds jostled as they all grabbed a bowl of stew and then separated to either side of the camp to eat.
The Sorcerer decided to use her Message cantrip to send a message to one of the Kobolds who seemed particularly put off by the Humans. Unfortunately the Sorcerer didn’t speak Draconic. So the Dragonborn Fighter helped her translate her message into Draconic. After a few practice attempts at saying the phrase she felt ready to cast the spell.
“The stew has been poisoned,” magically whispered in the ear of a Kobold. That was all it took to set him off. He threw down the stew and repeated what he’d heard not caring where the voice originated. The Kobolds seemed eager to have a reason to fight the Humans so they all dropped their food and drew weapons. One of the Cultists, the leader of this band tried to calm the situation down by speaking soothing words in Draconic to the Kobolds. It did not work.
Two Kobold slingers hit the cook with their bullets knocking the unsuspecting man unconscious. The four remaining Cultists all drew weapons and stepped back cautiously. The Kobolds attacked in pairs, two slinging, while four other pairs engaged the closest cultist.
The Kobolds all scored some quick hits on the Cultists but none fatal. The PCs decided it was time to step in and help the Cultists. If anyone could answer the questions they sought it was more likely to be the Humans than the Kobolds. So the PCs with bows fired at the Kobolds, while the Warlock and Sorcerer attacked with spells. Five of six attacks hit, three being crits (advantage helped a lot).
The Kobolds didn’t give up just because a few of their ranks fell. They regrouped and managed to drop two of the Cultists. The PCs spent another round firing into the melee carefully targeting the Kobolds only. Fewer shots hit, but more Kobolds were killed. The cult leader quickly turned and gave a salute to his unseen allies calling out an audible “Thank you.”
The Cultist killed two more Kobolds and the final two slingers decided to run rather than engage in melee. The PCs shot them too, just for good measure. They didn’t want anyone escaping.
With only two Cultists still conscious the Elf Rogue and Tiefling Bard (both dressed in Cult of the Dragon robes they’d acquired in a previous session) walked down to the camp to speak to them. The leader again thanked them for their help and asked who they were and more importantly why they’d come back for this group of stragglers.
The Rogue said they were sent back to make sure no one was following the main group. The leader took her at her word since the PCs had helped them fight and these two were wearing cultist robes. He then called out for the rest of the party. Although he couldn’t see them he could count and knew that more than two people assisted the fighting. The rest of the party reluctantly came out from hiding and slowly walked down – all except for the Halfling Rogue. He felt his small size would quickly give him away and blow their cover so he remained hidden.
The Elf Rogue realized that once the non-human PCs arrived on the scene the remaining Cultists would realize the PCs were likely lying. So she waited for him to turn his head and then knocked him unconscious with the pommel of her dagger. On cue the Warlock used his spell to drop the other cultist.
With all the monsters and NPCs down, the party cleaned up the scene. The removed all the loot that the Kobolds were carrying and hid it. Then they took all the Kobold bodies and tossed them off the beaten path. They tied up all the cultists, none of whom were actually killed, and blindfolded them all.
During a search of the bodies, the Sorcerer found a Harper pin on the Cultist who was the cook. As a Harper she felt an obligation to do something. She decided to slip a note into his pocket. How he handled this discovery remained to be seen.
With things cleaned up the PCs decided to awaken the leader and interrogate him. They kept the blindfold on so he couldn’t identify them. He remained calm when he awoke and asked the PC who they were and why they’d captured him.
The Warlock said they were a secret sect of the Cult of the Dragon, however, the leader didn’t believe him. The Dragonborn Fighter spoke to the captive in Draconic. The leader answered in Draconic that he was an important member of this sect of the Dragon Cult. He was impressed with the way the PCs acted and saw their value. If they truly wanted to become part of the Cult of the Dragon he said he could arrange it. He offered the Dragonborn a position of authority over the rest of the party if they joined.
The Fighter was unsure how to answer and since none of the other PCs spoke or understood Draconic they couldn’t offer suggestions. He said he needed to discuss it with his comrades. The PCs stepped away to decide how to handle things. Eventually they felt that they should let this cultist bring them back to the camp and allow them to join. The Halfling Rogue felt it best to be unseen and told the party he’d follow them secretly in the shadows, acting as a wild card in case things went bad.
The PCs returned to their prisoner and accepted his offer. When they removed the blindfold he asked where the loot had gone. If they returned to the camp without the Kobolds (no big loss) that was one thing, but without the loot, that would not be acceptable. So the PCs retrieved all the hidden loot. The cult leader asked to have his hands unbound so he could carry as much loot as possible. The party agreed to let him play pack mule.
They decided to leave the other four unconscious cultists where they were. They untied them and removed their blindfolds. Once the PCs infiltrated the cultists camp and learned what they could they’d “remember” that some of the other cultists were still on the road and would offer to lead a group back to retrieve them.
Once they were loaded up with stolen treasure, their new cultist friend led them south towards the Dragon Cult’s campsite. The terrain got rockier and eventually the path led between two rocky outcroppings. The PCs were weary and cautious. They stopped to adjust their heavy packs of loot while they looked for any signs of an ambush. They spotted two guards atop the rocks. We’ll see how the party deals with these guards next week.
Thoughts
After rocketing through episode 1, I decided to try and slow things down a bit for episode 2. I felt that we focused so much on combat in episode 1 that I didn’t really give the players a chance to role-play and develop their characters. Knowing that there is plenty of opportunity for non-combat solutions I deliberately let the players make more of the decisions rather than throwing options at them.
I was very impressed with how the players handled the encounters with the stragglers. It could have played out a few different ways, but given some time to weigh options the players had their characters make really smart choices. After taking some unnecessary beats during episode 1, the players have learned to act with more caution. Although there was only one combat encounter this week the PCs managed to avoid taking any damage at all. This should reduce the likelihood that someone will need to rest before the end of the episode.
We’ve had a lot of questions about how the factions play into D&D Encounters. Regrettably they don’t. I mean, they do since this is public play, but there is nothing explicitly written into the adventure. I felt that I needed to inject some faction action into the story which is why the PCs found the Harper pin on the cook. Unfortunately he was not revived so they still don’t know what his story is.
Throughout episode 1 the PCs fought Cultists, Acolytes, Kobolds, and Drakes. Guess what? They fight more of them in this episode too. I realize it makes sense for the story, but it’s already starting to get boring and I feel the combat encounters are getting repetitive. I may have to tweak things a bit just to add some flavour to the upcoming encounters.
How is your group progressing? Are you into episode 2 yet? Are you getting bored of fighting the same handful of monsters? Have DMs added faction details into their adventure so far? How has that worked?
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12 replies on “D&D Encounters: Hoard of the Dragon Queen (Episode 2: Session 1)”
It’ll be 2 more weeks before we complete episode 1 at my FLGS, so I’ll be back to comment on this at that point. I like the naming idea, though.
Ameron- Good recap as always. 5e trumps Magic! lol There was some interesting things going on for a relatively minor encounter. These opponents were push overs but it’s only a camp. The Dragonborn translating the simple Sorcerer’s Message spell at the Kobold was great idea. The halfling staying hidden for good reason. Wouldn’t it be an idea to take the loot back to town? I was wondering why the PC’s didn’t take more Cultist robes? I’m not the DM with the book though. I’ve perused a copy. But haven’t actually read it. I won’t be playing it unfortunately. I live vicariously thru your recaps ;
Yep those were two of the the things I’ve been wondering. A) How much do the factions play into it (nice job on the Harper pin maybe something similar can happen again.) B) Fighting the same things gets boring. but this proves role playing can make it interesting. I mentioned it before. I do believe a DM can substitute any humanoids as Cultists. Even though kobolds make the most sense. If you roleplay it it can be interesting.
This week my group finished episode 1. We have been a bit slower going due to the fact that we have no distinct leader, and everything is up for debate. We wind up spending half of our time in character debating our plan before even starting a mission. The other half of our time goes to combat, where we either spend the out of game time setting up tactically (and finishing the combat in 1 round), or in extremely drawn out combat, with every player rolling low.
Our party was made up of a high elf rogue, a human fighter, a drow cleric, a dwarf paladin (the one whose class I couldn’t remember last week), and my half elf sorcerer.
We had just decimated a patrol of 10 kobolds, 2 cultists, and 2 ambush drakes at the temple, and decided that our tactic seemed to be working fairly well. So we approached the back door of the temple, where a group of humans and kobolds were piling straw at the door to burn it. The others made ranged attacks from hiding, and when they had each attacked, I cast sleep on the remaining foes. We finished them off as they slept.
A couple seconds at the lock, and the rogue let us in. The priest hurriedly urged us in, and barred the door behind us. People cowered throughout, and I immediately set to mending cracks and splinters in the front door and the beam holding it shut. The others began to mobilize the civilians, and a sentry on a stack of benches saw enemy reinforcements coming from the north. The drow cleric and I stayed behind to give the others a head start, myself still mending. When the rearguard passed into the forest, we ran after them, shutting the back door behind us. It was not much longer before we heard the door splinter in the distance, but our rogue had gotten us all lost. Upon finding the river, we followed the edge until we found a low enough slope to get everyone down, but the raiders were catching up with us.
The rogue led the civilians down the tunnel to safety, but the rest of the party stayed outside to ensure that they made it safely. Several rounds of single digit attack rolls (at least 3 1s, 2 of which were mine) later, we had taken out maybe 4 enemies of the growing horde, and our cleric almost fell. I cast sleep on the area from the tunnel to him so he could escape (only 2 of our party were not immune to sleep, and they either had enough HP to ignore it or were out of range), dropping all of the nearby kobolds and allowing everyone to get inside. The dwarf wedged a rock into the grate so that it could not be opened easily, and the kobolds knew it would be suicide to come after us, so we made it back safely.
We were able to rest and spend hit dice before dawn, when a half dragon approached with prisoners and a group of kobolds. He promised to free the prisoners, but only if our mightiest warrior would meet him in single combat. After much discussion, the dwarf chose to accept. He managed to avoid the first 2 attacks from the foe before landing a solid smiting blow. This staggered the half dragon, who tried to strike back, but his armor had apparently been severely damaged by the massive blow he had recieved (he actually rolled 1s for both attacks), so he could not land a blow. He withdrew and yielded, as he could not continue in his state. A few courteous words passed between them, and the prisoners were freed.
This concluded the raid, and we were free to rest and recuperate. Upon waking again, we were summoned by the lord, who requested that we undertake a new mission to gather information on these foes and to recover stolen goods.
We also finished up Episode 1 this week. We managed to go though all of theses tasks over the last 4 weeks:
– Get into Greenest
– Get to Keep
– Rescue People on the Street
– Stop the Fire at the Mill
– Clear the Sewers
– Capture a Leader and Interrogate
– Go to Rescue people in the Burning Church (Failed)
– Fight a Dragon
– One on One Fight with Champion
– Some extra fights to get everyone up to LVL 2
Since we just failed at the Church we had 4 people left (the other 4 people did not show up this week). Also all 4 of us had only 1 HP and the Dragon was attacking the Keep. We all charged up the tower to get a good look at the Dragon. 2 new people showed up a little later and jumped right into the group. One was a Wizard (Pre-Gen and first time at D&D) the other was a Monk (1st time at the store but made a Monk PH).
The star of the fight was the Wizard. He launched 2 Magic Missiles and a Ray of Frost for a total of 27 Damage himself. The 2 Clerics both hit with Sacred Flame and a single javelin hit from the paladin doing a total of 42 damage to the Dragon. (This lasted a total of 3 rounds). The DM was nice and did not blast us even though we were doing damage. After the Dragon flew away we heard the Champion call out for someone to fight him. 4 of the Party jumped at this:
Dwarf Cleric of War (Me) – AC 18, HP 1
Dwarf Cleric of Light – AC 18, HP 1
Dwarf Paladin – AC 18, HP 1
Dragonborn Monk – AC 15, HP 9
Well we decided to let the new guy do it to get the experience and backed down. The Monk headed on to the field and attacked the Champion. The Monk won Initiative and struck doing a total of 12 damage. The Champion struck back at the Monk, 14 missed. Second attack, 12 missed. Spends action point, 15 Hit… total of 13 damage so the monk goes down. he then does 8 damage with his strike while the monk is down but the monk is quickly stablized by the Clerics of the group. The Champion leaves and now we are ready for episode 2. We then ran some “encounters” to get some more XP for the new people since we got 150 XP for the Dragon and Champion.
The extra fights were a lot harder and we barely got out of them, but we also got enough XP for the new people. Since we only have the Paladin as the Front Line I decided to make Stubby (my Dwarf War Priest) a 1st level fighter. This gives him another 8 more hp (total of 18 HP now), a 1d10 Hit Die, +1 to AC and the Second Wind for a free 1d10+1 HP per short rest. This should keep him going in fights when we dont have time to take long rests. We also started tracking where the Cult was heading so next week we can catch up to them.
Is anyone else running the problem of the party gaining a ton of XP? My players could easily be close to level 3 and we’re almost done with the first mission…
They’re upset with me because I told them level-ups must be done at a long rest, but they want to level up now.
@Michael Link
Remember that there is an XP cap per episode (Ep 1 = 300 XP, Ep 2 = 600 XP, Ep 3 = 900 XP). When we played Episode 1 the PCs earned about 500 XP each, but due to the cap the extra 200 XP was lost. Whereas in Episode 2 after two sessions they’ve only earned about 150 XP and it doesn’t look like they’ll come anywhere near the 600 XP cap.
Regarding level ups during play, Wizards confirmed that PCs can only level up at the end of the Episode or after a long rest (not after each session as is printed in the DM’s PDF). Many players got around that by playing one or more D&D Expedition. The XP they earned from those bumped them up and they levelled up immediately.
@Michael Good question and @Ameron explanation as always.
That seems really screwed up as poor design and info on WotC part. ie. the question shouldn’t even have to be asked
. But a lot of people have on ye ole Internet. Ironic 5e’s supposed to be accessible and easy to play. I can see where new comers could be miffed or confused. But even experienced players are confused and/or frustrated.
The author had to field a bunch of errata questions.
And fwiw Mike Mearls fielded an FAQ elsewhere that’s easier to quote: “[Re. Adventurer’s League] It’s debilitating having to figure scheduling, then deal with space issues because: ‘Wednesday’. it’s definitely something we’ve heard feedback on and are talking about.”
Thoughts?
Disclaimer. I’ve skimmed the adventure, I don’t DM, and haven’t had a chance to play in Adventuer’s League (there are several FLGS within 30 min). But I keep up on the Internet. So I’m aware of what’s going on (in some cases maybe I misinterpreted but I don’t think so).
P.S. Great write ups by everyone btw. One thing that does seem to be working is the different ways parties tackle a challenge. Some more RPG creative than others. Some more straightforward.
Hey I had a quick DM question. I have a group that has started playing, and none of us really have experience, so I have taken the role as DM. While I should have done better with character hooks for episode 1, it seems like my players are driven by greed and what they get out of every single situation. What is the best way to handle something like this?
Also, when they finish an encounter they instantly want to search the bodies to see what they can find. What kinds of things do you generally give random kobolds and acolytes?
I’ve enjoyed your episodes so far, it helps a lot for me. We are likely starting episode 2 in another week, hoping I can do better this time.
@Brandon, in previous games I have had larger forces attack them while they were looting, forcing them to run away (and learn from their mistake of pausing to loot rusted daggers from a bunch of kobolds).
In the narrative of this adventure, as they are looting emphasize the sounds of what is around them…. broken glass, smoldering buildings, the screams of innocent townsfolk.
You could also have a tense non-combat encounter of the town guards approaching them thinking they are cultists/mercenaries (until, of course, they notice the dead kobolds). Maybe you were mercenaries that killed the villagers, then turned on the kobolds for a better hold of the loot? They might make role-playing inside the keep interesting.
Hearing your weekly sessions has given me a lot more confidence as a newbie DM. I ran this encounter last night, and was surprised to find that my typically slash happy group took a similar approach, sneaking up on the camp and setting them against one another. I had the stats printed separately on 3×5 cards for the cultists and the kolbals to try to make my life easier, but after it became apparent from my save roll of 1 that the table was just going to watch me kill off half of the stragglers as they hid, I handed the kobald stats to the left side of the table and the cultist stats to the right, let them pick a character from the figures on the table and said said “GO”. They went through two rounds before my remaining kobalds saved high enough to figure out what was going on. It was so much fun having them trying to figure out how to use pack tactics against one another, and cheering for 1’s on wisdom saves as those came around. When the session ended everyone walked away with huge smiles on their faces, including me.
We finally ran session 2-1 on Wed, Oct 1 at Modern Myths in Northampton, MA. I started by asking my table what they had done over their day or two of resting to help the town rebuild. We then went around individually and I started throwing story seeds at them. I tried to get them to ignore the numbers and play their characters, though this didn’t work 100% of the time. For instance, the bard wanted to sing songs to keep the people’s spirits up. I said “Okay, many people are heartened by your songs, but one person is a little TOO enthusiastic in their fandom. Tell me about that person.” Then the monk wanted to use his high Athletics score to jump from rooftop to rooftop inspecting structural integrity. I sighed, let him make his check, and then said “One of the roofs is so bad that it cannot support your weight, and you fall into a burned-out secret attic. In there, you see some creature, person, or item that the raiders did not find. Describe it to me.” He then went on to tell me about how it looked like a magic sword devoted to his god Bahamut… and again I had to steer it AWAY from mechanics to say “Yes, the hidden sword shrine is horribly melted from the flames, though, so you can only vaguely make out the form that was once a sword. However, in the corner of the roof, you see that a family of Canaries has started building a nest, and you know that Canaries are a sacred bird to Bahamut, so you feel assured that the sacred nature of this site is still intact.”
The monk NPC (whom I renamed Wong Fei Hung for kung-fu movie reasons) was a relatively forced plot, but the group ran with it. I had his captured master be friends with our party’s monk’s master, so there was a connection I could play off.
Once they got on the road (though again, I had to get our druid to stop thinking about the mechanical bonus of his Dire Wolf form’s tracking abilities, since A. he’d only be able to hold the form for an hour and B. the army of 200+ raiders had left a pretty clear path across the plains), the monk decided to sneak up on the campfire they saw, and tried on his own (with the rest of the party waiting a ways off) to provoke the kobolds into attacking the cultists by throwing rocks. It almost worked, but while he was doing this, the group’s Ambush Drake, which had been set free to hunt while the cultists had lunch, did what it does and ambushed the monk. As he ran back to the party (I described it “like Han Solo running from the storm troopers in the Death Star”), the drake was right behind him, with the kobolds & cultists a round or two behind them. This let me stagger the fight so that they could focus on the drake first, then deal with the others.
Folks felt much more competent with their shiney new level 2 powers (and HP levels), so they did much better against the cultists than they did at level 1. They ended by getting a map to the raiders’ hide-out spot and cultist robes they might use to sneak in. We plan on stretching this to 3 sessions, so next week will be entering the camp, and 2-3 will be dealing with Leosin.
I’m still struggling a little to get some folks to play their characters and not their stats. I think this is partially due to 4E implanting the idea that bonuses need to be huge, and that magic items should be plenty, so now that 5E has lower bonuses and almost nothing for magic items, they feel like they need to milk the meager bonuses they do have instead of just trying things they might only have a +0 bonus on. I hope continued storytelling can break them of that habit, because that’s really not the way 5E works… but we’ll see.
We just finished the end of Episode 1 last week, and are looking forward to getting the PCs out of Greenest next week. I like your writeup… it’s a nice way to reinforce options and helps me anticipate next week.