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CCC-QCC2017 Delusions of Grandeur, Dreams of Revenge $4.99
Publisher: Dungeon Masters Guild
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by Jasmine L. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/22/2018 03:29:25

SPOILERS

I actually value balance pretty highly, and with this one...let's just say it wouldn't surprise me if a party of 5th level characters could mop the floor with most of these combats. The grand unified cult leader at the end is only CR 6, with half a dozen CR 1/8 minions and a single CR 5 elemental. This is a joke and it's honestly just sloppy. Even if you always run at Very Strong, the combats are basically unplayable as written.

The story and pacing are just okay and don't really make up for it. It's still a fairly linear dungeon crawl, even if there's an NPC with an interesting backstory who joins your party. It does have some "living dungeon" elements that spruce it up a bit, so it could be worse. The concept is fine, but the execution is...not so good.

EDIT: Thanks for the author response! Given the intent, here's some more targeted feedback: 1) It's not teeechnically the grand leader, but it's still the leader of the cell, and from a narrative perspective, it is the position that you expect to be filled with an end boss, so a CR 6 dork is something of an anticlimax. I would have gone with an archmage instead. (When I run this adventure now, I usually go with two archmages—that always gets 'em sweating.) 2) While there are interaction sections at the beginning, they don't really have goals (except for "receive exposition"), obstacles (the NPCs are gonna give you your mission either way), or stakes (Boddynock might not open up to you, but that doesn't matter if you're not invested in the character, and if he doesn't open up to you, you probably won't be invested in the character, right?), so they end up playing more as cutscenes with dialogue trees. The flumphs and myconids pull it off better (but they are part of the dungeon crawl). 3a) Encounters with multiple routes to victory are awesome and I'm a big fan. The adventure hints a little at using the cultist robes as disguises, for example, which is great. But in a pre-published adventure, you've also gotta cut the DM a little slack and give some guidance on what to do if the players try other solutions. For example, the ogre den has some ogres that are employed as guards by the cult. If the players disguise themselves as cult members, what do the ogres do? Wave them past? Ask their names? Ask for a password? All the cultists here are human—do nonhumans have disadvantage on Deception checks? I'm a pretty experienced DM, so I can come up with answers for all these, just like I can rebalance the encounters, but ideally I shouldn't have to scramble. I'd name DDEX2-2 and DDAL5-4 as examples of adventures that did this really well. 3b) Hordes of enemies can make for a good encounter, but it wasn't well-executed here. A good horde fight is almost always gonna require multiple waves of enemies, because if you toss one fireball and that's it, encounter over, then that's not so much a horde as a minor speed bump. You also want enemies that can pose a credible threat in great numbers, because otherwise you're just mowing the lawn, y'know? Where's the thrill? (DDAL7-10 recognizes this and basically says "Yeah, there are infinite manes here, but they can't do jack against you, so let's handwave 'em and save you the trouble.") Cultists have a single melee attack at +3 to hit, which means they not only need to get right next to the PCs, they also need to baaasically score a crit to get through a typical melee AC at this level, and then they deal an average of 8 damage—to the frontliner, who is probably the beefiest person in the group and won't even feel it. For this sort of thing, I'd be more inclined to go with several waves of low-CR elementals, since they play into the elemental cult theme. Magmins are good—they're fragile enough to mow down en masse, but their death burst makes them effective at chipping down your HP while still allowing for meaningful counterplay if you use smart tactics. Mephits could work well too. Additionally, you can't just have the whole adventure be low-level mooks—you need to balance it with more level-appropriate foes too!

The XP budgets from the DMG don't reeeally produce balanced encounters (especially at high levels), as seen in, well, this adventure, I guess. For contrast, if you look at the more detailed encounter-building guidelines in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, you'll find that for a party of five 13th level characters, a challenging-but-winnable fight would be more like two mages, four cult fanatics, twelve thugs, and twelve cultists.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
WARNING: SPOILERS!
Hi Jasmine,
A few quick notes/clarifications:
1) "The grand unified cult leader" doesn't actually appear in this adventure. It should be clear from the text of the adventure that this is an isolated cell. Part of the "final rewards" is actually an item intended as a gift for a higher-ranking member not appearing in this adventure.
2) The dungeon crawl is really just the second part of the adventure. There are role-play encounters and a couple combats before the party enters the "dungeon" part.
3) As you mentioned, some of the combats are fairly easy for a tier 3 party, and that was by design for a couple reasons:
a) Some of the encounters were not intended to be combats at all, but opportunities for some roleplaying and possible throwbacks to story award from other adventures.
b) I wanted the "large group" combat (excuse me for being a little cryptic, as I try to avoid spoilers for those who haven't read/played it yet) to be something fairly easy for a tier 3 party. Although the XP is budgeted appropriately for a tier 3 encounter per the DMG, the large number number of creatures results in a high XP multiplier for sizing even though many of the creatures involved may individually be low-powered. I wanted to give the feel of highly-powerful heroes sweeping through a large number of minions, ala Conan or a lot of the old fantasy books where the powerful heroes sweep through a hoard of opponents.

Anyway, I'm really sorry you didn't enjoy the adventure, but thanks for taking the time to write a review and provide feedback.
Happy gaming!
-Scott
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CCC-QCC2017 Delusions of Grandeur, Dreams of Revenge
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