Having missed last week due to the world being generally made out of
fail, I went back to the Patriot Games Wednesday club, there to look at
completing the second half of the first part of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. When last we left it, we were at the tunnel,
looking in on cultists, except this time, the group I was playing with was all
older players, none of them obsessed with concept of sleep and shank as the
previous group had been dominated by. So
instead of running down and killing everything, we wandered down and actually
managed to use persuasion to get the cultists away from the kobolds and then to
the point where we could ambush them and get them back into the keep.
It has to be said that a lot of the encounters in this particular part
of the game are resolved through the use of trauma to the opponents, and as we
go further into this, you’ll understand why this is a bit of a problem to me.
We got the cultists back to the keep and then there was an attack from
above, as the blue dragon that we’d encountered earlier started its attack in
earnest. We spend some time throwing
javelins and trying to shoot crossbows at it while it merrily flew out of
range, occasionally wandering in to breath weapon the other guards on the
wall. There was a moment of GM
intervention on the game when the dice finally indicated that the Dragon would
attack us, because even though we had two second level characters, the attack
bonus and damage from the dragon would be enough to hit any of us without a
high roll and even on a saved throw, the damage done by the breath weapon would
annihilate (like rolemaster, use a spatula...) any PC that it hit.
Which was a problem for a lot of us, none of us mind going up against a
dragon, but we all understand that unless you’ve got a few black arrows and a
number of shield surfing elves, or smartarse dwarves with a hobbit, dragons give
a party a very short lifespan to work with.
The problem inherent here is that it’s unsatisfying when the encounter
just flies away without you really doing anything to deal with it.
So the kobolds kept attacking and eventually, having been in four
different encounters with no chance to get a short rest, my character fell, not
dead, but out, and when we finally got rid of all the creatures, we were at the
end of the session.
And therein lies the problem, the whole adventure, both first and
second sessions, was fight, move, fight, move, fight, move, fight, move, fight,
move, sneak, fight, move, retreat, fight, dragon, s***, Dragon flee’s,
confused, move, fight, unconscious...
Level up...
And while I’m hoping that there’s going to be something else coming up
shortly when it comes to the next session, I’m not convinced and while I had a
lot more fun with the older players and I’ll be staying with it, there’s going
to need to be something other than smacking my way through the scenario to keep
my interest...
But onwards...
