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View Full Version : Any tips for Red Hand of Doom?



KillianHawkeye
2007-10-24, 07:16 AM
Hey everyone, I thought I'd see if the board had any tips on running the Red Hand of Doom adventure. I am a relatively inexperienced DM, and it's been a few years since I did it, and I never had a resource like this before, so I figured I'd see what people thought.

Specifically, I am looking for:
-Any tips for incorporating appropriate material from other WotC books.
-General tips on running the adventure and keeping things going smoothly.
-Tips for increasing the challenge factor, either for specific enemies or just in general.
-Ideas for what to do once the adventure is over, assuming I decide not to go into another one.
-Stories of people's experiences with the adventure, either playing or running it.
-Any other helpful advice.

Most of my players are fairly experienced. They are still working on their characters, but right now it looks like we will be having a Rogue, a Swashbuckler, a Monk, a ranged attacking Fighter, and a Psion Telepath. There will also be a couple of part-time players making a Cleric and a Wizard Necromancer which will most likely be used as NPCs when the players are absent. I am starting them off at level 4. They still do not know which adventure they'll be playing.

Due to our other games, people not having time to make characters, and my need to spend time learning the new Star Wars rules for another upcoming game, we will probably not be able to start this campaign for another couple of weeks at least. Right now I am somewhat familiar with the beginning and end of the adventure, but I need to spend more time on the middle parts to see how it all fits together.

HUGE thanks in advance for all your ideas!

Reel On, Love
2007-10-24, 07:38 AM
Hey everyone, I thought I'd see if the board had any tips on running the Red Hand of Doom adventure. I am a relatively inexperienced DM, and it's been a few years since I did it, and I never had a resource like this before, so I figured I'd see what people thought.

Specifically, I am looking for:
-Any tips for incorporating appropriate material from other WotC books.
Like what? Just have the PCs use it. If you're talking about, for example, making one of the sorcerers be a Shadowcaster, that's probably too much effort to be worth it.


-General tips on running the adventure and keeping things going smoothly.
-Tips for increasing the challenge factor, either for specific enemies or just in general.
Part of keeping things going smoothly is watching the challenge factor. Red Hand of Doom is a tough module in many places; if you want to up the challenge by creating more difficult versions of some antagonists, go ahead, but you should be ready to use the default versions (or even weaken those a little) when the PCs are running out of spells/HP/etc.


-Ideas for what to do once the adventure is over, assuming I decide not to go into another one.
-Stories of people's experiences with the adventure, either playing or running it.
-Any other helpful advice.
Launching another adventure or having them go elsewhere is obvious. you could also explore the idea of new antagonists moving in to fill the void left behind by the Red Hand.

My experience with the module is that it was fun, but very tough (in part due to not-so-competent party members a lot of the way). As the wizard, I occasionally had to pull out all the stops (i.e. Ray of Clumsiness + Ray of Exhaustion to take down a couple of the dragons) to keep us alive. I also, through good spell selection and lots of scroll scribing, turned some hard encounters into cakewalks. We also did everything "right"; I can't really imagine, for example, the Siege of Brindle with multiple surviving dragons or Dragonlords present.


Most of my players are fairly experienced. They are still working on their characters, but right now it looks like we will be having a Rogue, a Swashbuckler, a Monk, a ranged attacking Fighter, and a Psion Telepath. There will also be a couple of part-time players making a Cleric and a Wizard Necromancer which will most likely be used as NPCs when the players are absent. I am starting them off at level 4. They still do not know which adventure they'll be playing.
Characters are supposed to start Red Hand of Doom at level six. Putting level 4s into it may well kill them with the first (big) encounter; they're definitely unlikely to survive the first Keep.
Also, no one in your group has a high damage output (important) except maybe the (squishy) rogue, and they're all vulnerable to grapples. Your Telepath will have to be pulling a LOT of the weight; hopefully he knows what he's doing (and lack of, oh, Glitterdust, for example, will still hurt).

KillianHawkeye
2007-10-24, 07:51 AM
The text in the book actually says to start them at level 5, and I was going to adjust their starting experience points partway to 5th level so they'll level up after the first couple encounters anyway. I am also allowing them to play an ECL+1 race without the level adjustment at a lower total EXP, as though they had used the LA buy off.

And I was wanting to know about toughening things up in advance in case they surprise me with their competence and I need to turn on the heat on short notice. This was something that happened a lot the first time I DMed, and I found myself having to try to build an encounter with the goal of utterly destroying the PCs to even pose a decent challenge for them. Looking back, I guess that was probably my fault as an inexperienced DM, though.

Haakon
2007-10-24, 10:59 AM
Its a pretty decent module, though it really depends on party composition.

I have 2 different groups running through it now and I know that the second one is going to have a more difficult time (cleric, barb, wizard, rogue vs druid/cleric, barb, pally, rogue). It helps to have an arcane caster for the Red Hand of Doom, for both crowd control and blasting. I would also recommend starting them off at level 5, considering the first encounter scripted is CR 8.

Don't forget to take advantage of the fact that lots of the "bad guys" are spell casters and can provide battlefield control/buffs/blasting of their own.

If you want to add in some of your own encounters, take a look through the Races of the Dragon supplement. Considering the nature of the campaign, it wouldn't be unrealistic to see dragonborn or dragonwrought kobolds sometime.

Since the campaign is very time dependent, I insisted on having everybody write what day it was on their character sheets. Its a huge help when your trying to figure out what you need to do on your end, according to the timeline.

Dizlag
2007-10-24, 11:23 AM
As a DM who ran this module front to back over the course of 1 1/2 years of play, it was the best experience I've had and my players had. With that said, I really didn't have to do a whole lot of tweeking. There were 6 players and near the end we had 7, so all the encounters in the book were too easy for them.

So, I cranked it up a little bit. Mostly, I just add a class level or two for the main baddies to make the encounters harder. I also used a program called DM's Familiar (http://www.paladinpgm.com/dmf/) to keep the game moving with 6-7 players. It allowed me to quickly pull encounters onto the battle mat with the players. It kept track of initiative and I was able to roll 99% of my attacks with it. Although, I rolled my own d20 for saving throws ... let's just say my players hate my blue d20 now. Muhahahaha!

Now, when I say it allowed me to easily drag encounters to the battle mat, I had to set them up in the codex tree first. I effectively put the whole module in there, complete with advanced monsters and such. =) If you have it, or you get it ... let me know and I'll e-mail you the monsters and codex tree I created for it.

Anyways, running the module was easy and as you get into it you'll see just how easy it is. On occasion, I had to up the encounters on the fly, but that was few and far between. I had a good idea of what my players were going to do next, but I prepared other parts of the adventure as well just in case.

Just to be safe, I'm going to put the rest of this post in a spoiler section. Any players going to be playing this module, or are playing in this module might have a major plot point spoiled ... or revealed to them. And again, sorry to those who have already read this and it took something away from the adventure for you.



The climax of the module, the horde attacking the city of Brendol was met with loads of prep-work. Leading up to this attack, my players took it upon themselves to start taking pot-shots at the horde. I had to come up with a sizable horde and layout it's defenses while traveling. They list the numbers of baddies in the horde, but not it's organization while traveling or sleeping. I guess they thought players would be too foolish to attempt something like that. ;-) They were right! I almost got my first TPK (total party kill) for it. Hehehehe I've got that for your reference if you want as well.

The attack on Brendol was supposed to be more abstract, but of course ... nothing goes as planned and we had a huge mass battle over about 3 gaming sessions. It was awesome!

Well, this is getting WAY long! Overall, it was worth our time and my money for running this adventure. The only suggestion I would make regarding DMing this adventure is make sure you're prepared by reading ahead, balancing the encounters, and going with the flow. I had no idea at the end of this mini-campaign that the gnome ranger in the group would be an ambassador to the Kiri Tikor (sp?) elves. I went with it and remembered to reward my players for their good ideas. I also spanked them down for being stupid too. ;-)



Good luck!

Dizlag

Doresain
2007-10-24, 02:16 PM
The climax of the module, the horde attacking the city of Brendol was met with loads of prep-work. Leading up to this attack, my players took it upon themselves to start taking pot-shots at the horde. I had to come up with a sizable horde and layout it's defenses while traveling. They list the numbers of baddies in the horde, but not it's organization while traveling or sleeping. I guess they thought players would be too foolish to attempt something like that. ;-) They were right! I almost got my first TPK (total party kill) for it. Hehehehe I've got that for your reference if you want as well.

The attack on Brendol was supposed to be more abstract, but of course ... nothing goes as planned and we had a huge mass battle over about 3 gaming sessions. It was awesome!

Well, this is getting WAY long! Overall, it was worth our time and my money for running this adventure. The only suggestion I would make regarding DMing this adventure is make sure you're prepared by reading ahead, balancing the encounters, and going with the flow. I had no idea at the end of this mini-campaign that the gnome ranger in the group would be an ambassador to the Kiri Tikor (sp?) elves. I went with it and remembered to reward my players for their good ideas. I also spanked them down for being stupid too. ;-)

Good luck!

Dizlag

well thanks, you totally ruined any chances of me wanting to play it by telling me the ending >:(

Dhavaer
2007-10-24, 03:35 PM
well thanks, you totally ruined any chances of me wanting to play it by telling me the ending >:(

Where? He didn't mention the ending.

jameswilliamogle
2007-10-24, 03:42 PM
uhm... undead party + lord of the uttercold + nonlethal substitution + explosive spell + snowcasting + locate city nuclear bomb???

Dizlag
2007-10-24, 04:27 PM
Doresain,

I didn't spoil anything at all. Yeah, I mentioned the climax of the module, but the players will already know that throughout 90% of the module. Did I mention what was the horde makeup? Did I mention anything specific about the module, other than a city is going to be attacked?

I'm sorry if I spoiled the beginning of the module for you. I should've put my post in a spoiler. *going to edit now*

Dizlag

Doresain
2007-10-24, 04:34 PM
well i have never played/read it, so how was i supposed to know the horde was attacking some city...you spoiled some part of it for me, im just not sure which part

Reel On, Love
2007-10-24, 04:38 PM
well i have never played/read it, so how was i supposed to know the horde was attacking some city...you spoiled some part of it for me, im just not sure which part

Why would you read a thread about a module you have never played or read without expecting to be spoiled to some extent?

Overlard
2007-10-24, 06:08 PM
Attacking cities is generally what hordes do...

RTGoodman
2007-10-24, 06:25 PM
I've started running RHoD twice before, but the games fell apart each time. I just recently started again, but I'm not sure if it'll last since I only had two players (each playing two characters).

The biggest piece of advice I can give is to make sure you have an arcane caster. I know that they're overpowered, but there are a lot of times when some arcane firepower is almost required.

For more information and suggestions, I HIGHLY recommend you go check out this RHoD recap on the Wizards forum (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=642066). I've been lurking around reading it for probably 8 months or so. Caligula, the guy running it, is a tough DM (he claims to be the "toughest DM in Sweden," and I believe him), but his players are finally getting the final encounters of the campaign. Of course, they've been playing since sometime in May 2006 and have had their share of ups and downs (and character deaths), so it's a really long thread, but it's definitely worth reading. And if you have any questions, I'm sure Caligula would be happy to answer them for you.

KillianHawkeye
2007-10-24, 07:39 PM
Wow! Thank you guys for all the great stories and advice! I'm gonna go check out some of those links now, but feel free to keep it coming in the mean time. :smallsmile:

horseboy
2007-10-24, 08:00 PM
Alcohol, and lots of it.

KillianHawkeye
2007-10-24, 08:41 PM
Um, thanks, that really helpful.

... ... You can leave now.