The 3.5 Red Hand Of Doom Handbook for DMs [Major spoilers!] - WIP, PEACH!

[Saintheart]

For determining degrees of victory, I think I would still like some feedback on my initial post. Specifically, how hard is it to get all the victory points? It is not an interesting mechanic if the outcome is almost always flawless victory, so if, for example, most groups get between 66 and 72 victory points, it might be best to have the points be 41-66, 67-71, and 72 for flawless. On the other hand, if it is a more even spread, then having the ranges be more even would be better.

This might be a bit hard to estimate because different parties will always do different stuff.

The starting point I think would be the points that come from the Battle of Brindol itself, since that's pretty much the one event that the party is going to be at.

Assuming that the party literally does nothing else but show up at the battle, and wins each and every encounter, killing every Wyrmlord and/or dragon who's scheduled to appear, this is the count I get:

Abithriax: 4
Kharn: 8
Koth: 2
Ulwai: 6
Saarvith: 4
Saving the Walls: 2
Putting out the Fires: 2
Streets of Blood: 4
Killing Skather: 2

So a total of 34 VP. None of these guys are programmed to flee -- Abithriax on closer inspection might flee if the party hides or breaks contact -- so a party basically cannot miss the opportunity for these points.

That's without adding in the points they can pull from the Audience with the Lords ahead of the battle, for a maximum of 8 VP there. That's also a more-or-less guaranteed event and I've yet to encounter a campaign report where the party failed significantly in this encounter or didn't earn a single VP - the Diplomacy checks at DC 20 are not terribly hard for a level 8-9 party to meet.

On top of that, I think it's pretty much guaranteed that the party will convince Drellin's Ferry to evacuate the town before the horde reaches them, so I'd call that a safe 3 VP there. While I have seen one campaign where the party stuck around and try and fight the whole horde, I think that's an outlier - most parties, even if they don't get to Cinder Hill and take a look at the size of the Red Hand, tend to take the hint that the party and/or Drellin's Ferry can't fight the Red Hand on its own.

On that note, destroying the bridge at Skull Gorge seems to happen in most campaigns, so there's another 2 VP.

So: 34 VP from just showing up to the battle, 37 VP from just telling Drellin's Ferry folk that "Hey, there's a big army coming your way", and 39 VP from doing the most basic thing and taking out the bridge ahead of the Hand.

This is why it's pretty much the ultimate Fail Party who doesn't hit 40 VP. You can literally tell the Ferryfolk to clear out, gallop ahead of them to Brindol, and cool your heels for the next 3-4 weeks or so awaiting the Hand's arrival and you'll still come very close to winning the campaign.

It might be a bit harsh, but I consider 40 VP to be absolute base competence as players since if the party doesn't realise the nature of the threat and doesn't at least follow the plot marker back to Brindol, it probably shouldn't be out adventuring at all.

After that the VP totals are basically arranged like this:

Twistusk aid - 1 VP
Killing Ozyrrandion, the green dragon - 1
Road blockade - 2
Exposing Miha - 2
Killing Regiarix, the black dragon - 2
Disrupting the hatchery - 2
Killing Varanthian - 3
Delivering the gold - 4
Tiri Kitor Alliance - 5
Disrupting Ghostlord alliance - 5

I've excluded the Wyrmlords from this analysis because they're not, in truth, optional targets: if you don't catch them while out on your travels, you'll get them again at Brindol.

(Perhaps the most interesting part is that plain old indiscriminate slaughter of targets generally doesn't get as many points as diplomacy or doing stuff for people - killing the dragons only gets the party 6 VP altogether, while the alliance aspects of the sidequests nets 14 VP or more.)

A reasonably conscientious party I think is going to pick up at least 14 VP of this lot: from the Tiri Kitor alliance, disrupting the Ghostlord alliance, and delivering the gold. You could be unlucky with a dragon or two getting away, but the blockades are fixed, the Ghostlord isn't going anywhere, Varanthian basically is too big and fat to run anywhere, and delivering the gold is something the DM triggers automatically on the party at some point during their travels prior to the Battle of Brindol.

Remember, the party is going to get either guaranteed or a very high likelihood of 34 VP out of the Battle of Brindol. There's 27 VP in the above, and they only need 6 more points.

And on the campaigns I've seen, most DMs have given the party real and apparent shots at hitting any of these encounters. Few parties seem to skip over the Ghostlord section of the adventure. I think the highest failure rate seems to arise out of the Rhest section of the adventure, and that only because the party either wipes after trying a frontal assault or Regiarix/Saarvith escape. Very few seem to miss smashing up all the greenspawn eggs.

So if I had to hazard a real "degrees of victory" analysis, I'd say the lowest tier is 40 VP; the "average" tier is a total which accounts for the most obvious plot-based stuff that affects Brindol; and the highest total accounts for taking out all Wyrmlords, dragons, and enemy agents, since the last category is the one where luck or good rolls can most influence the outcome.

More analysis later because I have to go, but there's my unleavened tho9ughts...