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

[Fizban]

Apparently I really felt like going over RHoD again, have a detailed breakdown of the battle as written:

The whole victory point "system" is pretty well borked- Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land has its final chapter try to go RHoD, but with victory points so much tighter and based on so many things the players haven't been informed of, and with the standard victory still being half a loss, that it just comes off as unfair.

Part of the problem with trying to make a more granular battle for Brindol is that, if we're being honest, the module is probably lying through its teeth that the defenders can actually win that battle even if the PCs hit all their hot spots. Well not so much lying I guess, since the horde automatically breaks through and only loses if the PCs kill all their leaders. . . at which point they mysteriously rout despite having an insurmountable upper hand. They outnumber and outgun a foe who's fortifications are overrun, but apparently the moment you kill their last general all the units which were winning offscreen suddenly give up and run away. Ridiculous.

Still, fixing that isn't really required. But if you want timings that make sense you've got to actually put everything on the map, which gives you distance, which gives you time. There's a nice pretty map of the city that tells us it's maybe 750' by 1,500' give or take. The PCs start somewhere, giant squads attack the west and south walls (and the results seem to assume the PCs go to the south wall). The giants are a further 1,000' out from the walls, and ought to have the 250ish troops from the sidebar with them. The sidebar says they should be 500' back from the giants, and the 1d4+5 rounds for them to run in is fairly appropriate, but naturally for stronger/smarter parties you'll want to array them defensively around the giants like an actual army would, along with spellcaster/supernatural support so the PCs have more of a puzzle to solve if they don't want to burn all their resources.
(Pre-edit: and we have to remember that the map is not presented with north at the top, with north instead being off to the right. This takes probably a good 250' off the distances I used below, which is a good 2-4 rounds.)

So we have the first problem: supposedly it's been 5 minutes since the giants started throwing, but it does not take the PCs 5 minutes to get there (or does it?), so apparently the defenders were dumb enough to not realize what was going on for 5 minutes. Additionally, having the giants spread their attacks is stupid- they should have broken through in the first two minutes, leaving a 10' wide gap that can be barricaded and defended but far less effectively than an actual wall. This gives you a very simple metric for deciding how well the PCs do: how wide is the hole?

Assuming at least one PC is in heavy armor and they start in the center of the town, they've got to run 1,750' to reach melee with the giants. Now, that is in fact a full three minutes at full run in heavy armor with no speed boosts, or 4.4 minutes hustling. If the PCs were not prepared, then the giants have enough time to collapse two of the four sections they want by the time the melee PCs waddle their way up. But the rest of the module assumes they're mounted most of the time, which cuts that to 2 or 2.5 minutes or so, for only one collapsed section, or as low as 1.5 if they've managed light loads on light warhorses, and the giant owls would get them there fast enough to avoid any loss (of course all those mounts are vulnerable). You can stipulate that the defenders did in fact take a minute or more of scattered attacks before they realized what was going on and reduce the hp overall so that there's a greater chance the giants can put a new hole in while the PCs are closing, and facilitate all that by giving the giants a smarter commander. (There's also a question of how strong the gates are, since they could almost certainly smash the gates in much faster, albeit making a poorer choice of entrance, but a small hole+smashed gate is still pretty good).

The giants smashing the walls/gates is the first thing that happens and nothing else happens until it's over, Abithriax is supposed to draw people away from the breaches after they're made. The only choice the PCs have is to respond or not. If the PCs ignore the giants, the horde gets massive breaches at both gates and the defenders are effectively surrounded in their own walls- they're not winning now no matter what. The exception is if the PCs personally provide enough firepower to make up for it, but that means holding a breach themselves, ignoring the dragon and possibly the whole rest of the battle. This won't be a fast process either, since the horde won't be stupid enough pack themselves in for the killing, they'll take their time figuring out a response, and hey they've got dragons why rush? If the PCs try to split up or use teleportation to hit both groups of giants before they can breach the walls and succeed, then well, the horde probably breaks off for a day and you rewrite the rest of the adventure.

Abithriax is quite obliging in a way: he attacks the southern part of Brindol, near where the PCs are expected to be after saving the southern wall. I'm not convinced this makes sense- supposedly it should draw defenders to contain the fires, but if the southern gate held then there should be plenty of spare defenders there. A "better" reason is admitting that they don't actually want the PCs near the chokepoints, because they could very well annihilate the army at the choke, and that's why the dragon is programmed to attack the end of the city they're at and engage them as soon at they confront it. The problem with this one is that I'm pretty sure there's no way anyone could realistically contain those fires without magic. The defenders should still be concentrated by the walls, and as demonstrated it takes at least half a minute for them to get anywhere. By that time the dragon's set another wide swath on fire.

Once again it looks like the module may have done some of the math: at one breath every 5 rounds, if it takes the PCs 2.5 minutes to get back from the giant scene to Abithriax's target, that's five breaths, and they are at least requiring a full minute per check to put out a fire. But, uh, those aren't little house fires started from a dropped candle: they're massive 40' swathes of potential ignition across rooftops that have been burning for minutes, vs maybe a bucket or two? I don't really know how to fix this aside from deliberately having the dragon breathe only once in order to lure in the PCs, and just bast responding soldiers until they show up. The appropriate result here is that unless the PCs prepared with Quench spells the city burns whether they win or not, but they can still win the fight- which is a heck of a lot better than Shadowdale's gotcha where not doing every bit of unmarked extra credit means the enemy just keeps the fortress. But is there really anything for the PCs to choose? The giants are done throwing so there's no "hazard zone," the horde isn't fully in the walls yet, unless you want to throw other flyers at them or let them spend the owl riders to stall for time, there isn't a logical thing for them to

For the battle itself, I'd rate this one on how many groups of soldiers the dragon gets to roast if the PCs dawdle about. If the PCs decided to try and blast the horde as the entered the breaches and ignores the dragon, Abithriax gets to burn down the city and slaughter the defenders and they lose: the city simply does not have enough concentrated archers to focus fire 184hp of dragon. How fast the PCs choose to get there/when they choose to engage determines how much loss the defenders take.

Streets of Blood is where you can really get fancy in the preparation and timing by letting the PCs draw up where they want barricades and fallback points in the city rather than just some random street. You still have to just fiat how long and which barricade it takes them to hit, but you can do it based on their choices, and then have the soldiers fighting during the time it takes the PCs to respond (and those stormlizards will tear a strip if left alone). Once you fix your map orientation this fight makes sense: the west gate is at the top of the map, so west of the marketplace is right between their entry point and the marketplace with its six roads and control of the bridge gates, pretty important.

On to the end. The horde has pushed in through the west gate and is either regrouping there or consolidating gains, while Jaarmath is regrouping in the cathedral square (16) when the sniper attack happens, and the PCs respond (this should take them X amount of time, during which Y amount of damage occurs to defenders, etc). I suppose the players do have a bit of a choice here since they could ignore Jaarmath and try to take command themselves. If the horde can hold together with any one wyrmlord, the defenders should at least be able to hold as long as the PCs are around. But ignoring the sniper and hidden sorcerers just means they ought to stab you in the back when Kharn shows up. If you've got the ability to collapse the building on him that's always a good option.

However that resolves, it then says for the final battle that captain Ulverth just fought wyrmlord Kharn "to the north" at the marketplace (5) and that Kharn is coming to attack the cathedral (17). This means that after the PCs left their barricade, Kharn either went through or around it to the marketplace, effectively negating the PCs win there by the module. If the PCs held through Streets of Blood, Kharn should instead be described as coming down one of the other streets straight at the grouped defenders, rather than from the marketplace. This becomes very important. If the PCs held the road to the marketplace and forced Kharn to throw himself straight at them, the horde is still effectively strung out through a chokepoint: they're surrounded, and losing their commanders could feasibly cause a rout, allowing the defenders a crushing counterattack (or at least harrying them on the way out).

However, if the PCs lost the marketplace, the horde has effectively broken through their lines. They have two entry/exit points in the west gate and the bridges (they should have smashed all the gates but the NPCs somehow killed the giants), and access to the roads to push through to the east gate (while the defenders are supposed to have concentrated on the cathedral plaza, more south-west). The defenders are all but surrounded inside their own walls and have no hope of outfighting the horde- the horde simply should not break no matter how many leaders they lose, while the defenders are only still up because their leaders are. Even if they kill Kharn, if the PCs lost the marketplace during Streets of Blood, they can't win the battle until they retake the marketplace from whatever forces the DM thinks are appropriate- this is a much better place to shove surviving dragons and wyrmlords, rather than stacking them on top of Kharn, and even if the PCs held it that's a good place to throw remaining leaders who the PCs need to hunt. If the PCs know they can't retake the marketplace and/or finish remaining leaders then they boogie on out the south or east gate.

If you want PC choice, this'd be the big one. They have "less than 10 minutes" to prepare, which is a lot of time compared to the previous parts. Standing and fighting in the cathedral square isn't exactly a great plan- they're attacking the cathedral to remove the clerics, but Brindol has jack all for clerics. A fighting or even flat out retreat to gather more defenders is entirely reasonable. Kharn comes at the PCs with just a small number of mundane heavies, which means a bunch of chumps up on the wall are suddenly pretty important. Just 200' away is the south gate, assuming the PCs held it, down a nice narrow firing line. Ordering the defenders here to do something more sensible than just take it ought to be worth a reduction in casualties, especially if you take out Kharn himself nice and quick.


The battle flow they've planned is actually pretty decent, the problem simply lies in tying victory to arbitrary points rather than the events as they unfold ('cause the irony is not lost that tracking "defender losses" is point system from the other direction). I've probably said this before in the thread, but the point values on the razorfiends and ghosts is simply ridiculous. Every razorfiend has a breath weapon and DR 5/magic, forcing the defenders to rely on what, boiling oil/alchemist's fire and collapsing buildings? The hatchery had 30 eggs which are worth 2 points? Try 1-2 points per razorfiend if you wanted point values, and that's only because they lack flight- the smaller dragons in the horde are at least lacking in DR. The actual value is essentially no counter=win. The horde has 15 razorfiends (plus the 5 unlisted thunderlizards that must show up right before the battle), 12 ghost brutes, and 3 ghosts. The dragonspawn will annihilate essentially any number of troops on flat ground (and don't forget the horde's clerics), but the ghosts? The ghost brutes literally have the ability to howl and send everyone in 300' fleeing, while the normal ghosts just deal 2d10 damage to anyone that looks at them, and neither can be harmed by anything less than magic. If the Ghostlord is not brought on-side or every single ghost killed before or immediately once the battle begins, the defenders lose, period. This isn't a problem for what seems to be the vast majority of parties, and the Ghostlord is supposed to show up for the final fight to wreck you anyway if you didn't appease him, but still. If the horde has enough dragonspawn to send them through every point of attack, get some past the few who can fight them? The defenders lose again.

The wildcards are the elves and the dwarves, because we have almost no information about them. 200 dwarven mercenaries (vs the 800 or so militia which is half commoners) are apparently worth four victory points. They're paid 6,000 gold, which is more than you'd expect for 200 1st level warriors (at 40gp per day that'd be 150 days), but unless they have a significant number of magic weapons they won't matter against the ghosts, and without magic or alchemical weapons they won't help much against the dragonspawn either. The elves send "hunters:" the PCs can deploy four owl riders and the vp section claims they're an air force worth 5 points, but The Tiri Kitor Hunters is the name of their full military might of 260 warrior+ classed members. We know they probably have at least 15 giant owls if they can lend 5 to the PCs and still have 6 in the Streets of Blood and 4 more the PCs can assign at will, but how many more? Those owls are far more vulnerable to the bows carried by every hobgoblin regular than the dragons (and spawn and ghots) are to the defender's few crossbows (which also need to be shooting down at the hobbos). Either way they don't have magic bows, so they won't counter the nigh-existential threats of the dragonspawn and ghosts.

To take it all the way down you could assign all the leveled NPCs with magic and/or gear to certain areas, designate paths of attack for the horde's monsters, and see what happens. Except once again, I'm pretty dang sure the NPCs just straight up can't deal with the monsters they're supposedly dealing with off screen any more than the milita could actually hold chokes against what are essentially the equivalent of Total War mongol infantry.


I realize that my evaluation is basically that if the PCs don't do everything right, the defenders lose, which is basically the same thing I complain about being in Shadowdale. Except here it makes sense, while over there it's a force 1/5 the size spread out across a wider area with fewer monsters and higher level PCs. The ability of the defenders to stand up to the horde in RHoD is being massively fudged. Even with the dwarves they're outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1, the walls aren't worth nearly their full value thanks to the siege/auto-breach trigger, etc. I can't think of any ways to give the players agency via tradeoffs when the logical reading of things says that trying to make any tradeoffs should result in failure. I suppose if they're on normal mounts you could give them detour/eat AoOs from scattered troops, trading speed now for potential loss of speed later.