Top 10 Deadliest Official Modules in DnD 5e
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- čas přidán 8. 07. 2024
- Campaign Modules are books that are entirely self contained quests and stories for Dungeon Masters to run for their players. In this video we'll be going over the ten deadliest official modules from Wizards of the Coast to let you or your party know what to watch out for if you're thinking about picking up one of these modules. I will be talking about events that happen in the books to a degree, so be warned that there will be some spoilers ahead.
Video edited by Dylan
Script by TwoToes
-The List-
Intro: (0:00)
10: Lost Mines of Phandelver: (0:23)
9: Dungeon of the Mad Mage: (2:42)
8: Storm King's Thunder: (4:32)
7: Tales From the Yawning Portal: (6:44)
6: Descent Into Avernus: (8:26)
5: Rise of Tiamat: (10:27)
4: Curse of Strahd: (12:21)
3: Rime of the Frost Maiden: (14:15)
2: Hoard of the Dragon Queen: (17:11)
1: Tomb of Annihilation: (19:45)
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The way Tiamat is pronounced repeatedly gave me so much psychic damage, I'm on death saving throws.
i wasn't the only one effected! yaaaayyyyy~~~ bleh--
Same here 😆😆
Good.
Me, too! Plus Assirak...
Right! FYI, Chris Perkins and everyone else pronounce Tiamat as "TEE-uh-matt"
2:43 Put a sign at the entrance to the dungeon: "The genocide route is your only way forward: kill every monster you see or suffer the consequences. Speedrunners will perish."
The Green Dragon in LMoP was about ready to wipe players (The Paladin was the epitome of Lawful Stupid). The Dragon said right before I had them roll initiative "If you have any last words, I would say them now."
The Monk with the entertainer background and proficiency with bagpipes: "How about a song?"
Me: Why not? Roll performance.
Natural 20 for a total of 24.
Me: ... The Dragon is amused by this. You get the feeling if you leave now and *don't come back* he'll let you live.
They still had an argument about whether or not to go back and try to kill him.
I have learned that if a monster is on the cover of a book, its dedicated adventure is very difficult
Isn’t that every adventure?
@@georgestoebig105 I think they mean like Acererack, who was on the cover of another book besides his own adventure, the DM Guide
While "Death Spiral" is a fitting term, I tend to prefer Yahtzee Croshaw's version he coined for being spotted in stealth games: The Cock-Up Cascade.
I second this motion.
Third
Currently playing Frost Maiden, and our amazing DM, in our last session, dropped the Dungeon of the Mad Mage into Dougan's Hole. 2 in 1 campaign ^^ Hell yeah.
It is totally criminal to have a whole spot on Phandelver and not mention Klarg the Bugbear, who the party is supposed to encounter while they are still level one or two. He is absolutely brutal, when i ran Phandelver he one-shot the party sorcerer and kept dropping the fighter, giving him a permanent hatred/fear of bugbears
Klarg is particularly nasty if he crits... I turned a PC to goo one time because
Our group didnt have a big problem with him, but that's mostly because we went for a "convince him not to kill us" strat instead of trying to kill him head on
Don't forget that damn flood, especially when your low dex Paliden player almost drowns after failing to jump out of the way twice lmfao
My first game I wanted to be cool and told him to fight me 1 on 1 needless to say it turned into the party jumping him once I realized how fucked I was.
We had like 8 players when we fought him I think that’s the only reason we didn’t die but he was basically going around 1-shotting people lol
My first game dm'ing with strangers was Lost Mines. Every single player was more experienced in Tabletop than I was. That goblin ambush wasted them, even with me holding back (not targeting the squishies the first 2 rounds). It was brutal.
The next session they started as captives in the goblin's nearby hideout. A bitter goblin named Bait freed them and they had to clear the dungeon from the inside out. Ended up being an exciting twist and gave them a much beloved npc companion
I had 2 player deaths in a later encounter. The party was investigating a mage at a ruined tower. I substituted the wizard there for Glass Staff, who escaped earlier. A paladin charged into a barn full of zombies and got mobbed. The cleric charged in alone after him and also got slammed.
Say it with me: TEE-YAA-MAAT
me who has never played an official model: funny words magic man
But do you like the funny words of magic man?
Me who has never played: funny words magic man
I wouldn't be surprised if Goblin Slayer was made by some player that got the receiving end of a TPK in the very first Lost Mines of Phandalver encounter
Honestly, yeah. The timeline is there, 5e came out in 2014 while the Goblin Slayer light novel came out around 2016. I dunno if there was ever an official Japanese release for 5e in that time, Google is very obnoxious on that front, but IIRC there was an easter egg that showed the adventurers registering with 5e character sheets. So it's entirely possible!
The goblins were easy, our group did get wiped by ghouls in the final area tho
Turns out that repeated paralysis that doesnt let you get a turn even if you make the recovery save is hard
@@ShadowmancerLord oh look everyone, it's the Tokyo Ghoul author!
level 1 characters have been dying to goblin arrows since the 70's
Okay but hear me out, his friend died to the first encounter ambush and as a barbarian he gave himself to just killing goblins after we beat the Champaign XD His half orc pride was on the line and he wanted to respect his friend.
I've always wanted a Mad Mage campaign where the entire megadungeon functions as a demiplane and the party *can't* retreat to the surface until they've cleared the entire thing. I feel like it would add a level of narrative complication that would keep the dungeon crawl interesting, since the party would have to continuously make and maintain alliances with various NPC factions (... or become their own traveling power bloc?) just to establish base camps where they could rest safely.
I realize that this is essentially asking everyone at the table to commit to becoming the writers' room of a multi-year epic fantasy soap opera with several volumes of continuity notes, but someday, goddammit, someday.
Played a Wizard in Rime, we managed to win that 1st encounter with just 3 players, and only 1 'death.' My character made it to the end, not with the most flashy spellbook, but a lot of spells that ended up pulling multiple asses out of the cold embrace of death's reach.
Including that scroll of Summon Tarasque.
Surprised out of the abyss is not here. The difficulty is really the DM's experience when it comes to leveling the party as using xp usually takes extremely long and most DMs do not use it and there are not any recommended levels for each chapter of the book until the half-way point.
@@joshc6184 Running it rn hopefully I can keep the dread without the annoying aspect of tpking the party by accident lmao. Last party decided to face the Drow at level 5 with no plan and got destroyed lol :/
This was a deadly module. With a group of 6 players, we had a total of 14 PC deaths.
It felt like playing old-school D&D again. We loved every minute of it! 😁
It was the first campaign I ever ran. Took 2 years. Learned a lot
Excellent video! Great topic and well handled! It's the first video I've seen on this channel, and I'll watch some more!
Tyrany of Dragons was the first campaign/series I played. I have fond memories of Rise of Tiamat, specifically that Adult White Dragon you mentioned. At the time, the party was given two missions. We assumed there was a time constraint, believing that if we did one of them, the other would no longer be possible. We decided to split the party in an attempt to complete both missions. Most of them went on the other mission, while I went to the White Dragon area. Since the goal was just to rescue an NPC there, rather than actually fighting the dragon, we reasoned the stealthiest player going alone would have the best odds of success without having to fight the dragon. That didn't end up working out. I successfully got to the NPC, but encountered the dragon on the way out. The NPC and I killed it. I love being a Bard with crowd control.
Odd as it might sound, I want to thank you for mentioning Dungeon of the Mad Mage; I feel like that book is often painfully overlooked, and since Halaster Blackcloak is one of my personal favorite NPCs, in FRCS, I'm partial. It was also a book where I found an encounter I was certain my party could not win. I'd already run CoS with them, and flipped through most of the other campaigns, but shadow assassins, with their increased stats, and strength drain, would have wiped my party. Adding a shadow dragon, plus more shadows, would have just made it worse, but even alone, that was where I knew my party would be destroyed.
Yup, Storm King's Thunder is so far the only official module I've played in, and it ended right at the first encounter with the entire party dead.
There's an Unearthed Arcana module, called Turn Back The Endless Night, that I generally point to as an example of a challenging campaign for High Level Parties( Note how almost all of the deadliest parts listed here are during tier 1-2 play). Basically, it's an adventure designed to challenge, and possibly retire Level 20 characters, with the Final boss being Dendar, the Night Serpent, who's stats are comparable to full power Tiamut. The rough part is theres a time limit mechanic, where if you fail too many missions or take too many rests, you get the bad ending and Dendar escapes and destroys everything before you can get there. And while I think limiting rest stops is a valid way to challenge a level 20 party, you kindof have to break the 4th wall and warn the party about this, or you can end up with an unsatisfactory conclusion like Icewind Dale.
A very nice encounter, although Dendar gets squished pretty easily by an optimized level 20 party out of the gate. But then most level 20 parties aren't running optimized cheese.... xD
If you don't want bards to absolutely cheese him, give him fire immunity. Otherwise he'll be taking around 42d6 fire damage from each bard each round low end, or 1268 d6 fire high end xD
@Archmage MC when you're talking about that level of cheese, the only solo monster stat blocks that are gonna hold up are the "Beyond CR 30" homebrew from the DMsguild...most of those are so OP I'd only use them to end a campaign. Gods with thousands of hit points, and ability scores above 30, with impossibly high save DCs, that can do 2k damage in a round. You look at them and think " that's stupid, there's no point in numbers that big, no party could ever beat that" but then you look at optimized level 20 DPR and realize that's what it takes
@@agentchaos9332 Or bring in statblocks from 3.5e with the stats/saving throws/ACs/abilities converted to 5e. Damage and hp can stay the same. a Genius Loci has average 1800 hp with 20 regen but 10 ac. That bypasses so much cheese xD
@Archmage MC yeah Genius Loci are fun, my personal favorite 3.5 epic monster was the Xixecal. Depending how you interpret the Dire Winter effect for 5e, with the 1000 ft radius heavy blizzard around them, it can seriously hamper a parties ranged attacks. Plus they're too damn big for most crowd control tactics
@@agentchaos9332 Fun stuff, fun stuff. Or an Iron Colossus, but only bring that vs a party with epic boons since its a cr 54 creature that is immune to all spells and has an anti magic zone aura xD.
If I remember right, the slight reworked "Tyranny of Dragons" book that has both "Horde of the Dragon Queen" and "Rise of Tiamat" together reduces the insane challenge level of the adventures and setup
"A horde of goblins is a challenge for level 1 players and could tpk them"
I've nearly TPK'd a party of level 2 players with a single orc because they kept rolling nat 1's and he kept rolling nat 20. He has gone down in eternity as "Thumpus, the greatest of the orcs"
In lost mine of phandelver I added the druid npc as a companion during the dragon fight due to some good negotiating and roleplaying choices made by the players. They ended up killing the dragon without any player casualties
I didn't know you did D&D and not just WoW content. Can't wait to binge what you got!
Ridiculously good video thank you!!
Proud to say my group played through the Tomb of Annihilation and survived with no deaths. We had a lot of close calls, but playing a Chronurgy Wizard is what saved my party and got us to the end.
Thanks I needed this
I played through the Lost Mine Of Phandelver once and my players didn't rest enough at all in the final mine so the fight with Neznar was the most stressful fight I've ever done and had the highest pc body count I've ever ended up with
That was the weirdest fight ever in my 30 years of D&D. Ranger went first hit him. Neznar went, not 20, ranger down. The next 4 players all rolled a nat 20, Neznar dead >.
Very helpful for dms!
the return to before the fall of Netheryl is not necessarily game over. Still, you are now in an epic magic homebrew setting where your main mission should probably be preventing karsuses folly, (assuming the characters know what happened/will happen.)
The party I was in for Lost Mines actually had little trouble with the Young Green Dragon. Our bard cast Phantasmal Force, making something cover its face and hurt it. The dragon fumbled save after save, wasting its action each time, and we had like five rounds to freely wail on it.
Crowd control is brutal when it works
We never even fought the Dragon until more than one year later (three years in-universe) because we basically talked to them and avoided conflict. By the time we fought them, they had fully matured (and the cult had grown). We're playing a homebrew sequel to LMOP.
Sounds like your dm was lenient. He could just ignore the phantasm and fire breath the critters who are stabbing its guts.
So far I've been in a group that has play through 8 of the 5e modules. Hord of the Dragon Queen was the hardest and also the least fun. Three players and several NPCs died in the first session. The Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, and Decent into Avernus were the ones we have had the most fun with.
Thanks to a combination of not looking too closely at the party’s spell loadouts and some truly terrible rolls on my part, my party didn’t even get touched during the first encounter in Rime of the Frostmaiden.
Super cool channel, just subbed. Could you do a similar top 10 for the best 'beginner friendly' modules? My party is having a blast with Icespire Peak but I'm not sure where to progress next when times come. Cheers!
....✍️✍️✍️
I ran Rime of the Frostmaiden over 10 months or so. It was a blast. Yes things are very challenging but there is almost always a way to deal with encounters and not battle them. In a group of 5 PC’s we had 4 deaths. However, a clever DM can find ways to raise dead PC’s with a particular important NPC ;)
Welp my group last year got the time travel ending in Rime. We went through 12 characters in total. I was in my 3rd.
Running Curse of Strahd right now and I've had 3 player deaths in a group of 6. One of them is still dead, he was replaced by the icy doppelganger after wandering off on his own in the castle and meeting an unfortunate end at the hands of the shadow demon in Rahadin's office, and wasn't discovered for half a dozen sessions. The other two were brought to the Abbot and resurrected after accepting the offerings of vestiges Norganis and the Lady of Delights in the afterlife.
A certain temple in ToA, which is supposed to be encountered at level 1 is also incredibly hard. Our DM had us do it at level 2, which was the difference between dying outright and only dropping to 0 HP. Our party did however manage to kill a Zombie T-Rex at level 2 with Path to the Grave followed by Thunderous Smite + Attack + Divine Smite bringing it down to half HP before the other 3 party members even got to act.
I started running ToA a few weeks back. New player joint in right as they got to camp righteous (I’m pretty sure that’s what your talking about). Dude died within 2 hours of introducing his character by falling in a hole. 😅 But on the epic side they managed to effectively kite a Trex last week and push it over with a gust of wind and a well placed tree. They’ve managed to circumvent a lot of the Nature hazards with ranger and druid survival, but it’s still been a fun challenge for them. I almost tpked them with 3 sea hags, they only thing that saved them is the fact they chose Eku for their guide and she healed the druid.
Huh... I know I'll forget the details (purposefully too) but good to know that the second campaign I'll be a part of is the 3rd deadliest of all modules!
Opened this video and had to stop for a second to recognize that voice. Didn't know you covered d&d stuff Hiru
We are currently at the end stages of Descent into Avernus with our party, but it was a bit unconventional, since we didn't start at first level but at 8th level as we had played 2 other adventures with the same party beforehand. That meant, that the Encounters in Baldur's Gate weren't very difficult to us.
But we were a lvl 8 party with 6 people with pretty strong magic items (because our DM loves to give those to his players xD)... We always imagined how it would've turned out playing the same encounters we had played with our lvl 8 party, as 1st or 2nd level characters in Baldur's Gate...
There is one encounter with a band of pirates inside a tavern and a combat is basically inevitable. So you fight a band of like 10 pirates, including their boss who is pretty strong, inside a very narrow tavern with not a lot of free space... And the only way you are actually realistically able to do it as a first level party, is if you try to hire the other people inside the tavern as your allies, which you do not get told by the module, you have to get it by yourself...
We alyways thought that was pretty crazy. But then again, we recently had a fight with some demons at 14th level and the combat that was recommended by the Module were some Barlguras... CR 5 creatures... against a party of level 12 to 14...
This was so ridiculously easy that our DM decided to spice it up a little bit and let us fight a Goristro and Yeenoghu instead... xD
4:23 the dungeon has a mechanic to stop under leveled parties the spirit that controls the stairs
I have a couple stories,
1. I was the dm for a tyranny of dragons game where in the first chapter I introduced a number of NPCs to help my players through saving the town, and even then we still lost a guy to the blue dragon and my dragonborn paladin had to 1v1 the half-dragon because my players refused to.
2. I was a player in icewind Dale game where our party name was the "revolving door" because we had so many player deaths that Characters were just in and out so much. I played a total of 3 characters and that was the low end of characters.
These were both with experienced players and with newer class/subclass/races, I can't imagine playing hord of the dragon queen without those good character options avaliable.
I ran tomb of annihilation as a coalition, with 16 or so 11th level characters. I completely skipped the jungle and yuan Ti and The groups drew straws to see which group of 4 would go in at a time (as I homebrewed a guardian that only allowed 4 to enter) I actually made the dungeon harder and it was a ton of fun. Made the dungeon layout change each venture in, sometimes only slightly, got to use a ton of fun home brew, and even took several of the traps from tales of the yawning portal and dungeon of the mad mate. The party succeeded in battling the dungeon on the 4th attempt. One of my favorite short run campaigns.
the shock of hearing this voice and it not being on hirumaredx, truely eye opening
One thing I'll say in support of Tomb Of Annihilation is that Rangers finally get a chance to truly shine with their travel/exploration and survival skills, especially through the jungle scenarios. Still, it's definitely a hard nut to crack and not a module for a group of novice players, imho. :)
I've done a Rime of the Frost Maiden campaign !
I was the wacky warlock, a pure comic relief who secretly fell in love with Auril (the grace of her immaculate feathering, her irradiating mighty power, her radiant gaze... Who wouldn't ?... Right ? ... Yeah, let's keep it a secret.) but more importantly a zealot of He-who-lurks-in-the-Depths, my dark patron I am too stupid to realize his evilness and constantly trying to convert EVERYONE to His faith.
It was fun, and yes, I somehow survived and even managed to fund my own temple ! (turns out dragon attack refugees are desesperate enough to follow basically anyone who can provide a shelter and who has good enough charisma)
The first time I played Hoard of the dragon queen, our deagonborn fighter(with a bless from me) managed to defeat the half dragon by one hit. It helped that he just happened to pick a dragon ancestor that had resistance to the half-dragon’s breath attack. Flukes like that can be very fun.
This guy. Undeads, T'eye ah mot, ass ear ak... you are killing me.
I played Curse of Strahd this year. I remember our 4 member party (with a sidekick to replace the 5th member who quit early in the game) running into the windmill and the 3 Night Hags at level 3. It was quite dangerous, but we somehow managed to kill all 3 of them. After doing so, almost everything we had left to do became a breeze by comparison lol That was also after we made sure to fight every single encounter in the Death House xD
You can nerf the windmill encounter significantly by making the Hags cast a mix of crowd control/debuff type spells and damage spells while spreading out the targets. It creates a very scary and cinematic fight while not actually being very threatening as half the time the hags aren't actually trying to deal any damage at all.
@@plagueofjoe Indeed that was how things went. Our mage was hit with Sleep turn 1, and we kinda just left him there because he was useless in battle with his weird build, but the crowd control + aoe damage from the druid (me), with the burst of the barbarian and rogue managed to burst them down relatively quickly. But even then we were on our last legs by the end of the fight xD
I killed my Party with a fireball in Descent into Avernus 😂 first time DM and didn't know how powerful fireball is
Currently going through Tyranny of Dragons (still part way through Hoard of the Dragon Queen). I kind of picked up that the first town could have been a lot more deadly than it was. Most of us are somewhat experienced players (only one guy has never played - although the last time I played was in 2e a number of years ago). We're doing OK so far. I think our DM is doing an excellent job adjusting things appropriately.
Ambush Drakes can rip through level 1 PCs real fast if they ever get a surprise round. Cyanwrath is built to be an unwinnable boss fight. There’s an Adult Blue Dragon that acts mostly as a non combative threat circling the town.
3 years later and my players who started that campaign are 2-rounding adult dragons and around level 10 now. So proud of them.
When my table decided to try 5E we ran Hoard of the Dragon Queen. In our first day of adventuring we killed over 50 Kobolds, 12 normal cultists, 4 drakes, and that one big guy that was trying to break down the door. And that was only because our DM was giving us inspiration and health potions out the wazoo...mostly because we were TRYING to avoid fights but failed horribly every time due to bad stealth/thievery checks.
My party is doing Rime of the Frostmaiden, but we didn't really have much trouble.
However, that's because our party pretty much approachs all threats as a party of Batmen. For example, we beat the dragon construct by managing to get ahead of it and launching a huge ambush that blew its wing off, pretty much instantly weakening it by a significant margin.
Speaking of humblewood, some top 10 vidios about homebrew books, or a homebrew book in specific, would be pretty darn intresting
Lost Mines of Phandelver: Screw Venomfang with a rusty steel brush.
Dungeon of the Mad Mage: Screw those intellect devourers with the same rusty steel brush! And then clear'em up with a frickin' sandblaster!
The bugbear has n the first cave in phandelver is brutal. My players made a lot of noise, so he knew they were coming. He hid behind the crates and waited for the players to walk past. They failed to see him and he got his sneak attack off on the cleric and one shot him
I love Humblewood! I actually let my players use the Races and Subclasses from that book in regular DnD play 🤓
.....✍️✍️
If you want a lethal module look up "Death frost doom"
Rime of the Frost Maiden tells you that you can start in any of ten 10 cities and all of them have starting quest for you. Don't believe it and start with something easy like Brin Shander. My players started with Dougan's Hole - they were forced to fight with two winter wolfs and a mammoth! The module told me this quest could be for level 1 party! It's good that we started with level 3 and I heavily changed stats of this enemies or we had TPK at the first game. But it was still a very tough fight!
Tomb of Horrors was the module that made me ban the Ring of X-Ray Vison from all of my games...God dammit dad.
9:13 - Man you forgot about the boss fight in the next room where anyone within 5 foot of the Deaths Head of Bhaal gain Piercing Vulenrability. Casual Double Damage for Level 2s on a 1d4+5 attack
And when the DM rolls a nat 20 to hit my poor sorcerer, so double crit dmg.. instant death >.
We must have had a really nice DM for ToA. We never lost a character, even in the last room of the dungeon. Luckily, we got the item near the end that gave us 9 "lives," or 9 times if my health hit zero, it went to 1 instead.
I DMed ToA and I didn't make it nearly as tough as I should have. We didn't lose a single player, though we had several people get knocked unconscious throughout the campaign, just had people able to bring them back before death.
I am curious on your opinion because I am a DM that has TPKs because I try to stick as close to the original module and I have a friend who is a far more popular DM because they never allow player death but obviously doesn’t tell the players (He fudges a lot of rolls to shorten or extend the life of the monsters) and makes the adventure easier.
Now that you completed ToA but realize you had an easier time than most, do you feel cheated or feel less accomplished? Or are you just happy you got to play and see the ending and would like more modules to be changed to be easier?
@@The-0ni good question. I feel a bit of both I suppose? I've never had a pc death before in any campaign (except my very first one), so I'm not too familiar with the sting. However, my DM was very clear that he stuck to the module and RAW for the final battle, even though he was lenient in the lead up throughout the dungeon. I think it's a two-sided coin here: players want a challenge but also like winning. Much like your friend DM, he fudges in their favor but doesn't tell them, so they have the illusion that the fights might be just as hard as yours, but that they can win those fights just barely in the other campaign. Nobody likes feeling mortal, but at the same time few like feeling absolutely invincible. It's the reason that Superman can do so much, but has a weakness to Kryptonite, or Achilles could win entire wars, save for a hit to his ankle. Players want to feel like there's a possibility of death, but rarely see it. It's the salt of the game, too much and it's inedible, too little and it's bland.
The Atropal inside the Tomb of Annihilation wasn't a death god created by Acererak, it's the offspring of Atropus, an Elder Evil.
10:26 Tie-A-Mott = when you tie a ribbon around a jug of Motts
The only model I've played was acquisition incorporate. Though I have played a modified version of hoard of the dragon queen, rise of tiamat, humble wood, and currently in a modded strixhaven we're calling Everett academy and tales of the old margreve
Lost mine gave me a gift as a DM with a beloved npc was created that still exists today.
Where does those spell cards comes from ? I love that you can see the components in one look !
For DotMM, the biggest problem is find a safe way to long rest and replenish resources. If they have those, the whole thing's fairly easy as is since they can just long rest whenever. While the thought process is to go straight into it from Dragon Heist, if they go into it from any other module, they'll be very strong for the first few floors and there won't be much challenge. I'm currently running a group through DotMM after doing Descent into Avernus and because of their higher levels, they have access to spells and magic items that remove the need for retreat.
I want to sell how deadly Strahd can be to players who don't know
I had him show up to the players, who antagonized him a bit so he opted to put them in their place. Nearly TPK'd them at level 3.
...He never even attacked once.
I nearly ran Tomb of Annihilation as my first time being DM. Lucky I did some research and decided to do Waterdeep instead.
Personally I homebrew all of my campaigns, so I have little experience with modules, but I do PREFER to start my players at level 1 :D
Yeah, they're mechanically easy to kill, but that is kinda what the DM Screen is for... unless the group wants to play a meatgrinder, the DM can "adjust" the monster rolls to not make them deadly and I assume adventures in modules are designed to be adjusted; if the adventure is meant for 4-5 player party, a party of 3 will have significant trouble clearing it if the encounters remain as in the book.
This is probably why I prefer homebrewing: you have control over such things and aren't pushed by the written word to have it in a specific way. Plus it helps with improvisation skills because if about 20 years of DMing taught me anything, is that you can NEVER underestimate your players' ability to do something unexpected :D I love my players for that :)
Basically - what I mean - if that modules assuming level 1 parties are not exactly fair to be put here, I think. It's a different story if the encounter is bogus (like the Hoard entry) or designed to be difficult, but at level 1 luck does play a bigger part in party survival and DMs must adjust for that if they don't wish to murder their players.
wait... is this guy the same guy as duel logs? I just realized as I was absent mindedly listening to this video while making battlemaps, that the voice and cadence was the same as the yugioh one. My mind is blown
Rime of the Frostmaiden was my first real campaign I played in and while I loved the whole time it was quite deadly even though we spent a lot of time faffing about. 2 players ended up dying though only 1 was because of actual combat(the other was scripted since they wanted to swap characters) and my character actually ended up essentially dying due to the encounter where you have to run from the thousands of things that run as fast as you meaning you have to dash, you're running through rough terrain meanimg saving throw after saving throw, and you will take likke 100 opportunity attacks if you try to run so you need to disengage. Also the ground is difficult terrain. If you get caught in the swarm as my character did due to their inability to not put others before themself and if you dont have outs like misty step(my character spent their 2nd level slots in the dungeon right beforehand) you will just die, or at the very least get super knocked unconscious
Out of the abyss: level 1 party has to escape an outpost with 13 drow, 4 elite drow warriors, priest and drow priestess, also about 4 quaggots... yeah. And usually it is accompanied by demons fighting above heads, including the fight with weakened demon on the ground level. Also a psyonic grey ooze in the lake below the outpost. And giant spiders in the webs.
My level 2 party lost their cleric in a process and some NPCs in a brutal massacre caused by demons.
Also you can die from travelling encounters like burst of lava or stone ceiling crushes you. Or even from simple starvation.
But other time this group doing some crazy shit like killing Zuggtmoy on level 6 (cr 26 demon lord with her minions)... and half a year later almost lost 2 people to a beholder on level 8 (which means that Zuggtmoy's statblock sucks a lot compared to a beholder).
Killed adult black dragon as a random encounter in the wilderness, almost died from chasmes (those bastards are the worst).
So to say this module is unbalanced. Main story bosses die from your hands without breaking the sweat, but some random as shit fucker in the darkness annihilates you
Ran decent into Avernus and would up fireballing my level 2 party and only one player failed the save, but they were a tiefling so no one actually died. Scared the crap outta them though
A good topic for another video would be the opposite of this one, finding the most underpowered campaign modules; and what to look out for in them as a DM.
I had two back to back parties which way threw off my sense of scaling. I saw the first party at level 6, 1-2 uncommon items each or less nearly take down a non-lair Demogorgon when I ran OOA. We had run LMoP as an intro and when they encountered the dragon at level 4, they made it clear they wanted to fight and I told them it wouldn’t hold back, and yet they killed it.
The second party were in a homebrew campaign and went level 2-11. I saw them take down combat encounters well above their level with no magic items, with the final fight being a modified Rakshasa and several demons ranging cr 5-8, of whom they wiped the floor with with no character deaths and only one player went down at all.
Wizards had kolbold press make 5e and change things last minute. Like a month or 2. Also, hoard, many bad guys in the first part say they think they they are part of them. Sane with the second part
I DM’d Curse of Strahd as my first 5e module because it was quite popular and I had players begging me to run it.
Death House was the first TPK of the campaign because my players thought it would be great to split up the party and pull multiple encounters at the same time. One of them had played through the campaign partially before hand and swore to everyone they could kill the monster in the basement. After listening to his account of events and looking at the module I realized the DM he previously had changed nearly every fight to be winnable no matter the level of the party.
These modules written as is are indeed deadly to an extent. Unfortunately many DMs will completely rewrite or change the adventures so no matter what happens the party will always succeed and they will never learn the lessons of being cautious and to plan ahead or understand that its okay to run away and not every fight is win or die.
I would say Tomb of Horrors should be at the top of anyone's list. The traps are so deadly a party of 4-5 is more or less compelled to take with them 2 rogues along the way. It's an extremely uncomfortable module to play as a character.
Currently in an Avernus campaign. DM has used the revised version and we are having a blast. Haven't gotten to the Mad Max stuff yet, but we are in hell
The sunless citatal is awesome! Because of the kobalt dragon handler meepo!
So I've read the entire module for Rime of the Frost Maiden about 2 years ago and I fell in love with it at the time, but could never get a group together to run it. I'm about to re-read it and try a second time for a dedicated group for the campaign I think, does anyone have any advice or experience they'd like to share about some things they liked from the module? I'm a big fan of having a party hitting above their weight class, and I think this will be an amazing low to mid level campaign midule to get some players started in a more gritty world.
I've found the opposite thing with DoTMM. We are a group who clear out entire floors and are almost level 17 and we're only on floor 16. The module is super, super easy if you are at level or above it.
Strahd is a weird one. If you know what your doing a party of level 5s can take out Strahd and finish the module. And a party that doesn't know what they're doing well.... DMs can just lead the players to a certain very powerful NPC ally who can solo strahd.
"without spoiling too much, here's a map of the whole place"
As DM I never let the goblins surprise in the lost mines. I have had to complete restart twice which was aggravating so I adjusted it to a highly visible roadblock with a small dialouge
This video is exclusively about WotC modules, so basically D&D versions 3.0 to 5 (from year 2000 to present).
I find it pretty hilarious that the tenth deadliest campaign is essentially the "first tutorial" campaign
How do you have time to run a channel for every card game, Livestream, and do lists for D&D?
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1:21 We decided to fight that dragon One of our party members got instantly wiped and my wild magic barbarian recklessly murdered that thing out of the sky..... Best DM WTF face ever.
Out of the Abyss has a difficult beginning where you start out with pretty much nothing being chased by drow and living in one of the worst places The Underdark
I do not remember where I read this, but rime of the frostmaiden starting quest aren't supposed to be done when you are 1st level. They are meant to get you moving and level up while you try to find your target. I think that is more likely the reason why people die in the starting quest.
I'm a bit disappointed that my favorite Module series wasn't listed. G1,2,3 Against the Giants. I only played and will play Original AD&D or D&D.
I've run Rime of the Frostmaiden from start to finish and I think it deserves the #1 spot because it has essentially no worthwhile treasure, very little reward in terms of coin, nothing to spend your gold on, and no spellcasting services above 3rd level. Not only can you not pay a cleric to cast Raise Dead, there are no diamonds as treasure to let your Cleric cast it themselves - and the campaign may very well end at 8th level before you even get the spell. Furthermore, many of the magic items you DO find in the game are cursed and will drive you insane just being near them.
If you run Frostmaiden as written, your party may end the game with the same gear they started with, and about the same amount of gold. Even if the PCs don't die, it might kill your group's interest in playing with you again.
How many channels do you have?! I discovered the Duel Logs first, then DexLogs, and now this?!
I gotta admit, I'm surprised Dragon of Icespire Peak didn't rate a mention alongside Lost Mine of Phandelver, as the encounter balancing on that one is pretty jank for the module which claims it can be run with just a single player. A CR 2 mimic in the Gnomengarde quest, two CR 2 ochre jellies and a deadly 4d10 damage trap in the Dwarven Excavation quest, and a CR 3 manticore in the Umbrage Hill quest makes for a pretty steep difficulty curve for levels 1-2: my party of four level 1 PCs would've been wiped out if I didn't make the acolyte they were sent to rescue a CR 2 priest to help out against the manticore. There's also the roaming encounter mechanic with Cryovain to consider, meaning they could potentially run afoul of a CR 6 young white dragon at any time throughout the entire adventure, even if they don't need to do much to ward them off.
I'd also add that Klarg the bugbear makes for a pretty dangerous first boss in Lost Mine, being a CR 1 brute with enough raw power to one shot level one characters. That's why I recommend swapping his cavern with the cave used by the rest of the goblins so the party can rescue Sildar early and get his help against Klarg instead of accidentally stumbling into a boss fight when they check out the neat natural chimney that any party would naturally want to investigate. As far as Venomfang goes, I've only ever run him against tier 2 parties (my Lost Mine group skipped him and I wanted to run an epilogue for my Dragon of Icespire Peak group), but the module does at least throw the level 3 party a bone by making him run when reduced to only half his hit points. Toss in Reidoth as a CR 2 druid ally for the party instead of just giving them warnings of impending doom, and it should be a tough fight, but doable at least.
Confession… I sent my players into the caves of hunger at level 3 xD
If lost mines is ran like our DM did it, most parties will TPK with the Bugbear in Tresendar Manor. :D
What saved my players for many of these adventures is the fact that they were 5 or 6 characters, and not 4, and are experienced players, and even then I killed a few of them throughout these adventures...
Princes of the Apocalypse has the usual thing of starting out super deadly, I had a level 1 Druid insta killed by some stirges in a starter cave. Then my group at level 3 went up against a horde of fireballing Fire cultists. It generally got easier later. It feels like when WoTC say level 1-15, treat it as a 5-10.
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