Monthly Archives: October 2014

Is The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan overrated?

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Adventure C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (1980) ranked 18 on Dungeon magazine’s list of the “30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time.” Compiled “with help from an all-star panel of judges including Ed Greenwood, Christopher Perkins, Bruce Cordell, and Monte Cook,” the list appeared in Dungeon 116, published November 2004. In 2011, Wizards of the Coast sent a promotional copy of the Shrine updated for fourth edition—more evidence that the adventure ranked as a classic.

Hidden Shrine of TamoachanAs you may know from my posts lauding tournament modules, I love modules stemming from competitions, especially those complete with scoring information—not that I ever keep score. The best tournament adventures focus on a series of challenges that demand player ingenuity. Both Escape from Astigar’s Lair and the Fez series feature an array of clever obstacles. Also, I love adventures with keyed illustrations for the players. The Hidden Shrine comes from the D&D tournament run at the Origins Game Fair in 1979, and includes point sheets and wonderfully evocative illustrations. Between the reputation and the scoring sheets, the Shrine seems like a certain classic in my book.

Except soon after the Shrine’s release, I started reading the adventure with an eye to running it, but lost interest, mired in the mud, slime, and rubble of the first level.

In the wake of the accolades, I figured that I my first look at the module must have stopped before I reached the good bits. Then I saw the shrine ranked #3 on Willmark’s list, “The Five Worst AD&D Modules of All Time and discovered that someone seemed to share my impression.

Inside the Hidden Shrine

Opinions of this adventure seem mixed. Players who probed the Shrine as a traditional dungeon crawl tended to brand the adventure as a slog. Folks who played with  red-shirted, pregenerated characters and a brisk pace enforced by the poison gas tended to enjoy the adventure. So for the best game, you play the Shrine as designed, as a race against time to escape a death trap.

I had to read the adventure to the end. Does the The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan stand as a classic or an overrated dud?

Classic Overrated dud
Background. The Hidden Shrine draws from a caricature of Aztec and Mayan culture, just as traditional D&D draws from a caricature of the European middle ages. In a retrospective, James Maliszewski wrote, “The Mesoamerican flavor gives the whole thing an ambiance quite unlike other D&D modules. The whole thing has an ‘alien,’ exotic quality to it, which I think adds greatly to its appeal.” The background leads the adventure to pit the characters against monstrous snails, crayfish, and hermit crabs. While exotic, these creatures seem more suited to meeting Dora the Explorer than to menacing adventurers.
Locations. The Shrine features some unforgettable locations and cunning predicaments. In a ranking of classic modules, Loren Rosson III cites locations such as, “The Chapel of the Feathered Servant (one player fights an imaginary foe while the others are forced by a winged serpent to solve a puzzle), the Hall of the Smoking Mirrors (look into them if you dare), and the Hidden Room of the Alter-Ego (a statue duplicates the looks of one of the players and comes to life while that player turns to stone).” I love the immense room spanned by a miniature city, and featuring a duel with a doppelganger behind a curtain of flame. Dungeon’s 30-greatest list marks this as the Shrine’s defining moment. Particularly on the first level, the good moments seem overwhelmed by locations where PCs clear rubble, slog through silt and slime, and spring hidden traps. Too few of the adventure’s challenges require much ingenuity to surmount, threatening to turn the shrine into a tiresome struggle of attrition.
Illustrations. In “Picturing the dungeon – keyed illustrations,” I wrote, “I first saw keyed illustrations in the Hidden Shrine and I became enchanted. The illustrations transported me into the Shrine more vividly than any text description could. The pictures showed detail that would have required all of those hypothetical 1000 words, and the details tantalized me with potential clues to the mysteries of the Shrine. I think writers sometimes avoid locations that demand long and unwieldy explanations, so we encounter too many conventional 10’x10’ rooms with a pile of debris in the corner. With the Shrine, the designers loosed their imaginations, and it showed in the pictures.” The battle with the fire-breathing bat creature on the cover never takes place in the adventure.
Authors Harold Johnson and Jeff R. Leason reached beyond Aztec and Mayan culture for inspiration. In Jeff Dee’s illustration of the miniature city, the dragon boat in the room’s center looks oddly Chinese. The idea for the room and the boat comes from the article, “China’s Incredible Find,” in the April 1978 issue of National Goegraphic. The article features a fold-out picture of the sepulcher of China’s first emperor. A dragon boat bearing the copper coffin floats in a river of mercury at the center of a miniature recreation of the empire. The description notes that “invaders would have had to pass booby traps of hair-trigger crossbows to reach this prize.”
Sepulcher of China’s first emperor

Sepulcher of China’s first emperor

The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan may just rank as a classic, but like another classic, The Tomb of Horrors, players must tackle the Shrine with a time limit and a party of red shirts. Otherwise, the adventure can serve as inspiration. I have ideas for my own dungeon room featuring a miniature city.

Fifth-edition D&D strategy for fourth-edition players: Kill the wizard

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In fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons, enemy spellcasters brought the same mix of encounter and recharging powers as every other monster of the same level. They posed the same threat, but with spell-flavored powers.

In fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons, spellcasters have spells powerful enough to turn an combat into a quick victory. To balance this offensive power, PCs must make limited spell slots last through an adventuring day. But enemy spellcasters suffer no reason to pace themselves. As long as they remain in the fight, they can blast away.

In fifth edition, I have pitted a lot of evil spellcasters against groups of players, and I often see the PCs fail to give special attention to the casters. Big mistake.

In combat, in any edition, your party should focus attacks on one enemy at a time. By concentrating damage and eliminating enemies, you reduce the number of counterattacks your foes can mount. The fourth-edition Player’s Strategy Guide included a figure that showed the benefits of this tactic.

The advantages of focused fire

All this still holds, but the target with the most offensive power deserves special attention. That’s the guy raising a staff and speaking eldritch oaths. Find a way past the goons and hit the wizard with everything you have. Take him out fast. And stay out Lighting Bolt formation.

Protect the wizard

Smart monsters may use the same tactics against the party, so parties must work to protect their vulnerable wizards from attack. Is I explained in “Revisiting three corners of the new D&D rules,” the new rules for opportunity attacks rules can enable monsters to circle your front line and strike at the wizard in the middle. When possible, your wizard should stand three squares behind your melee characters.

Reaching the wizard without provoking a single attack

Reaching the wizard without provoking a single attack

If you play a wizard, then you must begin your adventuring day by casting Mage Armor on yourself. The spell lasts 8 hours and does not require concentration. Other defensive spells that do not require concentration include Mirror Image and Fire Shield.

Fifth-edition D&D strategy for fourth-edition players: Do not horde your spell slots

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From behind my dungeon masters screen, I keep seeing players hording their spell slots. Even as the wizard’s allies fall dying, even as the monsters bunch in a cluster ripe for a burning hands, he or she opts for another icy blast. Why?

Some of the reluctance comes from unfamiliarity with the spells. Fourth-edition character sheets listed powers and their effects right on the sheet; fifth-edition sheets offer no such descriptions. Many fifth-edition spells trace back to 1974, but to fourth-edition players, they all seem new. So instead of puzzling over Spiritual Weapon, the cleric chooses Sacred Flame again. None of this applies to you, because if you read D&D blog posts, you read your spell descriptions.

Defiance in Phlan at Gen Con 2014

Defiance in Phlan at Gen Con 2014

Even when players know the spells, fifth edition changes Dungeons & Dragons’ resource-management game, and so players struggle to decide when to spend a spell slot.

Fourth-edition characters had 3 types of resources: (1) encounter powers and other resources that renewed after every battle, (2) healing surges that characters virtually never exhausted, and (3) daily powers. In an easy fight, or even in a typical encounter, PCs rarely needed to reach past their renewable or barely-limited resources to tap daily powers. (For more on the changes to the frequency and scale of encounters, see “Converting Scourge of the Sword Coast from D&D Next to fourth edition.”)

In general, long-time 4E players used daily powers when either (1) a string of bad luck turned the odds to the monsters, or (2) the boss appeared for the adventure’s climax. In other words, you only use a daily to swing a fight that turns bad, or because your day ends with the current fight. If you spent daily powers early, you risked trading something you could not recover today for hit points and encounter powers that you would get back in five minutes.

To a player coming to fifth edition from fourth, a spell slot looks a lot like a daily power. These players learned to save their dailies for the boss. Meanwhile, the horde of creatures flooding the battlefield seems no more threatening than a group of minions. But fifth-edition adventures include fewer final bosses and no minions—that horde may kill you.

In a fifth-edition battle, feel free to spend your spell slots early, whenever you see a chance to get maximum effect. Cast them when you spot a way to target a multiple enemies with an area effect or to lock down the most dangerous foe early. Don’t worry about squandering a spell on a fight that you could have won anyway. Unlike in 4E, even easy fights tax your party’s resources. If your spell wins a quick victory, then your party emerges fresher for the next battle.

Obviously, don’t just fire at will, because you may need something for the next fight. Still, fifth-edition battles can go sour much faster than before. In 4E, even low-level parties brought ample hit points and healing. If the rogue got surrounded, the wizard locked in melee, and the cleric dropped, you still had extra time to change strategy, use daily powers, and turn the tide. That margin is gone. Use your spells now to keep your party from ever reaching such a perilous situation.

Fifth-edition D&D strategy for fourth-edition players: Look at things

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Fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons emphasized combat encounters at the expense of role playing and exploration. The Dungeon Master’s Guide encouraged, “Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter and on to the fun!” (p.105) Not-fun aspects of the 4E game included overlooking treasure the PCs needed to keep pace with the game’s math, and failing to spot clues leading to the next encounter. In 4E, no one needed to find the fun because adventures put everything in plain sight, or at least within reach of a group perception check. As I wrote in “Is it noticed? How to run alertness,” if everyone can attempt a perception check, someone invariably succeeds.

magnifying glassThis approach trained players to chase obvious leads without examining anything. Meanwhile, DMs wind up hinting that someone might want to check the bodies because apparently the loot doesn’t just drop from your kills video-game style.

The fifth edition designers recognized that exploration makes as big a part of D&D as combat. Clues and treasure may be hidden. You have to look for them, and you must tell the DM where you look. The basic rules say, “In most cases, you need describe where you are looking in order for the DM to determine your chance of success. For example, a key is hidden beneath a set of folded clothes in the top drawer of a bureau. If you tell the DM that you pace around the room, looking at the walls and furniture for clues, you have no chance of finding the key, regardless of your Wisdom (Perception) check result. You would have to specify that you were opening the drawers or searching the bureau in order to have any chance of success.” Do not step into a room, make a great perception roll, and assume you found everything. Instead, look for interesting features, and tell the DM that you want to examine them.

Hidden traps make a return too.

Back in “Fourth edition gives traps a new design,” I described how 4E attempted to replace old-school traps with battlefield traps that worked like monsters—immobile, indiscriminate monsters. Although a few hidden traps slipped into the 4E game, they dealt inconsequential damage. As you move from fourth to fifth, you may be surprised, and killed, by the deadly snares hidden in fifth-edition adventures. Forget about blundering from room to room until the dungeon master launches a skill challenge or drops a battlemap. Start by checking for traps in obvious places such as doors, chests, and the jewel eyes of demon idols. Hint: In adventures published so far, kobolds and goblins favor trapped passageways and stairs.

Fifth-edition D&D strategy for fourth-edition players: Choose your battles

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Over the last few months, I have introduced fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons to lot of folks who have only ever played fourth edition. In the new game, these players tend to make assumptions likely to get their characters killed. For players whose D&D experience starts with 4E, and those who picked up some dangerous habits, I have some advice that will help your character survive.

Choose your battles

Most public-play adventures open with a scene where a patron asks the characters to undertake some mission. The players may talk money, but whatever the terms, they always take the job. The scene is a formality. The characters took the job as soon as their players sat to play D&D. Sometimes I think fourth edition turned the combat encounters into the same sort of obligation. If an adventure budgets 1½ hours for a combat encounter, you may as well roll initiative, because you already chose to play. Certainly my D&D Encounters players tended to that outlook. More than once, I heard someone say, “Why are we talking to these guys? You know we will just have to fight them.” In public play, combat encounters so dominated game time that adding or skipping one upended a session’s pacing.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen - Dragon HatcheryFourth edition’s published adventures funneled characters from one encounter to the next, each presented with a little map that showed monster starting positions and a start area for the players. Sometimes my players broke this careful staging by sneaking, or talking, or simply walking around a wilderness encounter. In every case, the adventure’s designer completely overlooked the possibility that someone might choose to skip a fight. The game encouraged dungeon masters to craft encounters too precious to skip.

Fifth edition adventures encourage players to avoid some fights.

Fifth edition jettisons all this. A 5E encounter description consists of a monster name in bold. Adding or skipping a 20-minute fight won’t undermine the session.

You’re free. Avoid a fight by sneaking, or talking, or simply walking around it. Avoiding fights qualifies as smart play. Don’t worry about skipping past the adventure; plenty of monsters remain to fight, and your characters will reach them fresher.

As for the PC start areas, fifth edition drops those too. If you choose to enter a fight, try to start at an advantage. Set fire to the tents. Turn the tables. Hit and run. Surprise the DM. (I know you could do all that in 4E, but most of us just took a place in the start area.)

Despite this freedom, the new game offers new challenges.

Fourth edition proscribed strict recipes for building an encounter. Every combat encounter delivered just enough enemies for an lively fight, but never so many that a character might die. The next room never housed more monsters ready to storm in and tip the odds in favor of a total party kill where everyone dies. (Those of us who started playing before 4E, when such a thing could happen, sometimes abbreviate to TPK.)

Fifth edition encourages you to be wary.

None of this remains true in fifth edition. My Encounters group has started Horde of the Dragon Queen, I find myself starting every session with a warning that the adventure offers fights that the characters cannot win. I do this to discourage the players from, say, making a frontal assault on the raider camp based on faulty assumptions learned in 4E. All the 5E adventures I’ve seen include situations that invite reckless players to a TPK. Do not storm the feast hall of a hill giant steading.

Fifth edition monsters no longer have starting positions keyed on a map. The adventures return to presenting dungeons as dynamic places with creatures that move about. When monsters hear a clash of swords, they can join a battle. You may face enemies prepared to raise an alarm, or to retreat to join allies. Do not let the orcs sound their warhorn. Do not tease the drakes until their enraged roars summon a swarm of kobolds, then retreat into a cavern full of stirges. I do not want a repeat of last Wednesday night.

If you find yourself over your head, you can run away. The withdraw action and the limit on opportunity attacks makes fleeing much less risky than in fourth edition.

Next: More fifth-edition D&D strategy for fourth-edition players