From My Table – Tyranny of Dragons at the Well of Dragons

***WARNING – MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL CHAPTER OF TYRANNY OF DRAGONS***
Okay, now that’s out of the way …

Something that I found disappointing as a player going through this adventure was how the factions got used. Initially PC interaction with them felt forced. When you did sign up with them, you had to question why they approached you as a PC instead of sending other high level fantasy heroes. Finally, after all the work done for the factions, there was only minor impact on the final battle dependant on how many masks you recovered (only one really is vulnerable) and if you won enough support for them to show up to the battle.

When I scoured the internet looking for some insights, I found that I wasn’t alone in that opinion of that final grand melee at the Well of Dragons. I had many grand plans for it but in the end I threw together a quick and dirty wargame informed by the player character choices.

As the party gained approval of a faction, they were gifted a faction appropriate award as well given opportunity to purchase some minor magic if they they had gained enough approval with that faction. It was roughly three points on the Council Scorecard per rank of approval. I added a few extra opportunities to gain and lose points based on character specific differences (i.e. our ranger’s hated enemy was fey, so I massaged the fey to include the Shadovar and the returned Netherese wizards as an enemy faction of more significance than the Red Wizards).

For the final battle, the faction approval gave a base number of troops for the core cities and faction armies, as represented by meeples. A couple of faction troops has special abilities like wizards could take a hit to roll a higher die or Emerald Enclave scouts would attempt to evade damage. Lots of special abilities didn’t make it to the final version as they just added more complexity than I was looking for. Important NPCs got their own meeples and could take more hits than a regular troop meeple. The party was given the opportunity to further support these heroes by giving them magic items. Finally, in a stroke of heavy metagaming, I told the players that as the PCs were the most experienced in fighting the Cult of Tiamat and their foul allies, the War Council was putting the PCs in charge of where all these troops were going to be sent, either defending a city or to the Well of Dragons. The narrative told them that of the eight possible cities to attack, the cult were going to attempt to sacrifice five cities. The stakes – for each city successfully conquered, Tiamat was going to get an additional use of legendary resistance.

Mechanically, troops rolled 1d6, heroes 1d8, and dragons 1d12. Heroes equipped with magic weapons or spells would roll an additional die based on the power of the item (uncommon 1d6, rare 1d8, very rare 1d10) and take the better result of the dice rolled. Heroes also could take a base four hits, more if they were a group or if they had magic armor. Dragons could take 8 hits. Taking a hint from Blades in the Dark, I used a very punishing results table that I will probably tinker with more should I use this again, the higher the roll caused more hits of damage and lower rolls suffered hits. Cities had hit points and a special ability (city walls allowed a city to ignore a single hit in a turn, city wizards could add 1d8 at the cost of a hit to the city, etc.) they could use until they hit 1/2 hit points.

Narratively, I wanted this to feel like Aragorn at the Gates of Mordor. I wanted players to be agonizing over that NPC they befriended taking another hit to defend the small town they started out in. I wanted that sword gifted by the party to help turn the tide as cultists swarmed through a breached city wall and the tactical choice of where to send Ulder Ravengard and the Flaming Fists to have weight. It may not have been well play tested or balanced, but in the end I was satisfied with the overall feel of the mini wargame results, that it only took a few rolls to resolve the city battles and war field results. In practice, some things were modified on the fly but that’s not far from D&D at it’s rawest.

Meanwhile, the PCs made their way into the tunnels to do battle with Tiamat herself …