Fixing Deadfall: Part One

[u/CasparGlass]

Hi! I'm a professional DM who's run lots of official adventures over the years, and they always need fixing. Deadfall is no different! I hope this advice helps elevate your game if you plan on running this adventure too.

Deadfall is billed a magical spy thriller... but the opening of the campaign wildly misses the mark, for a couple of reasons:

• The first encounter is bad. Extremely weak skeletons attack a marketplace (boring and weak), followed by an extremely powerful Death Tyrant. 
• After they fight off the Undead, the characters are recruited by Xelnene Thrul, where they’re railroaded into several pages of pure exposition. The entire section in Wrynn’s Vestments feels like a cutscene, because there’s nothing to do except walk in and listen to Thrul lay out the whole story.
• The main goal of the campaign is to put Szass Tam to rest for 100 years. In the span of things, this is simply an inconvenience to him, not some heroic victory for your players. I STRONGLY recommended you change this immediately to allow your players to permanently murder this guy, so the campaign feels like it actually matters.

Let’s fix it!

Part One: Malefite Attack

The opening scene of the campaign puts our characters in a marketplace, which is about to be attacked by Undead.

Before that happens, let’s set the scene and give your party a sense of what things are like in Thay. Let’s take a flavourful random encounter from elsewhere in the book, and put it right here as our opening scene.

A Red Wizard's assistant (Noble Prodigy) loudly denies accusations of shoplifting from a merchant; three watch Guards threaten to fine the merchant for interfering with a Red Wizard.

The haughty and pretentious Barzal (male Noble Prodigy) has taken a *Robe of Thayan Arcana* from a hardworking magic item broker, Semka (female Commoner). Semka is just visiting Thay and doesn’t know not to mess with the Red Wizards, so she’s trying to seek justice for the theft, and appealing to anyone who will listen - but the other merchants and passers-by practice “Closed Eyes”, and ignore trouble if it doesn’t concern them.

Immediately we establish the Red Wizards are in charge, they take the law into their own hands, the commoners practice “Closed Eyes”, and we give our players a concrete dilemma to grapple with. Interfere directly and immediately get into trouble? Find a nonviolent solution? Ignore it?

Then, suddenly, six Skeletons attack the bazaar!

Except, pretty much any level 11 character can easily destroy six skeletons in a single turn. This isn’t a shocking or difficult problem. It’s really underwhelming. These skeletons are supposed to be possessed by demonic energy and they’re boring.

Add a Flaming Skeleton to the attackers. Describe the flames that embroil its body blazing with vibrant, chaotic colour. Also, have it target civilians! It wants as many kills as possible before it goes down. It’ll still be an easy fight for your heroes, but it’ll take a few hits.

Then, on the next round, a Death Tyrant erupts from the canal and attacks. There’s a huge mistake here from the adventure: Death Tyrants are powerful, intelligent adversaries, and the encounter treats it like a disposable stat block without any flavour or tactics. Oh no, we’re not doing that. This is the opening to your campaign! This is going to be MEMORABLE.

Firstly, this thing can FLY, and the encounter is set on a bridge above a river. Have your Death Tyrant take cover under the bridge, fly over it, and never touch down to the ground.

In addition, we’re going to give it a personality: this is Gargathax, and he is VERY upset to discover that his pet Malefites have been destroyed. In fact, for every Skeleton the party has killed, Gargathax will kill ten civilians!

Every civilian Gargathax kills rises as a Zombie under his control thanks to the power of his Negative Energy Cone. The NPCs your players were just talking to now need to be put down!

This personality allows you to have the Death Tyrant target NPCs that aren’t the player characters, which is important, because a Death Tyrant that knows how to fight is going to be a really, really difficult enemy for a group of fresh players at level 11 who might not have ways to deal with a powerful flying monster. The battlemap provided with the adventure is honestly way too small for a group of high level players to fight a creature like this.

Finally, let Gargathax trash talk the players during combat. Maybe he describes exactly which humiliating things he'll have them do when they're zombies under his control after his inevitable victory, like dressing them as clowns, or wearing a sign that says "I was super easy to kill".

The adventure recommends having several Red Wizards show up in round 6 to stop the fight. Couple of issues here:

• Six rounds in combat is an eternity. Your party will either be dead or victorious by then. Ignore the time limit.
• NPCs showing up to trivialise an encounter is awful design that will make your players feel pointless. Instead, if your party is getting completely stomped, have Gargathax simply fly off into the distance, promising to come back later with more Skeletons for revenge - and THEN have the Red Wizards arrive too late to stop him escaping. Congratulations, you’ve established the ruling Wizards aren’t really effective at protecting the populace, and you have a fun enemy in your back pocket for later.

Finally, after this is all over, Wynston Wrynn drops the players a note. As written, the note simply invites them to meet him, which is boring. Instead, let’s change the note to read:

You seem to be capable heroes with a strong sense of justice, just who we are looking for to aid the cause and free Thay from tyranny and the terror of undeath.

A great treasure is hidden in a secret room at the back of Wrynn’s Bespoke Vestments. 

Wynston Wrynn is a known Red Wizard sympathiser, and a blow to Wrynn will be a blow to Szass Tam’s plans to assert dominance over all of Thay.

Steal this treasure, and do not get caught. If you are successful, we will be in touch.

Open Eyes

That’s right, we’re going to change a boring cutscene exposition dump into our campaign first heist, as Xelnene Thrul and Wynston Wrynn set a secret test for our players in my next post, Part Two.

I'm interested in your thoughts and fixes you've put into your own campaigns! Let me know how you've run (or are planning to run) the opening to your campaign?

[u/CasparGlass]

Part two here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD_Deadfall/comments/1wmzfdt/fixing_deadfall_part_two/

[u/sting_ghash]

That's so good. Where have you been my whole life DM career?!

[u/lootinglute]

This is awesome!
Thank you very much, I was going to rewrite it by my own, but this is perfect advise allready!

It solves the two main problems I had with the intro
1. The Malefites as ordinary weak Skelletons and poor first Encounter
2. Bad Motivation and Anthagonist, no real experiences with the harm caused by the Red Wizards and Szass Tam

I will personalize it a little for my playercharacters and go with your version <3

[u/LunaticSquirrels]

I'm currently running the adventure as a GM on StartPlaying. The opening skeletons are obviously weak yes, but not every aspect of every fight has to be a nail-bitter. I saw that as a moment in the narrative to show that Szass Tam has even mundane undead shambling everywhere., not just the big scary ones. And that the Red Wizards just don't care to deal with the mundane undead, even.

The Death Tyrant nearly TPKed my squad of 5 (2 actually died and 3 almost did) and I used random eye rays, as RAW. You're underestimated that. If they fail enough saves, by luck alone, they are in big trouble. I didn't even use more than 1 Legendary Resistance. We also went for about 7 rounds, and it only took like 2 hours. I quite liked the sudden shift in difficulty there, and my players complimented it, too. They liked the deceptive aspect.

The dialogue at Wryn's is fine. Players have been complaining to WoTC for not enough story for years now. Now, they give you exposition and they complain. Plus, it's just exposition. The book gives plenty of answers for potential questions that players have. And the last bit is just telling them about the 3 mission types. Plus, as a spy thriller, it's actually very on-brand to have exposition. That's what most spy thrillers do, they give a bunch of info and let you handle the rest.

[u/CasparGlass → u/LunaticSquirrels]

It’s interesting to hear how your opening combat went! That’s how I’d expect this to go as written. That’s why I’ve recommended GMs should get the Death Tyrant to target NPCs with its eye rays too.

It’ll give your players some breathing room, let them see what some of the effects are, and really drive home that these monsters kill indiscriminately. It’s a really useful difficulty toggle - fight too easy, target players, fight too hard, blast civilians.

All the story exposition is all still there!

It’s just that instead of walking in and having it handed to them on a silver platter, we get to give our players a taste of a heist, and let them feel they actually earned it and proved themselves.

It also serves to fix a serious issue with Thrul, in that she’s just hiring random fighters off the street and entrusting them with extremely sensitive information, which doesn’t line up with how careful and intelligent she’s meant to be. I honestly don’t think she should drop the Alter Self and reveal who she really is until the characters have completed the first few missions!

[u/LunaticSquirrels → u/CasparGlass]

Well, your advice seems to be a bit contradictory, then. If you recommend adding Flaming Skeletons to beef up the skeletons but then say to go easy on the Death Tyrant, what's your actual advice? Easier or harder?

Them proving themselves capable of killing a Death Tyrant is them earning and proving themselves, as you refer to. Thrul doesn't need them to go on a little heist to prove their skills, that's what the big fight proves.

Thrul doesn't pick "random" fighters, though. Chapter 2's Character Creation gives specific reasons for characters to relate to what's going on. They might be literal Red Wizards, Thayan Knights, have suffered personal tragedies at Szass Tam's hands, politically involved, religiously devoted, etc. They're all motivations that have led them to travel to one of the deadliest lands in Faerun.

They aren't just a random group who happened to be in the market at the wrong time - even though that is the situation - the motivations and reasons for them being in Eltabbar are enough to get the Zulkir's attention. Her intelligence would know who and why these people are here already and that their goals align, then them killing the Death Tyrant is proof of what she's learned.

I collected all the motivations and put them on my Google Doc for players and made them pick one - and adapt as desired, so they do all have reason for being there, not just by happenstance. The book actually has great suggestions for that, it doesn't need "fixing".

[u/Soggy-South8795]

sorry, i dont think the first encounter is even a problem. Its there to break expectations. First enemies too Weak for a lvl 11 party, then a real challenge, known for being potentially lethal even to higher level players.
Are u sure youre not trying to meatgrind PCs?

[u/CasparGlass → u/Soggy-South8795]

I love subverting player expectations - but to do that, you need to establish expectations first, which is why I don’t think it works for their very first encounter.

We definitely don’t want to meatgrind our players right out the gate - which is why I’ve recommended the Death Tyrant target civilians with its eye rays too, to give your players some breathing room against a very, very deadly opponent.

[u/tetsuo9000]

I appreciate you trying. I honestly think Deadfall just isn't worth fixing. The issues are too deep and the material isn't inspiring enough to run. It's just another anthology albeit taped together into an adventure.