Davvy's favorite Race has Fey Ancestry and his favorite Subclass explicitly gets its power from the Fey. Davvy doesn't hate the Fey. He hates that they're competition.
I recently started. It's incredibly rich, but does require both experienced players and a seasoned DM to run well. It's a faction intrigue, hex crawl, highly lethal, hub adventure, ticking clock mystery, megadungeon. If you took a list of campaign traits and just checked every single box, you'd get ToA. But even at that, everything it does it actually does very well. You could conceivably drop pieces off of it and still end up with a good module. If you don't want to run faction intrigue, or you hate hex crawls... It's basically "endgame content" for 5e.
@@rpgchronicler I was about to say, what about Icespire Peak? To me as a player and dm it's like Lost Mines 2.0! Pretty noob friendly but still a lot of fun for a veteran party
I do think this review deserves a 4/10, but because of some bonus points, I'll give it a 4/10. Sadly, I do have to take away a few points, so it'll be a 4/10. Final answer.
The biggest problem of Stirxhaven was the drop of the class system. It was flawed but interesting. I wish they would've stayed in. Also, when will I get to play my jelly boy in dnd? When I saw the slime playable race in UA I was so excited I built a character Taylor made for that race. I cannot wait to be jellying around dungeons and dragons.
@@MiniCerberus991 Monster of the Multiverse is literally just all reprints and revamps of already existing races and, honestly, really not worth the purchase. Which means that the Giff, Plasmoid and Autognome will be in a Spelljammer book because they've mentioned one of the books this year would be for a 'classic' setting.
I wish I had a group that actually liked rp and puzzles so I could run wild beyond the witchlight. With my group I know they’d end up just murderhobo-ing their way through it, in which case there are better adventures for me to run for them.
Spice it up a bit perhaps add the other carnival from Ravenloft. Make it a fey horror game if your players are into that genre. Van Richten Guide has another carnival you could try to connect it to. Just my five silver pieces
The best part about Strixhaven is playing a completely non magical class. "We're going to magic school" "Lizardfolk fighter, I roll to eat my alchemy textbook"
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 see, when I run my Strixhaven game (which will be set at Hedgemoor Magical Community College), I'm getting around this by requiring everyone to have some kind of spellcasting at level 1. It can be from your race, your class, or a starting feat; I don't care, but you have to have some facility with magic to attend (although not from a background; nobody's starting with one in that game).
@@DavvyChappy Oh god that doesn't sound fun, I personally didn't have a problem dodging his shit, instead, it took me like 20 minutes of running around bashing his skeleton dudes cause I couldn't figure out the mirror puzzle. So that voiceline is just seared into my brain from hearing it continously
Fun fact: Ghosts of Saltmarsh contains the one monster that is vulnerable to acid damage. That would be useful to know if there were more than 6 spells that reliably deal acid damage.
I'm 100% with you on Dragon Heist. Its a lot of fun to run when you start putting your own spin on the flexible world. As written, ehn. But it's such a cool playground I can't help but bring my own toys to join.
"Derendil, Ront, and Jimjar can be killed off without consequences." One of our players became Jimjar after his bard died, and our only surviving NPCs were Eldeth and Stool. Everyone else died or fucked off.
Cool video, I really like that you refuse to give rankings and scores so people actually listen to what you say about the module rather than get mad you gave 1 a higher / lower score than another. Full length module reviews are still my favorite content you make, and I'd love to see you talk about modules more, especially if they're from systems like CoC or City of Mist
Me, a massive Paizo-stan with Pathfinder 1E, 2E, AND Starfinder campaigns going on: YES, Chappy. Please take a look at Paizo’s Adventures, they are legit some of, if not the best pre-written adventures out there.
I actually just finished a campaign with my friends doing the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign. It was pretty fun, though that might be because we didn't go through all the cult storylines at once.
i cant wait to see your pathfinder videos. i have the intention of playing PF2 and i would love to watch videos about PF1. If nothing else, just to see you take and opinions about those two systems
I can see how strixhaven would suck for someone running so many games a week. But as a dm who loves to put his own spin on things and sink too much time into prep, I love running strixhaven because it gives a good foundation that I can build off. So yeah, I like strixhaven, and I will kiss myself (with tongue).
For me Strixhaven isnt an adventure, but rather a bunch of suggestions that I can build into an adventure. The book may be bad, but its what I needed. (Except for more lore, dammit!)
I hope you give the pf /pf2e adventures a read and review since I've come to realize we have similar tastes and it'd be nice to have a trustworthy source of opinions on those modules.
I hate descent into Avernus with a passion. The first half has nothing to do with the second half. The plot is way too linear and feels like it leaves no room for improvisation. Your decisions barely even matter, you may as well just have the DM put your characters on autopilot and just tell you to roll initiative whenever an inevitable fight comes up. 4/10 because I feel generous today
Cut off Baldur's Gate, and repurpose the fetch quests so that they all give you pieces of a map that leads to the scab, and you can do them in any order. Automatically a better game.
I don’t understand people who get mad at 5e for being too inclusive. Being inclusive is how the system attracts players. You know how you never need to look too long to find a 5e group? That’s what inclusion does to a game.
I consider it to be right up there with LMoP. Has a Dragon that's always around the corner, Orcs taking over territory, undead popping up everywhere. Just all the classics that wasn't in LMoP.
i like that they're trying new things but i honestly DO want some more basic travel the land and right some wrongs games. this is why lately i've been rolling my own. Publish in a year!
Good to heat with The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. I like when my players don't just fight stuff and actually interact with the world, finally being a player again I talked to the ruler of a town about something we needed and a player asked why I would do that out of character and suggested "Just search the woods" as a solution, what we needed was in the town. This player got another turned into a lycanthrope after getting two people eaten by spiders, he then tried to kill the lycanthrope while still unchanged because "We need combat now!" and was promptly brought to 0 HP by punching the lycan in the face even though it was friendly to us and aiding us in killing one of the most interesting monsters I have seen and ignored by the entire party who could have easily saved him. The monster while basic was interesting AF, it was called an arcane-nubis (I can not spell it but combine arcane and Anubis) and was a three-headed hellhound with purple flames that caused you to teleport 10 feet in the direction you are facing at random if you caught on fire. His corpse laid there teleporting ten feet into the air over and over as it smolderd to ash. It was really funny.
For SKT about how to justify the cloud giant taking them without them being chosen ones, he could have gone to golden fields to find chosen ones but gets the party instead XD Like, he's told he can only go there *once* or else everything will go wrong, so when the party turn up and get to him he's already left and started flying. They walk in and he starts to welcome them, he blinks and goes "Oh no, no no no."
BG:DiA is my pick for the "best module to use but never run" award. So many wonderful setpieces and mechanics to steal, I've used the mad max machines as everything from kobold war machines to ships and aircraft....but I'm never going to actually run the thing.
Late comment i know... Kobold War Machines? Sounds like something someone would expand from Kanekuo's ideas. Idk about aircraft tho, in regards to fitting it in a medival setting.
Hey Davvy, Ik you don’t talk about 3rd party stuff as much, but I think Kobold Press’s stuff is really solid. Courts of the shadow fey is a cool ass political adventure.
I love what you do with the titles of the books, sound like something the characters of the Sims games would say or the names of some music bands like TLC or ELO.
I just joined an ongoing Icewind Dale campaign last week (we just fixed the Summer Star and are now being chased by ghosts), and I have no idea whether to be excited or scared based on Davvy's description. Eep.
The image you used at the end there reminds me that the best campaign I've ever been a player in was a homebrew conversion a friend did for Curse of the Crimson Throne into 5e. Paizo make adventures that are infinitely more compelling in their complexity and characters than basically anything WotC write. But what's my opinion worth? 4/10
Playing with a 1st time DM who's doing a good job but jesus, when they started layering these mmorpg style fetch quests on top of eachother it was hard to stay invested. Fortunately seems we have skipped something ahead as we went from lvl8 to lvl10.
I'm going to be part of a group running Princes of the Apocalypse DM'd by a player I've done a Ravenloft campaign with and my character is a Water Gensai Horizon Walker Ranger, and the DM mentioned that not only is it cool that I'm playing as a Gensai but it's going to lead to interesting interactions between her and some of the civilian NPCs due to the fact the 4 main antagonist groups are the 4 Elemental Cults combined with the fact my character is literally a human/water elemental/djinn hybrid.
WotC: "Combat is optional in WBTW. You can use your wits to come up with alternative solutions." My Fairy Barbarian: "I see." *becomes enlarged, spikes a Tiny hag into the ground from 100 feet in the air, and then lets the dollhouse it was sleeping in fall on it*
Daavy, do you have any advice for the DM running Dragon Heist? I’m a newer DM and chapter 2 is so difficult to run. My characters don’t care about the obvious plot stuff and I can’t make up anything. My only plan now is to make Trollskull really haunted and previously owned by a hag…something something…Witchlight? I don’t wanna bail on my players but this is MISERABME
I've been enjoying the Strixhaven game I've been running for about a month now, and we just got through the first portion, but I will point out one major criticism I have: similarly to what you said about the Tyranny of Dragons duology, it is *not* built to go off the rails *at all*. Exhibit A: my players deciding not to be rule-breaking vagrants like a certain scarred boy who will not be named and bust into that mansion to retrieve a cursing doll just because somebody dared them to, thereby skipping like a fourth of the first adventure. Exhibit B: My players investigating the eldritch balm thing and going to the Sedgemoor early to investigate further (in fairness, I probably could've sent them to a corner of the place that *wasn't* the final area of the first adventure, so them finding the BBEG's journal by session 2 was on me). Exhibit C: My players, armed with this journal and having been jumped by numerous magic things, making the reasonable assumption that hey, maybe we shouldn't have this festival that is *going to be attacked*, and convincing the deans of the danger, thereby skipping over another fourth of the adventure. In the end, I was able to work around it, and most of these wouldn't have happened if I hadn't goofed, but still, they have literally no option for what to do if your players decide not to risk expulsion over a doll, and while I haven't found any similarly avoidable sections of the other adventures so far, it wouldn't surprise me.
"Most of these wouldn't have happened if I hadn't goofed"? From what I've read you adapted the adventure according to your players' decisions instead of negating those decisions to get the adventure back on train tracks.
Tyranny of Dragons is actually my favorite campaign so far; and I've played through Curse of Strahd, Lost Mines of Phandelver and Rime of the Frostmaiden, all of which I loved playing in. It has glaring flaws, undoubtedly, but when your DM puts in some extra elbow grease when it comes to player choices, man, does it get awesome.
That's also the case for every other adventure though. I think the intent of the review here is: if you run the game right out of the book, what kind of experience will you have? Example: I'm currently playing in a Princes of the Apocalypse game. We love the game we're playing, and that's not the game that was presented in the book. Everyone, from the DM to the players, has had to put in an unnecessary amount of work to get the setting and plot to a fun place. Are the ideas serviceable? Yes. Does the module give you all the tools you need to succeed? No. And that's the point Davvy keeps trying to make. These books are marketed as "we did the hard work for you!" when they very frequently haven't. PotA sure as hell didn't and, conversely, WBtW totally did. It shouldn't be a total crapshoot. And throwing DMs under the bus for the game not working as advertised also doesn't feel great.
Did I black out for a second or did Davvy just not review the 4 adventures that come with the Essentials Kit? I’m talking about Storm Lord’s Wrath, Sleeping Dragon’s Wake, Divine Contention and Dragon of Icespire Keep.
Ok why does no one like princes of the apocalypse? I have read it rereead it like 4 times and not sure where people get lost, although the one time we tried, it went badly. Anyone got any tips on why it sucks?
My players love ambassador Brawnanvil now because they made the dwarven pride compromise with the dragon council and to soften that blow they decided to throw a whole dwarven style banquet for him and his entourage to try and curry some favor with him. There was an extensive drinking game with the whole entourage and Brawnavil and the party's dragon sorcerer were the last standing. It was good times. I think that tyranny of dragons and all of its political intrigue could have been actually intriguing if the game had any support for that political intrigue outside of just the insular meetings that occur. Myself and my players have kind of had to make it up as we go in that regard. Also, it can't be overestimated how difficult it is, as a DM, to play 15 or so unique characters with competing interests in the same room where they are all supposed to make their opinions known. The adventure really should have given them each at least one thing to say at each council meeting to ensure that they had clear characterization and their interests were obvious.
I'm trying to learn how to run Call of Cthulhu (mostly because I like systems that you can't just win by combat, and I REALLY like some of the horror settings that have come out that have to be adapted into hombrews AKA Mystery Flesh Pit National Park and Monumentality.) Is there a guide where I can learn enemy Stat blocks? I've had to wing a couple of enemies in one shots just because I didn't know how to make proper Stats for them.
I believe (and take it with a pinch of salt because it's been a while since I ran it) that monster stat blocks are in the core rule book for COC, so you should be able to find what you're looking for there or at least see how they're made so you can aim in that general vicinity.
For Out of the Abyss, if I ever run it, I plan to handle the NPCs the same way I handle a player who couldn't make it that week: they'll be present only if the story demands they are present. Otherwise, they'll be in the background presumably doing stuff, but we won't acknowledge their existence. Don't get me wrong, at any given moment I plan to have one or two or maybe three of them on initiative and have figures on the table, but the rest will be out of sight, out of mind unless they need to be. Also, I disagree about Jimjar, he's one of my favorites. I agree with killing Ront, Derendil I might try to flesh out his backstory if I can, otherwise I'll kill him, Sarith will frequently be active and he'll be VERY helpful to the party, with me even fudging rolls so he rolls lots of 20s and they come to love him. Uh, for no reason. Eldeth towards the end will probably be a toss up, with her life in the party's hands. Storm King's Thunder is fine if you appreciate it for what it is. If you want a campaign that has an overarching story but that story isn't constantly breathing down your neck (a la Strahd), SKT is right for you. Unlike the other published modules, this one actually allows you to use your players' backstories rather than occasionally acknowledge them or make your players write their backstory around the campaign. The biggest weaknesses are the sidequests being thrown together and constantly referring you to other products. If you like writing small sidequests, though, I'd say that's fine.
Can you slow down a bit? And say the actual module name clear? Not trying to be rude. Did you you tomb? I've watched 3 times and can't tell if you did tomb because of the aforementioned issue
I had the hardest time with Odyssey. The early encounters are not well balanced, and the players feltnkike they needed to rush to the end because of the timer and didn't interact with most of the optional material
I just realised, if you were to run most of the modules as written... most of them would suck. There really aren't a lot of good modules for 5e, aren't there?
I don’t think that’s physically possible, I really enjoyed Critical Role, but each season is over a hundred episodes and the episodes are three hours long on the short end and five or six on the long end, I can’t imagine keeping up with that amount of Content while going out of his way to watch all the other popular D&D live shows who also have hour long episodes, it seems maddening.
I'll say. I love most of these reviews, and ranking them all the same, thus letting your words speak for themselves is great. The ID:RotFM review though was more meme than helpful though.
My fav 5e adventure is one not by WoTC, but by Modiphius Entertainment called Odyssey of The Dragonlords. I woudl be interested what Rating this book would get here
Does that mean that books have become worse over time? No, ToD is easily the worst Does that mean that the books have become good and usable? No, you still have to put in copious amounts of work and time into making them work
I'm not really interested in TWBTW because I'm not really interested in the Feywild, but the combat optional thing gives me hope for any potential Planescape content they might make someday.
I was hoping you would give Strixhaven a 4/10 for the half of a book that is there, resulting in a 2/10. What's so annoying is the subject matter is very unappealing to a significant portion of players, but for the people that actually wanted it, they have to defend the idea of the book while saying, "but yeah, it's bad".
a LOT of people were also disappointed they picked Strixhaven as the MTG book for that year when other, more popular settings, would have been vastly more interesting than 'harry potter knockoff'. Ikoria, Amonkhet and Zendikar would have been way more interesting than that IMO. It feels like such a waste of a book slot.
Literally every single "review" of PotA is "I never played it, but I heard it's bad" Maybe it's seen as "bad" because no one has actually RAN THE DAMN ADVENTURE
Tomb of Annihilation: A lost world setting is a refreshing break from traditional medieval fantasy. If your DM is nice, get ready for Indiana Jones meets Jurassic Park where the party can thwart the bad guys, recover the McMuffin, and get in a “clever girl” reference before being mauled to death by velociraptors. If your DM is a dick, get ready for the lamest Discovery channel survival show to ever exist as you die slowly over the course of several long rests because you forgot to boil your water that one time. Overall, my favorite published 5e adventure. 4/10
Considering your fanbase, I'd think about reviewing 3rd party D&D books before other games. But that's just my opinion and I wont hate anyone for disagreeing.
I want to play Princes of the Apocalypse. If you want to play a game with a little halfling artificer seeking a power source for her mechanized crab armor, hit me up.
@@trip9845 It was the part where he clarified that he doesn't share his opinion on Strixhaven with bigots who just hate the book because it depicts a setting of utopian diversity and human rights. There's a lot of people who will decry something as evil if they think "SJW's" made it, regardless of its actual merits. Davvy has issues with the book, but not its moral content. Same thing happened with the new Star Wars movies. A lot of people didn't like them for various reasons, but a shocking number of folks who just hated that Disney casted women or people of color for major roles tried t push their ideology by saying: "See? We both don't like it, so we have the same opinion!" ignoring the basis for that opinion completely in order to gain a modicum of social validation for awful ideas.
@@trip9845 Buy what bullshit? That bigots exist and sometimes coincidentally hate things that other people also don't like for different reasons? Or are you saying that Davvy didn't mean what he said?
