I just finished running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and wanted to fire off a few quick thoughts about the final part of the adventure, the Vault of Dragons.
A few things up front about how I ran the campaign:
- Winter was the season, and I used Manshoon as the main villain,
- I used all the factions in Waterdeep - each character chose a different faction they wanted to join. I tracked each character's reputation with their faction.
- The rogue in the party joined the Zhentarim, but I made it clear the Zhents causing all the trouble and led by Manshoon were a separate faction from Davil's Zhents. Davil and those Zhentarum aligned with him want to get the city back to normal so they can engage in trade (illicit and not).
- The characters had already (barely) defeated Manshoon's simulacrum at Yellowspire, but they never found the teleportation circle or tried to explore Manshoon's base.
On to notes about actually running the Vault of Dragons:
- I ran the Vault of Dragons in two sessions of about two hours each.
- In the first session, I only had three players, so the martial arts adepts who attacked as the characters went to the vault entrance took a lot of resources from the party.
- The enthralling fresco could be a major problem for the players - I allowed the one person who was enthralled to have the effect countered by a charm person. Be flexible here, because 4th level characters may not have a lot of options to counter the effect.
- The characters went straight to the entrance of the Vault and had no trouble with the riddle.
- Similarly, the negotiation with Aurinax went well for the characters. They brought Ranear with them, and one player quickly guessed he was actually dealing with a dragon. Eventually, this comes down to a Charisma (Persuasion) check, but since the characters roleplayed well, I gave them advantage and made it clear everything came down to this one check, so they pulled out all their tricks and passed easily. I really didn't have a plan for a fail-forward option for that check - I'd recommend other DMs prepare for that.
- I should have encouraged the characters to take a short rest before they left the vault. The fight with Manshoon is a tough one, and the party was somewhat depleted - it happened in the second session, so there were two players who missed the first who had all their resources, but the other three were pretty tapped out.
- The battle happened on the bridges, with the characters exiting the vault and Manshoon and his lackeys on the other side. This worked out really well! People got pushed off the bridges, but the damage wasn't fatal, and characters were not really taken out of the fight when it happened. There was a lot of movement, jumping, and misty stepping around the battlefield.
- Vevette and Agorn were with Manshoon, and that worked out well as both were memorable NPCs. I was happy they both managed to elude the characters earlier in the adventure - it made them memorable villains that the characters were motivated to defeat.
- Without help, Manshoon and company would have wiped the floor with the characters. In retrospect, I might have let the characters level up to 5th level once they secured the hoard. But then do you give them a long rest too? If not does the level help them that much? The best option isn't clear to me.
- So, the Doom Raiders showed up to help. I did say Davil was able to get out of jail to lead the Doom Raiders in helping the characters, and Istrid was already staying in the Trollskull. I chose the Doom Raiders as the helpers because it was the faction with the highest reputation score, and a good reward for the player who most leaned into working with the factions
- The Doom Raiders probably tilt the fight a little bit too much to the characters, so I definitely had Skeemo turn on them. That made for some good drama as well.
- After the party defeated Manshoon, the Doom Raiders tried to convince the characters to split the hoard 50/50, but when the characters refused, I did not have the Doom Raiders attack as they would probably have wiped the floor with them. Instead, I had the Lord's Alliance showing up as a reason for the Doom Raiders to scram and leave the party be.
All told, I was very happy with how the adventure ended. I think Dragon Heist is one of the better 5e adventures. From here, I am going to do a hybrid "Waterdeep Marches" campaign that lets the players build out the Trollskull and explore the areas around Waterdeep. I've been working on fleshing out the area around the Trollskull as a next post for a while, and it should show up soon. Hopefully I can get back to posting regularly as I continue this campaign with a lot more homebrew and porting of other adventures.
