What I want to know is why the fucking fuckity fuck is it that so many of the Den's alleged finest are having a hard time with RHoD? About the only part of the difficulty complaints that's accurate is the fake difficulty bit, where time schedule + long campaign level span wise + shops not having proper upgrades + most stuff you find being gold fodder only means you will most likely have outdated equipment by the end unless specifically rewritten to fix that.
Almost everything you fight is a mook. The first 80% is really fucking heavy on warrior 2s for fuck's sake. The last 20% replaces them with some level 4 monsters that have most of the same failings as humanoid beatsticks anyways. And when you do fight an actual threat, they often spend most of their time fucking around with shit like summoning hell hounds, or casting lightning bolt.
Even the few dragons lose hard because it's trivially easy to know what you'll fight before you fight it, and of course they're color coded for your convenience.
First one is a Young Green. Its breath is 6d6, DC 17. Which means you look at it from hundreds of feet away from behind trees. You see it, it doesn't see you. It can't hear you either, because of the -30 or so. You cast Resist Energy (acid). It now does trivial damage if you fail the save and most likely none of you pass. Proceed to auto attack through the 93 HP, 20 AC, no casting enemy in short order. Or you can just Web or Glitterdust or something.
Even if it gets replaced by the level 8 model to be Large, it's not that much harder. Maybe you need a Ray of Enfeeblement somewhere in there.
The black one is a bit better off because you can swim. But you're also most likely 7 by then. Flight = not so hard.
Seriously, I've seen players completely fucking new to D&D fucking own this module hardcore. Which makes the fact supposed experts are complaining about the difficulty highly fucking offensive. Granted, Rogues suck a barrel of cocks in that adventure, so Frank's complaints might be justified. But still. What the fuckity fuckstar?
Or how about this?
http://www.myth-weavers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2838
These guys were EXTREMELY suboptimal for the first half of the campaign. We're talking blasting wizards, CW Samurai Sundertards, and healbots bad. They got better later on, but were still nowhere near strong characters. According to the wizard I talked to, it was at least semi deliberate. Regardless, and in spite of the fact the DM started buffing up everything especially later on (justified, given the number of terrible builds for the NPCs) and I do mean everything, including the dragons they still had very little problem with it. There were not many deaths, and most of the ones that did occur were to mooks, to remove the characters of players that quit from the campaign, or both. Which means even weaksauce like Rangers and Barbarians was mostly doing ok, and the real characters weren't even threatened until the finale when they got attacked by level 16 dragon pussy or whatever.
So to all the people complaining about the difficulty, what the fuck are you whining about?
