When I ran Thundertree, I had a backup plan where if my party all died I’d have them wake up jailed somewhere else in the tower with none of their gear or magic items. Venomfang would be sleeping and they’d have to escape from their cells somehow and sneak out of the tower. Maybe Venomfang would wake up while they were escaping and there’d be a tense escape sequence.
Instead, my party managed to somehow kill the young green dragon at level 3 before he could escape. They rolled multiple crits in a row and the only casualty was a weak npc. They rode that high for a while.
When I ran Thundertree, I had a backup plan where if my party all died I’d have them wake up jailed somewhere else in the tower with none of their gear or magic items. Venomfang would be sleeping and they’d have to escape from their cells somehow and sneak out of the tower. Maybe Venomfang would wake up while they were escaping and there’d be a tense escape sequence.
Instead, my party managed to somehow kill the young green dragon at level 3 before he could escape. They rolled multiple crits in a row and the only casualty was a weak npc. They rode that high for a while.
Then I introduced them to Strahd.