So I am running LMoP for a group online and this coming Friday is the second session, so last time the party steamrolled through Cragmaw cave and now they are level 2 and have another player so I wanted to make it a bit more challenging and so I gave Glasstaff two 3rd level spells, thoughts?
So I am running LMoP for a group online and this coming Friday is the second session, so last time the party steamrolled through Cragmaw cave and now they are level 2 and have another player so I wanted to make it a bit more challenging and so I gave Glasstaff two 3rd level spells, thoughts?
A bit hard to tell if we don't know which spells those are. If it is something like fireball you might kill your players, if they are something like remove curse then they wouldn't change much.
Those seem like a good start but I would also suggest you give him max xp. Wizards are too squishy.
Ok, so how many players are we talking about? Because how hard a fight with a wizard is will depend a lot on how easy it is to attack them and how often that happens. Slow is a good start, but if it is Glasstaff vs the full party then his concentration won't last much.
When I played Redbrand Hideout, I was fortunate because Glasstaff ended in a good position due to dumb luck. The players pretty much dominated the Nothic, so the monster ended up running away while telepathically calling for reinforcements. My players began to fight the redbrands while the Nothic kept running to call upon the Bugbears. Glasstaff tried to escape through the secret passage but the fight transitioned to the central area and things ended with Glasstaff flanking my players when coming out of the secret passage, dropping two out of three with magic missile and the last one the following turn while they tried to escape. I ended up having them capture the players instead of making it a tpk but the point stands; the best way to make Glasstaff more effective is to change the circumstances in which they fight him so that he actually has minions to distract the players while he casts spells. So if the nearby Redbrands are still alive, make him call them as reinforcements. If the rest of the hideout is dead, he would ideally run away without fighting but he could always raise Dendrar's corpse as an undead to help him. In my game, after the players escaped, they riled up the town to fight the redbrands in the streets but had to take a short rest before facing the hideout again. Glasstaff used the time to run away, but he also enchanted the corpse to raise as a Wight to fight intruders and rigged the hideout to fill with poison gas as a last f*** you to the players when they went to investigate (I originally wanted him to rig the base to collapse on top of them Bond villain style, but I was in a hurry and chose the easier mechanic).
Considering that we have a precedent in the hideout for Glasstaff to raise undead (the skeletons near the prison that raise and attack anyone without a red cloak), you could always make it so that, if there are no living minions to reinforce him, he uses undead. Have him enchant the red cloaks so that they make it easier for him to raise the corpse of those wearing them or summon their specters.
Another thing I have my Glasstaff use a lot is Glyph of Warding, which allows for him to lay traps across the base that you can activate during the boss fight if it looks too easy on your players. I would advice to use this as a last resource and only if it is a very big party. The exploding glyphs can overkill for level 2 players, though the biggest advantage of the spell is how it plays with concentration spells. So a Glyph of Warding that casts the Slow spell can even the odds if there are too many players and can be set to activate when someone who is not wearing a Red Cloak walks under it like with the skeletons.
Also what can I do to make that jade statuette more interesting ever since I saw it in the treasure I have wanted it to do something cool.
You could connect it with Iarno's noble house so that the players can have a chance to identify him if he escapes without fighting them. Alternatively, replace it with a figurine of wondrous power or put a secret compartment there... actually, one of the issues with Lost Mine of Phandelver is that the Black Spider only interacts with the players at the end. You could probably make the statuette either a sending stone or hide one inside and replace the letter the Black Spider sends Iarno with a chance for the players to speak with the mastermind behind the campaign.
I didn't alter Glasstaff's stats at all, and honestly he didn't put up much of a fight when the Ranger with Sharpshooter just shot him in the neck round one... but I played him by doing an over the top impersonation of Matt Berry and he ended up incredibly memorable and the players actually spent a lot of time with him after he surrendered because of it.
Which is to say... even if an enemy isn't challenging in combat, if you do something fun with them the players will still have a good time.
Solo casters vs a party are going to get demolished unless you give them some guards or pull some creative wizard stuff.
-His goal should be escape, a chase is going to be much more interesting and much more in character -His familiar should alert him so he knows they are coming, but you should at least let them roll to see if they notice the unusual rat looking at them and they running away. -He should use the spell scrolls in the chest, when they kick in the door to his room they eat a fireball (adjust the DC to be 10). That is really the only thing that is going to make this feel like a boss fight, instead of being incredibly anticlimactic wizard stomping.
Yeah my plan was to have him hopefully escape and if my campaign continues farther after LMoP my plan was for him to take over the Black Spider's empire, (I adjusted the story a bit so the Black Spider is recruiting all of the side quest monsters) and return to get the player's who ruined his plans).
I just wanted to give a good fight if they sneak up on him.
Yeah my plan was to have him hopefully escape and if my campaign continues farther after LMoP my plan was for him to take over the Black Spider's empire, (I adjusted the story a bit so the Black Spider is recruiting all of the side quest monsters) and return to get the player's who ruined his plans).
I just wanted to give a good fight if they sneak up on him.
I ended up using him in a future campaign as well, since the same characters moved from LMOP to Tyranny of Dragons, and I adjusted Glasstaff's backstory to establish that he was trained by the Red Wizards in Thay, and although he's not still a major villain his actions directly set off a lot of the major events in the story.
My Glasstaff became the leader of the cult of Myrkul in preparation for the expansions, allied with Venomfang and cooperated with them to create and army of plants and zombies, sent a disciple to infiltrate Phandalin and operate a hospital in which they operate patients in secret to insert artifacts in their heads to have them possessed by the ghosts of dead Redbrands, fed a mindcontrol potion to the leader of the town guard, rigged the town elections by having a doppelganger kill a candidate (Halia thornton) by pretending to be a second one (Galandro Luna, a sidekick) so that they could win as Daran Edermath (replaced during the fight with the Redbrands) and fooled the cult of Talos and Cryovain from Dragon of Icespire Peak into thinking Phandalin was attacking them, then had the mayor doppelganger hire the players to kill the orcs due to them threatening to destroy the town (I had both cults and dragons being rivals).
So far, the only things my players learnt of all that was that he had fooled the orcs and made an army with Venomfang. The rest they will find out in the next four sessions or so. It should have been earlier, but it seems that I am not good at giving hints.
Of course, this was because I had a tpk in the Mine and we decided to start again with level 2 characters a few months in game after that, so by that point I had to make Glasstaff the main villain because Groll was dead and the Black Spider had become a Drider and gone insane in the mine. So it might not be applicable.
So I am running LMoP for a group online and this coming Friday is the second session, so last time the party steamrolled through Cragmaw cave and now they are level 2 and have another player so I wanted to make it a bit more challenging and so I gave Glasstaff two 3rd level spells, thoughts?
Give his cat dragon's breath right before the party enters and have the cat start meowing to distract them. Have the door be ajar but very interesting potions and a cat who has a golden choker, the party will go for the cat. Then have the cat blow fire breath on them. Then say you hear stone grinding on stone in the back as glasstaff chugs and invis potion, they'll have a second to get him before he can take the hide action, do they attack the familiar or does one guy go after the noise in the room?
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So I am running LMoP for a group online and this coming Friday is the second session, so last time the party steamrolled through Cragmaw cave and now they are level 2 and have another player so I wanted to make it a bit more challenging and so I gave Glasstaff two 3rd level spells, thoughts?
Mythology Master
Also what can I do to make that jade statuette more interesting ever since I saw it in the treasure I have wanted it to do something cool.
Mythology Master
A bit hard to tell if we don't know which spells those are. If it is something like fireball you might kill your players, if they are something like remove curse then they wouldn't change much.
Right I should have included that slow (they all have ridiculous AC so I chose that spell mainly for that reason) and Counterspell.
Mythology Master
Those seem like a good start but I would also suggest you give him max xp. Wizards are too squishy.
Ok, so how many players are we talking about? Because how hard a fight with a wizard is will depend a lot on how easy it is to attack them and how often that happens. Slow is a good start, but if it is Glasstaff vs the full party then his concentration won't last much.
When I played Redbrand Hideout, I was fortunate because Glasstaff ended in a good position due to dumb luck. The players pretty much dominated the Nothic, so the monster ended up running away while telepathically calling for reinforcements. My players began to fight the redbrands while the Nothic kept running to call upon the Bugbears. Glasstaff tried to escape through the secret passage but the fight transitioned to the central area and things ended with Glasstaff flanking my players when coming out of the secret passage, dropping two out of three with magic missile and the last one the following turn while they tried to escape. I ended up having them capture the players instead of making it a tpk but the point stands; the best way to make Glasstaff more effective is to change the circumstances in which they fight him so that he actually has minions to distract the players while he casts spells. So if the nearby Redbrands are still alive, make him call them as reinforcements. If the rest of the hideout is dead, he would ideally run away without fighting but he could always raise Dendrar's corpse as an undead to help him. In my game, after the players escaped, they riled up the town to fight the redbrands in the streets but had to take a short rest before facing the hideout again. Glasstaff used the time to run away, but he also enchanted the corpse to raise as a Wight to fight intruders and rigged the hideout to fill with poison gas as a last f*** you to the players when they went to investigate (I originally wanted him to rig the base to collapse on top of them Bond villain style, but I was in a hurry and chose the easier mechanic).
Considering that we have a precedent in the hideout for Glasstaff to raise undead (the skeletons near the prison that raise and attack anyone without a red cloak), you could always make it so that, if there are no living minions to reinforce him, he uses undead. Have him enchant the red cloaks so that they make it easier for him to raise the corpse of those wearing them or summon their specters.
Another thing I have my Glasstaff use a lot is Glyph of Warding, which allows for him to lay traps across the base that you can activate during the boss fight if it looks too easy on your players. I would advice to use this as a last resource and only if it is a very big party. The exploding glyphs can overkill for level 2 players, though the biggest advantage of the spell is how it plays with concentration spells. So a Glyph of Warding that casts the Slow spell can even the odds if there are too many players and can be set to activate when someone who is not wearing a Red Cloak walks under it like with the skeletons.
You could connect it with Iarno's noble house so that the players can have a chance to identify him if he escapes without fighting them. Alternatively, replace it with a figurine of wondrous power or put a secret compartment there... actually, one of the issues with Lost Mine of Phandelver is that the Black Spider only interacts with the players at the end. You could probably make the statuette either a sending stone or hide one inside and replace the letter the Black Spider sends Iarno with a chance for the players to speak with the mastermind behind the campaign.
I didn't alter Glasstaff's stats at all, and honestly he didn't put up much of a fight when the Ranger with Sharpshooter just shot him in the neck round one... but I played him by doing an over the top impersonation of Matt Berry and he ended up incredibly memorable and the players actually spent a lot of time with him after he surrendered because of it.
Which is to say... even if an enemy isn't challenging in combat, if you do something fun with them the players will still have a good time.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Solo casters vs a party are going to get demolished unless you give them some guards or pull some creative wizard stuff.
-His goal should be escape, a chase is going to be much more interesting and much more in character
-His familiar should alert him so he knows they are coming, but you should at least let them roll to see if they notice the unusual rat looking at them and they running away.
-He should use the spell scrolls in the chest, when they kick in the door to his room they eat a fireball (adjust the DC to be 10). That is really the only thing that is going to make this feel like a boss fight, instead of being incredibly anticlimactic wizard stomping.
Yeah my plan was to have him hopefully escape and if my campaign continues farther after LMoP my plan was for him to take over the Black Spider's empire, (I adjusted the story a bit so the Black Spider is recruiting all of the side quest monsters) and return to get the player's who ruined his plans).
I just wanted to give a good fight if they sneak up on him.
Mythology Master
I ended up using him in a future campaign as well, since the same characters moved from LMOP to Tyranny of Dragons, and I adjusted Glasstaff's backstory to establish that he was trained by the Red Wizards in Thay, and although he's not still a major villain his actions directly set off a lot of the major events in the story.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
My Glasstaff became the leader of the cult of Myrkul in preparation for the expansions, allied with Venomfang and cooperated with them to create and army of plants and zombies, sent a disciple to infiltrate Phandalin and operate a hospital in which they operate patients in secret to insert artifacts in their heads to have them possessed by the ghosts of dead Redbrands, fed a mindcontrol potion to the leader of the town guard, rigged the town elections by having a doppelganger kill a candidate (Halia thornton) by pretending to be a second one (Galandro Luna, a sidekick) so that they could win as Daran Edermath (replaced during the fight with the Redbrands) and fooled the cult of Talos and Cryovain from Dragon of Icespire Peak into thinking Phandalin was attacking them, then had the mayor doppelganger hire the players to kill the orcs due to them threatening to destroy the town (I had both cults and dragons being rivals).
So far, the only things my players learnt of all that was that he had fooled the orcs and made an army with Venomfang. The rest they will find out in the next four sessions or so. It should have been earlier, but it seems that I am not good at giving hints.
Of course, this was because I had a tpk in the Mine and we decided to start again with level 2 characters a few months in game after that, so by that point I had to make Glasstaff the main villain because Groll was dead and the Black Spider had become a Drider and gone insane in the mine. So it might not be applicable.
Give his cat dragon's breath right before the party enters and have the cat start meowing to distract them. Have the door be ajar but very interesting potions and a cat who has a golden choker, the party will go for the cat. Then have the cat blow fire breath on them. Then say you hear stone grinding on stone in the back as glasstaff chugs and invis potion, they'll have a second to get him before he can take the hide action, do they attack the familiar or does one guy go after the noise in the room?