Hallo, I am new DM and i am planning to run the new Phandelver campaign, and I just reading the new book Phandelver and Below, and i noticed that encounters are much harder than in Lost Mine of Phandelver. For example Cragmaw hideout:
H2 was 2 goblins, now 2 goblins and 1 goblin boss
H4 was nothing, and now here is giant poisonous snake
H6 was 6 goblins and one of them has more HP, now 5 goblins and 2 goblin bosses
H7 was 3 goblins and now 3 goblins and 2 wolves
Many of this encounters was already hard, but now they are deadly even for 5 first level characters. What are you thinking, are this encounters too hard?
I guess that depends on the sort of group you’ll be DMing for.
If your group is comprised of new or casual players, who are likely to be running less-than-optimal characters, who don’t necessarily know the finer points of combat & dungeon crawling strategy, then the old encounters are appropriate.
On the other hand, if you have a table filled with veteran players who do understand all this, then the new encounters would be better.
Judge the situation based on your group, and go with whichever is more appropriate.
Thank you, that is smart. But what should do new DM who has not the original adventure and who plays with new players? This adventure looks too hard. But mby they are counting with power creep which is comming with 2024 version...
As has been stated over and over, tier 1 combat (esp lvl 1) is so dice dependent. If the goblins crit, thing go so bad so quickly, and the PCs making some lucky openers turns it into a squash.
But the three times I ran the old version, the hide out was very tuff and I found myself pulling punches making the goblins a bit stupid and not tactical. So I'm surprised that those areas have been made more difficult. The rest of the campaign, is actually a bit too easy, so hopefully they buffed some of those areas as well. But yeah, the hide out is super deadly now. The advice I've seen a lot is to start everyone at level 2, and that was for the old setup. Might try leveling them all after the initial ambush, and then let them try the hideout with a lil more hp buffer.
Now I am looking at next chapter and the Redbrands Hideout, and now there are few more enemies, but overall they looking easier, bcs Redbrand Ruffians are now much weaker. They are still CR 1/2, but now they have 11 AC instead of 14, and now they dont have multiattack, so they do just one attack instead of two. I rly do not get it, why they make first chapter so hard, and then they make second easier.
I was was really shocked at the changes they made to the original campaign. they made Craigmaw Hideout a lot harder. they also doubled the damage of the flood trap to 2D6 which can knock out a level 1 player. It doesn't matter how experienced you are if you don't know the tunnel is trapped and fail your saving throws there isn't anything you can do. The goblin bosses have an AC of 17 and three times as many HP at 21 plus they were given multiple attacks.The second on with with disadvantage. Even with experienced players there isn't a lot of options for a level 1 characters. They took a pretty challenging hideout and made it a lot harder.
This campaign is advertised as a started campaign for beginner players and DM's, but if you are a brand new DM I think trying to run the Craigmaw Hideout as it is written on Phandelver and Below would be incredibly frustrating. The DM will need to give the players a lot of help.
For me what is weird about the changes they made is they made the beginning so much harder but they made the end easier. Which from my experience running this campaign is backwards. The beginning was too hard than the end was too easy.
A novice DM may not know how to use nimble escape properly, and without that goblins don't live up to their CR. I can't otherwise see a reason to make Cragmaw Hideout harder, it already blows away the daily encounter budget for a first level party.
There are a couple of things to look at in terms of the rebalancing.
I haven't seen the new version.
The original was written so that the encounter on the road with the dead horses and the goblins in the intro could result in the players following the goblins to the Cragmaw hideout and dealing with it immediately. However, depending on how the DM intro'ed that part, it was equally likely (or even more likely) that the party would take their responsibility to deliver the wagon load of goods to Phandalin to be a higher priority rather than risk it being lost to a goblin attack.
The beginning has the party hired to deliver a wagon load of goods to a merchant in Phandalin. However, in order for the players to be motivated to go to the hideout the DM has to present several additional facts before that encounter.
- The quest giver is a member of the Lords Alliance (?) in Neverwinter. Is this quest giver portrayed as a personal friend of the characters or just someone hiring some adventurers to guard a wagon? If the latter then the character priority is likely delivering the wagon.
- When the characters come upon the dead horses they need to discover several things assuming they survive the ambush. That the horses were ridden by the original quest giver. That the quest giver and companion survived the assault and were taken prisoner. That there is a trail leading several miles through the wilderness that the characters are capable of following. Take away any of those pieces of information and there is little reason for a group of novice adventurers to attempt a rescue of someone they barely know from some sort of goblin encampment.
- the ambush is set to capture the wagon and its goods. The goblins aren't after the characters. There could be other ambushes on the road ahead even if the characters defend the wagon from this one. There is no real reason why the characters should abandon their guard duties and chase off into the wilderness on the possibility of rescuing someone they may not even know well.
Given all that, the first encounters in LMoP actually don't make much sense. When I played it, the group decided to go into town, deliver the wagon and come back later to investigate. We explored the town a bit, rested and went back later to see what could be done about the goblins.
The only reason I can think of to reduce the challenge in the redbrand encounters and increase the challenge in the cragmaw hideout (not the castle) is because they may have adjusted the narrative so that the initial encounter emphasizes the dangers on the road but does not encourage the party to run off into the wilderness to the goblin hideout. Instead the expected narrative is now to continue to Phandalin, interact with the Redbrands, perhaps find out that they are allied with the goblins, and then go back to find the cragmaw hideout and deal with the goblins threatening the trade on the road. This narrative might require reducing the threat of the redbrands and increasing the goblin threat.
In addition, in my opinion, that particular sort of adjustment to the expected narrative makes total sense since the original LMoP narrative didn't really make sense UNLESS the party were best friends with the quest giver and felt that trying to rescue them, despite the extreme risk of attacking goblin bandits in their lair as a group of novice adventurers, was far more important that delivering the goods they were hired to protect - which is obviously required since there are goblin raiders on the roads.
Anyway, my suggestion would be to read over the hooks and other elements that lead to these encounters and see if the expected sequence of events is the same as in the original.
A novice DM may not know how to use nimble escape properly, and without that goblins don't live up to their CR. I can't otherwise see a reason to make Cragmaw Hideout harder, it already blows away the daily encounter budget for a first level party.
The logical conclusion might be that the party is not expected to be first level in the revised LMoP when they reach the hideout? (though it could also be poor editing :) ).
There are a couple of things to look at in terms of the rebalancing.
I haven't seen the new version.
The original was written so that the encounter on the road with the dead horses and the goblins in the intro could result in the players following the goblins to the Cragmaw hideout and dealing with it immediately. However, depending on how the DM intro'ed that part, it was equally likely (or even more likely) that the party would take their responsibility to deliver the wagon load of goods to Phandalin to be a higher priority rather than risk it being lost to a goblin attack.
The beginning has the party hired to deliver a wagon load of goods to a merchant in Phandalin. However, in order for the players to be motivated to go to the hideout the DM has to present several additional facts before that encounter.
- The quest giver is a member of the Lords Alliance (?) in Neverwinter. Is this quest giver portrayed as a personal friend of the characters or just someone hiring some adventurers to guard a wagon? If the latter then the character priority is likely delivering the wagon.
- When the characters come upon the dead horses they need to discover several things assuming they survive the ambush. That the horses were ridden by the original quest giver. That the quest giver and companion survived the assault and were taken prisoner. That there is a trail leading several miles through the wilderness that the characters are capable of following. Take away any of those pieces of information and there is little reason for a group of novice adventurers to attempt a rescue of someone they barely know from some sort of goblin encampment.
- the ambush is set to capture the wagon and its goods. The goblins aren't after the characters. There could be other ambushes on the road ahead even if the characters defend the wagon from this one. There is no real reason why the characters should abandon their guard duties and chase off into the wilderness on the possibility of rescuing someone they may not even know well.
Given all that, the first encounters in LMoP actually don't make much sense. When I played it, the group decided to go into town, deliver the wagon and come back later to investigate. We explored the town a bit, rested and went back later to see what could be done about the goblins.
The only reason I can think of to reduce the challenge in the redbrand encounters and increase the challenge in the cragmaw hideout (not the castle) is because they may have adjusted the narrative so that the initial encounter emphasizes the dangers on the road but does not encourage the party to run off into the wilderness to the goblin hideout. Instead the expected narrative is now to continue to Phandalin, interact with the Redbrands, perhaps find out that they are allied with the goblins, and then go back to find the cragmaw hideout and deal with the goblins threatening the trade on the road. This narrative might require reducing the threat of the redbrands and increasing the goblin threat.
In addition, in my opinion, that particular sort of adjustment to the expected narrative makes total sense since the original LMoP narrative didn't really make sense UNLESS the party were best friends with the quest giver and felt that trying to rescue them, despite the extreme risk of attacking goblin bandits in their lair as a group of novice adventurers, was far more important that delivering the goods they were hired to protect - which is obviously required since there are goblin raiders on the roads.
Anyway, my suggestion would be to read over the hooks and other elements that lead to these encounters and see if the expected sequence of events is the same as in the original.
Hooks are same as in original adventure. There are few different hooks for them to start, but they are suggesting that connection to Gundren Rokseeker should have at least one character in the party, but propably all, and they are telling to DM: "Ask the players how their characters came to know the dwarf Gundren Rockseeker.".
Horses now are not dead, but still they tell us that "Any character who know Gundren Rockseeker and Silder Hallwinter identifies their horses."
Characters could first deliver goods, but in same time, they could just investigate Goblin Trail and find Cragmaw Hideout. They even tell us that "The drivers can easily steer the wagon off the road and tie off the oxen before characters pursue the goblins." And for new DM this is logical conclusion that Cragmaw Hideout is in first chapter before Phandalin and so that should be run before characters arrive in Phandalin, and DM could even push characters to go to Hideout. And it is now murderhouse.
They put even map of Goblin Ambush encounter, and on the map is clear trail to Cragmaw Hideout
Next thing is, now they are not talking about experience points anywhere in book. Not even that, but they explicitly tell us in the begining of first chapter: "The characters should be 1st level when the chapter begins. The characters gain a level when they finish exploring the Cragmaw hideout." So they want the party to explore the Cragmaw Hideout at first level!
They just tell in start of second chapter that "The characters should be 2nd level when the chapter begins (so when they arrive to phandalin). The characters gain a level when they finish exploring the Redbrand Hideout under Tresendar Manor." Se yeah, they could first deliver goods, but they are still level 1! Maybe DM could give them level in Phandalin (just after that one fight with Goblins in first chapter), then they could explore the Redbrand Hideout, get third level and then go to explore Cragmaw Hideout, but in the book, there is not much help for new DM to play this in this way.
Now i am reading third chapter and in Old Owl Well, in original adventure is twelve zombies and one evil mage (CR 1, who has like magic missile, shocking grasp), and now there is same number of twelve zombies, but instead of evil mage, now there is a regular Mage, which is CR 6 and has spells like cone of cold, grater invisibility, counterspell, fireball and fly. OK, they tell us he "is not particularly aggressive, and he is willing to strike a deal that advances his interest at the same time it helps the characters." But still, characters could just see an evil necromancer and i thing in 80% of time they will want to kill him. And they have no chance, bcs he can misty step, fly, shoot them with fireball and he has twelve zombie meatshileds...
Sorry for my bad english, its not my first languange and i have no official education in english.
The fights in Phandelver and Below are all over the place. I did Cragmaw Hideout with 4 experienced players, they had to retread and come back finish the job so prepare something in case this happens. Also, no one died but i played the ennemies really dumb.
In Phandelver, you spend 1 hour telling the players that the RedBrands are ferocious, yet they are so freaking easy to kill. The Redbrand Hideout is a joke. I will use the legacy Stats for the RedBrand.
I'm preparing Ruins of Thundertree. They removed a lot of twig blights. Ash zombies now are just regular zombies, all the fights will be freaking boring. Yet again, I will use the Legacy settings. If your players are not dumb, the original Ruins of Thundertree is very well balanced.
Ohh yeah and now, Black spider is just, Spider.... Geez.... at least if you want to go full woke, make an effort to give him another name....
So, I began running a combined Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak prior to the launch of Phandelver and Below. One of my groups even asked to run the same location using the different encounters and when we did...well sadly Phandlever and Below is a lot like most of the recent stuff. It goes a lot easier on Players than previous.
WotC I think have tried to correct stuff that they feel don't work without an actual understanding of what might have gone wrong. My advice to people has been that if they are new to DMing run Dragon of Icespire Peak at least once, and then once they've done that run any official adventure they like but be prepared to tweak the encounters (and especially the DCs) to properly challenge your group.
My main issues though have been with the second half and new material added into the adventure. There's no connection, no tangible link between the two sections that don't feel forced. You go from the arc surrounding finding Wave Echo Cave into what is essentially a completely separate arc. What's infuriating, especially as a writer myself is to see the so called professionals at WotC miss so many tricks. For example, perhaps the Spider could have been under Illithid Influence. Perhaps, Halia is being puppeted by an Intellect Devourer. There are so many better ways to have connected an old adventure to this newer content that would have made the second half feel like an actual continuation. Like most things of late though the writing team behind D&D are just proving themselves to be pretty unskilled.
The main takeaway for me is that if you pick up the new book be prepared to do some on the fly rebalancing of encounters and DCs, and maybe try and find a more naturalistic way of bridging the first and second half of the book.
Hallo, I am new DM and i am planning to run the new Phandelver campaign, and I just reading the new book Phandelver and Below, and i noticed that encounters are much harder than in Lost Mine of Phandelver. For example Cragmaw hideout:
Many of this encounters was already hard, but now they are deadly even for 5 first level characters. What are you thinking, are this encounters too hard?
I guess that depends on the sort of group you’ll be DMing for.
If your group is comprised of new or casual players, who are likely to be running less-than-optimal characters, who don’t necessarily know the finer points of combat & dungeon crawling strategy, then the old encounters are appropriate.
On the other hand, if you have a table filled with veteran players who do understand all this, then the new encounters would be better.
Judge the situation based on your group, and go with whichever is more appropriate.
Thank you, that is smart. But what should do new DM who has not the original adventure and who plays with new players? This adventure looks too hard. But mby they are counting with power creep which is comming with 2024 version...
As has been stated over and over, tier 1 combat (esp lvl 1) is so dice dependent. If the goblins crit, thing go so bad so quickly, and the PCs making some lucky openers turns it into a squash.
But the three times I ran the old version, the hide out was very tuff and I found myself pulling punches making the goblins a bit stupid and not tactical. So I'm surprised that those areas have been made more difficult. The rest of the campaign, is actually a bit too easy, so hopefully they buffed some of those areas as well. But yeah, the hide out is super deadly now. The advice I've seen a lot is to start everyone at level 2, and that was for the old setup. Might try leveling them all after the initial ambush, and then let them try the hideout with a lil more hp buffer.
Now I am looking at next chapter and the Redbrands Hideout, and now there are few more enemies, but overall they looking easier, bcs Redbrand Ruffians are now much weaker. They are still CR 1/2, but now they have 11 AC instead of 14, and now they dont have multiattack, so they do just one attack instead of two. I rly do not get it, why they make first chapter so hard, and then they make second easier.
I was was really shocked at the changes they made to the original campaign. they made Craigmaw Hideout a lot harder. they also doubled the damage of the flood trap to 2D6 which can knock out a level 1 player. It doesn't matter how experienced you are if you don't know the tunnel is trapped and fail your saving throws there isn't anything you can do. The goblin bosses have an AC of 17 and three times as many HP at 21 plus they were given multiple attacks.The second on with with disadvantage. Even with experienced players there isn't a lot of options for a level 1 characters. They took a pretty challenging hideout and made it a lot harder.
This campaign is advertised as a started campaign for beginner players and DM's, but if you are a brand new DM I think trying to run the Craigmaw Hideout as it is written on Phandelver and Below would be incredibly frustrating. The DM will need to give the players a lot of help.
For me what is weird about the changes they made is they made the beginning so much harder but they made the end easier. Which from my experience running this campaign is backwards. The beginning was too hard than the end was too easy.
Spaceman Spiff
A novice DM may not know how to use nimble escape properly, and without that goblins don't live up to their CR. I can't otherwise see a reason to make Cragmaw Hideout harder, it already blows away the daily encounter budget for a first level party.
There are a couple of things to look at in terms of the rebalancing.
I haven't seen the new version.
The original was written so that the encounter on the road with the dead horses and the goblins in the intro could result in the players following the goblins to the Cragmaw hideout and dealing with it immediately. However, depending on how the DM intro'ed that part, it was equally likely (or even more likely) that the party would take their responsibility to deliver the wagon load of goods to Phandalin to be a higher priority rather than risk it being lost to a goblin attack.
The beginning has the party hired to deliver a wagon load of goods to a merchant in Phandalin. However, in order for the players to be motivated to go to the hideout the DM has to present several additional facts before that encounter.
- The quest giver is a member of the Lords Alliance (?) in Neverwinter. Is this quest giver portrayed as a personal friend of the characters or just someone hiring some adventurers to guard a wagon? If the latter then the character priority is likely delivering the wagon.
- When the characters come upon the dead horses they need to discover several things assuming they survive the ambush. That the horses were ridden by the original quest giver. That the quest giver and companion survived the assault and were taken prisoner. That there is a trail leading several miles through the wilderness that the characters are capable of following. Take away any of those pieces of information and there is little reason for a group of novice adventurers to attempt a rescue of someone they barely know from some sort of goblin encampment.
- the ambush is set to capture the wagon and its goods. The goblins aren't after the characters. There could be other ambushes on the road ahead even if the characters defend the wagon from this one. There is no real reason why the characters should abandon their guard duties and chase off into the wilderness on the possibility of rescuing someone they may not even know well.
Given all that, the first encounters in LMoP actually don't make much sense. When I played it, the group decided to go into town, deliver the wagon and come back later to investigate. We explored the town a bit, rested and went back later to see what could be done about the goblins.
The only reason I can think of to reduce the challenge in the redbrand encounters and increase the challenge in the cragmaw hideout (not the castle) is because they may have adjusted the narrative so that the initial encounter emphasizes the dangers on the road but does not encourage the party to run off into the wilderness to the goblin hideout. Instead the expected narrative is now to continue to Phandalin, interact with the Redbrands, perhaps find out that they are allied with the goblins, and then go back to find the cragmaw hideout and deal with the goblins threatening the trade on the road. This narrative might require reducing the threat of the redbrands and increasing the goblin threat.
In addition, in my opinion, that particular sort of adjustment to the expected narrative makes total sense since the original LMoP narrative didn't really make sense UNLESS the party were best friends with the quest giver and felt that trying to rescue them, despite the extreme risk of attacking goblin bandits in their lair as a group of novice adventurers, was far more important that delivering the goods they were hired to protect - which is obviously required since there are goblin raiders on the roads.
Anyway, my suggestion would be to read over the hooks and other elements that lead to these encounters and see if the expected sequence of events is the same as in the original.
The logical conclusion might be that the party is not expected to be first level in the revised LMoP when they reach the hideout? (though it could also be poor editing :) ).
Hooks are same as in original adventure. There are few different hooks for them to start, but they are suggesting that connection to Gundren Rokseeker should have at least one character in the party, but propably all, and they are telling to DM: "Ask the players how their characters came to know the dwarf Gundren Rockseeker.".
Horses now are not dead, but still they tell us that "Any character who know Gundren Rockseeker and Silder Hallwinter identifies their horses."
Characters could first deliver goods, but in same time, they could just investigate Goblin Trail and find Cragmaw Hideout. They even tell us that "The drivers can easily steer the wagon off the road and tie off the oxen before characters pursue the goblins." And for new DM this is logical conclusion that Cragmaw Hideout is in first chapter before Phandalin and so that should be run before characters arrive in Phandalin, and DM could even push characters to go to Hideout. And it is now murderhouse.
They put even map of Goblin Ambush encounter, and on the map is clear trail to Cragmaw Hideout
Next thing is, now they are not talking about experience points anywhere in book. Not even that, but they explicitly tell us in the begining of first chapter: "The characters should be 1st level when the chapter begins. The characters gain a level when they finish exploring the Cragmaw hideout." So they want the party to explore the Cragmaw Hideout at first level!
They just tell in start of second chapter that "The characters should be 2nd level when the chapter begins (so when they arrive to phandalin). The characters gain a level when they finish exploring the Redbrand Hideout under Tresendar Manor." Se yeah, they could first deliver goods, but they are still level 1! Maybe DM could give them level in Phandalin (just after that one fight with Goblins in first chapter), then they could explore the Redbrand Hideout, get third level and then go to explore Cragmaw Hideout, but in the book, there is not much help for new DM to play this in this way.
Now i am reading third chapter and in Old Owl Well, in original adventure is twelve zombies and one evil mage (CR 1, who has like magic missile, shocking grasp), and now there is same number of twelve zombies, but instead of evil mage, now there is a regular Mage, which is CR 6 and has spells like cone of cold, grater invisibility, counterspell, fireball and fly. OK, they tell us he "is not particularly aggressive, and he is willing to strike a deal that advances his interest at the same time it helps the characters." But still, characters could just see an evil necromancer and i thing in 80% of time they will want to kill him. And they have no chance, bcs he can misty step, fly, shoot them with fireball and he has twelve zombie meatshileds...
Sorry for my bad english, its not my first languange and i have no official education in english.
The fights in Phandelver and Below are all over the place. I did Cragmaw Hideout with 4 experienced players, they had to retread and come back finish the job so prepare something in case this happens. Also, no one died but i played the ennemies really dumb.
In Phandelver, you spend 1 hour telling the players that the RedBrands are ferocious, yet they are so freaking easy to kill. The Redbrand Hideout is a joke. I will use the legacy Stats for the RedBrand.
I'm preparing Ruins of Thundertree. They removed a lot of twig blights. Ash zombies now are just regular zombies, all the fights will be freaking boring. Yet again, I will use the Legacy settings. If your players are not dumb, the original Ruins of Thundertree is very well balanced.
Ohh yeah and now, Black spider is just, Spider.... Geez.... at least if you want to go full woke, make an effort to give him another name....
So, I began running a combined Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak prior to the launch of Phandelver and Below. One of my groups even asked to run the same location using the different encounters and when we did...well sadly Phandlever and Below is a lot like most of the recent stuff. It goes a lot easier on Players than previous.
WotC I think have tried to correct stuff that they feel don't work without an actual understanding of what might have gone wrong. My advice to people has been that if they are new to DMing run Dragon of Icespire Peak at least once, and then once they've done that run any official adventure they like but be prepared to tweak the encounters (and especially the DCs) to properly challenge your group.
My main issues though have been with the second half and new material added into the adventure. There's no connection, no tangible link between the two sections that don't feel forced. You go from the arc surrounding finding Wave Echo Cave into what is essentially a completely separate arc. What's infuriating, especially as a writer myself is to see the so called professionals at WotC miss so many tricks. For example, perhaps the Spider could have been under Illithid Influence. Perhaps, Halia is being puppeted by an Intellect Devourer. There are so many better ways to have connected an old adventure to this newer content that would have made the second half feel like an actual continuation. Like most things of late though the writing team behind D&D are just proving themselves to be pretty unskilled.
The main takeaway for me is that if you pick up the new book be prepared to do some on the fly rebalancing of encounters and DCs, and maybe try and find a more naturalistic way of bridging the first and second half of the book.
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