Just for a little bit of background info, I've played D&D for long enough to have a good understanding of the game mechanics from the players' side, but I'm a fledgling DM who has never tried to actually run a game. I've got a small group of three other people who have some general D&D knowledge from popular things like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role but have never actually played the game before. Since I already owned several of the various D&D sourcebooks, I went ahead and ordered Tyranny of Dragons so that we could try to run through an actual campaign instead of grabbing the Starter Set or anything. I chose that one since I played through Hoard of the Dragon Queen a couple of years ago, and I thought having a bit of familiarity with the campaign might make it easier for me to ease into running the games.
Tyranny of Dragons generally assumes your adventuring party is 4 players but says that you can tweak some of the encounters for larger or smaller parties. Since this is a group of three, relatively inexperienced players, I figured it would be worth trying to make the encounters a bit easier, especially early on since they also don't have any one who wanted to be a dedicated healer. I've read up on the theory about balancing encounters, but I'm not 100% sure I'd be able to do it for the entire campaign. While thinking about it and looking through some of my D&D books for other ideas, I saw that one of the blurbs in the opening pages of The Sunless Citadel (from Tales of the Yawning Portal) lists ways to tie it into the Forgotten Realms by saying it was an old Cult of the Dragon hideout which got me thinking about trying to incorporate that adventure into the campaign. I thought that if have the group run through The Sunless Citadel before starting Hoard of the Dragon Queen proper then that might be a way to give them a few extra levels for more HP and potential combat options instead of trying to balance all of the encounters.
Would it be feasible or at least relatively balanced to have the players just be 1 or 2 levels about the "expected" levels in the various chapters instead of trying to balance all of the encounters across the Tyranny of Dragons campaign?
If that wouldn't work, what is the best way to try to balance the premade encounters? Basically just remove enough enemies for the XP per battle to mostly correspond to the expected adventuring day XP for the three person party?
You could also add some NPC adventurers to make up the numbers… a healing Cleric might make a good addition, with a mostly supporting role so as not to steal the limelight bit maybe help the party out of a jam occasionally, since they are not the most experienced players.
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Netherlands, GMT +1 // “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.” — Bruce Lee
That's a good point, and it is an option, but I was a little worried about it because it felt like I might be walking a bit of a precarious ledge. I worry about trying to be a DM and be a player at the same time. But I think it might also be kind of weird trying to balance out exactly how much knowledge or whatever this character might have. With random NPCs that aren't constantly with the party, it doesn't seem too hard to just have them just know what's directly around them or whatever, but having an NPC that specifically travels with the group seems a little harder to separate out.
You could try to give the players a sidekick. They're detailed in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. basically, a simpler version of a PC to help fill out smaller groups.
As far as the original question. I tried running Horde of the Dragon Queen and found it to be a bit of a mess. (I have about 40 years of DM'ing experience, for context.) For a new DM, I'd recommend Lost Mines of Phandelver. its designed for new players, and new DMs, and its available free here on dndbeyond.
Since there's apparently a full Phandelver book coming here in a few months, I think I'd prefer to just go ahead and wait for that to start any of the Phandelver stuff as it might be easier to have things physically since I think we'll mostly be using pen and paper for playing (plus I just have an obsession with collecting some of the D&D books). That being said, do you think the newer Dragons of Stormwreck Isle Starter Set is an alright replacement?
And thank you! I'll check through that section in Tasha's Cauldron. Do you think just a single sidekick at a time would be enough for the most of the campaign or should I be ready to make several as we go along to either switch them out or supplement more to the party? Again, very new to DM-ing, so I'm still working out how to actually balance anything.
I can't speak to stormwreck isle, specifically, but its probably better than horde of the dragon queen. most folks who've run it have needed to modify it quite a bit to make it work, is the impression I get.
As far as sidekicks, I'd say if you identify a hole in their party composition, then usually, the sidekick can help fill it. Probably, story-wise it could be better to keep them in the party, and that also simplifies things for you. That said, it can be also be cool for a sidekick to leave and another one step in. If you try to give them a personality, maybe one decides to stay and help out in the town the party just saved, but, hey, turns out this guy was inspired and wants to join the group. It may work, or it may be contrived. The real question will be who runs it? You can, or if you think one of your players is up for it, they might take a crack at it. Then, they can incorporate the sidekick into their backstory, which really lends itself to that sidekick sticking around.
Dragon of Icespire Peak has instructions on how to adapt each of its quests for the size of the party. As an adventure, the narrative is lacking (although it works well enough with a party that is just taking odd jobs or full of do-gooders), but it does make balancing quite easy for you. It also has three follow up adventures that top it up to L13, if you want them.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I’ve heard of the kind of disjointed nature about Dragons of Icespire Peak, and that kind of put me off from it. Have you tired the follow ups here on D&D Beyond? If so, how are they? Are they a bit more narratively focused?
As a small aside, I’ve found that singular sidekicks really suck. I’d recommend instead creating a 4th PC that you let one of the players run. If all they need is healer / support, that’s perfect.
I’ve heard of the kind of disjointed nature about Dragons of Icespire Peak, and that kind of put me off from it. Have you tired the follow ups here on D&D Beyond? If so, how are they? Are they a bit more narratively focused?
They're more of the same, to be honest. The adventure is fine, so long as you're not expecting a grand narrative - you're just a group of people helping out a town. Ironically, compared to LMoP, this actually worked in its favour. LMoP has encourages a narrative....but combined with the XP levelling system, it actually creates a jarring situation where characters are told how to rescue their friend and ate given the means that try, but aren't high enough level according to the quest's recommendations. They're given other quests to get the XP...but it doesn't make sense for them to do the ostensibly optional quests while their friend is captured. DoIP is more controlled so that doesn't really happen, it just doesn't have an obvious narrative arc to it. It's more obviously focused on new players and introducing them to D&D mechanics and what it can do rather than giving them a taster of a real campaign, if that makes sense.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Don't roleplay the extra characters. They're there purely to provide extra firepower and maybe a few skills. "Stan the Sidekick jumps forward, whacks the goblin on the head" or "Seeing the party struggle with the lock, Sue the Sidekick pushes forward, and quickly picks it, then stands back to let the party past" is sufficient. They're.not there to be a proper character, just to provide some extra boosts to help balance the party.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The easy thing to do there, if you’re playing the NPC, is to not have them say anything. Tie it to one of the PCs backstories do it has a reason to be there. But do something like, the NPC was sent to help as an observer, but doesn’t have any personal motivations of its own or ideas about what to do next. Maybe it took a vow of silence for some reason.
I worry a little bit about them trying to manage an extra PC since 1) it makes it a bit awkward for role playing purposes and I'm still unsure how deep they plan to get into RPing in the game and 2) none of them have really played before and don't necessarily know what they're doing outside of theory of the game, so I think they'll need to learn to manage their own actions and combat beforehand. And like I said earlier, I'm worried about trying to make and role play a PC while also being DM since I'd have to consistently keep them separate mentally and not use my own knowledge of the story to influence actions or how I play them. I feel like it would be easier not to "game the system" for myself if I didn't, but I'm not necessarily against the idea if I end up needing to.
You could try to give the players a sidekick. They're detailed in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. basically, a simpler version of a PC to help fill out smaller groups.
As far as the original question. I tried running Horde of the Dragon Queen and found it to be a bit of a mess. (I have about 40 years of DM'ing experience, for context.) For a new DM, I'd recommend Lost Mines of Phandelver. its designed for new players, and new DMs, and its available free here on dndbeyond.
Tasha's section on sidekicks looks pretty useful, especially if they're just going to wind up needing someone in more of a support role instead of a direct combat one, but I'm trying to consider how much I should be doing in terms of the party's roleplaying. Parties I've played with, even experienced ones, seem to often to put a lot of stock into NPCs' words since they come from the DM, and NPCs generally exist to progress something about the plot. I don't want to wind up having them feel like I'm using this NPC to railroad them (or even to just shepherd them into any course of action in particular) or that the NPC's suggestions or words have more weight than theirs just because they're technically coming from the DM.
After reading through some of Hoard of the Dragon Queen last night, I can see what you mean. My DM on that one must have put in a fair bit of work on it because I remember it feeling a lot more streamlined and a bit more cohesive in the early chapters. I picked up Tyranny of Dragons specifically because it was kind of railroaded and I'm not 100% confident in my DM-ing skills to do something that is more open-ended like Storm King's Thunder or that's too light on story like Dungeon of the Mad Mage (as an example since I definitely wouldn't actually start them out with that).
I also have a feeling that this group isn't going to being running away and/or being stealthy, at least not until they're more accustomed to the game. I don't think they're going to see sneaking around and avoiding encounters as a viable and entertaining course of action in most cases and are going to want to engage any enemies the may come across.
I did find some notes online that might help with running the campaign though:
A cursory readthrough makes them seem like pretty viable changes both for cohesion and for better scaling of the combat.
EDIT: Sorry, I didn't expect the responses so quickly! I had deleted the post because I was trying to add to it but couldn't get the quote to merge and didn't want to double post.
The easy thing to do is reduce the number of creatures in a battle and, if they’re fighting a single big monster (like, I don’t know, TIAMAT!!), reduce the monster’s hit points and number of attacks to account for the fewer characters.
I have a couple of articles I’ve written that might help with this topic:
I'm a bit late to this, but there's a battle simulator here you can use to balance your encounters. Its by "Trekiros - Game Changer" on youtube, I haven't personally used it, but from what I've seen it seems like a good tool to give a test run. By the way, he made a video on it to explain it.
A simple explanation of it is that it can simulate encounters with your party. You can put in stats, class, subclass, feats, spells, etc, to make it as accurate as possible. Of course, it can't account for the crazy stuff players can come up with. You can save these characters on your computer so you don't have to put it all in again the next time you run it, apparently. Cool stuff. If I remember correctly, you can put in some homebrew as well? At least for the enemies.
I'm a bit late to this, but there's a battle simulator here you can use to balance your encounters. Its by "Trekiros - Game Changer" on youtube, I haven't personally used it, but from what I've seen it seems like a good tool to give a test run. By the way, he made a video on it to explain it.
A simple explanation of it is that it can simulate encounters with your party. You can put in stats, class, subclass, feats, spells, etc, to make it as accurate as possible. Of course, it can't account for the crazy stuff players can come up with. You can save these characters on your computer so you don't have to put it all in again the next time you run it, apparently. Cool stuff. If I remember correctly, you can put in some homebrew as well? At least for the enemies.
I know D&D Beyond has an encounter building tool as well, but I haven't tried it out very much. I think you may be required to own some of the books digitally on D&D Beyond in order to use some of the tools and enemies that come from those books though, and I don't own any of the books on here. I prefer to have them physically if I can just because I find them easier to read through that way.
Hello, all!
Just for a little bit of background info, I've played D&D for long enough to have a good understanding of the game mechanics from the players' side, but I'm a fledgling DM who has never tried to actually run a game. I've got a small group of three other people who have some general D&D knowledge from popular things like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role but have never actually played the game before. Since I already owned several of the various D&D sourcebooks, I went ahead and ordered Tyranny of Dragons so that we could try to run through an actual campaign instead of grabbing the Starter Set or anything. I chose that one since I played through Hoard of the Dragon Queen a couple of years ago, and I thought having a bit of familiarity with the campaign might make it easier for me to ease into running the games.
Tyranny of Dragons generally assumes your adventuring party is 4 players but says that you can tweak some of the encounters for larger or smaller parties. Since this is a group of three, relatively inexperienced players, I figured it would be worth trying to make the encounters a bit easier, especially early on since they also don't have any one who wanted to be a dedicated healer. I've read up on the theory about balancing encounters, but I'm not 100% sure I'd be able to do it for the entire campaign. While thinking about it and looking through some of my D&D books for other ideas, I saw that one of the blurbs in the opening pages of The Sunless Citadel (from Tales of the Yawning Portal) lists ways to tie it into the Forgotten Realms by saying it was an old Cult of the Dragon hideout which got me thinking about trying to incorporate that adventure into the campaign. I thought that if have the group run through The Sunless Citadel before starting Hoard of the Dragon Queen proper then that might be a way to give them a few extra levels for more HP and potential combat options instead of trying to balance all of the encounters.
Would it be feasible or at least relatively balanced to have the players just be 1 or 2 levels about the "expected" levels in the various chapters instead of trying to balance all of the encounters across the Tyranny of Dragons campaign?
If that wouldn't work, what is the best way to try to balance the premade encounters? Basically just remove enough enemies for the XP per battle to mostly correspond to the expected adventuring day XP for the three person party?
Thank you for any help!
You could also add some NPC adventurers to make up the numbers… a healing Cleric might make a good addition, with a mostly supporting role so as not to steal the limelight bit maybe help the party out of a jam occasionally, since they are not the most experienced players.
Netherlands, GMT +1 // “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.” — Bruce Lee
That's a good point, and it is an option, but I was a little worried about it because it felt like I might be walking a bit of a precarious ledge. I worry about trying to be a DM and be a player at the same time. But I think it might also be kind of weird trying to balance out exactly how much knowledge or whatever this character might have. With random NPCs that aren't constantly with the party, it doesn't seem too hard to just have them just know what's directly around them or whatever, but having an NPC that specifically travels with the group seems a little harder to separate out.
You could try to give the players a sidekick. They're detailed in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. basically, a simpler version of a PC to help fill out smaller groups.
As far as the original question. I tried running Horde of the Dragon Queen and found it to be a bit of a mess. (I have about 40 years of DM'ing experience, for context.) For a new DM, I'd recommend Lost Mines of Phandelver. its designed for new players, and new DMs, and its available free here on dndbeyond.
Since there's apparently a full Phandelver book coming here in a few months, I think I'd prefer to just go ahead and wait for that to start any of the Phandelver stuff as it might be easier to have things physically since I think we'll mostly be using pen and paper for playing (plus I just have an obsession with collecting some of the D&D books). That being said, do you think the newer Dragons of Stormwreck Isle Starter Set is an alright replacement?
And thank you! I'll check through that section in Tasha's Cauldron. Do you think just a single sidekick at a time would be enough for the most of the campaign or should I be ready to make several as we go along to either switch them out or supplement more to the party? Again, very new to DM-ing, so I'm still working out how to actually balance anything.
I can't speak to stormwreck isle, specifically, but its probably better than horde of the dragon queen. most folks who've run it have needed to modify it quite a bit to make it work, is the impression I get.
As far as sidekicks, I'd say if you identify a hole in their party composition, then usually, the sidekick can help fill it. Probably, story-wise it could be better to keep them in the party, and that also simplifies things for you. That said, it can be also be cool for a sidekick to leave and another one step in. If you try to give them a personality, maybe one decides to stay and help out in the town the party just saved, but, hey, turns out this guy was inspired and wants to join the group. It may work, or it may be contrived. The real question will be who runs it? You can, or if you think one of your players is up for it, they might take a crack at it. Then, they can incorporate the sidekick into their backstory, which really lends itself to that sidekick sticking around.
Dragon of Icespire Peak has instructions on how to adapt each of its quests for the size of the party. As an adventure, the narrative is lacking (although it works well enough with a party that is just taking odd jobs or full of do-gooders), but it does make balancing quite easy for you. It also has three follow up adventures that top it up to L13, if you want them.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I’ve heard of the kind of disjointed nature about Dragons of Icespire Peak, and that kind of put me off from it. Have you tired the follow ups here on D&D Beyond? If so, how are they? Are they a bit more narratively focused?
As a small aside, I’ve found that singular sidekicks really suck. I’d recommend instead creating a 4th PC that you let one of the players run. If all they need is healer / support, that’s perfect.
They're more of the same, to be honest. The adventure is fine, so long as you're not expecting a grand narrative - you're just a group of people helping out a town. Ironically, compared to LMoP, this actually worked in its favour. LMoP has encourages a narrative....but combined with the XP levelling system, it actually creates a jarring situation where characters are told how to rescue their friend and ate given the means that try, but aren't high enough level according to the quest's recommendations. They're given other quests to get the XP...but it doesn't make sense for them to do the ostensibly optional quests while their friend is captured. DoIP is more controlled so that doesn't really happen, it just doesn't have an obvious narrative arc to it. It's more obviously focused on new players and introducing them to D&D mechanics and what it can do rather than giving them a taster of a real campaign, if that makes sense.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Don't roleplay the extra characters. They're there purely to provide extra firepower and maybe a few skills. "Stan the Sidekick jumps forward, whacks the goblin on the head" or "Seeing the party struggle with the lock, Sue the Sidekick pushes forward, and quickly picks it, then stands back to let the party past" is sufficient. They're.not there to be a proper character, just to provide some extra boosts to help balance the party.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
The easy thing to do there, if you’re playing the NPC, is to not have them say anything. Tie it to one of the PCs backstories do it has a reason to be there. But do something like, the NPC was sent to help as an observer, but doesn’t have any personal motivations of its own or ideas about what to do next. Maybe it took a vow of silence for some reason.
I worry a little bit about them trying to manage an extra PC since 1) it makes it a bit awkward for role playing purposes and I'm still unsure how deep they plan to get into RPing in the game and 2) none of them have really played before and don't necessarily know what they're doing outside of theory of the game, so I think they'll need to learn to manage their own actions and combat beforehand. And like I said earlier, I'm worried about trying to make and role play a PC while also being DM since I'd have to consistently keep them separate mentally and not use my own knowledge of the story to influence actions or how I play them. I feel like it would be easier not to "game the system" for myself if I didn't, but I'm not necessarily against the idea if I end up needing to.
Tasha's section on sidekicks looks pretty useful, especially if they're just going to wind up needing someone in more of a support role instead of a direct combat one, but I'm trying to consider how much I should be doing in terms of the party's roleplaying. Parties I've played with, even experienced ones, seem to often to put a lot of stock into NPCs' words since they come from the DM, and NPCs generally exist to progress something about the plot. I don't want to wind up having them feel like I'm using this NPC to railroad them (or even to just shepherd them into any course of action in particular) or that the NPC's suggestions or words have more weight than theirs just because they're technically coming from the DM.
After reading through some of Hoard of the Dragon Queen last night, I can see what you mean. My DM on that one must have put in a fair bit of work on it because I remember it feeling a lot more streamlined and a bit more cohesive in the early chapters. I picked up Tyranny of Dragons specifically because it was kind of railroaded and I'm not 100% confident in my DM-ing skills to do something that is more open-ended like Storm King's Thunder or that's too light on story like Dungeon of the Mad Mage (as an example since I definitely wouldn't actually start them out with that).
I also have a feeling that this group isn't going to being running away and/or being stealthy, at least not until they're more accustomed to the game. I don't think they're going to see sneaking around and avoiding encounters as a viable and entertaining course of action in most cases and are going to want to engage any enemies the may come across.
I did find some notes online that might help with running the campaign though:
https://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/2014/10/tyranny-of-dragons-guide-to-hoard-of.html
A cursory readthrough makes them seem like pretty viable changes both for cohesion and for better scaling of the combat.
EDIT: Sorry, I didn't expect the responses so quickly! I had deleted the post because I was trying to add to it but couldn't get the quote to merge and didn't want to double post.
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InsiderThe easy thing to do is reduce the number of creatures in a battle and, if they’re fighting a single big monster (like, I don’t know, TIAMAT!!), reduce the monster’s hit points and number of attacks to account for the fewer characters.
I have a couple of articles I’ve written that might help with this topic:
Oh, that's your site! I actually just saved the pages for the Hoard of the Dragon Queen notes last night as well.
Thank you. Those are all very helpful pages.
I'm a bit late to this, but there's a battle simulator here you can use to balance your encounters. Its by "Trekiros - Game Changer" on youtube, I haven't personally used it, but from what I've seen it seems like a good tool to give a test run. By the way, he made a video on it to explain it.
A simple explanation of it is that it can simulate encounters with your party. You can put in stats, class, subclass, feats, spells, etc, to make it as accurate as possible. Of course, it can't account for the crazy stuff players can come up with. You can save these characters on your computer so you don't have to put it all in again the next time you run it, apparently. Cool stuff. If I remember correctly, you can put in some homebrew as well? At least for the enemies.
This is the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8FNVkFuhXI
https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/
Woah! That's actually a really cool tool!
I know D&D Beyond has an encounter building tool as well, but I haven't tried it out very much. I think you may be required to own some of the books digitally on D&D Beyond in order to use some of the tools and enemies that come from those books though, and I don't own any of the books on here. I prefer to have them physically if I can just because I find them easier to read through that way.