So our regular board game group decided to dive into the world of D&D. So I was nominated as the DM and I purchased the starter set. We will be playing this weekend and after hours and hours of reviewing the instruction manuals and online resources, I have a few questions. I know that they can all be found online, but it would kinda take me a lot of time to track all these questions down for answers. So I'm hoping some kind, experienced player would be willing to answer a few questions for me.
Q1: When do you get XP? Just on milestones? Goblins in the back of the manual do not have the "challenge XP" like other monsters do.
Q2: What happens when you level? Do you immediately get access to the new spells, abilities, health?
Q3: Looting corpses. How does that work? What do players find on a goblin corpse?
Q4: How does investigation work? Do they have to roll to be successful?
Q5: When creating a custom character on this website a ranger has 400 arrows! Yet one of the starting fighter characters comes with only 20 arrows. Is the starting equipment correct on the character creator?
Q6: In part 5 of the Goblin Arrows, the Goblin on the bridge has a javelin. How do I know what dmg he does? The back of the book says that they only carry scimitars and bows.
Q7: Can characters recover arrows? Are all arrows universal to all types of bows?
Q8: Do the starting characters know what a goblin and bugbear are? Do I call them by these names?
Q9: Can a character help another climb? How would that work?
Q1: When do you get XP? Just on milestones? Goblins in the back of the manual do not have the "challenge XP" like other monsters do.
At the end of each chapter/major encounter the LMoP adventure book will tell you how much XP to reward
Q2: What happens when you level? Do you immediately get access to the new spells, abilities, health?
exactly! if players get new spells then that is when they will pick them. For health, each time you gain a level, you gain 1 additional Hit Die. Roll that Hit Die, add your Constitution modifier to the roll, and add the total to your hit point maximum. Some DMs make the party rest before leveling up, some make them get away from any danger, some award it on the spot. it's really up to you.
Q3: Looting corpses. How does that work? What do players find on a goblin corpse?
This is optional and up to you! I'd sometimes let them find some copper on goblins, or other dumb things like teeth, an empty bottle, a tiny angry spider, etc.
Q4: How does investigation work? Do they have to roll to be successful?
Bingo! depending on what they are investigating, set a challenge number for yourself. For example: if someone wanted to kick in an old wooden door that would require a strength roll of 5. A sturdier wooden and locked door? maybe 10. A metal door? 15-20. Its really up to you and what you want the outcome to be based on their rolls
Q5: When creating a custom character on this website a ranger has 400 arrows! Yet one of the starting fighter characters comes with only 20 arrows. Is the starting equipment correct on the character creator?
That definitely sounds off. Everyone usually starts with a quiver of 20 arrows
Q6: In part 5 of the Goblin Arrows, the Goblin on the bridge has a javelin. How do I know what dmg he does? The back of the book says that they only carry scimitars and bows.
in this case just look up the damage by a javelin and if the goblin has a + to attack
Damage: 1d6
Damage Type: Piercing
Item Rarity: Standard
Properties: Range, Thrown
Range: 30/120
Q7: Can characters recover arrows? Are all arrows universal to all types of bows?
If you want them too, yes. My DM has us roll for it. above 10 and we recover so many, under 10 and recover less. Obviously they'll almost never recollect them all as arrows can break on impact or when removed
Q8: Do the starting characters know what a goblin and bugbear are? Do I call them by these names?
In the world of fantasy it would be assumed they have seen or at least heard of them. You can call them by that. It may help your players to even describe what they look like.
On that note, this is where the fun of roleplaying really shines. Maybe the player's character HASN'T heard of a bugbear. Let the character react to that and see where the story goes :)
Q9: Can a character help another climb? How would that work?
Sure! They can either try to inspire the character or even maybe offer to give them a boost. In this case have the player roll with advantage. Advantage is when you roll 2 D20's and take the higher roll. On that note, disadvantage is when you take the lower roll
It can definitely be a little confusing at first but you picked the best starter AND the best place to ask for advice! I hope your group has a great time
It really happens lol. I told the rogue she found a tiny angry spider in a dead goblin pocket and she decided to keep it. I didn't think anything of it until they were later interrogating a redbrand thug. Everything they rolled to intimidate to get an answer out him was terrible until the rogue pulled this tiny spider out of her pocket, placed it in front of the thug, and told him to tell her what he knew or she'd feed him to the spider. Nat. 20. This man was unafraid of anything.. except bugs. The party loved it, we all had a good laugh. All because of a dumb random thing I placed as a loot item.
For Q2 it's up to the DM, most groups i play with handle level ups on long rest. If your group is having trouble you could go with immediate level or on short rest level. Leveling on rest helps keep momentum going because people can ask questions and or look things up without interrupting the action.
For Q9 other ways to help would be knotting the rope(might lower the DC for everyone using the rope), or pointing out good hand/foot holds(I'd rule this as the help action granting advantage on the roll)
1. You principally have 2 options. a) milestone: whenever the players achieve something important in the narrative. this allows you to pace their progress more directly and not worry about maths. b) monster/encounter/roleplaying: each monster is worth an amount dependent on its challenge rating (they just need to thwart the monster(s) not necessarily kill every last single one of them). add them up, divide by the number of players... add something for the encounters, clever thinking, roleplaying (of you want) and give them a total each. They then track. It's granular and requires book keeping. Regardless you usually reward at the end of the session. This means if they level, they can handle that between sessions. I recommend milestone to start. 2-3 sessions to get to level 2. Similarly to get to level 3. Maybe 3-4 sessions for level 4. And so on. What's important here is not rushing ahead to make those levels whizz by for new character abilities, nor to go at a crawl and have them stay at level 2 for 10 sessions. The importance is to reward them achieving the namesake "milestones" that drive forward the adventure and narrative.
2. Yep. Which is why doing it between sessions feels more natural than doing it mid encounter or combat. Of course, you are totally within your rights to insist that everyone level up in a moment in your game (say a 3 month sea journey)... because narratively it feels right that they would have earned something "off camera". This is rare though, and few DMs would do this. Between sessions. Have them roll HP (if you're going to do that) openly in front of everyone before packing up for the night.
3. Whatever you think is appropriate. Don't sweat the small stuff. Typically: horrible smelly broken armor, a rustic splintered spear, a couple of keepsakes (a painted rock or pine corn), and whatever smattering of coins (or other tradeable item that species may prefer, civilised money isn't universal). You can generally hand wave this and say something like: "You search the goblins and find [roll 1d6 per goblin behind your screen] 27 silver pieces total. You can also control this narratively: is there a clue (like a map to the goblin hideout) that is on the leader, then that's important to find; did they just loot a caravan and are flushed with gold "you find a pouch of 68 gold in a leather bag with the crest of a well-know merchant". Now they have a decision to make, return the gold, remove the gold from the bag, keep the bag and the gold (which you will then have someone recognise that bag later in town), leave the gold... etc.
4. Good question. DMs can differ on this. This is how I do it. I want the players to get the clue to continue the adventure. what you don't want is for them to fail the roll and then your game dead ends. Their question is "Where must we go next?" The quality of the answer is dependent on how well they roll, so on the fly (or prewritten if its super important) I'll record answers at DC5, DC10, DC15, DC20 and DC25+. The higher they get the more I will tell them. The great thing about RPGs is that you almost cannot tell a bunch of players too much. They'll still misunderstand, mishear, argue amongst themselves, extrapolate, and muddle your perfectly clear answer. Example: "Where must we go next?" revealed by an Int Investigation check of a burgled office. DC5 "By the wet footprints, you reckon the docks or maybe the river bank". DC10 "You notice the drying footprints, and the slight bit of mud scraped against the overturned carpet, you're sure its the river bank." DC15 "The muddy footprints, it's the riverbank... but specifically that part near the waterfall where the earth is almost black" DC20 "They came from the waterfall a few miles outside of town on the riverbank... the black mud is still moist between your fingers... you reckon there were at least 4 of them in this room." DC25 "There were four of them in the room, but the size of children or halflings, light on their feet. The moist black mud between your fingers points, suggest they were in this room no less than a half day. You've seen that black mud before, from the sides of a waterfall a few miles up the riverbank. Thing is it takes 2 days to get there from town. They're most likely still in town."
5. Shrug. Don't know. Not a biggy. Just buy more arrows for the fighter, remove arrows from the ranger, whatever makes sense in your world. 400 arrows certainly sounds like a lot.
6. Look up a javelin in the PHB. It does 1d6 piercing. You may want to give him 1, 2 or 3 javelins - as opposed to infinite javelins.
7. Up to you. Most DMs allow it with a roll. If a player remembers to ask I allow them to roll a dice vaguely indicative of half the number of arrows they shot. If they shot 10 arrows, roll a d6 and that's how many you recover. Yet again... this isn't incredibly important unless you have narrative reasons for them to be concerned with ammunition (long overland treks through hostile territory where someone is actively fletching at camp at night etc). Are the universal... they certainly are by a rules standpoint... again, this is intense detail that most likely won't lead to amazing roleplaying experiences. Of course, some players love book keeping... and some DMs insist. It is up to you if you want to segregate arrows by type.
8. Another good question. So players have backgrounds and that background should be suggestive of what they have experienced in their character lives before sitting down at the table. If a PC has a noble background he may never have seen a Galeb Duhr, but he may have heard tales in court. Of course your player can say his noble character often travelled the Kings Wood by horseback and so of course knows what an Owlbear is. If DM and PC cannot easily agree on what another knows (and keep in mind, the more a player knows the more options there are for them)... then you can ask for an Int Nature check, or Int Arcana... to see if they know anything about the beast or weird magical monster. When it comes to describing them, I'd also recommend going for the full description the first few times just so you can paint a picture in everyone's minds. In time, you can shorthand those 5 lines into "bugbear"... but starting with just the "name" is going to work against you if you haven't described the thing. Plus descriptions of teeth gnashing, eye rolling, fur roiling, saliva dripping... are fun.
9. Yep. Rules wise... all characters can help another and provide advantage to a single player's roll. I forget if they also need to be proficient in the same skill too, I hand wave it. If it makes sense then sure. With regards climbing it depends on what they are climbing - a tree, a wall, a cliff, rigging on a ship. I'd mostly ask for the more experienced climber to get to the top, and shout down instructions, lower a rope, and otherwise direct the lesser climber (and provide the lesser climber advantage while the more experience is engaged in helping) - but if that is impossible and they have to climb together, then perhaps the experienced climber is just in the lead, showing where the foot and hand holds are, clipping the lesser climber in at crucial points or even taking a little of their weight. And even if they fail, I won't have them plummet to damage, but instead have them reach the top exhausted, which is condition type that penalises PCs rolls.
At this point it is not up to you to imagine how it works, but rather how your players explain to you what they are doing. If it sounds reasonable (and its more fun to say "yes, and.., " than "no, but...") you can say sure, get advantage. Just try to be consistent with how you are awarding advantage with help.
As with all things, there is a narrative concern as to why there is something to climb. Like the investigation check if the climb cannot be achieved, and the adventure cannily continue unless the players can reach the top, then you have an issue. Is there a longer and slower way up? Is there another way but it has monsters? Is there a consequence to not making it today, but they can try again tomorrow... but suffer an attack by a pack of wild dogs in the night? And lastly, if they absolutely need to get up, have ropes, crampons, climbing gear, good conditions, patience... don't even require a roll... just say it takes several hours.
Rule for drama. Roll for memories. If there isn't a meaningful failure condition, do not roll. Ever. (Perception checks, I'm .... clunk, roll, roll, roll, stop... 14, looking at you... maybe?)
5. My guess is that when you added arrows to the ranger, you put 20 in the quantity amount, not realizing that 1 means “1 quiver of 20 arrows.”
7. Somewhere in the rules I think it says that if you choose to recover arrows after a fight, you recover half of those you shot. (Actually, it is in the equipment description for arrows here). That’s what I do. Other DMs do other things
Also, don’t sweat getting all the rules at first. It’s a good rule of thumb to be comfortable saying in the midst of play “For the moment, I’m going to rule it this way. After this session I’ll look through the rules and let you know if I’ll handle it this way or a different way going forward.” It’s also o.k. To decide to set aside some of the rules initially. I felt overwhelmed with the rules when I first started DMing, so I didn’t use the encumbrance, reaction, or opportunity attack rules at first. I’ve added back everything but encumbrance since. Note, though, that sometimes setting aside some rules can have a major affect on certain characters: ignoring reactions, for example, ****** our Rogue. We made some adjustments to her features to account for that until I felt able to handle reactions. (Which weren’t as hard as they sounded)
Finally, if you are running Lost Mines of Phandelver and using the pre-generated characters that come with it, make sure that you as DM read all the backgrounds of those characters. If someone plays the rogue, think through how that background affects certain aspects of the adventure. If you would like to know how I handled it, send me PM, and I’ll fill you in.
Thanks for all the great info guys! We had a great time.
Our fighter was really hurt by one of the wolfs, took a huge bite outa him. So I said that he bit off the fighters balls. The cleric immediately heals the fighter so of course his balls are back on and fine. Then our other fighter (wife of other player) decides to loot the wolf corpse, and she finds two balls in the wolf's mouth. Laughter erupts. Well then I did not expect this... She decides she wants to attempt to sew his balls back on. Well, me the novice DM I am, asks her tif she has any type of skill for that, and tell her to make an intelligence check (while making up an insanely difficult check). Well low and behold, she rolls a 20! (now I know that crit 20's are not for skill checks) but I hadn't prepared for the possibility of it. So ... she successfully managed to sew back his balls, and now our fighter is walking around with 4 balls. We must've laughed a good 20 minutes at this ridiculous scenario. I can't wait to continue the adventure.
And boy, you aren't kidding, players will do the dumbest shit, even though you spell it out for them! My players want to head off to Cragmaw castle and they haven't the slightest clue what direction to even go! I'm trying to figure out how to handle that one. Poor Sildar is still sitting there on the bring of death, and they are just interrogating him.
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So our regular board game group decided to dive into the world of D&D. So I was nominated as the DM and I purchased the starter set. We will be playing this weekend and after hours and hours of reviewing the instruction manuals and online resources, I have a few questions. I know that they can all be found online, but it would kinda take me a lot of time to track all these questions down for answers. So I'm hoping some kind, experienced player would be willing to answer a few questions for me.
Q1: When do you get XP? Just on milestones? Goblins in the back of the manual do not have the "challenge XP" like other monsters do.
Q2: What happens when you level? Do you immediately get access to the new spells, abilities, health?
Q3: Looting corpses. How does that work? What do players find on a goblin corpse?
Q4: How does investigation work? Do they have to roll to be successful?
Q5: When creating a custom character on this website a ranger has 400 arrows! Yet one of the starting fighter characters comes with only 20 arrows. Is the starting equipment correct on the character creator?
Q6: In part 5 of the Goblin Arrows, the Goblin on the bridge has a javelin. How do I know what dmg he does? The back of the book says that they only carry scimitars and bows.
Q7: Can characters recover arrows? Are all arrows universal to all types of bows?
Q8: Do the starting characters know what a goblin and bugbear are? Do I call them by these names?
Q9: Can a character help another climb? How would that work?
First off, Welcome to D&D!
Q1: When do you get XP? Just on milestones? Goblins in the back of the manual do not have the "challenge XP" like other monsters do.
At the end of each chapter/major encounter the LMoP adventure book will tell you how much XP to reward
Q2: What happens when you level? Do you immediately get access to the new spells, abilities, health?
exactly! if players get new spells then that is when they will pick them. For health, each time you gain a level, you gain 1 additional Hit Die. Roll that Hit Die, add your Constitution modifier to the roll, and add the total to your hit point maximum. Some DMs make the party rest before leveling up, some make them get away from any danger, some award it on the spot. it's really up to you.
Q3: Looting corpses. How does that work? What do players find on a goblin corpse?
This is optional and up to you! I'd sometimes let them find some copper on goblins, or other dumb things like teeth, an empty bottle, a tiny angry spider, etc.
Q4: How does investigation work? Do they have to roll to be successful?
Bingo! depending on what they are investigating, set a challenge number for yourself. For example: if someone wanted to kick in an old wooden door that would require a strength roll of 5. A sturdier wooden and locked door? maybe 10. A metal door? 15-20. Its really up to you and what you want the outcome to be based on their rolls
Q5: When creating a custom character on this website a ranger has 400 arrows! Yet one of the starting fighter characters comes with only 20 arrows. Is the starting equipment correct on the character creator?
That definitely sounds off. Everyone usually starts with a quiver of 20 arrows
Q6: In part 5 of the Goblin Arrows, the Goblin on the bridge has a javelin. How do I know what dmg he does? The back of the book says that they only carry scimitars and bows.
in this case just look up the damage by a javelin and if the goblin has a + to attack
Q7: Can characters recover arrows? Are all arrows universal to all types of bows?
If you want them too, yes. My DM has us roll for it. above 10 and we recover so many, under 10 and recover less. Obviously they'll almost never recollect them all as arrows can break on impact or when removed
Q8: Do the starting characters know what a goblin and bugbear are? Do I call them by these names?
In the world of fantasy it would be assumed they have seen or at least heard of them. You can call them by that. It may help your players to even describe what they look like.
On that note, this is where the fun of roleplaying really shines. Maybe the player's character HASN'T heard of a bugbear. Let the character react to that and see where the story goes :)
Q9: Can a character help another climb? How would that work?
Sure! They can either try to inspire the character or even maybe offer to give them a boost. In this case have the player roll with advantage. Advantage is when you roll 2 D20's and take the higher roll. On that note, disadvantage is when you take the lower roll
It can definitely be a little confusing at first but you picked the best starter AND the best place to ask for advice! I hope your group has a great time
Full of rice, beans, and bad ideas.
Thank you so much! I really like the idea of them finding useful stuff on goblin corpses. Maybe they will think "oh that might be useful later". haha.
It really happens lol. I told the rogue she found a tiny angry spider in a dead goblin pocket and she decided to keep it. I didn't think anything of it until they were later interrogating a redbrand thug. Everything they rolled to intimidate to get an answer out him was terrible until the rogue pulled this tiny spider out of her pocket, placed it in front of the thug, and told him to tell her what he knew or she'd feed him to the spider. Nat. 20. This man was unafraid of anything.. except bugs. The party loved it, we all had a good laugh. All because of a dumb random thing I placed as a loot item.
Full of rice, beans, and bad ideas.
For Q2 it's up to the DM, most groups i play with handle level ups on long rest. If your group is having trouble you could go with immediate level or on short rest level. Leveling on rest helps keep momentum going because people can ask questions and or look things up without interrupting the action.
For Q9 other ways to help would be knotting the rope(might lower the DC for everyone using the rope), or pointing out good hand/foot holds(I'd rule this as the help action granting advantage on the roll)
1. You principally have 2 options.
a) milestone: whenever the players achieve something important in the narrative. this allows you to pace their progress more directly and not worry about maths.
b) monster/encounter/roleplaying: each monster is worth an amount dependent on its challenge rating (they just need to thwart the monster(s) not necessarily kill every last single one of them). add them up, divide by the number of players... add something for the encounters, clever thinking, roleplaying (of you want) and give them a total each. They then track. It's granular and requires book keeping.
Regardless you usually reward at the end of the session. This means if they level, they can handle that between sessions. I recommend milestone to start. 2-3 sessions to get to level 2. Similarly to get to level 3. Maybe 3-4 sessions for level 4. And so on. What's important here is not rushing ahead to make those levels whizz by for new character abilities, nor to go at a crawl and have them stay at level 2 for 10 sessions. The importance is to reward them achieving the namesake "milestones" that drive forward the adventure and narrative.
2. Yep. Which is why doing it between sessions feels more natural than doing it mid encounter or combat. Of course, you are totally within your rights to insist that everyone level up in a moment in your game (say a 3 month sea journey)... because narratively it feels right that they would have earned something "off camera". This is rare though, and few DMs would do this. Between sessions. Have them roll HP (if you're going to do that) openly in front of everyone before packing up for the night.
3. Whatever you think is appropriate. Don't sweat the small stuff. Typically: horrible smelly broken armor, a rustic splintered spear, a couple of keepsakes (a painted rock or pine corn), and whatever smattering of coins (or other tradeable item that species may prefer, civilised money isn't universal). You can generally hand wave this and say something like: "You search the goblins and find [roll 1d6 per goblin behind your screen] 27 silver pieces total. You can also control this narratively: is there a clue (like a map to the goblin hideout) that is on the leader, then that's important to find; did they just loot a caravan and are flushed with gold "you find a pouch of 68 gold in a leather bag with the crest of a well-know merchant". Now they have a decision to make, return the gold, remove the gold from the bag, keep the bag and the gold (which you will then have someone recognise that bag later in town), leave the gold... etc.
4. Good question. DMs can differ on this. This is how I do it. I want the players to get the clue to continue the adventure. what you don't want is for them to fail the roll and then your game dead ends. Their question is "Where must we go next?" The quality of the answer is dependent on how well they roll, so on the fly (or prewritten if its super important) I'll record answers at DC5, DC10, DC15, DC20 and DC25+. The higher they get the more I will tell them. The great thing about RPGs is that you almost cannot tell a bunch of players too much. They'll still misunderstand, mishear, argue amongst themselves, extrapolate, and muddle your perfectly clear answer. Example: "Where must we go next?" revealed by an Int Investigation check of a burgled office.
DC5 "By the wet footprints, you reckon the docks or maybe the river bank".
DC10 "You notice the drying footprints, and the slight bit of mud scraped against the overturned carpet, you're sure its the river bank."
DC15 "The muddy footprints, it's the riverbank... but specifically that part near the waterfall where the earth is almost black"
DC20 "They came from the waterfall a few miles outside of town on the riverbank... the black mud is still moist between your fingers... you reckon there were at least 4 of them in this room."
DC25 "There were four of them in the room, but the size of children or halflings, light on their feet. The moist black mud between your fingers points, suggest they were in this room no less than a half day. You've seen that black mud before, from the sides of a waterfall a few miles up the riverbank. Thing is it takes 2 days to get there from town. They're most likely still in town."
5. Shrug. Don't know. Not a biggy. Just buy more arrows for the fighter, remove arrows from the ranger, whatever makes sense in your world. 400 arrows certainly sounds like a lot.
6. Look up a javelin in the PHB. It does 1d6 piercing. You may want to give him 1, 2 or 3 javelins - as opposed to infinite javelins.
7. Up to you. Most DMs allow it with a roll. If a player remembers to ask I allow them to roll a dice vaguely indicative of half the number of arrows they shot. If they shot 10 arrows, roll a d6 and that's how many you recover. Yet again... this isn't incredibly important unless you have narrative reasons for them to be concerned with ammunition (long overland treks through hostile territory where someone is actively fletching at camp at night etc). Are the universal... they certainly are by a rules standpoint... again, this is intense detail that most likely won't lead to amazing roleplaying experiences. Of course, some players love book keeping... and some DMs insist. It is up to you if you want to segregate arrows by type.
8. Another good question. So players have backgrounds and that background should be suggestive of what they have experienced in their character lives before sitting down at the table. If a PC has a noble background he may never have seen a Galeb Duhr, but he may have heard tales in court. Of course your player can say his noble character often travelled the Kings Wood by horseback and so of course knows what an Owlbear is. If DM and PC cannot easily agree on what another knows (and keep in mind, the more a player knows the more options there are for them)... then you can ask for an Int Nature check, or Int Arcana... to see if they know anything about the beast or weird magical monster. When it comes to describing them, I'd also recommend going for the full description the first few times just so you can paint a picture in everyone's minds. In time, you can shorthand those 5 lines into "bugbear"... but starting with just the "name" is going to work against you if you haven't described the thing. Plus descriptions of teeth gnashing, eye rolling, fur roiling, saliva dripping... are fun.
9. Yep. Rules wise... all characters can help another and provide advantage to a single player's roll. I forget if they also need to be proficient in the same skill too, I hand wave it. If it makes sense then sure. With regards climbing it depends on what they are climbing - a tree, a wall, a cliff, rigging on a ship. I'd mostly ask for the more experienced climber to get to the top, and shout down instructions, lower a rope, and otherwise direct the lesser climber (and provide the lesser climber advantage while the more experience is engaged in helping) - but if that is impossible and they have to climb together, then perhaps the experienced climber is just in the lead, showing where the foot and hand holds are, clipping the lesser climber in at crucial points or even taking a little of their weight. And even if they fail, I won't have them plummet to damage, but instead have them reach the top exhausted, which is condition type that penalises PCs rolls.
At this point it is not up to you to imagine how it works, but rather how your players explain to you what they are doing. If it sounds reasonable (and its more fun to say "yes, and.., " than "no, but...") you can say sure, get advantage. Just try to be consistent with how you are awarding advantage with help.
As with all things, there is a narrative concern as to why there is something to climb. Like the investigation check if the climb cannot be achieved, and the adventure cannily continue unless the players can reach the top, then you have an issue. Is there a longer and slower way up? Is there another way but it has monsters? Is there a consequence to not making it today, but they can try again tomorrow... but suffer an attack by a pack of wild dogs in the night? And lastly, if they absolutely need to get up, have ropes, crampons, climbing gear, good conditions, patience... don't even require a roll... just say it takes several hours.
good luck.
Rule for drama. Roll for memories.
If there isn't a meaningful failure condition, do not roll. Ever. (Perception checks, I'm .... clunk, roll, roll, roll, stop... 14, looking at you... maybe?)
5. My guess is that when you added arrows to the ranger, you put 20 in the quantity amount, not realizing that 1 means “1 quiver of 20 arrows.”
7. Somewhere in the rules I think it says that if you choose to recover arrows after a fight, you recover half of those you shot. (Actually, it is in the equipment description for arrows here). That’s what I do. Other DMs do other things
Also, don’t sweat getting all the rules at first. It’s a good rule of thumb to be comfortable saying in the midst of play “For the moment, I’m going to rule it this way. After this session I’ll look through the rules and let you know if I’ll handle it this way or a different way going forward.” It’s also o.k. To decide to set aside some of the rules initially. I felt overwhelmed with the rules when I first started DMing, so I didn’t use the encumbrance, reaction, or opportunity attack rules at first. I’ve added back everything but encumbrance since. Note, though, that sometimes setting aside some rules can have a major affect on certain characters: ignoring reactions, for example, ****** our Rogue. We made some adjustments to her features to account for that until I felt able to handle reactions. (Which weren’t as hard as they sounded)
Finally, if you are running Lost Mines of Phandelver and using the pre-generated characters that come with it, make sure that you as DM read all the backgrounds of those characters. If someone plays the rogue, think through how that background affects certain aspects of the adventure. If you would like to know how I handled it, send me PM, and I’ll fill you in.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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Thanks for all the great info guys! We had a great time.
Our fighter was really hurt by one of the wolfs, took a huge bite outa him. So I said that he bit off the fighters balls. The cleric immediately heals the fighter so of course his balls are back on and fine. Then our other fighter (wife of other player) decides to loot the wolf corpse, and she finds two balls in the wolf's mouth. Laughter erupts. Well then I did not expect this... She decides she wants to attempt to sew his balls back on. Well, me the novice DM I am, asks her tif she has any type of skill for that, and tell her to make an intelligence check (while making up an insanely difficult check). Well low and behold, she rolls a 20! (now I know that crit 20's are not for skill checks) but I hadn't prepared for the possibility of it. So ... she successfully managed to sew back his balls, and now our fighter is walking around with 4 balls. We must've laughed a good 20 minutes at this ridiculous scenario. I can't wait to continue the adventure.
And boy, you aren't kidding, players will do the dumbest shit, even though you spell it out for them! My players want to head off to Cragmaw castle and they haven't the slightest clue what direction to even go! I'm trying to figure out how to handle that one. Poor Sildar is still sitting there on the bring of death, and they are just interrogating him.