r/LostMinesOfPhandelver

My players are almost here, and I'm looking for how it went for others.

What was fun? What was a pain? What advice do you wish you'd gotten?

Hello everyone, I’m running DnD for the first time and chose Lost Mine of Phandelver – The Shattered Obelisk for my group.

I felt that Sister Garaele’s quest was a bit too simple and flat: “Take the comb and bring it to the banshee.” So I expanded it, and I’d love to hear what you think of the idea:

First, the tragic backstory:

The story revolves around a deadly love triangle within the noble Tresendar family, who once lived in the manor in Phandalin. “Marius Tresendar” was having an affair with an elf named “Agatha” from Conyberry. Wanting to get rid of his troublesome lover, Marius acquired a “poisoned silver comb” as a supposed gift for her. But the plan failed horribly: his wife, “Angelique Tresendar,” uncovered the affair and discovered the hidden gift. In an act of spite — or perhaps ignorance — she wore the comb herself during an evening celebration to show her husband that she knew about his “little whore.” Angelique died from the poison in the comb.

Marius, consumed by guilt and unable to confess the truth, blamed Agatha and sent his knights to murder her. Agatha was slain in the woods near her cottage and returned as a hate-filled banshee.

How the players uncover the story:

The heroes can slowly piece together the plot while exploring Tresendar Manor:

1. In the crypt:

Inside Angelique’s sarcophagus, they find her remains together with the silver comb and a tender note from Marius — though, with what the players now know, the message carries a dark double meaning. Marius had secretly arranged a hidden room in the manor for his meetings with Agatha, and the note reads:

“My dearest, I have left a special comb and several other useful items for you in the room behind the NUMEROUS ANIMALS. I look forward to holding you in my arms again soon. — Marius”

Marius himself now lies as dust and bones in his own coffin, separated forever from the woman he indirectly murdered.

2. The hidden room:

The players searched for the manor’s secret room and eventually found it hidden behind a painting. (They had to solve a small puzzle from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything by counting animals in seven paintings and using the numbers to spell out the word PEGASUS.)

Inside the room, the players find an empty jewelry box for the comb on a bed, as well as Angelique’s final letter. In it, she confronts her husband about his betrayal and declares that she will wear the comb so he understands that she knows everything. There are also one or two simple magical artifacts hidden there.

3. Meeting Agatha in Conyberry:

When the party visits Agatha in her forest cottage, they first discover the corpses of three long-dead knights bearing the Tresendar crest. Once the players meet Agatha and hand over the comb and letters, she finally realizes the true extent of Marius’s betrayal. Agatha explains that the three knights had been sent by Marius to kill her. She was supposed to wear that horrible comb. She was supposed to rot and die from it!

Resolution and reward:

Agatha’s hatred begins to fade, and she becomes calmer, now understanding that Marius dragged not just one, but two women to their deaths. As thanks for uncovering the truth of her fate, she answers one or two important questions for the heroes — such as the location of Bowgentle’s spellbook or the secret entrance to Wave Echo Cave.

Hey!

So I'm running a LMoP campaign, as my second time DM'ing ever. It's HEAVILY homebrewed and I've added a lot more meat to it, improvising to adapt the story after seeing what my players enjoy doing the most. They did things in very different order (Ambush - Phandalin - Old owl well - conyberry - cragmaw castle - redbrands - thundertree), and are now returning from Thundertree to put all the puzzlepieces together for the final push into Wave Echo Cave.

My plan is basically to have a goblin warband raid Phandalin while they're preparing to go to WEC, we're talking massive fight involving the party and the npcs in town. It's the last push from the remaining goblins, being sent by (a now VERY deceased) Glasstaff, armed with a kinda supermutant serum making them mutate into shortlived but strong mutants.

The last part of the raid will be a bossfight against a very resident evil inspired massive orc mutant, sent as a last resort.

MY QUESTION: How do I balance a massive fight with like, 30-40 goblins total, 10 ish phandalin militia and sildar, gundren etc, and without it taking a hundred years to finish? I've never done a large scale battle like that.

I want it to feel epic, they've been harassed by goblins this whole campaign. We're talking doomslayer style mowing down goblins left and right. The main fight is the acutal orc mutant.

Any feedback is appreciated, it's a big moment in the campaign.

Lost Mine of Phandelver is the most common starting module for new DMs, and Phandelver and Below extends the story significantly. The problem is that resources for both modules are scattered across a dozen different sites, with wildly varying quality.

I put together a single reference page for both campaigns, covering:

• Third-party supplements on DMsGuild that add encounter content, expanded location maps, and additional NPC development
• Map resources (player-facing and DM-reference)
• Tools that help with the hex-crawl sections in Phandelver and Below specifically
• Prep guides for the tonal shift between LMoP (classic fantasy) and PBTSO (cosmic horror)

The tonal shift section took me longest to research. PBTSO assumes players already have LMoP attachment to the region, and several of the supplements help bridge that transition in ways the book doesn't fully address.

If you are interested in the resource list it is in the comments.

Dm pov: learning the final cave and it seems really long an difficult. A few healing spells and potions won't last after a few battles.

Taking short rests may work in a few places (like room [7]).

How would you handle long rests? 8 hours in such a cave should be very dangerous

I have simulated the battle with my players (Paladin, Barbarian, wizard and Rogue). I assume they all get hit with the breath weapon unless they win initiative (after all, Venomfang isn't stupid). After the breath attack, I try to play the survivors cleverly, as my players are generally experienced players and 2 of them are strategic thinkers (though 2 of them are not). In about 50% of the simulations, they all die. In the other 50%, they barely survive with Venomfang running away after taking half his HP in damage.

Was this encounter really meant for four, level 3 players? 3 out of my players have very high constitution (even the wizard), which is why the dragon breath doesn't take nearly all of them out in most simulations (usually it takes out 1 or 2 of them out). No player in my party has the hit points to take the full 42 points of poison damage.

Perhaps I should assume my players will be clever, but outsmarting a green dragon isn't a safe bet.

I am currently prepping the Venomfang encounter. My party will be dealing with him after the forge of spells so I've beefed him up a little. I've also been foreshadowing the goblin cult (psi goblins) a bit.

I just had the idea that Venomfang is initially disgusted by the aberrant nature of the goblin cult, but if the party beats on him and he escapes, perhaps he is drawn in by the promise of power and his anger to have his vengeance upon the party, turning him into an ELDER BRAIN DRAGON *cue Bloodborne music*

Has anyone done this? And how did it work for you? I feel like dragons would be disgusted by illithids, but Venomfang is young and may be embittered by a loss to the party, making him more susceptible to illithid influence?

Hello everyone,

I've been lingering and asking questions is this subreddit for a while but my campaign is going to begin this Saturday. My group have been playing together a long time and we play every 2 weeks (we swap weekly with another game also running on Saturday). My plan is to play P&B: TSO till level 12 as intended and then switch over to V:EOR but keep the characters at level 12. I've planned some interconnected webs between the stories (mostly just how Vecna has influence in P&B: TSO). I was wondering what advice everyone had from their own games. Anything to really look out for or mistakes you made? All advice is appreciated.

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Hey all,
I’m DMing for a party of 7 and I was wondering if anyone has tips to rebalance the enemies to avoid the players feeling invincible.
We had a session 0 with Gundren asking the players to escort him to the crypt of a wizard and retrieve the puzzle box.
The combat went well only thanks to the legendary and lair actions I gave to the specter, but I assume that the party would steamroll the goblins in Goblin Arrows and beyond.
So, any tips&tricks?

Thanks

Hey everyone, I need some narrative advice and brainstorming help for my campaign. My party just finished clearing out Wave Echo Cave and reclaiming the Forge of Spells.

However, during their single-minded pursuit of the main mission, they completely ignored the quest hook to go deal with Agatha the Banshee on behalf of Sister Garaele. To make the world feel alive and consequential, I put up a bulletin board notice in Phandalin stating that Sister Garaele has gone missing because she eventually went out to the woods to handle it herself. The party intends to investigate her disappearance next session.

Once they resolve Garaele's missing person plot, I want to transition them into the heist module Masterpiece Imbroglio from Keys to the Golden Vault.

For those unfamiliar with the hiest, the party is hired by an academic society (the Cognoscenti Esoterica) to infiltrate a thieves' guild called the Agile Hand. The goal is to steal back Constantori's Portrait which is a sentient, Lawful Evil magic painting that loves to eavesdrop and collect dangerous secrets.

My Initial Idea:

I want to tie the painting into something where the Harpers are trying to find the location of a Lich's phylactery but I am having trouble connecting all the dots. My thought is that Constantori’s Portrait isn’t just a sentient magic item, but a cleverly disguised phylactery. But the module explicitly mentions the portrait eavesdrops especially on political conversations,so maybe it is just the only source of Avery valuable piece of information to the Harpers?

I am trying to figure out:

What does Agatha know about this portrait/phylactery?

Why did Garaele going out to see Agatha cause her to go missing or end up in a possession/stasis situation?

How can I use Garaele's current situation to give the party a incentive to go pull off this art heist?

I’m highly open to other ideas or variations if the lich angle is not a good one. How would you stitch these elements together?

Thanks in advance for the help!

In my last PROPER session, the party rescued an unconscious but stable Gundren from King Grol. The follow up session, only 3 out of 5 players could make it, so I spun off a little side quest because I didn't want the story to fully progress without the whole party.

I gave my players two options to recover some herbs that could be used to make a tincture to help Gundren recover. Option A was seek out the druid Reidoth for a more social encounter and options B was to journey into Neverwinter Woods towards a known area of the goblin cult (the psi goblins, I've been dropping little hints about them, and one of my players was absent since the killing of Glasstaff, and returned recently. I wrote it as she was captured by the goblin cult. She made some pretty poor rolls to recall information about them, but she knows they had other captives and were performing strange rituals on them. She escaped, with the help of several Cragmaw goblins, and she wandered the woods until Reidoth encountered her and set her on the path to Phandalin) for a more combat focused encounter. I was hoping they would take the combat focused encounter, but they went towards Thundertree and Reidoth.

They had a really good encounter with Reidoth, who they all seem to really like. Reidoth explained that a dragon had recently taken roost in Thundertree, and with it, the emergence of a Dragon Cult. I removed the twig blight stuff from Thundertree and I had loose plans for the cult, but mostly I was just winging it. Due to this, the cult definitely came off more dumb and unprepared than I would have liked them to, and I let my party know that when they return, the Dragon Cult may be a bit more cunning and devious.

Regardless, they did some good socializing. Our goblin rogue fed all the guard dogs little bits of meat, so they may not respond with hostility if the party tries to sneak in at some point. The party learned that the cult thinks Venomfang is an ancient green dragon, and they are trying to curry his favor. The Cult also hinted that they may be offering up a sacrifice to Venomfang soon. (The cult has two child captives, one a human boy from Leilon and the other is a wood elf girl from a community in Neverwinter Woods called Griffons Roost I created and the party has a soft friendship with)

If anyone in the party has knowledge about dragons or speaks to Reidoth about what the Cult has said, they will learn that Venomfang is NOT an ancient green dragon and is in fact a young green dragon.

I'm looking for ideas on how to run Venomfang. I was thinking about playing him as mildly irritated by the cult, but sees them as a means to an end and is trying to figure out how to utilize them. I was also thinking about having Venomfang try to turn the party against Reidoth, which I think will be very hard after the last session, but maybe the offer of an alliance with a dragon may sway them.

I want Venomfang to be an interesting and tense encounter, as it is the first time they have experienced a dragon, and it's also the first time I've run a dragon as a DM. I want Venomfang to be devious and cunning, not wanting to charge into battle but also not to be pushed around either.

Id also like the cult follow up to be a bit more horror tinged. The party has discovered that there are spellcasters amongst the ranks of the cultists. In addition to this, the common members of the cult are all zealots and fanatics, and I'd like to play them with a bit more depth than I previously did.

I wonder if the party may suggest the recently cleared out Cragmaw Castle as a new home for Venomfang, which I think a green dragon might like (who wouldn't want a castle) but I don't want this to be an easy exchange.

How did you guys run Venomfang and what are some cool ideas I could use to beef up the cultists?

Hi,

in short, any tipps?

Long, I got some friends together for DnD and because I asked I won the DM cape.

I got the campain book and the standart books like PhB, DMG and MM.

I prepared the "a Most potent Brew" one shot so the players get ro know their characters and the characters each other.

The party consists of a druid (later of the stars), an artificer (attilerist), an fighter and one more martial character.

What else can I prep in the long game and what should I prep before each session?

Ive skimmed through the book and the first chapter seams pretty doable to DM but iam afraid of the later chapter, how to use the book and not get overwelmed.

Also I think i should level them earlyer than the book says, and how should i manage the level ups if they dont follow the milestones? Like if they go straight to cragmaw castle and not first to phandalin?

And what is that in chapter 3, a green young drake on a level 3 party???

I want that they have a great time but iam afraid my inexpieriendness and trouble to organise how to run the later chapters will diminish the fun for them.

I searched for DM guides but the most of them obly cover the lost mines part. Should i use them and how until chapter 5 i "learned to walk alone"

Any questions from you?

Thanks ^^