r/rimeofthefrostmaiden

EDIT: Thanks folks! I think I was overthinking it a little bit, and now I have some much better ideas of what I should do next; mostly let em go with the flow!

BLUF: After confronting the Duergar in Caer Konig (but before getting to the Outpost) my players don't consider the Duergar conspiracy to be a threat, and are choosing to pursue other things. What should the consequences of their actions be? Or should I just steer them back onto it?

Ok, so, context first, question afterwards:

In my game (inspired strongly by the Eventyr's version) pretty much everything has gone as expected, they spent time in Bremen, Lonelywood, Termalaine, and Kelvin's Cairn. I used Sephek as lure for them to follow, and also made him a Duergar instead of a human. So the players followed Sephek over to Caer Konig after Kelvin's Cairn, where they confronted and killed Sephek in the Duergar hideout, but one of the Duergar escaped and fled; they decided NOT to pursue (choice No.1) because at this point, they still consider the whole thing to "just be thefts". Now, up until this point, i have both directly, and indirectly hinted and disclosed the relationship between the druids, Sephek, and collecting the chardalyn. After they let the Duergar escape, they directly learn a couple other things:

1. that the duergar operation is far larger than just the thieves in this town
2. that chardalyn is a magical stone that can be molded into magical devices, items, and things
3. that the Duergar are collecting lots of the stuff, and are building something big to use against the dale

Now, they did choose to follow the breadcrumbs out to the Outpost in the morning, so the Duergar would have either been expecting them or buggered off altogether (the runner would have warned them). But, along the way, I rolled the Berzerkers random event in the Tundra, and the players inevitably tried on the ring and were teleported to Cave of the Berzerker. Fast forward to being done the cave, they're discussing what to do next, and in their discussions make no mention of the duergar plot whatsoever. None. They want to go back to Bryn Shander and turn in the Cold Killers quest and get payment from the Speaker, they want to go to Easthaven to speak with Vellyne and turn in the Chwinga quest. They want to track down Ravasin the Frost druid (i'm using her as an Antagonist through Act 1+2). But no mention of the Duergar.
4. because they didn't make it to the Outpost, they did NOT receive notification about the operation in Easthaven.

There is obviously an opportunity in Easthaven with the ferry to again present them with the information that the Duergar are a threat, if not THE threat; but I'm also partially incline to let them ignore it and suffer the consequences...

What should the consequences be in the short and long term of ignoring the Duergar? Or should I just keep angling them back to it until they get the idea?

The obvious one is that (eventually) the dragon get's released on the Dale while they're not expecting it, but I don't know that's fair.

Hi all! I am DM my ROTF campaign with XP advancement (so that the world feels more open and advancement can be quantified more easily than milestone/checklist). What level should my party be when I give them the “we know where the fortress is, go hike for 2-3 days then break in” hook? My main concern is having them at a high enough level that they can handle the dragon if they decide to chase the dragon *before* infiltrating the fortress, not after. My instinct is to wait for level 5, but if anybody has experience with how to approach this I’m all ears :)

Hello, DM here, preparing Sunblight for a level 7 party. Organizational chart of the adventure say it's for level 6 players, but the chapter says it's for level 4, unlikely. I would like to make some changes :
- Celestial Kirin (CR=12) instead of Chardalyn Dragon (CR=11)
- Bone Devil (CR=9) instead of Barbed Devil (CR=5)

Here is my idea :
- The Bone Devil is CR=9 so it could have access to 5th level spells.
- The Bone Devil might have cast "Planar Binding" to bind a celestial Ki-rin, and with the help of chardalyn, make its soul "evil" and control it.
- The Twenty Stones of Thruun might have been used to cast that powerful spell ; the megalithes could be in resonance with the stars, like celtic ones, and somewhat with the celestial plane. (I know the real story is different, but why not)

Why eliminate the chardalyn dragon ?
- 1st, I don't like constructs, no soul inside.
- 2nd, the construct is made of chardalyn ? why ?I don't get it... It's a construct, it should obey his inventor without the need of evil black ice/metal
- 3rd, how we maintain a dragon"s heart living ? Seriously ?
- 4th, by the way, what is chardalyn ? Sometimes, it's black thin ice with magic inside, sometimes it's a cursed metal. Wizards merged 2 things different, so lets say chardalyn is very rare, it is mysterious, and can control weakened minds.

My party players are quite resilient, high HP, high constitution, they are ready for a dangerous adventure. Both the Kirin and Chardalyn Dragon do radiant damage ; both of them got "Magic Resistance".

What is your opinion ? Does it worth it ? is it bad ?

https://www.aidedd.org/dnd/monstres.php?vo=ki-rin

http://dndroll.wikidot.com/creatures:chardalyn-dragon

Ok, the party is currently on a quest to find the Captain’s Log of the Dark Duchess for Maud Chiselbone, the lake hag of Easthaven, in exchange for knowledge about Auril. But that’s another story.

They scouted out the ice troll, botched an ambush, and an epic battle ensued. They won, but half the party went down and the other half ended up badly wounded, so the session ended there. Their conclusion was basically: “We definitely need a long rest next time. Who knows, maybe there’s another one of these things.”

They already set up camp with tents about half a mile away and will probably retreat there at the start of the next session.

Now I’m unsure how to handle Arveiaturace’s arrival in the meantime. She shouldn’t realistically be able to spot the camp by pure chance with her bad eyesight.

A few factors:

• Her kobolds are still alive, barricaded in their cabin. They could have seen or heard something.
• There are obvious signs of battle on the Dark Duchess’s deck, the party mage threw two Fireballs at the ice troll. The ship itself was mostly protected by its ice covering, but still it shows...

Any ideas on how to handle this?

My first thought was that an alerted Arveiaturace would search for intruders by spiraling outward from the ship. But if she strafes the camp with her breath weapon, it would probably be a TPK (the party is level 5).

If she’s less aggressive and merely drives the party away, they lose the chance to properly explore the ship. But maybe that’s simply the consequence of trying to rest next to a dragon’s secondary hoard...

So my players had initially got involved with Good Mead and the speaker side quest there before heading off around Ten Towns and forgetting all about it.

Well due to that Shandar ends up elected and running the town which is good for business and her links to Targos are profitable but she’s purely transaction based with the party.

Now the party wants a letter of introduction from her to the Speaker at Caer-Danevil to get them in the keep. She’s said yes if they bring her the cauldron of plenty (already given to Easthaven) and they said no.

Now one morally dubious member wants to break in and threaten or kill her. As Shandar is a bad guy what other tasks might she put before this player to make a deal? Shaking down the locals for more money doesn’t seem right for this. Thoughts?

The playlist is over 3 hours long. Best enjoyed sequentially. Contains audio and visual OC. I recommend following and also adding it as a new playlist to your library.

So I'm a newer DM. I have run the lost mines campaign before I had even played D&D before. Since then, I have played a couple of 1 shots, CoS to completion, and ToD which ended at level 3 when a couple players moved away. I was looking to start a new campaign and IWD looked interesting. Is this a good campaign for a newer DM to run? Do you have any advice for story tweaks to have it run smoothly?

Typically, the guys I play with are more interested in combat, but I want to try to get them a little more into the role play aspect of the game. Im hoping this is a combat centered campaign with good draws to the role play elements. It seems like having such small communities like 10 towns, there will be more consequences for murder hoboing, which I'm hoping won't occur, but you never know.

FYI, I have not yet bought the book but I plan to soon.

Hello, I was using the Advanced AI in Baldur's Gate and checked off defensive spells so that my characters would cast iron skins and stone skin at start of day. Is there a way to do that in Icewind Dale? Are there any custom scripts I could import?

So my players are nearing the end of chapter 5 and will meet Auril for the first time next session. Super excited about that but not what my post is about.

One of my players is a Goliath artificer and has Demelok from the Wyrmdoom Crag as a mentor (I changed her to be a high-level Artificer) and since the Reghed nomads haven’t been a big part of the campaign I plan to exchange the Elk nomads with goliaths on Griffons as they ended the feud before going to Solatice and Grimskalle. After the encounter with the tiger tribe Auril will show up with her army of undead and snow monsters and Demelok will urge the party to flee and join them to the glacier. There she will remain and cast hallow to buy the party more time. This will work but in the end she will be killed by other antagonists.

Here’s the part that might be to evil: Auril will come after the party and would not let the opportunity pass to raise another Coldlight Walker (that might even be stronger but no specific idea or stat block) and have her attack the party in Ythryn. She was kind of the only Goliath to support my Goliath PC and taught him everything he knows so it would be heartbreaking to see her corpse misused by Auril but it would fit very well and maybe also enrage the PC to fight Auril.

What do you think? Is this too harsh or evil?

The party's barbarian was taken by the roc on the Isle of Solstice (because the player is away IRL). Now, the party wants to rescue him.

I'm thinking of using a modified Cave of the Berserkers as the rescue mission. Changes would be:

• Cave is on the island and roc nest is on top of the mountain where the cave is. (Alternatively, the cave is another floor of the castle?)
• Barbarian has been taken from the nest into the cave to convert him into a being like Sephek Kaltro, so party can't just fly to the nest.
• Chardalyn berserkers replaced with two coldlight walkers and a few undead with Sephek Kaltro's stats. Maybe add a puzzle trap.

Does this make sense and seem fair? Do you have any ideas to make it better? Party is 9th level, but low on resources since they can't rest as normal on the island.

It's kind of wild that after a CR6 Frost Giant Skeleton, two CR6 Invisible Stalkers and then the flying axes and the crow swarms, this adventure pits the players against a CR8 Frost Giant.
Of course, it is available to avoid her, but there's a good chance it may not be possible.
In my playtesting, my party tricked her by throwing the Blue Boots from Kelvin's Cairn down the stairs, said if she wanted the "horn" it was all hers, and then swiftly ran away.
How did your group handle this? Did they actually fight Gromin’gorn?

Hello, everyone.

You probably don't remember me, but I've made a post asking for help a couple of weeks a go regarding what I had planned for my session 0 of Rime of the Frostmaiden. Well, the date is getting closer and I come here once again asking for your thoughts on the subject.

I've made the following dungeon for our first session (I believe I also have a problem, because I can't seem to stop tweaking it for some reason):

https://preview.redd.it/acao5iy1t51h1.png?width=3920&format=png&auto=webp&s=34693a31d40d88989b090aab5fa6a3a1cfb692c2

Since our session zero is only one week away, I came here seeking advice on populating the dungeon and making it feel alive. I was wondering if the encounters won't be too easy or uninteresting (even considering it will be a party of 5 level 1 characters)?

For instance, there'll only be 2 ice spiders on area #6, 2 ice mephits on #area 7 and probably only 1 yeti when they try to exit the cave on area #4. Besides the yeti, are the other encounters too simple and homogeneous? Should I throw in some other critters so combat won't be as straightforward as I'm thinking it will be?

Also, I'll be using the Angry GM’s Tension Pool for extra… tension!

Thanks in advance!