Lost Mine of Phandelver
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Ghouls are the only monster on the Lost Mine of Phandelver’s Wilderness Encounters table (Chapter 3: The Spider’s Web) that does not call for a daytime encounter, and I approve! These are creatures of the night, and they’ll make for a more memorable encounter when they go bump in the dark. That being said, there’s…
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The nice thing about stirges is their ability to subvert expectations for what some players might steel themselves for during an evening spent out under the stars. For a nighttime random encounter, stirges don’t come crashing out of the bushes with a roar or a war cry. Certainly not when, under the cover of darkness,…
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During daylight hours, characters are most-likely to encounter stirges while the foul little beasties are sleeping, since the monster’s darkvision trait suggests a nocturnal nature. Like bats, stirges sleep upside down, hanging from the upper reaches of wherever they roost. In Lost Mine of Phandelver, that would likely be a mine, cave, or ruin. Or…
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When prepping for Lost Mine of Phandelver’s Chapter 3: The Spider’s Web, I would recommend Dungeon Masters put some forethought into how they would deploy each of the monsters found on the Wilderness Encounters table before it actually comes to a dice roll in game play. You’re the Dungeon Master, and you’re keeping enough in…
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When I was a kid, I had a friend whose brother kept a shoe box full of fingernail and toenail clippings beneath his bed. I always found that absurd, because I thought they were his fingernail and toenail clippings. Now that I’m older, wiser, and have read a few Player’s Handbooks, I’m not so certain.…
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It’s time for a long rest, and the characters are out and about in the hinterlands of Phandalin. Who will stand watch as the party sleeps? “Gosh, I don’t know. Who has darkvision? How many elves are there in the party? They don’t sleep, right? I think they’re into tantric meditation or some shit and…
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Trinkets don’t get enough love. Players can choose one from the list in the Player’s Handbook at character creation, but if/when they do select a trinket, the player doesn’t know what to do with it, so it just just becomes some forlorn item on a character sheet for most people. To me, trinkets are a…
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There be dragons in Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak – and they’re often accompanied by grumbling Dungeon Masters, fretting over how encounters with Venomfang and Cryovain are unbalanced. There’s actually some really good advice on encounters with dragons in The Rise of Tiamat, which came out four months after Lost Mine…