How this channel has so little views is beyond me, your content is great dude! And thank you so much on doing these prep kits for thee Essentials Kit, I'm setting things up for running it and these videos have been great, so thank you!
We've ran through this quest recently. Our DM's opinion of it was very low for several reasons. Keep in mind this is referring to the section 'as written'. * The quest that leads the characters here is an escort quest that is technically over as soon as they reach the mine, which is a formality. They can then take their reward and leave, never engaging with the dungeon. * The map of the location does not work convincingly as a mine. It looks like a bunch of rooms connected with twisting corridors, rather than something dug out following a vein. There is a much better map available online. The default maps in the module are generally very poor quality. * The tunnel the dwarves have dug out is meandering everywhere, when realistically, they should have went in a straight line if they wanted to simply escape, especially since they were running out of food. * The carrion crawler being in that one empty corridor makes little sense, as there is a perfectly serviceable fresh graveyard right outside. It should have been feasting there. * The whole mine is pretty much empty of anything interesting, aside from two or three rooms: the big chamber where basically every wererat is, the giant rat 'guard room', and the dwarves. There is no loot anywhere in the mine outside of the two hidden bags of gold. * All of the doors are described as wooden and unlocked. Ignoring that there should be no doors in an active mine like this, this means that there's nothing stopping the carrion crawler from wandering into the mine at large. * There is a random human corpse in one of the corridors, with absolutely no explanation. The most logical scenario seems to be that he got stabbed as he was running away during the attack, and then holed up here and died, but there is no blood trail, and every other miner is a dwarf, so his presence seems odd. Perhaps the end result of a rivalry. But then, why would he be propped against a wall like this? * The two guards at the entrance are female, which I guess is supposed to incentivize players to talk, but in our case it turned into a horny bard situation. * According to the book, if there is combat, no sound will carry. This is completely unrealistic to anyone who had been in any sort of enclosed space, especially any sort of cave. It is also very video-gamy, since the monsters will basically sit in their assigned room and wait until the players stumble upon them. Combined with the above points it makes the mine feel empty and lifeless. * There are no gold veins described as being present in any of the areas. Reading this verbatim means the mine has ran out of ore, and so continuing operation is pretty much pointless. * The main quest line associated with this location is as follows: escort the new foreman. Either attack and kill the wererats or talk with them. The wererats send you to another location to clear out the orks so that they can return there. If you do, they refuse to leave anyway. Meaning they have just sent you on a suicide mission to get rid of you. If you leave the new foreman alone, he will become a wererat afrer a while, but nothing will come out of this. In effect, this quest incentivizes murderhoboing, because actual diplomacy leads nowhere. Leaving also provides no real consequences. This very much feels like a repeat of the first goblin dungeon from Lost Mines, where diplomacy also led nowhere, and the goblins were lying. Combined, these two tell the players to kill and not bother talking, which is a massive bummer. * The way the encounters are clustered, I see three ways of dealing with the dungeon: talk and get sent on a pointless suicide mission; attack and most likely get slaughtered; or get past the guards, randomly stumble around until you find the dwarves (hopefully before you run into the main band), and then escape unmolested. * Our party included three spellcasters, one partial spellcaster and a rogue, all at second level. I'd argue that because of how powerful spellcasters are in this edition, you don't really need silver or magical weapons, provided each of them takes at least one direct damage cantrip. The basic ray of frost is basically a supped-up crossbow that completely bypasses damage reduction, and you can actually fire it faster. I would venture that at level 5, the top level recommended for the area, it could be soloed by an evocation wizard, due to how the dungeon is described. Now for suggestions: * Have the dungeon occupants respond to the combat. If the guards get ambushed and are being overwhelmed, one of them should call alarm, and others should come running in 1d6 rounds. * Have a random chance of a small patrol wandering around the corridors, maybe 1 were and 2 giant rats, so that the players can pick them a few at a time as they explore. * If you are worried about players being overwhelmed, a simple fix our DM did was to narrow all corridors to 5ft wide. This meant the wererats had to come at us single file. We've set up an ambush right outside the mine entrance, where we could pummel them as a group, and only had to worry about at most two at a time. In fact, the giant rats did more damage than the weres. * Add stuff to the rooms for the players to find. Small nuggets of ore that the miners hid away in their bedrolls, documents in the foreman's office, some small trinkets or even a low level magical item in the tool shed. The Goggles of Night are particularly thematic. * Change the carrion crawler door to be secured in some way. Even a simple bar blocking it from opening would work. * Consider to have the wererats actually being honest and leaving the mine if you clear out the orks. * Add an exposed gold vein somewhere, perhaps to M4 or M8. This at least gives a reason for the mine to still be operational.
Yeah, if the game is being run for a group of first time players, I would definitely justify the wererats not biting the PCs by saying that they don't want to share the "gift" with their enemies too. Good call on that 😉 I'm personally a fan of Lycanthropy, though, and I know one or two players who would really get excited and more engaged with the game and the world if they had the opportunity to run a were-creature PC. The way I run it, the player has complete control of the character, provided that they remain within a certain range of their HP 😉 I was actually super stoked to see similar mechanics at play with Travis' current character on CritRole 😆
Definitely a big fan too. Even at lower levels there's so little that makes a long term impact on characters. That's why I put it in the forest table first thing, big dramatic stakes make the game fun and the story meaningful. I didn't know about that side of blood hunter the last time I had a player go werewolf at my table, but that's a great idea I'm going to keep in mind next time it comes up
I like that you name other youtubers. Yes i will watch their videos but i will be back 😄 And i would like to see a Video about your thougts on werecreatures.
Awesome for including other DM streams to share info with the Community!! This is why I keep coming back to your content.
Thanks, I appreciate it
How this channel has so little views is beyond me, your content is great dude! And thank you so much on doing these prep kits for thee Essentials Kit, I'm setting things up for running it and these videos have been great, so thank you!
I appreciate you saying that, glad you're getting something out of these
New to D&D and your videos have been essential for my “essentials kit.” Thank you.
Awesome, glad you got something out of it
Thanks for the series.
Thanks for the comment
External links are definitely useful and I DO enjoy them, thank you.
I really love this series such great ideas for helping me run encounters or just to give me inspiration
Great to hear! A lot of these can be lifted out and dropped into another campaign as well
@@RdotDoyle yah I’ll be taking a few of these quest for sure to reskin
We've ran through this quest recently. Our DM's opinion of it was very low for several reasons. Keep in mind this is referring to the section 'as written'.
* The quest that leads the characters here is an escort quest that is technically over as soon as they reach the mine, which is a formality. They can then take their reward and leave, never engaging with the dungeon.
* The map of the location does not work convincingly as a mine. It looks like a bunch of rooms connected with twisting corridors, rather than something dug out following a vein. There is a much better map available online. The default maps in the module are generally very poor quality.
* The tunnel the dwarves have dug out is meandering everywhere, when realistically, they should have went in a straight line if they wanted to simply escape, especially since they were running out of food.
* The carrion crawler being in that one empty corridor makes little sense, as there is a perfectly serviceable fresh graveyard right outside. It should have been feasting there.
* The whole mine is pretty much empty of anything interesting, aside from two or three rooms: the big chamber where basically every wererat is, the giant rat 'guard room', and the dwarves. There is no loot anywhere in the mine outside of the two hidden bags of gold.
* All of the doors are described as wooden and unlocked. Ignoring that there should be no doors in an active mine like this, this means that there's nothing stopping the carrion crawler from wandering into the mine at large.
* There is a random human corpse in one of the corridors, with absolutely no explanation. The most logical scenario seems to be that he got stabbed as he was running away during the attack, and then holed up here and died, but there is no blood trail, and every other miner is a dwarf, so his presence seems odd. Perhaps the end result of a rivalry. But then, why would he be propped against a wall like this?
* The two guards at the entrance are female, which I guess is supposed to incentivize players to talk, but in our case it turned into a horny bard situation.
* According to the book, if there is combat, no sound will carry. This is completely unrealistic to anyone who had been in any sort of enclosed space, especially any sort of cave. It is also very video-gamy, since the monsters will basically sit in their assigned room and wait until the players stumble upon them. Combined with the above points it makes the mine feel empty and lifeless.
* There are no gold veins described as being present in any of the areas. Reading this verbatim means the mine has ran out of ore, and so continuing operation is pretty much pointless.
* The main quest line associated with this location is as follows: escort the new foreman. Either attack and kill the wererats or talk with them. The wererats send you to another location to clear out the orks so that they can return there. If you do, they refuse to leave anyway. Meaning they have just sent you on a suicide mission to get rid of you. If you leave the new foreman alone, he will become a wererat afrer a while, but nothing will come out of this. In effect, this quest incentivizes murderhoboing, because actual diplomacy leads nowhere. Leaving also provides no real consequences. This very much feels like a repeat of the first goblin dungeon from Lost Mines, where diplomacy also led nowhere, and the goblins were lying. Combined, these two tell the players to kill and not bother talking, which is a massive bummer.
* The way the encounters are clustered, I see three ways of dealing with the dungeon: talk and get sent on a pointless suicide mission; attack and most likely get slaughtered; or get past the guards, randomly stumble around until you find the dwarves (hopefully before you run into the main band), and then escape unmolested.
* Our party included three spellcasters, one partial spellcaster and a rogue, all at second level. I'd argue that because of how powerful spellcasters are in this edition, you don't really need silver or magical weapons, provided each of them takes at least one direct damage cantrip. The basic ray of frost is basically a supped-up crossbow that completely bypasses damage reduction, and you can actually fire it faster. I would venture that at level 5, the top level recommended for the area, it could be soloed by an evocation wizard, due to how the dungeon is described.
Now for suggestions:
* Have the dungeon occupants respond to the combat. If the guards get ambushed and are being overwhelmed, one of them should call alarm, and others should come running in 1d6 rounds.
* Have a random chance of a small patrol wandering around the corridors, maybe 1 were and 2 giant rats, so that the players can pick them a few at a time as they explore.
* If you are worried about players being overwhelmed, a simple fix our DM did was to narrow all corridors to 5ft wide. This meant the wererats had to come at us single file. We've set up an ambush right outside the mine entrance, where we could pummel them as a group, and only had to worry about at most two at a time. In fact, the giant rats did more damage than the weres.
* Add stuff to the rooms for the players to find. Small nuggets of ore that the miners hid away in their bedrolls, documents in the foreman's office, some small trinkets or even a low level magical item in the tool shed. The Goggles of Night are particularly thematic.
* Change the carrion crawler door to be secured in some way. Even a simple bar blocking it from opening would work.
* Consider to have the wererats actually being honest and leaving the mine if you clear out the orks.
* Add an exposed gold vein somewhere, perhaps to M4 or M8. This at least gives a reason for the mine to still be operational.
Thorough, thanks. Yeah, some good ideas in here
We appreciate u sir keep up the great work
Thank you, that's the plan!
Yeah, if the game is being run for a group of first time players, I would definitely justify the wererats not biting the PCs by saying that they don't want to share the "gift" with their enemies too. Good call on that 😉
I'm personally a fan of Lycanthropy, though, and I know one or two players who would really get excited and more engaged with the game and the world if they had the opportunity to run a were-creature PC. The way I run it, the player has complete control of the character, provided that they remain within a certain range of their HP 😉
I was actually super stoked to see similar mechanics at play with Travis' current character on CritRole 😆
Definitely a big fan too. Even at lower levels there's so little that makes a long term impact on characters. That's why I put it in the forest table first thing, big dramatic stakes make the game fun and the story meaningful.
I didn't know about that side of blood hunter the last time I had a player go werewolf at my table, but that's a great idea I'm going to keep in mind next time it comes up
I like that you name other youtubers. Yes i will watch their videos but i will be back 😄
And i would like to see a Video about your thougts on werecreatures.
Good to hear, thanks for the valued input as always!
Where is the Reddit link to the JoseWF version of a condensed map?
Unfortunately the link broke at some point, I don't know if OP or the host took it down