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If you haven't thought of it already, you can take images of the full color maps and make them black and white by loading them in a program like GIMP or Photoshop and making them black and white there (Under Image settings, Mode settings, Greyscale in GIMP, might be different in Photoshop.).
Didn't you get the memo? Wizards now get Fireball at every level. It is intended to speed up play by reducing time spent selecting which spell to use. ;)
Why does everyone keep assuming that auril is defeated in chapter 5, and then the rest is extra? I keep hearing this complaint. How is a party of 5 level 7 players gonna take on a cr 11 and a cr 9? Even if they beat the cr9, it just becomes a cr10. And then a cr11. How could this NOT be a tpk. Winning condition is getting the scroll to crack the ice and getting out alive. Then you NEED the mythallar to save icewind dale.
I think this chapter is meant like how strahd appears in curse of strahd a lot of the times and will just completely trash your players and then leave to flex on how strong he is. (It's also a great tool to use as a DM to gague how close yoru party is to killing him, and allow for buffing him in later fights) This is Auril showing up to fight the characters before she either A.) Makes her big escape to then show up later or B.) trashes the players but barely keeps them alive bc she figures it isn't worth her time.
Lol, as soon as we got the McGuffin, our druid ran off for our spell jammer while the rest of the party, consisting of a bug bear tundra barbarian, way of the open hand half-orc monk, elf gloom stalker ranger and my human order cleric. The icicles the Frost Maiden fucked us in her first phase, but we managed to knock her out quickly when she turned to phase 2 thanks to stunning strike and bless with my order cleric's passive, making my heals give bonus attacks to the people I heal. The massive bird she had got us really low before she went to phase 3, the scariest part of the fight. Her pet walrus, and her icy minions and her 19 AC almost killed the 4 of us. The Cover shield I had keeping her walrus at bay and reviving when people went down with giving bonus attacks, with the gloom stalker dealing the main dps, the tundra barbarian tanking most of the damage and our monk playing the flex role, which was really needed. We ended up defeating the Frost Maiden after the barbarian got knocked 5 times, the monk 3 times, the gloom stalker twice and me with death ward went down once with everyone but the gloom stalker at 1 health!
I'm currently running this module, and while I do have a larger group (7 players) I know that they could easily take on Auril and win in chapter 5. There is also a note in the book saying that one of the level up conditions is to beat Auril. While her CR may be high, her stats don't seem to back it up to me, which is where the rebalancing comes into play. Its mainly just poor writing from what I've seen. My group can easily pump out 138hp worth of damage in a single round without using spell slots.
Luke I think you have missed a text that says that chapter 2 is a kind of open-world chapter that is not supposed to be run as itself and is connected to either some rumors that the players got earlier or will get later (Its basically filler adventures, which are cool and someone can run them all or jus the ones that looks the best to DM). The quest that you have described is not for lvl 1 characters, as it is supposed to take the party through few cities untill they find "the guy", I would run it at level 2 with 5-6 player and level 3 for 4 man party, which should be fine for a hard but rewarding fight. I haven't read later chapters but overall it seems like one of the better adventures from Wizards yet, especially that it does not (!) have branching paths which are a total waste of printing paper (as most people run module for one group so they only go through one path).
@@theDMLair You sure did! Had to get that review out BEFORE you read the whole thing, eh? Too bad your ineptitude is writ large for the world to see, for all time!
Perhaps Wizards could have placed a difficulty ranking for each quest so the DM knows at a glance to lead parties towards or steer them away from certain things (oh wait they did, at least for some). But i think it’s good to have the variety from cake walk to deadly. This campaign is supposed to invoke fear. Having deadly encounters not only is one way to invoke fear, but is also an incentive to solve an encounter in an “outside the box” way rather than charge in head first. I disagree with a lot of your complaints here in this video. You’re entitled to your opinion, but make sure you understand what you’re gut reaction is before hand.
It's so situational though. Could be the easiest quest in the world unless you get a party without X spell that resolves the biggest hurdle, or vice versa. That's why DM balancing on-the-fly is important.
I think the game designers made encounters so deadly because the module is marketed as a "survival horror" module. Sooo it's probably designed to create "OH SHIT, RUN" moments.
@@theDMLair D&D is moving away from hack 'n slash. Social interaction is the point these days. We're in a pandemic! Get with the times or get out of the way, old man!
The starter quests are short because its intended that they explore each of the towns along the way and potentially take quests while they are there. Eventually solving the initial quest after maybe gaining a level.
Then why is the boxed text for Cold Killer literally tell you who dunnit. I am running mine as a murder mystery without the over the top reveal that could see a lvl one party go headfirst into Sephek.
@@theDMLair - LOL. And, great insight about the module. I think they were trying really hard to make it more sandboxy - like Dragon of Icespire Peak. But, they lose some of the narrative when they try too hard. I've been reading through Princes of the Apocalypse and is has some great locations, but the story is completely lost since you could go anywhere at any time. I guess thats the tradeoff - Linear Aventure with Strong Narrative arc, and simple progression system. Or give you a world to play in and leave it up to the DM to make it cohesive. But, the Challenge rating issues I think shows a lack of playtesting.
Never got confirmation that fat cat died. now that he is unshackled from the party he can begin his rise to become the legendary king he was meant to be. once he slays old man commoner and steals his immortality.
Some reason I’m thinking necromancer cat. Not to be confused with a Tabaxi Necromancer, but a Necromancer house cat. Although a Tabaxi Necromancer who’s background is trying to find immortality since he’s on his 9th life that would be really funny
@@wolfjack5802 I think there's a yokai like this. Bakeneko? Pretty creepy sorta thing. Really old housecat that can raise the dead or masquerade as a person by wearing their skin. Makes me want another eastern-flavored module/setting.
"giving a player a free feat at level one is gamebreaking early game" Id rather have my players be stronger early on in these modules than have the game break my players spines imo.
Agreed. At some point i would like to try a progression where the PCs start out weaker, but progress stronger. However, Icewind Dale is not where i am going to explore that. I would also be more inclined to granting them a level one feat instead.
Adding a “flavor” feat to each character is not too bad, as long as you limit the choice to a few that are helpful, but not OP. I would even consider a few Racial feats to be free at level one, but the flavor feats are more fun. Consider feats that are cool, but most will not take. Observant, Keen Mind, Chef, Actor or even just the tough feat for everyone (they are hero’s after all).
With quite a bit of story tweaking, connecting Xardox to Auril, Auril’s power source being connected to the Netherese City this module becomes bit more coherent and fun.
To offer a bit of speculative insight, I think WotC designs their encounters for Adventurer's League min-maxers who will inevitably build specifically to tackle the module and exceed the recommended party size. I don't know though, I'm just a welcome ambassador datacron.
Eh, I wouldn't say that AL characters are neccessarily more min-max'ed than characters in other campaigns. There are a lot of restrictions that apply to AL only (you can't pick certain races or subclasses, for example), you have to use Standard Array or Point Buy (so no "lucky" players who just "happened" to roll three 18 stats to start with) - and Rime of the Frostmaiden is the first Season 10 adventure, meaning you can't trade overpowered magic items over from your older characters while playing this hardcover.
After running the module twice with some heavy tweaking, it's now my favorite official module, primarily because of how much freedom it allowed me as a DM compared to other modules I ran. It's got problems but it's pretty great otherwise.
Simple fix for people who take issue with Auril not being the climax. Have the city's Mythalar be needed to hault her spell, and then either finish her off in heir lair or in the city so the Mythalar can go from holding the spell at bay to repairing the weather fully
Aurils abode was never the climax, it’s intended for you to fight Auril at ythryn as the final encounter, I mean the best you can do at auril’s abode is stop the ritual but obviously the frostmaiden is going to come and try to take revenge for that, I mean there’s a whole section in the seventh chapter with a detailed encounter for the characters against the frostmaiden
That’s exciting for us! They made more content for us to fix and make content on! “How to fix unbalanced encounters” Commin up!! Great breakdown, was super helpful to see the big picture
I absolutely adore this module. It’s my first and only campaign, running it as a DM. I ignored the starting quests and gave them a NPC designed specifically to die after healing them through the first combat, once they got to level 2 it went more smoothly.
One of the issues with promade adventures is then tend to be balanced against a specific group/level of optimization. I think most of them are intended for fairly optimized characters (as shown by past deadly encounters) and not everyone does those.
Welp, I'm glad I decided to check this out on my lunch break. First time DMing, planning on spending this evening mapping out my party's first game on Friday, and I decided that Rime Of The Frostmaiden would be a perfect introduction! Woop! To be honest the setting is good enough that I have no issues with spending a bit of time rebalancing!
It seems odd, to me, that the designers don't just include some quick tweaks that the GM could make to level encounters to suit their party; bonuses or penalties to NPC HP, Damage and To Hit.
@@MrLeava Indeed, however, in the video, he was saying that the scenarios aren't balanced to work with the spread of character levels covered by the campaign. This seems like an oversight by the designers, and, I thought, that they could take some of the work load off the GM by offering guidelines.
@@euansmith3699 Its not an oversight. The DM Lair just failed to mention that there's a disclaimer that many of these encounters are deadly and players should be warned that just blindly running into combat is a foolish mistake. It's stressed that frequent resting, smart decision making and retreating are all necessary to survive this module. It's not meant to be balanced. It is meant to be freaking, stinking hard. Session Zero matters so much for establishing the importance of a solid party and also is a great opportunity to tell your players that this module will be hard and they should be prepared to respond accordingly. This campaign should be ran with established players who know how to play well together. And it's on the DM to describe enemies in such a way that the PCs can smell a deadly encounter before the wizard takes 50 damage in a single hit and gets knocked unconscious. If my players aren't sat on the edge of their seats, terrified whether they'll survive the encounter, I'm doing something wrong when running this module. As for your first point, some encounters do have Dues Ex style NPCs and scenarios you can run to distract or neutralise foes. *Spoiler alert* Just take a look at the ship that's trapped in the ice in Chapter 2. When the dragon arrives, there are clearly detailed things the DM can do to make the encounter easier for the PCs.
@@MKxJUMP I was thinking more the other way, where the players level up using chapter 2, until they are OP for chapter 3. Still, it is nice that this setting has some of that old school feel where players need to be ready to flee from a too powerful encounter.
@@euansmith3699 Honestly, I wouldn't mind the PCs being able to breeze through Chapter 3 (assuming they choose to do it) because it means they can rush through it, find the plans and hopefully stop the dragon before it's too late.
I believe there is an interview with Perkins, and Crawford on the adventure that gives a very small insite to DM's and ideal on running the game. One take away thing I remember from it was make it your own game, don't just do everything verbatim from the book it's only a guide, everyone will interpret things different, and feel free to add on to things " Anyway you would like to spin it."
This does makes me feel better that, as an extremely new player first time DM, I come away from my prep sessions like "why is this just a chapter filled with 100 quests that my players will do like.... 5 of."
I thought you can't kill Aureil completely as she regenerates at the next winter solstice unless you find that spell that actually banishes her and that's why the PCs keep going afterwards...? (sorry for the horrible grammar/spelling - English is not my first language)
In my view this book are multiples modular adventures conected by location and period. Chapter 1 and 2 provide us multiple adventures that are basic short dungeons that can be implemented at any game. I have a far use of lake monsters and confused kobolds, and I will use the nautiloid não in the Spelljamer part of my home campain. Most of the book are 3 separeted storylines that one or two could had been made in a second part book (like rise of tiamat as a part 2 for hoard of the dragon queen). The Duergar Dungeon and dragon atak could be part one and the Island of Frostmaden and arcane brotherhood search for the Netheril City could be part 2. Or even a 3rd part for the Netheril search.
Thanks! I found this video helpful as I’m a new time DM planning to run this module. I agree how Chapters 6 and 7 seem a bit disjointed and I was planning to add more to the adventure by having the characters not fight Auril’s three forms all at once, but at different stages and bump up her CR to match the party’s level, and also make it more clear that the Ythryn Mythallar can relieve some of the Ten Towns from Auril’s Rime, making the Ythryn quest make more sense to the storyline.
Nice overview I love this module. I think it's a great source book for Icewind Dale. I also really like the basic outline of the story. Aurilia I thought was suppossed to be faugjt 3 times, once for each form she had. (Cold Crone, Brittle Maiden and Winters Womb)
So far been enjoying running this one for my group. I had my players make custom dark secrets that I then tied into the main plot points to tie the story together a bit more. Auril got a full redesign as I am planning to run this up to the 15 or so range rather than stopping at 12. Lastly I added in some new more powerful magical threats that are looking for the netherese ruins. A Nagpa, a manshoon clone, and X the Mystic. The quests in Ten Towns thusfar have been fine, and personally I found this module to be one of the quickest reads so prepping hasn't been too bad for me.
Could you tell me how you altered Auril's stat block? I'm planning on running this campaign for my group and it'd be fun to reach higher levels of play
One of the things I always tell my players in games that I make myself is : It not because you encounter an enemy that you are supposed to just straight-up fight it. Sometimes you have to run, sometimes you have to talk, sometimes you have to think of an ingenious plan, sometimes you have to come back later, etc. Having both easy peasy encounters and deadly ones is something I personally like (it's even something I'd rather never do without) because it's more realistic and it invokes the need for my players to do some decision making. There is no way life will put you through challenges that are just right for your level of strength every time so can just bash in every encounter until you reach the end. I don't want my players to rush into every fight, I want them to consider the challenge before they jump in, otherwise they might very well die. And for the leveling thing, maybe because from chapter one, the players can choose to go to chapter two right after reaching level 4, or they can keep going and do every quest in Ten-Towns. A DM might reward those players with more levels, and so chapter 2 has challenges for those players ? Cause chapter two is not meant to be played as is, it is material to transit into chapter three I think. So you get material for a variety of levels, the DM should pick the ones that are relevant. I think. I haven't fully studied the book yet, but studying the book very well and understand how it is meant to be played is the DM's job, and it is a very important part of making it fun and also giving justice to the work behind it. Sometimes small details of how to use the book makes allll the difference.
Unpopular opinion. If you run cold blooded killer as RAW, the caravan starts in a DIFFERENT town then the PCs. The act of even getting to the other location should be enough to level to party to level 2, and if you do another quest along the way your party should be almost level 3 themselves. The opening quests are meant to spur exploration of Ten Towns. Just like how the chawinga are also in a different town.
The reason for very dangerous low level encounters is Wizards believes that the dnd world should feel dangerous. They want characters to die so players use their brains and have to work out of situations. This adds to the overall fun
@@bonbondurjdr6553 I agree there are better way but wizards knows the higher level u get the thought of death is less and less a thing at low levels is the time your most likely to be able to die, and stay dead... but to me that just means they shouldnt let pcs learn revivif lol
@@supersmily5811 and as i said i agree that there are better ways to teach players that death for their characters are very real, but i have been a dungeon master for 5+ years and let me tell you how there are some babies out there that never want their players to die... but the sad fact is, early spell casters are weak in strength its why they became casters and weak in spells cuz they are low level.. u wanna combat this dont make con and str and dumpstat... but also remember the world does revolve around you players and not every monster or person is gonna be on ur level or less.... BUT YES wizards should not right official campaign with 1st level, first session, tpks
@@MrLeava It should always feel dangerous without being the DM trying to kill the PCs. Hence why I throw fairly tough cr encounters at my players. Changing hp if i need to. I killed two pcs with disintegrate from a beholder zombie when they were level five. The zombie beholder had also vomited shadows at them. However they had found two scrolls of resurrection just five sessions earlier. However that was it for them for bringing people back. I warned them that bringing someone back from the dead is a bit unnatural and they have to make a DC roll everytime which gets harder everytime that character dies.
Started this campaign yesterday, but it requires a huge amount of work to setup and customise, definitely not one for a new DM to run straight off the pages. Even allowing for balance issues, it is very large amount of information that has to be absorbed before you start. All ten towns have to be read and considered before you can start, and since a lot of them aren't going to be used, was there something important that got left behind.
Totally agree. Lots of work and reading and prep, even more than something like Curse of Strahd which is also very open worldy. I feel this is a module for experienced DMs and players.
@@theDMLair the boxed text here is great and there is some great setting to develop further. I am ratcheting up the cold, the isolation and the gallows humour of the residents to drive the horror theme. I started them with arriving the night of the lottery in Bryn Shader, and another dead body shows up the next morning to kick off the Cold Killer story.
Bought CoS before quarantine and am now running Icewind Dale with roll20. Keeping it pretty open until I see them take interest and you can find a lot of useful secrets with a quick search I got a cannable, I think it'll go well. They want to just scrounge the battlegrounds for finger food. Later it'll be like the wendigo curse.
They should've done what was done in the extra encounters in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. They present an area and then gave a few enemy tweaks that would up level the encounter area between 3, 5, 7, etc..
i ran the ice killer as my opener to a group of 4 (barb, artificer, druid and fighter) i chose this opener after i saw the party had 2 people with fire spells plus 2 people that could cure wounds / healing word. With those in their kit they fought the monster and were able to pingpong a bit and take him out. At the en dof hte fight it was close, 2 people were unconscous(the 2 healers) nad hte fighter/barb were about to be downed when they managed to just barely beat the guy and do enough damage to finish him off. It was a crazy encounter, there's a reason they give you multiple options for the opener, you dont have to go with that opener you can go with an easier one. Look at your PC's make-up and choose an opener that they WONT struggle with. My pc's are all DM's and they built a very well rounded party, so i figured why not throw the hardest opener at them and see what happens.... and they won.
I see what you mean about the density of the book, but I’m going to take the sandbox approach to the whole module, at least with the first few chapters, as that approach allows you to plug and play lots of the towns and the attached quests to those towns, and find a way hook the party into the duergar king adventure, and maybe teasing Auril after that and seeing what they do.
My perspective on this is that parts of chapter 2 were designed to be completed after chapters 3 and 4. There are a lot of quests there that are meat grinders for characters below level 7 (my party only survived one of them because of a werebear), and there are also quests that the characters have no reason to do until they need transport to Grimskalle. Anyways, that's just my opinion on the matter, hope it helps!
I'm going to be the dm to this module in a month. I have throughly read over chapter 1 and between exhaustion and some of the quests/encounters I could slay the party of 4 that will be playing. I definitely have some balancing prep to do. I'm going to have them lvl 5 before heading to ch 2.
This is a very good review! I was wondering whether I was going to buy this, but now I'm almost certain I will. Love the in-depth, but quick analysis. My favorite dm to learn from! Have a great day Luke!
SEPHEK SHOULD NOT BE FACED OFF AGAINST BY THE PCs UNTIL LEVEL 2 or 3. From getting the quest to finding Sephek, the party should have had at least one wilderness encounter (traveling from starting town to the next town which needs to happen to work on the quest anyway) then the town quest, which could be one of the easier town quests. Then they can face off against Sephek. It’s not a design flaw, it’s a user error/user ignorance thing (with respects that no one DM is generally ignorant or dumb). This module is very obviously intended to be a toolkit for a DM to develop into their own campaign. I don’t even think you are supposed to actually run all three main quests in one campaign. You can. But I think each is intended to be its own campaign. Chapter 2 is intended to be sprinkled throughout the events of all of the other chapters. Work is not something a DM should shy away from, it is our role in the group.
I'm a 1st time DM, running ROFTM. Did session 1 last night, which ran to 12 hours. Party started on Bryn Shander, and knocked those damn goblins on their asses with only 1 party member going Unconscious at one point. At level 2 (and I was *so* proud of my party) they took on the Verbeeg Lair from Good Mead. Killed Duhg and the ogre, (animal friendship potioned the polar bear), THEN went on to kill Gahg. It was *mental.* Such a rush!
The best way I found to connect the quests in the module is by utilizing a newspaper system. (: I call it the Ten Town Tribunes! The party picks up single sheet newspapers in each town and finds out new rumors...
It's an extremely deadly as-written adventure, for sure, but my group has shown themselves capable time and time again. Some examples: At level 3, two of the PCs fought Maud Chiselbone and her "pets" while the other two were asleep and came out victorious, without any deaths. At level 4, the party handily defeated a frost giant riding a mammoth. At level 5, the party easily swept six chardalyn berserkers without AoE spells. As such, I've actually needed to scale *up* difficulty slightly, to keep the players on their toes. I beefed up the Xardorok fight with extra enemies, and they still had no issues. Last session, I spiced up Destruction's Light by having a duergar warlord encounter during a siege. The party handily defeated the duergar warlord alongside three duergar, while the chardalyn dragon was firing potshots at them with its breath weapon when available. They aren't even metagaming. They're just *really* strong in combat.
Running this adventure right now, and I changed 3 big things: 1. It's not known Auril is behind the winter. Her frost druids are spreading the faith in secret, sacrifices are made on the DL. Sephek kills people who steal sacrifice, instead of avoid it. This also makes the first chapter a mystery, searching tentowns for clues and leads. 2. I introduced Vellynne much earlier. She's a sage questgiver whom the players have a bond with. Makes the second half of the book less random. 3. I split information about Ythryn, the Caves of Hunger, Sunblight, Grimskalle, Auril, and all the strangeness up between a bunch of NPCs. Nobody knows everything, and the party puts together how to stop the winter through exploration and roleplay.
I feel a good way to actually tie Auril in as the main villain early on is to replace the infernal roles of Levistus/Asmodeus with her so she actually has a role early on, which honestly, I'm surprised the designers didn't do that since as is she only in the background for most of the adventure SHE is supposed to be the villain of.
Another thing you have to factor in is magical equipment. All the CRs of the monsters in the Monster Manual are geared towards Characters without magic items to counter the weaknesses of a lot of monsters. Characters with magic items can generally handle creatures a little bit higher than the normal CR levels associated with the challenge thresholds... admittedly it also comes down to how you run the monsters and how tactical the players are. A highly tactical group, especially one that has access to minis and a battle mat, could potentially think of ways to isolate individual monsters and defeat them so there's less individual challenge. Other times you might get low-power monsters that the GM plays smart and tactical with which wipes out a high level party simply because of the effective use of terrain and tactics.
My plan for my eventual Frozen North campaign is to basically just take quests/events out of book. Auril will probably be a level 10 fight, the city, maybe 15 and I have other content for up to 20. Its going to basically be a mish-mash of module and homebrew content.
Fun Fact: Rime is frost which forms from mist or fog droplets instantly freezing on contact with a cold surface (as contrasted with the usual way, where dew forms on a surface and then freezes after). Bonus Fun Fact: I learned the word from Dickens' famous story A Christmas Carol and looked it up to find the meaning. Extra Bonus Fun Fact: Part of the description of Scrooge delves into hyperbole by describing him as "a frosty rime was on his brow" in an attempt to describe how cold and unfeeling Scrooge is at the opening of the tale.
Now, I haven't watched much of the video cuz I don't wanna spoil it, but I'm guessing that the way chapter 2 works is that it's just what's supposed to be between other chapters. It's dubbed Icewind Dale and thus makes me think that it's just a general chapter to have the characters do stuff between other chapters as they choose. They could have named it differently yes
First, thank you for that great introduction part of your video..I thoroughly enjoyed it... LOL . So I've been wanting to run this module for months now and I've had the book since October. I finally will have my first session this Friday 1/29. I'm pretty excited. I play virtually using Fantasy Grounds. Got a friend who is also running this game -- he's on his fourth session this weekend and has been sharing what he's doing and what has happened in his sessions. Plus I've read the first three chapters at least once and the first chapter probably 3 times now. I've watched some videos of groups that streamed their sessions....I've taken notes ...I've really put in my homework on this one. I'm not a new DM but I stopped playing the hobby in October. So I've had a few months break and that added to my excitement to get back to playing. one of the reasons I've put in some good hours preparing is because of what is pointed out rightly so in this video -- I've heard it before ..about the weird leveling and the unbalanced encounters. (My friend that is already running his game -- like I said he is going to be at session 4 this weekend, he had 1 TPK already and almost another with only 1 player left standing, and that player had like 2 hp left). I have some homebrew ideas I'm gonna mix in to help balance things, but at the same time I'm gonna be a bit sadistic (before you think that's terrible, normally my style is very forgiving so yeah I''m due to be a little tougher).
I was going to run this campaign for 5 to 6 players. I think a plot hook on going into the frozen city within the caves of hunger after dealing with Auril would be that a magic artifact needs to be acquired in order to permanently dispel Auril. In a way maybe make it like a Lich's phylactery?
At level 1 you fight rats. Not the giant variety, and not swarms. RATS. Also, did you ever run the Death House just as written in the module? Was it a TPK every single time, regardless of party composition?
I plan on using this module as a prelude to my conversion of the old school module Queen of the Spiders, I needed something to get the players up to a decent level before even contemplating throwing that at them. For reference, the Queen of the Spiders was written for characters 8-14 and the first three rooms in the first "dungeon" are: room 1, 3 Hill Giants. room 2, 1 Hill Giantess. room 3, 12 Hill Giant young (treated as ogres). The Big Boss fight is the Hill Giant Chieftain, Chiefs Wife, 20 other Hill Giants, 1 Cloud Giant, 3 Stone Giants, 8 Ogres and a Cave Bear for good measure. Try that at level 8.... Lets just say that converting that module from AD&D to 5E has been "interesting".
The reason you can get to level 7 in the module via the towns alone is the module expects characters may not attempt to stop the dragon’s construction, but it is also expected characters will desire to do so.
I think scroll of summon tarrasque can be utilized by people with certain optional secrets at the end of the game. My character would plan to bring it to Neverwinter if they could obtain it.
Thank you again for your awesome help, Luke! I bought this module to run for my friends online and I’m so glad to know what to expect. I had no idea what to expect from this module(Icewind Dale was among my favorites in the Drizzt books), but was hoping a wintery, survival, horror trek version of Tomb of Annihilation(Fav module)... But wonder if that’s even possible to homebrew it like that, lol
The more I pulled from Icewind dale the more I loved it's philosophy of open world design. The book, while it's laid out sequentially in chapters is composed of different interlocking segments. The reason for the level mismatches between chapters was because the authors were attempting to guide open world exploration that spans the entire adventure. The obvious problems of course is that this requires an implementing DM to figure out and tweak CR intensely, keeping some random encounters out of the realm of possibility for certain characters who have MODOKs. They are all fun encounters, but many of them emphasize interaction over combat.
Think it works best (and I read it already as suggestion if you start to mix chapter 1+2 earlier (say level 3) to use the easier encounters first. Also I plan not to tigger some of the adventures in city if the characters are too weak. First campaign I'm DMing but played Avernus and we had an awesome tank to stay alive gut reminded by that when I read the starting adventure. I think its correct that the climix of the hunt should not happen at L1 but after some town with easy encounters.
Ok. So, I've enjoyed your videos greatly and garnered much from them about running games. But, I think I can answer some of your questions about the book. It's important to remember that these are considered campaigns, rather than previous versons' modules. $50 for a 30-page module would be corporate suicide, so they write a series of "modules" (i.e. chapters) and interlink them; thus we have a campaign with an overarching story that ties them all together. The idea that a villain may-or may not-return for bloody revenge makes for icing on the cake. And, yes, that's a rime pun.
I think the thing about cr is that people don't realize that wotc have an ideal party make up. I was explaining this to my boyfriend and he was confused and then I said "you never questioned the cr of the banshee?". After I said that, he started thinking about it and was like "yeah... you'd need a cleric" and that's when I stopped him "exactly". The cr didn't cover every single party comp. It leans toward healer, tank, dps, and utility. But not every party can or will be that way. That's why it's important for a dm to know what the party can and can't do to figure out encounters.
as for chapters 2/3/4 i noticed the same thing with the leveling. I intend on doing 1 adventure from chapter 2 and trying to steer the party down to the duergar fortress around level 4 or just before level 5. Have them deal with that and the dragon to get level 6, then go back to do 2-3 remaining chapter 2 quests to hit level 7, then move into chapter 5 from there. That's the only way i can have it make sense to me lol.
I get that people are frustrated with Wizards for not understanding how frail player characters are at level 1, but this is not the module to address this problem. When you're playing in a HORROR THEMED adventure, always being affraid of walking into a TPK isn't a bug, it's a feature. When you watched The Thing (the most explicit inspiration for this adventure), did you think it was a bad movie because 10 out of the 12 main characters died? Not every adventure is about the players being god-slaying warrior kings. Sometimes, just surviving when others didn't is the win you're looking for. That being said, I'd normally agree with you that Wizards has problems balancing encounters (low-level encounters in particular). Playing even a high-adventure or action-comedy book at first level always feels like you're walking on eggshells. I get that they want you to feel like you're diving right into the adventure without spending your first level stabbing rats in a celler every time, but they go too far in the other direction way too often.
The cold hearted killer didn't seem THAT bad, played through it last week and we took that guy down without anyone dying (though several times someone got knocked down).
The problem is bigger than that! They don't even know how to make engaging encounters! They use plot devices, for ffs! In a game about choice! What a bunch of dumbasses!
@@bonbondurjdr6553 Thing is, modules have to be a bit railroady. Plot devices are not my favourite thing but usually some DM bullshittery is needed to keep the players on track. Players are notoriously good at ignoring plot hooks, and settings are better than adventure modules for choice-filled, sandbox-y games.
Tip to newer players: just because you have an encounter doesn't mean you have to engage that encounter. The world is not scaled to be a fair challenge for you: not even in D&D :)
I am going to run this module and got a Milestone XP chart to use, with XP granted for individual objectives, broken down by chapter. Well researched and thought out, I think we'll be fine. Also got the complete DM's guide bundle from Eventyr games.
I am fresh out of the gate and decided to use this module as my first time DMing. I mentioned this a few live streams ago on your channel and thanked you for having a nice back catalog to help me. Now you know why. :)
@@theDMLair We are doing session 2 tomorrow night. I used the other starting quest for my players and they spent over an hour in real world time searching the starting town. (After I had the quest giver make it clear it wouldn't work that way, 3 times) We are playing online using roll 20 and today I finished making the last map from Chapter 1, knowing* full well how many of them will likely be used.
I felt like the lost city was a weird touch so I decided to make it that the frostmaiden cursed icewind dale to keep the city frozen underground because there was a "ancient evil" locked inside. So that it gave Auril a better reason for the Rime. And the Arcane brotherhood are seeking to unleash what was inside the city making them the big bad
They keep happening because 2 things death is part of the game for 1 and 2 the level 1 quest you keep referring to isn't meant to be complete at level 1. The quest introduces you to all the quests you need to be level 3 when you fight him.
my biggest gripe with the module as written is that they give us this cool (pun intended) mechanic for the harsh climate then immediately take it away and make it inconsequential by automatically assigning the players cold weather gear that ignores it completely. I'll be running it as cold weather gear and/or cold resistance gives advantage on the climate checks.
I am a Brand New DM and I have 3 out of 5 new players. You are completely right about being frustrated on this campaign! I have been doing a lot of home brew just to make the story make sense to me. 😅 I’m a hot mess!
I’m about to run this actually. And I’m moving the tarrasque scroll to muuuuuuch earlier in the module just to temp them to use it as a get out of jail card that I can use as a plot hook later.
Thanks for the review! As a DM, I would love all the extra content and lore besides the adventure. It gives it a lot of extra lifetime because I can pull out parts of the book to use in other adventures. Have you ever done a Descent Into Avernus review? I can't find it on your channel and I would love your thoughts.
I'm a player now in a DiA game so have not read the module though i do have it sitting on my shelf. It would ruin my game experience if I read it though. And be cheating IMO. 😀
I am going to be running this module after we finish Lost Mine of Phandelver at 5th level to deal with some of the dangerous encounters. For the easier encounters I will just rebalance for a stronger party.
I'm not big into forgotten realms lore. I'm learning as I go with Rime (first official module I have used). From what I'm discovering is 1) all of this has been factors to Icewind Dale. 2) seems like the end game is going to lead into many plot hints throughout the rest of the official 5e content. 3) not knowing that fluff lore stuff can be a real disconnect if your expectations are subverted.
Yes, doing a lot of work adapting the module to Greyhawk. Blackmoor and the Land of Black Ice are appropriate. I'm always re-jigging encounters for my group anyway, so there's nothing new. Also adding my own ideas such as Green Hag whose home is built on the back of a Horizon Turtle ( cf. Wildemount).
If you read chapter two fully it clearly states you only level up characters to 4 even if they do all of the quests which they don't have to at that point
Thanks for the breakdown. I've been looking forward to this one, not to run as an adventure, but to cherry pick content from for an eternal winter type story arc I've been planning in my own campaign. So hopefully, even with all those level balancing issues, it's still a good purchase for that purpose.
You can't go wrong with that. Lots of stuff is really hard in this module. Giving the players and extra level would help, things will still be challenging.
I didn't se a correction in the description but since it is such a huge part of the video, Chapter 2 is purely optional side quest content ment for up to lvl7 you dont have to finish it to advance to chapter 3 ect.. its just there so your party can have an alternate way to lvl and explore if they take a break from the main story.
I think if I run this, I will try to do it more Curse of Strahd style, with encounters in chapters 1 and 2 being optional based on what locatiojs the players visit, and things like the mechanical dragon being optional depending on if they complete the preceding adventure by a given time limit. Also, redo the story just a bit to make Auril more tied to everything and a more involved villain.
I already rewrote the entire plot to make the city a part of the campaign, make Auril more prevalent, and reworked several mechanics and quests to feel less forced or frustrating. I'm a first time DM.
Here be Spoilers. . . . . Side Note: The Conjuration Wizard subclass got a much needed late game boost from this supplement, which added a 9th-level combat Conjuration spell (Weird since the book doesn't go that high but okay I guess) called Blade of Disaster. It's almost as good as Meteor Swarm, but runs into the same problem all damage over time spells have to deal with. Concentration instantly drops when you lightly slap a wizard. But since it's a conjuration spell, Conjuration Wizards can avoid this penalty, making it the only conceivably better choice for a 9th-level damaging spell. Coincidentally, it's also instantly one of my favorite spells in the game. Pocket Champion Fighter. Genius.
I am going to run the adventure for my friends and while I am not exactly fresh out the gate, I would say I am fairly new, this is the first time I run a prewritten adventure. And all the stuff I read about problems is making me really nervous. I have already told them that this is a horror story, I have specifically instructed them to have a backup character ready in case of what seems to be inevitable and I will remind them once more that running is a thing, but I'm not even kidding myself, they will try to kill everything with brute force. In all fairness, audacity has worked for them before, it might again. Last time I thought they would TPK, they made it out with little to no damage. Then again, they TPK'd twice against encounters that were "easy" in theory. Anyway, I will try to offer more creative solutions to winning battles, such as giving them opportunities to build clever traps or gain allies, I guess.
Here's the thing about level 1. You are an expert, sure, but you are still a normal person. Normal people don't rush into a fight with a grizzly bear and survive. Normal people don't rush blindly into unknown caves, and forests, and tundra without consequences. We have safety gear, precautions, and emergency kits for a reason. As such, I like to include elements in story that spell out to players that an area is dangerous. NPCs could offer advice: "No adventurer or group has gone into that forest and returned", "Don't travel the paths at night", "If you see a wolf, turn the other way, there will be a pack close behind". Quest givers want results, so they won't send people on a suicide mission. Additionally, not every encounter is a fight to the death. Bandits will likely behave like pirates in that they ask for money first, then fight if the adventurers don't comply. Animals could be scared off by fire or loud noises (or distracted by food). An evil mage might attempt to recruit the players or make some kind of deal. TPK could also be a TPKO, where the party wakes up with a little less gold or imprisoned or being tended to by another passing band of travelers. Whatever fits the narrative. Level 1-4 can actually be my favourite stage when done with care. It requires strategy and feels more human, with paradoxically higher stakes.
in the module it does say you can cut and alter anything in the book. maybe its not expected to use everything so they gave leveling for each thing as reference in case you dont use somthing before it
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If you haven't thought of it already, you can take images of the full color maps and make them black and white by loading them in a program like GIMP or Photoshop and making them black and white there (Under Image settings, Mode settings, Greyscale in GIMP, might be different in Photoshop.).
i don't like milestone leveling, people don't even have time to learn their characters current abilities before they get new ones
Wait! That Wizard is only Level 1, where'd he get fireball?!
Didn't you get the memo? Wizards now get Fireball at every level. It is intended to speed up play by reducing time spent selecting which spell to use. ;)
THANK YOU!
Maybe he got the scroll of fireball from one of that one quest
I expected him to say something like, "I cast fire...bolt"
It was a scroll... maybe
Why does everyone keep assuming that auril is defeated in chapter 5, and then the rest is extra? I keep hearing this complaint. How is a party of 5 level 7 players gonna take on a cr 11 and a cr 9? Even if they beat the cr9, it just becomes a cr10. And then a cr11. How could this NOT be a tpk. Winning condition is getting the scroll to crack the ice and getting out alive. Then you NEED the mythallar to save icewind dale.
Thank you! I was really thinking I missed something when he said that lol
I think this chapter is meant like how strahd appears in curse of strahd a lot of the times and will just completely trash your players and then leave to flex on how strong he is. (It's also a great tool to use as a DM to gague how close yoru party is to killing him, and allow for buffing him in later fights)
This is Auril showing up to fight the characters before she either A.) Makes her big escape to then show up later or B.) trashes the players but barely keeps them alive bc she figures it isn't worth her time.
Lol, as soon as we got the McGuffin, our druid ran off for our spell jammer while the rest of the party, consisting of a bug bear tundra barbarian, way of the open hand half-orc monk, elf gloom stalker ranger and my human order cleric. The icicles the Frost Maiden fucked us in her first phase, but we managed to knock her out quickly when she turned to phase 2 thanks to stunning strike and bless with my order cleric's passive, making my heals give bonus attacks to the people I heal. The massive bird she had got us really low before she went to phase 3, the scariest part of the fight. Her pet walrus, and her icy minions and her 19 AC almost killed the 4 of us. The Cover shield I had keeping her walrus at bay and reviving when people went down with giving bonus attacks, with the gloom stalker dealing the main dps, the tundra barbarian tanking most of the damage and our monk playing the flex role, which was really needed. We ended up defeating the Frost Maiden after the barbarian got knocked 5 times, the monk 3 times, the gloom stalker twice and me with death ward went down once with everyone but the gloom stalker at 1 health!
@@brettreedy9520 as someone preparing to play this module and planning on making an elf gloomstalker myself, this is fairly good to hear
I'm currently running this module, and while I do have a larger group (7 players) I know that they could easily take on Auril and win in chapter 5. There is also a note in the book saying that one of the level up conditions is to beat Auril. While her CR may be high, her stats don't seem to back it up to me, which is where the rebalancing comes into play. Its mainly just poor writing from what I've seen. My group can easily pump out 138hp worth of damage in a single round without using spell slots.
Luke I think you have missed a text that says that chapter 2 is a kind of open-world chapter that is not supposed to be run as itself and is connected to either some rumors that the players got earlier or will get later (Its basically filler adventures, which are cool and someone can run them all or jus the ones that looks the best to DM). The quest that you have described is not for lvl 1 characters, as it is supposed to take the party through few cities untill they find "the guy", I would run it at level 2 with 5-6 player and level 3 for 4 man party, which should be fine for a hard but rewarding fight. I haven't read later chapters but overall it seems like one of the better adventures from Wizards yet, especially that it does not (!) have branching paths which are a total waste of printing paper (as most people run module for one group so they only go through one path).
It's possible I missed something... That would make me feel a whole lot better. 😀
@@theDMLair You sure did! Had to get that review out BEFORE you read the whole thing, eh? Too bad your ineptitude is writ large for the world to see, for all time!
@@benvoliothefirst Amen & amen!
Perhaps Wizards could have placed a difficulty ranking for each quest so the DM knows at a glance to lead parties towards or steer them away from certain things (oh wait they did, at least for some). But i think it’s good to have the variety from cake walk to deadly. This campaign is supposed to invoke fear. Having deadly encounters not only is one way to invoke fear, but is also an incentive to solve an encounter in an “outside the box” way rather than charge in head first.
I disagree with a lot of your complaints here in this video. You’re entitled to your opinion, but make sure you understand what you’re gut reaction is before hand.
It's so situational though. Could be the easiest quest in the world unless you get a party without X spell that resolves the biggest hurdle, or vice versa. That's why DM balancing on-the-fly is important.
I think the game designers made encounters so deadly because the module is marketed as a "survival horror" module. Sooo it's probably designed to create "OH SHIT, RUN" moments.
Maybe but this seems like more a trend in most of the recent modules.
@@theDMLair D&D is moving away from hack 'n slash. Social interaction is the point these days. We're in a pandemic! Get with the times or get out of the way, old man!
The starter quests are short because its intended that they explore each of the towns along the way and potentially take quests while they are there. Eventually solving the initial quest after maybe gaining a level.
Then why is the boxed text for Cold Killer literally tell you who dunnit. I am running mine as a murder mystery without the over the top reveal that could see a lvl one party go headfirst into Sephek.
Excellent. Thank you and will use.
@@MrBrianofarrell lol
"Take your party to level 10 and beyond" is on par with "... and I've been a Dungeon Master since highschool" as far as slogans are concerned. :)
Fair point... Lol
@@theDMLair - LOL. And, great insight about the module. I think they were trying really hard to make it more sandboxy - like Dragon of Icespire Peak. But, they lose some of the narrative when they try too hard. I've been reading through Princes of the Apocalypse and is has some great locations, but the story is completely lost since you could go anywhere at any time. I guess thats the tradeoff - Linear Aventure with Strong Narrative arc, and simple progression system. Or give you a world to play in and leave it up to the DM to make it cohesive. But, the Challenge rating issues I think shows a lack of playtesting.
Never got confirmation that fat cat died. now that he is unshackled from the party he can begin his rise to become the legendary king he was meant to be. once he slays old man commoner and steals his immortality.
Schrodinger's fat cat
Some reason I’m thinking necromancer cat. Not to be confused with a Tabaxi Necromancer, but a Necromancer house cat. Although a Tabaxi Necromancer who’s background is trying to find immortality since he’s on his 9th life that would be really funny
@@wolfjack5802 I think there's a yokai like this. Bakeneko? Pretty creepy sorta thing. Really old housecat that can raise the dead or masquerade as a person by wearing their skin.
Makes me want another eastern-flavored module/setting.
Now he can become Krosp, the king of all cats. ;) (Kudos go to anyone who gets the reference) :D
@@melkiorwiseman5234 Ahh I see what you did there.
Maybe the climax is a race between the party and Auril to claim the Mythalar, with Auril wanting to use it restore her faltering spell
"giving a player a free feat at level one is gamebreaking early game"
Id rather have my players be stronger early on in these modules than have the game break my players spines imo.
Agreed. At some point i would like to try a progression where the PCs start out weaker, but progress stronger. However, Icewind Dale is not where i am going to explore that. I would also be more inclined to granting them a level one feat instead.
I would allow the feat from varient human, but not just blanket allowing everyone a feat for everyone reguardless of what they are playing.
Adding a “flavor” feat to each character is not too bad, as long as you limit the choice to a few that are helpful, but not OP. I would even consider a few Racial feats to be free at level one, but the flavor feats are more fun. Consider feats that are cool, but most will not take. Observant, Keen Mind, Chef, Actor or even just the tough feat for everyone (they are hero’s after all).
With quite a bit of story tweaking, connecting Xardox to Auril, Auril’s power source being connected to the Netherese City this module becomes bit more coherent and fun.
Lol, TH-cam tags this as Icewind Dale, the 2000 pc game ..
TH-cam is... Great. Love YT! 😂
If you haven't, go play it. It's amazing!
@@jochenpanjaer980 You mean the 2000 PC game? Yes, yes I played it .. thanks for the suggestion though
Hilarious
To offer a bit of speculative insight, I think WotC designs their encounters for Adventurer's League min-maxers who will inevitably build specifically to tackle the module and exceed the recommended party size. I don't know though, I'm just a welcome ambassador datacron.
Certainly could be. 😂
Eh, I wouldn't say that AL characters are neccessarily more min-max'ed than characters in other campaigns. There are a lot of restrictions that apply to AL only (you can't pick certain races or subclasses, for example), you have to use Standard Array or Point Buy (so no "lucky" players who just "happened" to roll three 18 stats to start with) - and Rime of the Frostmaiden is the first Season 10 adventure, meaning you can't trade overpowered magic items over from your older characters while playing this hardcover.
After running the module twice with some heavy tweaking, it's now my favorite official module, primarily because of how much freedom it allowed me as a DM compared to other modules I ran. It's got problems but it's pretty great otherwise.
Simple fix for people who take issue with Auril not being the climax. Have the city's Mythalar be needed to hault her spell, and then either finish her off in heir lair or in the city so the Mythalar can go from holding the spell at bay to repairing the weather fully
Aurils abode was never the climax, it’s intended for you to fight Auril at ythryn as the final encounter, I mean the best you can do at auril’s abode is stop the ritual but obviously the frostmaiden is going to come and try to take revenge for that, I mean there’s a whole section in the seventh chapter with a detailed encounter for the characters against the frostmaiden
That’s exciting for us! They made more content for us to fix and make content on! “How to fix unbalanced encounters” Commin up!!
Great breakdown, was super helpful to see the big picture
I absolutely adore this module.
It’s my first and only campaign, running it as a DM.
I ignored the starting quests and gave them a NPC designed specifically to die after healing them through the first combat, once they got to level 2 it went more smoothly.
One of the issues with promade adventures is then tend to be balanced against a specific group/level of optimization. I think most of them are intended for fairly optimized characters (as shown by past deadly encounters) and not everyone does those.
And inevitably you can't balance it for 3 players and have it work for 6. Who's job is it to fix that kind of thing? The DM's!
Welp, I'm glad I decided to check this out on my lunch break. First time DMing, planning on spending this evening mapping out my party's first game on Friday, and I decided that Rime Of The Frostmaiden would be a perfect introduction! Woop! To be honest the setting is good enough that I have no issues with spending a bit of time rebalancing!
Oh yeah, with some rebalancing and TLC I'm sure it'll be tons of fun for you all.
It seems odd, to me, that the designers don't just include some quick tweaks that the GM could make to level encounters to suit their party; bonuses or penalties to NPC HP, Damage and To Hit.
U as a dm could just.. do that if u see ur party starting to flounder
@@MrLeava Indeed, however, in the video, he was saying that the scenarios aren't balanced to work with the spread of character levels covered by the campaign. This seems like an oversight by the designers, and, I thought, that they could take some of the work load off the GM by offering guidelines.
@@euansmith3699 Its not an oversight. The DM Lair just failed to mention that there's a disclaimer that many of these encounters are deadly and players should be warned that just blindly running into combat is a foolish mistake. It's stressed that frequent resting, smart decision making and retreating are all necessary to survive this module. It's not meant to be balanced. It is meant to be freaking, stinking hard. Session Zero matters so much for establishing the importance of a solid party and also is a great opportunity to tell your players that this module will be hard and they should be prepared to respond accordingly. This campaign should be ran with established players who know how to play well together. And it's on the DM to describe enemies in such a way that the PCs can smell a deadly encounter before the wizard takes 50 damage in a single hit and gets knocked unconscious. If my players aren't sat on the edge of their seats, terrified whether they'll survive the encounter, I'm doing something wrong when running this module.
As for your first point, some encounters do have Dues Ex style NPCs and scenarios you can run to distract or neutralise foes. *Spoiler alert* Just take a look at the ship that's trapped in the ice in Chapter 2. When the dragon arrives, there are clearly detailed things the DM can do to make the encounter easier for the PCs.
@@MKxJUMP I was thinking more the other way, where the players level up using chapter 2, until they are OP for chapter 3. Still, it is nice that this setting has some of that old school feel where players need to be ready to flee from a too powerful encounter.
@@euansmith3699 Honestly, I wouldn't mind the PCs being able to breeze through Chapter 3 (assuming they choose to do it) because it means they can rush through it, find the plans and hopefully stop the dragon before it's too late.
I believe there is an interview with Perkins, and Crawford on the adventure that gives a very small insite to DM's and ideal on running the game. One take away thing I remember from it was make it your own game, don't just do everything verbatim from the book it's only a guide, everyone will interpret things different, and feel free to add on to things " Anyway you would like to spin it."
This does makes me feel better that, as an extremely new player first time DM, I come away from my prep sessions like "why is this just a chapter filled with 100 quests that my players will do like.... 5 of."
I thought you can't kill Aureil completely as she regenerates at the next winter solstice unless you find that spell that actually banishes her and that's why the PCs keep going afterwards...? (sorry for the horrible grammar/spelling - English is not my first language)
Yes I think that's true.
Don't worry about your spelling, it's top noch, not a single mistake. Keep going brave soul that has ventured into this amazing hobby.
Thanks to the Kobald Vampire spawn Gary is now an intern for a vampire
In my view this book are multiples modular adventures conected by location and period. Chapter 1 and 2 provide us multiple adventures that are basic short dungeons that can be implemented at any game. I have a far use of lake monsters and confused kobolds, and I will use the nautiloid não in the Spelljamer part of my home campain. Most of the book are 3 separeted storylines that one or two could had been made in a second part book (like rise of tiamat as a part 2 for hoard of the dragon queen). The Duergar Dungeon and dragon atak could be part one and the Island of Frostmaden and arcane brotherhood search for the Netheril City could be part 2. Or even a 3rd part for the Netheril search.
I'm really happy because we got a rant for free 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Also, we started playing this module last night and I'm hoping we only get a couple of tpks 😂
You like the rants? Lol
@@theDMLair and the cats too. 10/10
Thanks! I found this video helpful as I’m a new time DM planning to run this module. I agree how Chapters 6 and 7 seem a bit disjointed and I was planning to add more to the adventure by having the characters not fight Auril’s three forms all at once, but at different stages and bump up her CR to match the party’s level, and also make it more clear that the Ythryn Mythallar can relieve some of the Ten Towns from Auril’s Rime, making the Ythryn quest make more sense to the storyline.
First time being a DM for a campaign module.
Glad to know that my group picked a difficult one to have me start with lol.
How did it go? :)
Nice overview I love this module. I think it's a great source book for Icewind Dale. I also really like the basic outline of the story. Aurilia I thought was suppossed to be faugjt 3 times, once for each form she had. (Cold Crone, Brittle Maiden and Winters Womb)
So far been enjoying running this one for my group. I had my players make custom dark secrets that I then tied into the main plot points to tie the story together a bit more. Auril got a full redesign as I am planning to run this up to the 15 or so range rather than stopping at 12. Lastly I added in some new more powerful magical threats that are looking for the netherese ruins. A Nagpa, a manshoon clone, and X the Mystic. The quests in Ten Towns thusfar have been fine, and personally I found this module to be one of the quickest reads so prepping hasn't been too bad for me.
Awesome. Glad it's going well for you!
Could you tell me how you altered Auril's stat block? I'm planning on running this campaign for my group and it'd be fun to reach higher levels of play
@@DaBlueIghuana For sure. A lot of it was adding more spells, hp, legendary resistances etc. Do you want me to send the actual pdf?
@@LCommando19 would be amazing
Auriel's form has an owl's head and her name actually sounds "Oh-real" - at this point it becomes too much of an old "O rly?" meme. :D
New theory: The o'rly-jokes are the reason for the many TPKs. xD
Oh-reel sounds horrible! No way I'm not going to be saying it 'Orril'.
@@kopecci9678 Orril sounds too much like Oral to me and I feel like the oral jokes are worse that the O rly jokes
One of the things I always tell my players in games that I make myself is : It not because you encounter an enemy that you are supposed to just straight-up fight it. Sometimes you have to run, sometimes you have to talk, sometimes you have to think of an ingenious plan, sometimes you have to come back later, etc.
Having both easy peasy encounters and deadly ones is something I personally like (it's even something I'd rather never do without) because it's more realistic and it invokes the need for my players to do some decision making. There is no way life will put you through challenges that are just right for your level of strength every time so can just bash in every encounter until you reach the end. I don't want my players to rush into every fight, I want them to consider the challenge before they jump in, otherwise they might very well die.
And for the leveling thing, maybe because from chapter one, the players can choose to go to chapter two right after reaching level 4, or they can keep going and do every quest in Ten-Towns. A DM might reward those players with more levels, and so chapter 2 has challenges for those players ? Cause chapter two is not meant to be played as is, it is material to transit into chapter three I think. So you get material for a variety of levels, the DM should pick the ones that are relevant. I think.
I haven't fully studied the book yet, but studying the book very well and understand how it is meant to be played is the DM's job, and it is a very important part of making it fun and also giving justice to the work behind it. Sometimes small details of how to use the book makes allll the difference.
Unpopular opinion. If you run cold blooded killer as RAW, the caravan starts in a DIFFERENT town then the PCs. The act of even getting to the other location should be enough to level to party to level 2, and if you do another quest along the way your party should be almost level 3 themselves. The opening quests are meant to spur exploration of Ten Towns. Just like how the chawinga are also in a different town.
I am currently running Storm Kings Thunder for an 8 member group. This book actually makes a great source material book for that module as well.
The reason for very dangerous low level encounters is Wizards believes that the dnd world should feel dangerous. They want characters to die so players use their brains and have to work out of situations. This adds to the overall fun
What a stupid excuse.
@@bonbondurjdr6553 I agree there are better way but wizards knows the higher level u get the thought of death is less and less a thing at low levels is the time your most likely to be able to die, and stay dead... but to me that just means they shouldnt let pcs learn revivif lol
This does not add to the overall fun. It punishes players for picking casters.
@@supersmily5811 and as i said i agree that there are better ways to teach players that death for their characters are very real, but i have been a dungeon master for 5+ years and let me tell you how there are some babies out there that never want their players to die... but the sad fact is, early spell casters are weak in strength its why they became casters and weak in spells cuz they are low level.. u wanna combat this dont make con and str and dumpstat... but also remember the world does revolve around you players and not every monster or person is gonna be on ur level or less.... BUT YES wizards should not right official campaign with 1st level, first session, tpks
@@MrLeava It should always feel dangerous without being the DM trying to kill the PCs. Hence why I throw fairly tough cr encounters at my players. Changing hp if i need to. I killed two pcs with disintegrate from a beholder zombie when they were level five. The zombie beholder had also vomited shadows at them. However they had found two scrolls of resurrection just five sessions earlier. However that was it for them for bringing people back. I warned them that bringing someone back from the dead is a bit unnatural and they have to make a DC roll everytime which gets harder everytime that character dies.
Started this campaign yesterday, but it requires a huge amount of work to setup and customise, definitely not one for a new DM to run straight off the pages.
Even allowing for balance issues, it is very large amount of information that has to be absorbed before you start. All ten towns have to be read and considered before you can start, and since a lot of them aren't going to be used, was there something important that got left behind.
Totally agree. Lots of work and reading and prep, even more than something like Curse of Strahd which is also very open worldy.
I feel this is a module for experienced DMs and players.
@@theDMLair the boxed text here is great and there is some great setting to develop further. I am ratcheting up the cold, the isolation and the gallows humour of the residents to drive the horror theme.
I started them with arriving the night of the lottery in Bryn Shader, and another dead body shows up the next morning to kick off the Cold Killer story.
Bought CoS before quarantine and am now running Icewind Dale with roll20. Keeping it pretty open until I see them take interest and you can find a lot of useful secrets with a quick search I got a cannable, I think it'll go well. They want to just scrounge the battlegrounds for finger food. Later it'll be like the wendigo curse.
alternate end: using the scroll to fight the return of the goddess
They should've done what was done in the extra encounters in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. They present an area and then gave a few enemy tweaks that would up level the encounter area between 3, 5, 7, etc..
i ran the ice killer as my opener to a group of 4 (barb, artificer, druid and fighter) i chose this opener after i saw the party had 2 people with fire spells plus 2 people that could cure wounds / healing word. With those in their kit they fought the monster and were able to pingpong a bit and take him out. At the en dof hte fight it was close, 2 people were unconscous(the 2 healers) nad hte fighter/barb were about to be downed when they managed to just barely beat the guy and do enough damage to finish him off. It was a crazy encounter, there's a reason they give you multiple options for the opener, you dont have to go with that opener you can go with an easier one. Look at your PC's make-up and choose an opener that they WONT struggle with. My pc's are all DM's and they built a very well rounded party, so i figured why not throw the hardest opener at them and see what happens.... and they won.
I see what you mean about the density of the book, but I’m going to take the sandbox approach to the whole module, at least with the first few chapters, as that approach allows you to plug and play lots of the towns and the attached quests to those towns, and find a way hook the party into the duergar king adventure, and maybe teasing Auril after that and seeing what they do.
I am dming icewind dale tbh, and it’s kinda funny how it decides to be super deadly at random times
My perspective on this is that parts of chapter 2 were designed to be completed after chapters 3 and 4. There are a lot of quests there that are meat grinders for characters below level 7 (my party only survived one of them because of a werebear), and there are also quests that the characters have no reason to do until they need transport to Grimskalle.
Anyways, that's just my opinion on the matter, hope it helps!
I'm going to be the dm to this module in a month. I have throughly read over chapter 1 and between exhaustion and some of the quests/encounters I could slay the party of 4 that will be playing. I definitely have some balancing prep to do. I'm going to have them lvl 5 before heading to ch 2.
This is a very good review! I was wondering whether I was going to buy this, but now I'm almost certain I will. Love the in-depth, but quick analysis. My favorite dm to learn from! Have a great day Luke!
Happy to help! The module seems fun; just needs some TLC.
@@theDMLair thanks a lot
the DM Lair Thanks dude, love your channel!
SEPHEK SHOULD NOT BE FACED OFF AGAINST BY THE PCs UNTIL LEVEL 2 or 3. From getting the quest to finding Sephek, the party should have had at least one wilderness encounter (traveling from starting town to the next town which needs to happen to work on the quest anyway) then the town quest, which could be one of the easier town quests. Then they can face off against Sephek. It’s not a design flaw, it’s a user error/user ignorance thing (with respects that no one DM is generally ignorant or dumb). This module is very obviously intended to be a toolkit for a DM to develop into their own campaign. I don’t even think you are supposed to actually run all three main quests in one campaign. You can. But I think each is intended to be its own campaign. Chapter 2 is intended to be sprinkled throughout the events of all of the other chapters.
Work is not something a DM should shy away from, it is our role in the group.
Yeah! Why'd you put so much content in this book?!? It's too hard to get 100% with all fetch quests/trophies!
I'm a 1st time DM, running ROFTM. Did session 1 last night, which ran to 12 hours. Party started on Bryn Shander, and knocked those damn goblins on their asses with only 1 party member going Unconscious at one point. At level 2 (and I was *so* proud of my party) they took on the Verbeeg Lair from Good Mead. Killed Duhg and the ogre, (animal friendship potioned the polar bear), THEN went on to kill Gahg. It was *mental.* Such a rush!
The best way I found to connect the quests in the module is by utilizing a newspaper system. (: I call it the Ten Town Tribunes! The party picks up single sheet newspapers in each town and finds out new rumors...
It's an extremely deadly as-written adventure, for sure, but my group has shown themselves capable time and time again. Some examples:
At level 3, two of the PCs fought Maud Chiselbone and her "pets" while the other two were asleep and came out victorious, without any deaths.
At level 4, the party handily defeated a frost giant riding a mammoth.
At level 5, the party easily swept six chardalyn berserkers without AoE spells.
As such, I've actually needed to scale *up* difficulty slightly, to keep the players on their toes. I beefed up the Xardorok fight with extra enemies, and they still had no issues. Last session, I spiced up Destruction's Light by having a duergar warlord encounter during a siege. The party handily defeated the duergar warlord alongside three duergar, while the chardalyn dragon was firing potshots at them with its breath weapon when available.
They aren't even metagaming. They're just *really* strong in combat.
Running this adventure right now, and I changed 3 big things:
1. It's not known Auril is behind the winter. Her frost druids are spreading the faith in secret, sacrifices are made on the DL. Sephek kills people who steal sacrifice, instead of avoid it. This also makes the first chapter a mystery, searching tentowns for clues and leads.
2. I introduced Vellynne much earlier. She's a sage questgiver whom the players have a bond with. Makes the second half of the book less random.
3. I split information about Ythryn, the Caves of Hunger, Sunblight, Grimskalle, Auril, and all the strangeness up between a bunch of NPCs. Nobody knows everything, and the party puts together how to stop the winter through exploration and roleplay.
Oh yeah, also:
The eternal winter is _eternal_. Beating Auril won't stop it. You have to use the Mythallar, explore Ythryn, get a satisfying climax...
I feel a good way to actually tie Auril in as the main villain early on is to replace the infernal roles of Levistus/Asmodeus with her so she actually has a role early on, which honestly, I'm surprised the designers didn't do that since as is she only in the background for most of the adventure SHE is supposed to be the villain of.
Another thing you have to factor in is magical equipment. All the CRs of the monsters in the Monster Manual are geared towards Characters without magic items to counter the weaknesses of a lot of monsters. Characters with magic items can generally handle creatures a little bit higher than the normal CR levels associated with the challenge thresholds... admittedly it also comes down to how you run the monsters and how tactical the players are. A highly tactical group, especially one that has access to minis and a battle mat, could potentially think of ways to isolate individual monsters and defeat them so there's less individual challenge. Other times you might get low-power monsters that the GM plays smart and tactical with which wipes out a high level party simply because of the effective use of terrain and tactics.
My plan for my eventual Frozen North campaign is to basically just take quests/events out of book. Auril will probably be a level 10 fight, the city, maybe 15 and I have other content for up to 20. Its going to basically be a mish-mash of module and homebrew content.
Snowy Owlbears make a potential TPK worth it. I'm gonna name mine Snowball. ;)
Fun Fact: Rime is frost which forms from mist or fog droplets instantly freezing on contact with a cold surface (as contrasted with the usual way, where dew forms on a surface and then freezes after).
Bonus Fun Fact: I learned the word from Dickens' famous story A Christmas Carol and looked it up to find the meaning.
Extra Bonus Fun Fact: Part of the description of Scrooge delves into hyperbole by describing him as "a frosty rime was on his brow" in an attempt to describe how cold and unfeeling Scrooge is at the opening of the tale.
I'm running a campaign of this now. I agree that this is a balance and editorial mess but I don't mind rewriting the encounters. I'm enjoying it.
Now, I haven't watched much of the video cuz I don't wanna spoil it, but I'm guessing that the way chapter 2 works is that it's just what's supposed to be between other chapters. It's dubbed Icewind Dale and thus makes me think that it's just a general chapter to have the characters do stuff between other chapters as they choose. They could have named it differently yes
You've got a better understanding than the reviewer.
First, thank you for that great introduction part of your video..I thoroughly enjoyed it... LOL . So I've been wanting to run this module for months now and I've had the book since October. I finally will have my first session this Friday 1/29. I'm pretty excited. I play virtually using Fantasy Grounds. Got a friend who is also running this game -- he's on his fourth session this weekend and has been sharing what he's doing and what has happened in his sessions. Plus I've read the first three chapters at least once and the first chapter probably 3 times now. I've watched some videos of groups that streamed their sessions....I've taken notes ...I've really put in my homework on this one. I'm not a new DM but I stopped playing the hobby in October. So I've had a few months break and that added to my excitement to get back to playing. one of the reasons I've put in some good hours preparing is because of what is pointed out rightly so in this video -- I've heard it before ..about the weird leveling and the unbalanced encounters. (My friend that is already running his game -- like I said he is going to be at session 4 this weekend, he had 1 TPK already and almost another with only 1 player left standing, and that player had like 2 hp left). I have some homebrew ideas I'm gonna mix in to help balance things, but at the same time I'm gonna be a bit sadistic (before you think that's terrible, normally my style is very forgiving so yeah I''m due to be a little tougher).
I was going to run this campaign for 5 to 6 players. I think a plot hook on going into the frozen city within the caves of hunger after dealing with Auril would be that a magic artifact needs to be acquired in order to permanently dispel Auril. In a way maybe make it like a Lich's phylactery?
At level 1 you fight rats.
Not the giant variety, and not swarms.
RATS.
Also, did you ever run the Death House just as written in the module?
Was it a TPK every single time, regardless of party composition?
I plan on using this module as a prelude to my conversion of the old school module Queen of the Spiders, I needed something to get the players up to a decent level before even contemplating throwing that at them. For reference, the Queen of the Spiders was written for characters 8-14 and the first three rooms in the first "dungeon" are: room 1, 3 Hill Giants. room 2, 1 Hill Giantess. room 3, 12 Hill Giant young (treated as ogres). The Big Boss fight is the Hill Giant Chieftain, Chiefs Wife, 20 other Hill Giants, 1 Cloud Giant, 3 Stone Giants, 8 Ogres and a Cave Bear for good measure. Try that at level 8....
Lets just say that converting that module from AD&D to 5E has been "interesting".
The reason you can get to level 7 in the module via the towns alone is the module expects characters may not attempt to stop the dragon’s construction, but it is also expected characters will desire to do so.
I think scroll of summon tarrasque can be utilized by people with certain optional secrets at the end of the game. My character would plan to bring it to Neverwinter if they could obtain it.
Almost like they planned it that way...
Thank you again for your awesome help, Luke! I bought this module to run for my friends online and I’m so glad to know what to expect.
I had no idea what to expect from this module(Icewind Dale was among my favorites in the Drizzt books), but was hoping a wintery, survival, horror trek version of Tomb of Annihilation(Fav module)... But wonder if that’s even possible to homebrew it like that, lol
Happy to help! :D
RotF is INCREDIBLY customization-friendly. You can make it whatever you want.
Benjamin von Sück I’ll try to make a hexagon map with their locations to discover or something. It’ll take some work haha
The more I pulled from Icewind dale the more I loved it's philosophy of open world design. The book, while it's laid out sequentially in chapters is composed of different interlocking segments. The reason for the level mismatches between chapters was because the authors were attempting to guide open world exploration that spans the entire adventure. The obvious problems of course is that this requires an implementing DM to figure out and tweak CR intensely, keeping some random encounters out of the realm of possibility for certain characters who have MODOKs. They are all fun encounters, but many of them emphasize interaction over combat.
Think it works best (and I read it already as suggestion if you start to mix chapter 1+2 earlier (say level 3) to use the easier encounters first. Also I plan not to tigger some of the adventures in city if the characters are too weak. First campaign I'm DMing but played Avernus and we had an awesome tank to stay alive gut reminded by that when I read the starting adventure. I think its correct that the climix of the hunt should not happen at L1 but after some town with easy encounters.
Ok. So, I've enjoyed your videos greatly and garnered much from them about running games. But, I think I can answer some of your questions about the book. It's important to remember that these are considered campaigns, rather than previous versons' modules. $50 for a 30-page module would be corporate suicide, so they write a series of "modules" (i.e. chapters) and interlink them; thus we have a campaign with an overarching story that ties them all together. The idea that a villain may-or may not-return for bloody revenge makes for icing on the cake. And, yes, that's a rime pun.
You understood this module much better than the reviewer.
@@benvoliothefirst I appreciate the compliment; but I'm quite sure he could run it better than me. 😅
I think the thing about cr is that people don't realize that wotc have an ideal party make up. I was explaining this to my boyfriend and he was confused and then I said "you never questioned the cr of the banshee?". After I said that, he started thinking about it and was like "yeah... you'd need a cleric" and that's when I stopped him "exactly". The cr didn't cover every single party comp. It leans toward healer, tank, dps, and utility. But not every party can or will be that way. That's why it's important for a dm to know what the party can and can't do to figure out encounters.
as for chapters 2/3/4 i noticed the same thing with the leveling. I intend on doing 1 adventure from chapter 2 and trying to steer the party down to the duergar fortress around level 4 or just before level 5. Have them deal with that and the dragon to get level 6, then go back to do 2-3 remaining chapter 2 quests to hit level 7, then move into chapter 5 from there. That's the only way i can have it make sense to me lol.
I get that people are frustrated with Wizards for not understanding how frail player characters are at level 1, but this is not the module to address this problem. When you're playing in a HORROR THEMED adventure, always being affraid of walking into a TPK isn't a bug, it's a feature. When you watched The Thing (the most explicit inspiration for this adventure), did you think it was a bad movie because 10 out of the 12 main characters died? Not every adventure is about the players being god-slaying warrior kings. Sometimes, just surviving when others didn't is the win you're looking for.
That being said, I'd normally agree with you that Wizards has problems balancing encounters (low-level encounters in particular). Playing even a high-adventure or action-comedy book at first level always feels like you're walking on eggshells. I get that they want you to feel like you're diving right into the adventure without spending your first level stabbing rats in a celler every time, but they go too far in the other direction way too often.
The cold hearted killer didn't seem THAT bad, played through it last week and we took that guy down without anyone dying (though several times someone got knocked down).
The problem is bigger than that! They don't even know how to make engaging encounters! They use plot devices, for ffs! In a game about choice! What a bunch of dumbasses!
@@bonbondurjdr6553 Thing is, modules have to be a bit railroady. Plot devices are not my favourite thing but usually some DM bullshittery is needed to keep the players on track. Players are notoriously good at ignoring plot hooks, and settings are better than adventure modules for choice-filled, sandbox-y games.
Tip to newer players: just because you have an encounter doesn't mean you have to engage that encounter. The world is not scaled to be a fair challenge for you: not even in D&D :)
I am going to run this module and got a Milestone XP chart to use, with XP granted for individual objectives, broken down by chapter. Well researched and thought out, I think we'll be fine. Also got the complete DM's guide bundle from Eventyr games.
12:50 raises the question then:
Aside from the starter set or essentials kit, what IS the best full module for a newish DM to run new players through?
After coming out of a TTRPG hiatus of ten years... I found the Stranger Things starter kit to be rather worthwhile. :)
The Sunless Citadel from Yawning Portal.
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Nice to see offical adventure module taking place in location from Icewind Dale video game and books of R.A.Salvatore.
I am fresh out of the gate and decided to use this module as my first time DMing.
I mentioned this a few live streams ago on your channel and thanked you for having a nice back catalog to help me.
Now you know why. :)
Lol. Yep. What's been your experience with the module as a new DM?
@@theDMLair We are doing session 2 tomorrow night. I used the other starting quest for my players and they spent over an hour in real world time searching the starting town. (After I had the quest giver make it clear it wouldn't work that way, 3 times)
We are playing online using roll 20 and today I finished making the last map from Chapter 1, knowing* full well how many of them will likely be used.
I felt like the lost city was a weird touch so I decided to make it that the frostmaiden cursed icewind dale to keep the city frozen underground because there was a "ancient evil" locked inside. So that it gave Auril a better reason for the Rime. And the Arcane brotherhood are seeking to unleash what was inside the city making them the big bad
That is such an imaginative way of doing it!
Scrap everything because next video has to be fixing Frostmaiden 🤣🤣
Yes!
Um... Yeah...
Yeah! Waiting for the video :)
there was that line about the video being less than two hours long, though....
did the fighter get a new sword?
They keep happening because 2 things death is part of the game for 1 and 2 the level 1 quest you keep referring to isn't meant to be complete at level 1. The quest introduces you to all the quests you need to be level 3 when you fight him.
my biggest gripe with the module as written is that they give us this cool (pun intended) mechanic for the harsh climate then immediately take it away and make it inconsequential by automatically assigning the players cold weather gear that ignores it completely. I'll be running it as cold weather gear and/or cold resistance gives advantage on the climate checks.
I am a Brand New DM and I have 3 out of 5 new players. You are completely right about being frustrated on this campaign! I have been doing a lot of home brew just to make the story make sense to me. 😅
I’m a hot mess!
I’m about to run this actually. And I’m moving the tarrasque scroll to muuuuuuch earlier in the module just to temp them to use it as a get out of jail card that I can use as a plot hook later.
For the color maps, just print them out greyscale for your notes and use the color versions for the players to see.
Thanks for the review!
As a DM, I would love all the extra content and lore besides the adventure. It gives it a lot of extra lifetime because I can pull out parts of the book to use in other adventures.
Have you ever done a Descent Into Avernus review? I can't find it on your channel and I would love your thoughts.
I'm a player now in a DiA game so have not read the module though i do have it sitting on my shelf. It would ruin my game experience if I read it though. And be cheating IMO. 😀
@@theDMLair Got it! Too bad, I would've appreciated your review. Perhaps someday after the campaign.
I am going to be running this module after we finish Lost Mine of Phandelver at 5th level to deal with some of the dangerous encounters. For the easier encounters I will just rebalance for a stronger party.
You'll probably spend more time leveling up encounters tbh if PCs start at level 5.
I was gonna adapt this into my parties next campaign as there lvl 4-8 or 9. So this will be useful
I'm not big into forgotten realms lore. I'm learning as I go with Rime (first official module I have used). From what I'm discovering is
1) all of this has been factors to Icewind Dale.
2) seems like the end game is going to lead into many plot hints throughout the rest of the official 5e content.
3) not knowing that fluff lore stuff can be a real disconnect if your expectations are subverted.
Yes, doing a lot of work adapting the module to Greyhawk. Blackmoor and the Land of Black Ice are appropriate. I'm always re-jigging encounters for my group anyway, so there's nothing new. Also adding my own ideas such as Green Hag whose home is built on the back of a Horizon Turtle ( cf. Wildemount).
I'm still reading through my copy, but I'm really hoping this one can be made to work because I want it to be fun.
It can. I'm sure it will be fun with some rework.
It IS fun! You just have to RTFmodule!
If you read chapter two fully it clearly states you only level up characters to 4 even if they do all of the quests which they don't have to at that point
Thanks for the breakdown. I've been looking forward to this one, not to run as an adventure, but to cherry pick content from for an eternal winter type story arc I've been planning in my own campaign. So hopefully, even with all those level balancing issues, it's still a good purchase for that purpose.
I'm literally about to run this for my group. With a party of 3, I was thinking of starting them at lvl2, to help them out
You can't go wrong with that. Lots of stuff is really hard in this module. Giving the players and extra level would help, things will still be challenging.
I didn't se a correction in the description but since it is such a huge part of the video, Chapter 2 is purely optional side quest content ment for up to lvl7 you dont have to finish it to advance to chapter 3 ect.. its just there so your party can have an alternate way to lvl and explore if they take a break from the main story.
I think if I run this, I will try to do it more Curse of Strahd style, with encounters in chapters 1 and 2 being optional based on what locatiojs the players visit, and things like the mechanical dragon being optional depending on if they complete the preceding adventure by a given time limit. Also, redo the story just a bit to make Auril more tied to everything and a more involved villain.
I already rewrote the entire plot to make the city a part of the campaign, make Auril more prevalent, and reworked several mechanics and quests to feel less forced or frustrating. I'm a first time DM.
Here be Spoilers.
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Side Note: The Conjuration Wizard subclass got a much needed late game boost from this supplement, which added a 9th-level combat Conjuration spell (Weird since the book doesn't go that high but okay I guess) called Blade of Disaster. It's almost as good as Meteor Swarm, but runs into the same problem all damage over time spells have to deal with. Concentration instantly drops when you lightly slap a wizard. But since it's a conjuration spell, Conjuration Wizards can avoid this penalty, making it the only conceivably better choice for a 9th-level damaging spell. Coincidentally, it's also instantly one of my favorite spells in the game. Pocket Champion Fighter. Genius.
I am going to run the adventure for my friends and while I am not exactly fresh out the gate, I would say I am fairly new, this is the first time I run a prewritten adventure. And all the stuff I read about problems is making me really nervous.
I have already told them that this is a horror story, I have specifically instructed them to have a backup character ready in case of what seems to be inevitable and I will remind them once more that running is a thing, but I'm not even kidding myself, they will try to kill everything with brute force.
In all fairness, audacity has worked for them before, it might again. Last time I thought they would TPK, they made it out with little to no damage.
Then again, they TPK'd twice against encounters that were "easy" in theory.
Anyway, I will try to offer more creative solutions to winning battles, such as giving them opportunities to build clever traps or gain allies, I guess.
Here's the thing about level 1. You are an expert, sure, but you are still a normal person. Normal people don't rush into a fight with a grizzly bear and survive. Normal people don't rush blindly into unknown caves, and forests, and tundra without consequences. We have safety gear, precautions, and emergency kits for a reason.
As such, I like to include elements in story that spell out to players that an area is dangerous. NPCs could offer advice: "No adventurer or group has gone into that forest and returned", "Don't travel the paths at night", "If you see a wolf, turn the other way, there will be a pack close behind". Quest givers want results, so they won't send people on a suicide mission.
Additionally, not every encounter is a fight to the death. Bandits will likely behave like pirates in that they ask for money first, then fight if the adventurers don't comply. Animals could be scared off by fire or loud noises (or distracted by food). An evil mage might attempt to recruit the players or make some kind of deal. TPK could also be a TPKO, where the party wakes up with a little less gold or imprisoned or being tended to by another passing band of travelers. Whatever fits the narrative.
Level 1-4 can actually be my favourite stage when done with care. It requires strategy and feels more human, with paradoxically higher stakes.
Never DMed before and just ordred this book, so looking for all the inspiration i can get 😁
in the module it does say you can cut and alter anything in the book. maybe its not expected to use everything so they gave leveling for each thing as reference in case you dont use somthing before it
I loved this video! Luke please do Waterdeep: Dragon Heist next!!