ไม่สามารถเล่นวิดีโอนี้
ขออภัยในความไม่สะดวก
Umbrage Hill DM Guide | How to Run Dragon of Icespire Peak
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ส.ค. 2024
- Umbrage Hill DM Guide | How to Run Dragon of Icespire Peak
0:00 - Intro
1:00 - Quest Card/Overview
2:47 - Adventure Evaluation
5:21 - Fixing the Manticore Encounter
7:30 - Negotiating with the Manticore
9:02 - Adabra Declines to Return to Phandalin
13:52 - Outro
___________________________________________
JNJtabletop is a group of friends who love to teach and play D&D and tabletop RPGs. We provide content that teaches you to be a better player, inspires you to be a better game master, and hopefully shines a bright light in even the darkest of timelines.
#dnd #ttrpg #jnjtabletop
Follow our social media accounts to stay up to date on all things JNJ!
LinkTree: linktr.ee/jnjt...
Twitch: / jnjtabletop
Twitter: / jnjtabletop
___________________________________________
Suggested Playlists
-Intro to Dungeons and Dragons: • Intro to Dungeons & Dr...
-Dungeon Master Tips: • Dungeon Master Tips
-Reviews & Unearthed Arcana: • Reviews & Unearthed Ar...
-Table Talk: • Table Talk
Gameplay
-Ancient Relics & Hokey Religions: • Ancient Relics & Hokey...
-Dragon of Icespire Peak: • Dragon of Icespire Peak
___________________________________________
Gameplay Attributions
___________________________________________
Art Used
docs.google.co...
___________________________________________
Music & Sounds
Our videos (mostly our gameplay) sometimes contain music or sounds from various sources and these are the most common places that we use.
Music used may be part of Bethesda Elder Scrolls games such as Oblivion and Skyrim and it is used because of the legal statement made by Bethesda here... bethesda.net/e...
Music and Sound by Syrinscape.
store.syrinsca...
Because Epic games need Epic game sounds
tabletopaudio.... is another excellent resource when it comes to gaming ambience and content creation. We use some of their audio tracks from time to time as well.
Thanks for watching! We've got many other DM Tips to help you get the most out of your games! Check them out on our channel and in this playlist... th-cam.com/play/PL6dmrZg4pm2qOzacuy1icbfxTvjj-PKf6.html
For more tips on running the Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure, check out our growing playlist here: th-cam.com/play/PL6dmrZg4pm2phOB99W_qDcTHfRO_ipO-i.html
I really wish you had more videos on Icespire peak! I'm about to run it with some friends as my first experience DMing and these 2 videos have been SUPER helpful.
We’re so happy to hear this and we promise they are coming!! Jake has been out of town all month and his entire setup/rhythm has been off. Once he gets back, in addition to our regular stuff, he will be focusing primarily on getting one for each adventure module in DoIP!
Is there anything in particular you may be looking for?
@@JNJTabletop Awesome! I'm excited to see more! Aside from videos like this where it explains the Quests, I'm kind of struggling to find information about how to best utilize a battle grid during my sessions. Should I pre-draw my maps somehow before the session? Should I draw it as we go through a location or dungeon bit by bit only by what they can see? I can't find much helpful information on how to approach this and still make it immersive while not spoiling the entire dungeon or having the players sit there for 30 minutes while I draw out the dungeon.
Ah ok. That’s the kind of thing that’s going to be a bit more specific based on the group and wether or not they’re meeting in person or online. Jake did prep his maps with a sort of fog of war for the adventure he ran on this channel. He likes that it made things more immersive and he did do it ahead of time to keep the action moving during the game. He did use the dndbeyond code to get the digital maps ahead of time which made everything a lot easier
@@sleepingsunsetofficial
hey man!
I bought 2 ''official'' dnd adventure grids ( so that's about 40 bucks for a LOT of reusabillity)
I have 1 dungeon pre-drawn, and one ''combat map'' pre-drawn.
I have both grids folded and ready to go behind my DM screen.
whether the party chooses to dive into a dungeon, it's ready.
they want to go to umbrage hill first?
that's ready on the other side!
this having ''the 2 most likely encounters'' your players are going to pick gave me a lot of confidence, even steering the party naturally towards either option, as opposed to panicking that they ''were going off script again''
I hope your first time DM'ing was as fun as mine!
well, I promised I'd be back after DM'ing this for my group of 5 first time player friends, with me being a first time DM.
the boys absolutely loved it, and it was just ''an introduction'' to the adventure with some random encounters.
I was sooooo overprepared!
the good thing about that, is that I feel super confident for the rest of the adventure.
I still have hella NPC's, random encounters, plot hooks and homebrewed magic items that were never even needed in our first session, because the players were too busy beating the snowy owlbear they chased out of a den that was not scripted whatsoever, I just happened to have that mini ready.
took 'em a good 3 hours at level 1 with no experience in DND, but everyone had a blast.
again, many thanks for the amazingly useful videos.
I decided to level my party up to lv 2 before heading into phandalin (that's what the owlbear was for) so I don't have to nerf my manticore, seeing as how it's a 5 player party with some ranged options.
next session my players will run into that manticore, but they have some lv 2 spells, and 2 barbarians :')
I do feel that for one of the very first quests in a campaign meant for new DMs they should have included more ideas on how to handle this. I'd also have loved a few hints for the Manticore's personality if they do choose to talk with it.
I'm a BRAND NEW DM and these videos have been SUPER helpful. Thanks for doing these!!!!!! 👍👍👍
You’re so very welcome!! We’re so glad to hear this!
DM for a while now but dealing with some new players and wanted to run something that would be nice for them so I bought the essentials kit. I like doing my prep so I'm happy someone has good videos for this module! Thank you
Very happy to be of help! If you have any tips or insight you figure out, please don’t be shy about sharing them!
@@JNJTabletop My group ran Umbrage hill this past Saturday and if you have 4/5 people at lvls 2-3 I for sure recommend the "initially wounded manticore that summons mate" route. Was a very fun encounter that was balanced provided I upped the AC and base health of the unwounded Manticore
I’m about to run this for the first time, and you are a huge blessing making these videos! Thank you so much!
So glad to hear it!! Jake plans to make one for each adventure module in this campaign but life/time has not been kind in that regard.
Please let us know how your game goes and, if you like using discord, feel free to join our server (link in our linktree in the description)!!
I just ran this last week with my friends (my second session as DM and 5th session in total ). They chose this quest as there second quest so they were lvl 2 at the time.
I know my party realy likes combat so i prepared 3 ways to throw in combat :
1: the attack or do not calm down the manticore he would attack (he would not fly because then i would flat out kill them) but appart from that i hadn't planned some changes to the manticore.
2: if the could calm down the manticore without battle i woul trow in a comat on the way back.
3 the could in my mind persuade the manticore to ho hunting with them for the meat he wants. Depinding on percentile dice they would find prey, get attacked by wolves or the manticore would be to hungry and still attack .
The party went with option 3 :p
So along the hunt they get attacked by wolved, i threw 11 at them 4at the manticore, the paladin an barbarian had to deal with 2 each (to show of pac tactics) , and one wolf each for the sorcer (sidekick of the book) and the ranger because they are squishy.
the wolves surpised the party and whent first on initiative so they attaked twice before the party could react.
The manticore trew realy bad and only killed 1 of his wolves before dying, the wolves threw extremly good and got nat20's like it was nothing.
Result i almost killed the entire party (the palladin died 3 thimes XD
My party loved it but i realy miscalculated how manny wolves to trow in ;)
Love how many different ways there are to approach this and as long as everyone had fun, that’s really what matters most!
The more you post about Icespire, the more I want to play it!
It surprised me how much I/we enjoyed it. A lot of that had to do with having such a great group dynamic between us all but the adventure is quite good!
New DM here who just led her 1st level party through this encounter (just barely). It still didn't make things entirely fair, but here are some things I did that might help:
1. The Manticore just got out a a nasty fight with the dragon, and only had about 26 hit points. Make sure you describe to your characters how this Manticore is very beat up, so they don't mistakenly think this is how it's supposed to go. If I could go back in time I'd also decrease it's Armor class a little, since a lot of hits kept missing.
2. Adabra got 3 levels of wizard so she could use Ray of Enfeeblement. In hindsight I should have made her a cleric, but I thought a 4th player would be coming with a cleric and didn't want to take anything away from him. My biggest thing is make sure she's casting support spells to not take away from the Party's victory.
3. Work with your players and make sure they know what abilities they have and how to use them. Experienced groups probably won't need this, but I had to look up all of the Bard's spells to see if any work with a bonus action and long-distance since their Rouge was about to make his 3rd death saving throw after 2 fails. She had Healing Word though, so it worked out.
Of course, since I didn't want to go through that again I told them they got their level up after getting the letter from Adabra, and highly suggested they take a long rest in her house before going to Gnomengard.
Thanks for sharing!
I'm about to DM for the second time, just bought the starter set and i'm so glad i found this video cause it gave me a lot of ideas of how to run it in a fun way!
Awesome! That’s exactly what we want to do! If you’re up for it, we’d love to hear all about how it goes 😊
theres your 900th. sub, very helpfull video series, going to run Dragon of icespire peak soon, thanks for the work
Going to use this to teach new players to approach problems from different angles, but will wound the manticore beforehand to be safe-ish
Sounds like a sensible plan to me!
Just leave the Umbrage Hill card off the jobs board until the party has completed their first job (dwarves or gnomes quest). When they return they see a new job. Easy.
Obviously you can change anything you want, however you want, and this idea certainly would do the trick. Many, if not most, won't think about it too much, but there are two things to potentially consider because this might remove some of the cohesion in the overall story if not thought out beforehand.
1. Did Adabra just move to the windmill? Why would Harbin Wester choose to not warn her at the start? Perhaps they don't get along and he dragged his feet in posting this notice. If you take this route, it might make sense to think about it just a little more to make it make sense.
2. Also, this adventure is designed to be available right from the beginning. This is a bit of a cheesy reason, but anytime you change something from its intended use, it's always worth thinking about.
My son and I are playing this adventure with just the 2 of us. I am trying to make each session use 1 quest and play out like TV episodes that have a common plot to try and keep the story coherent but to also not make the session too long because he’s 8 and wants to run around and play. I had a thought on the manticore quest, I was going to explain how dangerous it was especially if it was hungry like a real wild animal would be, but if he talked and helped the manticore, secretly, it would return the favor at the end of the campaign by swooping in and assisting with the Cryovain fight as a friend. I wasn’t sure how viable that would be, but I would like to think that all the primary NPCs encountered would help my son’s character out in some fashion for the battle to make it feel special and epic.
YES!! That sounds like a great way to handle the manticore and have some real quality teaching moments!!
This adventure in particular was one of the ones I struggled with the most. Probably because it was right in the beginning, but hopefully this helps!
I can def see where you would have issues with one, but the decisions you made sound like they worked out pretty well!
@@bluedragonguild I froze like such a noob!! It was more my lack of experience with pre-made adventures than anything else there. Once I settled in to feeling like it was still me that was the DM, I feel like things went smoothly 😊
@@JnJake haha it def happens! I’m not a fan of running the prewritten stuff, so I would def do the same thing!
@@bluedragonguild I had to give myself permission to change something. I know many people don’t struggle with that but I was so worried I would mess something up that was important later on. I know there are others out there like me.
@@JnJake I absolutely understand that feeling!
One of my players wanted to negotiate with the manticore by letting the manticore eat Adabra Gwynn. (He was playing a Drow). Then another one of my players had a lawful good character who objected to it and started a fight. Then that lawful good character offered her arm to the manticore instead of Adabra Gwynn, taming the manticore in the process
thank you so much for this effort!!
I'm about to DM for the first time with this campaign and I was thinking, why not have the girl at the windmill also be the tavern owner's niece? Might be a little extra in there from him.
Coming back through to comment on each episode. HAIL THE ALGORITHM
Al Gore must remain in rhythm! 🤣🤣🤣
But seriously, thank you for the love and support!!
My players really surprised me a couple of times in this quest. Firstly the ranger and the monk (successfully) stealthed their way towards the mill, after which the monk climbed into the mill through one of the windows. Now the adventure doesn't say whether or not the windows are large enough for this but looking at the map I was like why not, they are 5 feet wide so they are probably similarly tall (pretty big windows). The monk was a goblin so he was pretty small anyway. After this he speaks quite bluntly and undiplomatically to the terrified Adabra who now has a goblin in her house as well as a manticore outside her door but he manages to convince her that he is there to help. He tosses a rope to the ranger who is waiting outside and tells Adabra to slide down it. At this point I make her do a wisdom save as this would be a quite scary experience for most commoners (speaking as a commoner). She fails it and freezes in fear. At this point the monk gets a brilliant idea, rather than calm her down he rushes downstairs and OPENS THE DOOR FOR THE MANTICORE! I was flabbergasted. He rushes up with the manticore in tow prompting Adabra to do a new save which she does a lot better. After which she jumps/falls out the window onto the waiting ranger.
At this point the manticore leaves the windmill but Adabra is waiting behind the party. The powerbalance has completely shifted as it is a quite large group (7 players). In the end the bard convinces the manticore to accept the meat in their rations, the sorcerer makes them smell more appetizing with prestidigitation. The manticore flew of and joined the orcs at the Temple of Savras together with his mate. He was later killed at Butterskull Ranch, although his mate and cub are still at large.
Regarding Adabra the bard cast charm person on her when she wouldn't leave. This gave me a reason for me to explain her motivations when they got her back to Phandalin: FIrstly I made Adabra a dwarf, since her race isn't mentioned anyway. Her ancestors rest beneath the cairns on the hill and although she no longer worships the dwarven gods she still honours them. For this reason she asks them to bring a bottle of mead and pour it on the ground if they are going that way (which they are). Adabra isn't telling the whole truth, the offering of mead isn't as much to honour her ancestors as it is to keep them under the ground. The spirits of the hill are restless due to the way they died; violently while forsaking all dwarven codes of honour and family. Consequently when the players arrived on their way back from Gnomengarden to pour the mead, several wannabee cultists of Murkul (yes foreshadowing) are trying to do dark rituals (the leader had a staff with a fake skull, they later found skulls like it in Butterskull Ranch). They were politely but firmly told to leave by the party.
A bigger group has a very different dynamic here! The goblin monk opening the door to scare Adabra into going had me 🤣
Forewarned about how tough a Manticore can be I subbed it out for 3 Orcs attacking the door of the windmill to give the players a more reasonable first adventure challenge and it worked out well, although we had a close call with a player nearly dying. Adabra's unwillingness to relocate to Phandalin was not received well!
It’s such a clunky adventure but that substitution makes a lot of sense for the overall story! Well done!
The Gold thing makes no sence.
But feeding the Manticore and failing to convince Adabra to return (which i gave a DC20), meant in T3 when they returned, they found 2 Manticores, a destroyed Windmill and Adabra's half eaten corpse ^^
Love this! It shows how the players actions (successes OR failures) and choices affect the game.
In the kit it gives you sidekicks for situations where you’re running a single player campaign. If you have a party of three or more, could you, in theory, use a sidekick or two to work with the party just for this quest? Maybe kill them off to showcase the level of danger for the campaign without killing any pc’s early in their first quest?
The beauty of D&D is you can do whatever you want! Each adventure even gives you instructions for how to adjust combat difficulty based on number of players and sidekicks. This would be pretty easy to pull off if you ask me
4:38 top left lol
😉
I had cryovein drop the manticore near the hill and it was pissed and lashing out injured and Cut some hp off, drop a damage die for missing claw.
I want to run this at some point!
We HIGHLY recommend it!!
what umbrage hill didnt show up on the job board until after doing one of the other quests?
Nice video. On the topic of starting the players at lvl. 2, I was thinking of having some orcs run into town and possibly threaten one of the NPC's there. This would both give a relatively low-stake introduction of dnd combat to any PC's that are new to DnD, while also giving me a story based excuse to lvl up the party. Was wondering what you thought of this and where it might fall through.
This is an excellent idea! As a base, I would consider 1 orc per party member (not including sidekicks). If anything, round down/remove an orc. If the purpose is to teach combat and to give a reason for them to level up, there’s no need to push the difficulty here.
I think I'm going to have the manticore injured (frostbitten) on his left arm and claw...perhaps an injury from Cryovain. He's got disadvantage with his claw attack.
No idea how the fight's going to go. Everyone in my group is new, but we have a bunch of players so I'm hoping it's not too grueling or frustrating for us!
The ability to fly coupled with the power of the ranged tail spike attacks can be particularly nasty to a level 1 group. If possible, showcase just how strong it is before the group decides to fight it so they can make an informed decision and it sounds like a good plan overall to me! Please let us know how it goes if you get the chance!
Edit: i didn't hear you out before writing. I got excited about the encounter too soon 😄
I'm still waiting for my box so I don't know how this scenario is presented but sounds like naturally the manticore is focused on the tower and the NPC within. To me it sounds like an excellent opportunity to emphasize the horrifying strength and viciousness of the monster. There should probably be a good vantage point to take a look at what's going on after hearing terrible roars and banging. That might have the characters seeking other options besides combat.
Maybe if the players are all new you can give some further hints but not to feed the players a solution. A group of players are likely to come up with a better more inventive strategy than the DM would. Also it's good for the DM to be kind to player ideas even if they don't seem brilliant. Experienced 5e players used to mostly prevailing is another challenge of course.
Also I really appreciate your emphasizing meaningful choices.
I’m about to run this adventure and I was wondering if I should not give them the umbrage hill quest until after they finish one of the other 2, would that be ok?
We just started our game at level 2 so our players could decide which quest they did rather than the DM deciding but that would certainly work. I think that idea is particularly helpful with brand new players that you’d like to ease into learning their characters.
Ok thanks, none of us have played before which is why I was wondering
Ah that's awesome! I think that would be a very wise move then. Level 1 characters are definitely squishy, so I tend to keep encounters very simple for them. I avoid things like ambushing them, monsters that are clearly too strong, etc...
If you think I/we can help you with anything else, please don't hesitate to ask!
Ok thanks
This quest is, honestly, one of the most offensive things about the Essentials Kit. As you laid out, it's the first thing most players will do, and it's way too deadly. I cannot understand how it survived play testing.
I fully skipped it, but I would make two key changes:
1) I would have the manticore be immediately semi-sympathetic, in that he is yelling in anger and fear, demanding that she give him a place to stay safe from the dragon and let him have her healing potions, hopefully telegraphing it as a role-playing encounter from the get go.
2) instead of offering a note to the PCs, I would have her offer them a free healing potion as a reward for helping her deal with the manticore, as long as they let her stay.
Now it's a choice: make her go back for Wester's 25gp reward or take her 50gp healing potion reward.
Because Wester is a bit antagonistic (if you run him like he's portrayed in Lost Mine, anyway) this can give a little fuel to that right off the bat. Wester can be irrationally angry at the party for not returning with her safe and sound, and no amount of explaining that she wanted to stay will matter.
Love your take and the insight into how Westor is portrayed from Lost Mines! Thank you!
Hi, I was wondering how you placed character images on the maps that you were able to move during the game?
I used a program called MapTools. It’s an older program but it did a good job! We now use Fantasy Grounds instead because it was easier to let everyone control their own character that way.
Thank you
You’re welcome!
The manticore really isn't balanced, played it with a party of 3, they tried attacking but decided that making a deal would be the better option, sadly 1 (problem) player decided to stab the manticore in the back during the payment, so my first session as a DM, already a character death.
Thinking about how to nerf the manticore, instead of just lowering its hitpoints, what do you think about giving it some levels of exhaustion (fleeing from a dragon sounds like a good reason for that)? 3 levels should make the manticore a lot less likely to hit, and 4 also would reduce the hitpoints.
I’m sorry you’re dealing with character death right out of the gate. Exhaustion would certainly help with nerfing this fight. Maybe it’s a combination of lack of proper food and stress that leads to that.
I’m curious what level you started everyone at.
I followed the adventure and started at lvl 1, I think that this worked fine as long as you show your players that combat isn't the only way out.
In my session (my first ever one, mind you), I took a few pointers from others and decided to make the manticore have half it's health, missing most of it's tail spikes, and look emaciated, injured and desperate due to the dragon pushing it out of it's habitat.
This made my player first try and trap the manticore with a snare (which it ended up failing) and actually spoke in common with it. He ended up bringing the manticore into the forest, successfully hunting a deer for it, and satiating it's hunger for the time being. I plan on bringing the manticore back randomly on a quest or two, maybe for more food (kinda like a cat bothering an owner for more) and even helping in the final dragon fight potentially. That's just how mine ended up lol
Absolutely LOVE all of this! Especially the idea of bringing the manticore back as an NPC of sorts!
My players prefer the XP for levelling up. Do you have a guideline as to how much each area could be worth in XP points? I feel I would need to increase the encounters or somehow or award them in other ways.
I would suggest following the XP values the monsters have and then consider quest completion bonuses. At the end of the day, that ends up just being milestone leveling anyway. It’s tricky because the adventure is not setup for tracking XP.
I’m new to dnd but why not nerf the manticore as you say, describing its injuries (maybe damaged wing so can’t fly, few tail spikes etc) sustained by cryovain. Its motivation for wanting to get into the building is because it knows healing potions are produced there? So if the party is smart and agrees to (partially) heal it they could agree to work together (when the time comes) to ultimately kill cryovain and restore the manticore to its former ‘top dog’ position and territory
The great part about D&D is that there’s never just one way of doing things. I advocate just starting the characters at level 2 because it’s the simplest and most reliable solution in my eyes. It also allows the players to decide to fight or negotiate as they see fit. The design here feels restrictive to me in that it almost feels like they’re trying to force the group into not fighting. I enjoy when my players have choice/agency.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a battle that’s over their heads once in a while but you need to give indicators that that’s the case for them. Otherwise, it really can come off as unfair.
I really disliked that line when the adventurers are approaching, “A little help here?”
Just seems like shes not taking the danger seriously, I omitted
It definitely sets a very lighthearted tone. I believe the term is “campy” if I’m not mistaken