Lost Mine of Phandelver DM Guide - Villains - Nezznar the Black Spider
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2024
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Meet the main antagonist of Lost Mine of Phandelver Starter Set adventure - Nezznar the Black Spider! Let's roll.
I changed Nezzar to a Drider. He was a drow but cursed by lolth and banished from the underdark. To take power he was looking for the forge of spells. Once he died, drow captured them and forced them into slavery...enter Out of the Abyss
Sounds cool!
Oooh. Brilliant.
In the game I am running, there are 3 dragons all converging on Wave Echo Cave. Venomfang was driven out from his previous lair in the east and has heard of the cave wanting to make it his home. Gundren Rockseeker is an adult Silver Dragon, which the players do not know about. Before the campaign he was a patron for them in Neverwinter, but his discovery of the cave divulging the discovery but not the details to his longtime friend Sildar was his undoing because of Sildar's carelessness trusting Glastaff. The 3rd dragon is Daurgothoth the Creeping Doom from older D&D ed. lore.
Daurgothoth is hatching a larger overarching scheme to bring back Tiamat to have as a mate (which I am tying together into Tyranny of Dragons later). He is in the underdark and while his presence is more or less hidden, through his advanced magic he has been weakening the Spider god Lolth's hold on the drow. Lolth has been under his sway to a certain degree, and this is where Nezznar comes in. He is caught up in this and terribly afraid. He serves Lolth, and throughout the campaign as he has spent time out of the underdark and further from Daurgothoth's reach he has become disillusioned and believes he must free the drow from the draconic influence, and the forge of spells can help him by crafting magic items to resist and possibly fight free of Daugothoth. (His original purpose being sent there to secure the forge for part of Tiamat's hoard). This will make him pretty sympathetic I think, but what keeps him a villain is that the spell forge requires sacrifices to function, people's souls. Something he is willing to do, but I doubt my players will be.
Daurgothoth is a little over kill
I don't understand why everyone thinks they need to change Blackspider. Phandelver is one of the better fleshed out stories for such a short module. The simplest thing I added for him was a timeline of events. The whole module is roughly about a week's time. So from the time Gundren goes missing Nazznar needs to capture him, move him to a safe location cragmaw castle, interrogate him, decipher the dwarf map, locate and hike to echo wave cave, then clear the place out.. he's only one or two days into his exploration of the cave when the PC catch up. So it makes sense he hasn't found the forge yet, if he's a weak fighter than he probably asks for a long rest after every combat. Kappa. Or he cleared out maybe 500 years of spawning undead which could be a month or more.
Happy with video, but everything I watch people make 100 changes to the module
Hey, thanks for the comment. Well, to me, D&D settings and stories are meant to be altered to fit one's taste. If you found the original just fine, that means your taste matches that of the authors, and that's great too. Honestly, I enjoy running modules as close to the "canon" as possible. With Nezznar, I just wanted more depth to the character. I'm a sucker for good fleshed-out villain with a relatable story. Check out my short story about Nezznar if you haven't already :)
Yaaay! Finally the main villain of the campaign!
Fantastic story and a great review of the campaign. I really enjoyed the way you look at adventures, villains and the whole D&D world. Hope to see your new videos very soon!
Thank you, sir
This is excellent. I know Im late as hell but im just now running LMOP. I like what you did here as well as with the beacon. As for my version of Nezznar. I split the Doppelgangers and Vyrith and Vhalak into seperate entities. The drow are real and Nezznars sibling cousins. They helped with his escape, and now he plans on conquering the surface in name of Vhaerun. Lolths son. Vyrith is still secretly in service to Lolth, and Vhalak seeks redemption from Elistrae after returning a favor to Nezznar. So im loving what I can do with those dynamics.
I love your videos, keep making them! These lmop ones are particularly good
This was totally awesome and so helpful!! Thanks for the great content!
Just entering the final chapters... Got some homebrew and some ideias form others around the net. Yours going to blend in too. Gotta get it spicy :P Great Job and keep on helping me as a Newbie DM
Wow! I'm surprised I just found your channel. You're very well spoken and I love the ideas I heard in the last video plus this one.
You're the best lore teller. I enjoy listening at the same time while at work
Thanks, that's very nice to hear
Excellent job just what I needed to prep for tonight’s session!
Love your videos, you really deserve more subscribers.
Thank you, Benjamin.
Great video. I wish I'd found this series before I started running LMoP.
your channel has become one of my favourites , i really like your style and ideas
That's very nice of you to say ☺️
Brian I’m so proud of them
Looking for guides on LMoP and found your channel. Great stuff
The way I understood it from the module itself is that Nezznar found the Cave through his spies following the dwarf brothers already before Gundren hired the PCs. Getting Gundren for interrogations and obtaining his map was just means to prevent others from finding it.
As for motives, I'm hoping to merge my Lost Mine with Rise of Tiamat. Doing material in between that's homebrew but kinda establish the essentials of HotDQ in alternative ways. Nezznar, a bit of a historical scholar as well as one of magic, has somehow foreseen or predicted the Cult's plan. Mostly fearing for his own life and those he cherishes, he's gone off to find ways to possibly confront the Cult's plan, mostly independently because he has a reputation of madness and paranoia even among his closest peers.
The Forge of Spells is but one option of many he's considered as a key to stopping the Cult. Nezznar considers it possible that if used right, the forge and the mine's yield together could help him assemble an entire army of magic-weapon armed warriors that he'd expand with goblinoids, orcs and other monsters that can be motivated for the sheer promise of loot and violence. And this he would use to wage war against the Cult that the ignorant city-states of the Sword Coast are too stubborn to realize is a serious threat.
Had a monologue ready and rehearsed, foreshadowing this that would have been pretty cool, but the party has a barbarian.
Oh wow great idea!! I was thinking on how to link it to HotDQ as well but was a bit lost so this is really helpful! I'll probably give it a personal twist of course but thx for the help ;)
Outstanding
Great content with this and the Tyranny of Dragons videos. Just wanted to throw out there for anyone using Lost Mines of Phandelver to start a campaign and then transitioning to the Tyranny of Dragons, you can have Nezznar be part of the cult tasked with with getting the forge of spells running again to have a constant source of items to add to the hoard. Include a note from Rezmir, add some cult flair to point out on Nezznar's outfit and add some Lizardfolk/Bullywogs as part of his personal guard. Really helped to bridge the two campaigns and moved us right into the Mere of Dead Men section of Hoard. After the returning back to town, Leosin could approach the characters alongside fellow harper Sister Garaele. Would also be good to potentially spin the cultists/venomfang encounter to turn out to be the adventurers interrupting a recruitment mission.
Just some food for thought for anyone looking for ideas.
Excellent guidance here. I'm very impressed! I'm pulling nezznar into my saltmarsh based game currently. This is a great bit of info to make him a decent sub villain.
Check out my short story - Beacon of Hope!
This was fantastic! I'm going to be starting Wave Echo Cave today. Wish I watched this earlier and had a chance to build up his character further. I don't expect they will make it through the whole cave in one session though so I can still build up tension.
Good luck concluding the adventure!
This is so useful! I'm a first time DM for my long time DnD group and I know they are the type to ask "why is an npc doing what it's doing" so I was really struggling with this as they are reaching the end of the campaign. I'm gonna put all these ideas to work, thanks!
Thanks. Also check out my short story "Beacon of Hope".
Awesome. Good stuff.
Thank you!
I have been putting in some mentions and have a doppelgänger in town spying on the party.
VenomFang and The black spider are working together so I can drop some details this weekend when I steer the party to ThunderTree.
Good job 👍
Very interesting takes in this one. What are your thoughts on Matthew Perkins’s changes to this module? One thing this video helped me realize is that you don’t need to add some macgufin “enchanted puzzle box” into the story. Instead, the map can just be enchanted, like you suggested.
That's amazing, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
thanks for posting these videos. The biggest "Why?? wtf?!?" thought i have had running this (or icespire peak) is the lack of info etc for Neverwinter. Travelling all the way 2-3 days journey to phandalin(or similarly small town) when a larger coastal city with sea access and a river is closer to the adventure point seems counter intuitive for a weary adventuring party low on resources.... though i imagine affairs in Neverwinter could be a whole module easily unto itself.
I have to agree. I remember one of my players was super excited when he saw the city on the region map, but I think it was dissapointing to him to find out it's never really mentioned in the adventure. I would guess they threw in the famous word for marketing reasons. And to be fair, on the other hand, running a bustling city would be daunting for most starting DMs.
@@LutesDice I imagine if i was more familiar with the video game series filling in some lore/locations on the fly might not seem so mammoth , but all i have are some smaller maps from online which show it as built up on both shores of the river...
There's a 4th edition Neverwinter Campaign Setting source book, if you're interested. Maybe you can find a pdf on DMs Guild or some other resource.
@@LutesDice would the "sundering" incident or its reversal impact anything found in that book drastically though, or is it essentially a similar layout to the 5e sword coast??
I'm not an expert on the sundering topic, but I imagine it wouldn't be too incorporated into the city setting. Essentially you want your shops, guild houses, organizations and so on, it's very possible it can be all applied to the current timeline. In any case, I've heard very good things about this supplement.
By the way, it comes to mind that I've used Murder in Baldur's Gate setting book for info on that Baldur's Gate (the module took place during the sundering as far as I know) and the city is basically the same in 5e BG: DiA.
This is the best thing I have seen in D&D in over 15 years, thank you.
Thank you for these words!
lol the cat! Thanks, great ideas to improve the campaign. In the module it really doesn't make sense that in the end Nezznar is an idiot who is not capable of passing through a fungi cave.
CAT CR30
What are the stats and CR of the gargantuan beast at the end? It looks like it has a grapple bite and some claw attacks, does it have any resistances like to suggestions spells or vulnerabilities like to color spray or laser pointers?
Just finished the Wave Echo Cave 🤘😂🤘
Congratulations
i make it so he needed dwarfs to make the forge work
👍🏻
I thought of making him a hobgoblin instead of of a drow.
Storm King's Thunder!!!! Plzz
Hello, Xan. I have a copy, but I never ran the adventure, only used it as a sourcebook for the North. Maybe one day!
Could you do a video on how to add music to your campaign ? This should include "source of free music" and how to use Roll20 for this. I'm just getting starting with VTT gaming so my players have asked this of me.
Hmm, I'll think about it. Thanks for the idea.
Can somebody get this guy some more subscribers please?