The Snow Stalkers 5E D&D Adventure Walkthrough
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- A full walkthrough for The Arcane Library's 5th-level D&D horror one-shot, The Snow Stalkers!
When the members of The Red Drakes adventuring party go missing with precious cargo, it's up to the characters to find them before a blizzard hits. Can the group survive the grisly revelations waiting for them in the remote peaks of Frostfall Pass?
Get a copy of The Snow Stalkers in the Bundle of Horror 2: www.thearcanel...
Highly recommend purchasing, my party has been through a few arcane library adventures and they loved every one of them!
I ran the first bundle of Horror as a mini campaign and then purchased the Bundle of Horror 2 and am now running this module and love it.
Just dropping by to say I got this adventure and ran it in my Ravenloft game. It worked beautifully. We played it in two sessions of about 3 hours each, great fun for all involved! Thanks for your work!
I purchased the Snow Stalkers and will be running my group through this tonight, we loved Skyhorn Lighthouse and Temple of the Basilisk Cult. Always a good time, keep up the good work!
That's fantastic to hear, thanks so much, Benny! Have fun with the Snow Stalkers! :)
Love these new adventures Kelsey. It is always a pleasure to open up one of your adventures and get a peek into your world. As always, I hope you roll 20s!
Yay, thank you so much, Chuck! :) I really appreciate you scoping them out and always being such a big supporter!
Okay - ran this last week (had a blast with costumes), and I wanted to post how things went here. I'll also add a few notes for prospective DMs - especially with regard to scaling things if needed for party strength, etc. This became most noticeable in the final combat with the alchemist.
So - as usual - the quality and pacing of this adventure is superb. Kelsey is a master at blending artistic interest with focus and clarity - so it's rather hard for PCs to completely wander away from the point. At the same time, they don't feel railroaded into a set sequence of events, either. I needed to get my PC's to a snowy pass area post-haste (they were finishing Wave Echo Cave in LMoP). To summarize my mechanics there, the last fight/encounter actually occurred at the entrance to Wave Echo Cave (for why that was the case, see my writeup on Kelsey's Watchers in the Night adventure). This actually had the Black Spider and his minions (to include Glasstaff/Iarno) returning to the cave after a tough encounter with a Glabrezu. The PCs were just on their way out of the mine, having actually long-rested after complete exhaustion dealing with the undead portion of the dungeon and the Forge of Spells. They knew they would be facing opposition as a result of the aforementioned "off-track" nature of their trek through LMoP, so the "final battle" actually became a stand-off between the party and the Black Spider as the latter tried to fight his way back into the mine. While this battle was going on, a concurrent contest between Venomfang and Cryovain occurred outside the mine entrance (in the air). Both dragons have played pivotal roles in this campaign, and in a weird ironic twist, Cryovain has actually used the party (and they, her) from time to time throughout. Venomfang, however, is an enemy due to the PCs stealing an egg from her - and she and the party have had several run-ins throughout. She also played the part of the arch-villain for the entire LMoP sequence for me. As it happens, the battle in the entrance way resulted finally (with two characters unconscious) with Nezznar and Iarno misty-stepping away after casting Darkness as one doppleganger died (and the rest of the bugbears, etc. were killed). The PCs who could finally find the cause of all the noise outside (dragon battle) and arrive in time to see Venomfang wound Cryovain such that she disengages and starts flying away. Venomfang turned her attention to the three PCs who emerge, breathing on them from afar (less damage, but still quite effective), and she then departed. But this opened the window for opportunity attacks, and the four arrows that then hit her, one a sneak attack, finally did her in (combined with damage from the previous dragon-v-dragon battle). I haven't heard the PCs cheer that loudly for some time.
Anyway - I now needed to get them to a completely different climate quickly - to do that I had Aerdrie Faenya (goddess of storms/tempests), our eleven cleric's deity, appear in a 'bamph' of planar travel to announce that she was: 1) pleased with the PCs accomplishments, and 2) putting them under a quest compulsion to recover one of her more powerful artefacts. This became the "special order" that Nim gives the Red Drakes. I devised this to be a Container of Storms (think legendary artefact - small glass cylinder filled with clouds and lightning and capable of extraordinary balance of power altering effects). She transports the party through planar travel (healing them all on the way) and deposits them at the Spine of the World (think Icewind Dale) on the North side of the Spine (the town being Bryn Shander - the pass represented as Ten Town road heading south towards Fireshear). Aerdrie leaves them with warm cloaks and boots. They find Nim's tent in the small town, and after some role-playing about reward and information about the Red Drakes, they head up the pass road.
The first encounter (river crossing) was interesting. The Snow Apes were effective with the rock throwing - dealing some damage while the PCs worked with the Owlbear, etc. The druid rolled great on his Animal Handling check, so he stayed with the Owlbear throughout - moving it behind trees, etc. to avoid it becoming enraged by the rocks. After about half the apes were finally killed with arrows (and one spectacularly fell to a lot of damage as a result of a nat 1), I had the rest escape up the side of the rock walls to the area. The river was tough. Two PCs wound up with exhaustion levels as a result of falling into the water, and one of those eventually made it to level three by continuing to fail rolls (until inside the cave complex). What finally got them over it was the Paladin summoning a Huge Owl as a divine steed - and having it ferry them over the river.
The trap (hanging carcass with cloak over it) did fool the cleric - but she rolled a 19 on her Dex save to avoid being caught/damaged. This did alert the Stalker, though. They did as good a job as possible at the Red Drake tent, including burying the body before continuing down the "path" to the cave entrance. I should note that the continuing horror "clues," starting with the missing owlbear eyes, did a great job of increasing dramatic tension. They really set up the removed mouth/teeth of Iovus such that folks were truly creeped out at this point. While talking with Thalia in the cave (after spending healing on her and getting rid of poison effects) the Stalker rolled well and entered/attacked. This was a huge battle, but I want to note that with 6 players of 5th level (and one of those a battle master fighter), I needed to increase the Stalker's HP to about 200 to make this an appropriate fight given the status of that monster in the module. The three attacks can be super damaging, and I advise having the Stalker size up who is the biggest threat (after attacking the person closest to the secret door) and then going slash/slash/slash on that individual using the move-attack action mechanic. This will do the most damage in the most quick manner - however, it does open it up to opportunity attacks - thus the need for more HP if your party deals damage like ours does. As an example, in the first complete round, the battle-master (ranged) fighter did over 50 HP of damage using an action surge. Combine that with a successful rogue sneak attack at 5th level, and the Stalker is going to be down in two rounds. I didn't see this as appropriate to Kelsey's design for the Stalker (and its intended effect), so for my very heavy damage-dealing party, I adjusted accordingly. If I had to do it again, I would have the Stalker first target the ranged battle master in melee - causing a different calculus for the battle (and opening the door for heroics by more/other PCs in a team fashion). It's all good - the battle left an impact on the session.
They then entered the door and explored the 'open' areas of the complex fairly straightforwardly. They very wisely took the medical implements from the surgery room - this was crucial to survival later. They also entered the non-alchemist room door first (thankfully). Here they again healed/countered poison for the Red Drake - as well as learned a bit about what waited for them (not much, though). The creepy stuff thus far had them at a fever pitch when they opened the laboratory room and found Karina. Two of them gained surprise - which the fighter used to ready her bow and take partial cover - and the rogue used to traverse the space and put a sword up against her back. Great move - but Karina rolled very high for 'normal' initiative, so I had her release a poison canister immediately and spin away behind a monster tank on her action. This started a very, very lethal battle. The way I played Karina was to have her move from tank to tank while using ranged attacks with her fire canisters mostly. I then (adding to the module's abilities) allowed her a reaction when hit - that of releasing a poison canister. If I had not done that, she would have gone down much too easily (and the PCs would have skated a bit through this). I also increased her HP to 100. This resulted in the final battle (which saw the release of all the Imperfect Specimens) being absolutely epic. Four PCs were rendered unconscious, and after Karina and the others were finally killed, the fighter and the rogue were sprinting around to do medicine checks on PCs making multiple death saving throws. Without the medical implements from one of the areas on the complex, two PCs would have permanently died in this encounter.
The wrap up was great - to include the spirit-infused maul (which I'm going to have a lot of fun with in future sessions). As far as analysis goes - Kelsey has really done a nice job creating and balancing this module. This means that if, as I did, you have more characters (6 instead of 4-5) or particular abilities that tend to be a bit OP for fifth level, you'll need to do some buffing of the Stalker and Karina to make the adventure "sting" as much as it should. Vice versa for less or lower-leveled PCs. For me, the effect of giving Karina a Reaction to release a poison canister when hit really transformed the battle and made the PCs very wary of alchemists/potion masters - something that will help going forward. It also kept the Rogue's Sneak Attack ability a bit in check, as a few hits from those canisters pretty much had him moving away to work on the Imperfect Specimens. At fifth level, the ability of a Rogue's Sneak Attack and a fighter's action surge to get to 90 HP of damage is remarkably quick - 2 round really, given the math. I needed her to survive and do damage in an effective way in order to allow the Imperfect Specimens to be released to make this a hard/deadly encounter for 6 buffed 5th level PCs. In retrospect, I think it would have been fine if only three specimens had joined the fight, but I let the battle play out as it did once I adjusted abilities.
This was great fun - and I'm really looking forward to Skyhorn Lighthouse with these characters this weekend!
Rogues playing in person with a mask on is all the more immersive... ;)
It'd definitely be on-brand for horror, especially if everyone was wearing a Plague Doctor mask!
I love this! Just purchased it by itself to be a 2-day "one shot" for some kids I'm going to run it for over the next 2 days. I'll let you know how it goes!
I'll gonna run this adventure tomorrow, I'm so excited!
Awesome! Good luck with it! 😃
I'm going to be running this and the other horror bundles as backup for my DM when they don't have the time to prep for the main campaign, will be my first time running a game!
Very excited :)
I absolutely love your content. Got my campain started recently using "Ghostlight" and my table loved it! Looking forward to running more of your amazingly creative adventures!!!
I love that Ghostlight kicked off your campaign! :D Thanks so much for these kind words!
Cool. Just bought this bundle last night.
Thanks so much! :) I hope it's a lot of fun!
I'm a little late to the party, but I've had the adventure lying around for a long time and will be running it next weekend.
In the chapter on the final battle, it says that Katarina releases an Imperfect Specimen every turn. Does that mean she has to use her Legendary Action "Release Specimen" to do this, or does she automatically release one per round and can use the Legendary Action to release an additional one?
i bought the bundle of horror 2 yesterday and im impress i will run this campaign soon. more power to your channel and website
Thanks so much! :D
This is great content, Kelsey! Awesome to more uploads from your channel.
Thanks so much! Four brand new adventure walkthroughs today -- lots of videos! :D
@@TheArcaneLibrary Fantastic. Just purchased the bunch!
@@joshuabraddy6264 Thank you so much! That makes you officially the first person to see these adventures, I think! :D
Got all of these a few weeks back....this module is all cued up for the Halloween session (and there will be costumes)!
Excellent! 😃 D&D + Halloween + costumes is next-level gaming - I hope you all have a blast!
Hey! Just found your channel looking for D&D one-shots to play. This sound like a lot of fun, when adding some animated snow and howling wind audio!
What is the intended party size for this? I would assume around 4 players, and if so, what would you recommend if you need to scale it up a bit?
Hey! :) Glad you found the channel! Yes, this is for 4-6 players, so if you're on the higher side, you might want to scale up. It depends a bit on the number of people and how high they are past the intended level, but I might even keep the Snow Mutant the same unless there is a huge disparity (in which case you could either double how many there are, or give the solo one about +10 HP and +4 damage per attack per extra PC). I'd also add extra Imperfect Specimen so there are always about 1 of them per PC, or 2 per PC if they are very powerful.
@@TheArcaneLibrary We are 6 player + 1 GM with freshly made characters just for this one-shot, so looks like I don't need to tweak a lot!
Thanks a lot for the advice! I can report back in 10 days on how they did.
My buddies are all over the US and only play online. So I will definitely be trying this for our next one shot I do to give my DM a break.
I'm in the same boat, online play has been such a boon!
Hello could you please clarify something? For the snow mutant how does a DM roll that encounter like with the % ticking up everytime there is a loud noise or party draws attention what are you supposed to roll? Like just use percentile dice and add the %
Yeah! I’d just use a percentile dice and keep adding the amount.
@TheArcaneLibrary thankyou much appreciated!!! I'm running it on saturday for a group.
Gonna run this adventure in just a few days! So excited :) One item I am unsure about... Using percentage die for whether the Snow Mutant attacks. It seems some other dm tactic might work better, like some sort of rising meter... A PC makes a loud noise, the meter rises, they hide or fall down a cliff and the meter lowers. Once meter hits 100 (or whatever) the Snow Mutant attacks. Anyone else find a good tactic for the stalking?
You can definitely do a different method for this! I'd say you just want to make sure the starting chance is higher if the PCs activate the bear trap from Icy Jaws. I love the idea of using tokens or some visual counter to reach 10 or otherwise. Most groups will probably explore between 2-4 rooms in the dungeon portion before reaching Karina, so I'd also suggest just making sure there's roughly a 50% chance of the snow mutant appearing by the time they're hitting that third room, otherwise the chance it'll show up is so low that it might not happen. It's definitely good to be aggressive about a mix of noise + movement adding to that number to make the mutant a real threat. 👍
(I should add that as long as the PCs know "something" is after them and their actions are adding to that possibility, the snow mutant is having its desired effect -- making the group feel stalked! It doesn't actually have to show up to be exciting, ideally. Just extra fun if it does, hehe!)
I like your idea of a visual counter. I'm thinking about just 1d10 where table can see it, and see me move it from 1 to 3 to 4 and so on... At 10, it attacks!
@@SheaEugene I love that! :D
These are all great, have set them up in Roll20 as a 5th-8th level mini campaign, very easy to setup and run... Only thing that would be nice is that I paste the monster stats into Roll20 tokens and the PDF combat cards aren’t that ‘copy-paste friendly’, plaintext or standard (DnDBeyond-style) stat blocks would be nice, but its the tiniest of quibbles peculiar to how I run my games.
I've noticed that, sometimes copy-pasting out of docs with atypical fonts can cause really weird results! Like the letter F gets turned into an S or an E. I'll try to sort out if there's a way to improve that! Were you pasting directly from the combat cards, or was it the adventure PDF doc?
Hiya, that was from the combat cards, will check pdf, thanks!
@@simonbrooke6449 Got it! Thank so much! Who knows if the PDF will be any better -- still has an unusual font. Fingers crossed for a better outcome!
Hi Kelsey, the adventure PDF works much better, thanks
I'm thinking of using this for a one shot. How long does it take most parties?
This one should take about 3-5 hours to complete! :)
Hi Kelsey, great to see more content, purchased the bundle and look forward to running these 1 shots, hoping for some proper winter weather to help the setting of this one... :)
Very quick question, that might be covered in the pdf (but I'm supposed to be working so haven't read yet) - what happens if they PC's don't find the secret door? ohh and is there away for the Mad Alchemist to escape? (or i might try and add one ;p )
All excellent questions! 😊 There’s an NPC who can point the players in the right direction (even if she dies since they will potentially have access to speak with dead). But if they still don’t find the door, I’d reveal it to them after a bit of time, possibly after the snow mutant finds and attacks them!
Also, I think the alchemist could absolutely escape, if you wanted. She’s a bit cornered in the final battle, but she’s the kind of person who would have secret tunnels and other escape routes set up if you want to make her a “recurring problem.” 😈
@@TheArcaneLibrary Thanks muchly :)
Hi Kelsey. The Blizzard comes after 24 hours after speaking with Nim. They start at Nim's campire. So do they sleep first and then take off? so at AREA 1: FROZEN RIVER "five hours into the hike....." is actually 13 hours ?
if it is really 5 hours It feels like the storm will never come. even if the PCs want to take a long rest and take their chances with the hourly roll against Exhaustion they have enough hours left.
are the PCs "allowed" to take a long rest during this trip
Hi! :) The PCs can take a rest at any point, but the assumption is they want to get to shelter before the blizzard hits. In some cases, that could mean beating the blizzard and getting back to Nim’s camp, or else that could mean getting to the cave. They’d be taking 1d6 damage a round in the blizzard without adequate shelter, and it’d probably bury the clues at the campsite and make them nearly impossible to find.