Lost Mine of Phandelver DM Guide - Villains - Nothic
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ค. 2024
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Nothic is one of the more unique monsters in Starter Set and even in Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual itself. In Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure the player first meet this thing beneath Tresendar Manor and in this video I'll try to give you some ideas on how to make this meeting memorable.
I was part of a group that recently wrapped up this campaign up.
Our DM introduced the Nothic as non-hostile and we ended up making a deal and delivered the dead bugbears and red brands as we made our way through the area. As Glass Staff was escaping, the Nothic blocked his path and we had the final showdown in his cavern.
We decided to restore the manor after finishing wave echo cave and are keeping our friend as a bit of a security system for Intruders :)
I've been reading and watching all sorts of things for ways to spice up LMoP. This is by far the best one I've seen yet.
I really appreciate that. Thank you.
No chance for the Nothic if the party consists of murderhobos who somehow have awesome perception. Our Nothic failed all wird insight checks and was spotted immediately. I don't have to say that the party immediately started to attack. He wouldn't have had any chance if our fighter had succeeded his attack, but he crit failed. The Nothic was within an inch of his life when it was my character's turn, finally. And she has high charisma, so she decided to talk instead of attacking. Beaten, the Nothic wasn't interested in anything but surviving any more. My char also rolled high, so the Nothic accepted leading us through the Redbrand lair. And this was when things started to get weird. The DM had no control over that Nothic any more. It seemed as if the dice god threw the dices for him. The DM intended for the Nothic to stay in the basement when the party left, but when my character asked the Nothic to come with us, he threw such a high number that the answer was yes. He even rolled again, and it was yes, yes YES and yes all over again. (Eep, the Nothic is obsessed with my character now!) The DM was all WTF and in the following sessions the Nothic then proceeded to protect my character over and over again. He rescued her from being killed by monsters when she couldn't walk away because she hurt her leg. He protected her when an ogre wanted to have his way with her. He grabbed her and jumped away with her in his arms, when a ceiling collapsed and she would have been buried by it. And for each of those situations, the Nothic rolled nat 20s. It wasn't normal any more. When we finally asked the dice what's up with him, it turned out that he has fallen in love with my character! When I then read Nothic lore and found out he's a cursed human, things started to make sense. DM and me then rolled for what kind of human, his appearance etc and he turned out to be a handsome young wizard on his way to becoming a magister, tricked into reading forbidden lore. Their relationship gives me beauty and the beast vibes, and I totally ship them. My character wants to break his curse and he wants to protect her with all he got. If that didn't make the Nothic into an interesting character, I don't know what does.
ok
NGL, Your DM repeatedly putting your PC in weird situations (including an Ogre tryna "have his way" with her!!!) only for the DMPC Nothic to come to the rescue every time... sounds rather creepy than interesting...
That is the most weird and awesome campaign I’ve ever heard! So cool that you’ve made Nothic so interesting character!
That story is really cool!
When my party came across the Nothic, our ranger fed him, I think and got it as a "pet" and named it Butterfree. It died fighting alongside us.
When I ran the module as DM, the party was confused by it and tried to kill it. I gave it climb speed and hide abilities and that made it very difficult to kill. When it was low on health, it burgained for its life. All but one PC was okay with that. That player kept trying to Eldritch Blast it tho she couldn't see it. She made so much noise that almost the entirety of the Red Brands descended on them.
They all escaped by putting a bag of holding inside another which led to some fun one shots in a different plane :)
Well that escalated quickly!
Your videos have been very inspiring. I find it especially interesting to hear different versions of the same npcs you've used to fit different games. Great stuff!
Wonderful suggestions. Very impressive.
Thank you so much!
I am running this game for the first time and taking on the DM role. I've DM'd lots so this adaptation speaks to me. I'll use this with my gnome PC member if I can pull it off. Thanks.
Thank for stopping by, The Novice DM! 😊
In my campaign Nothic became this sort of creepy, terrifying Gollum creature that was constantly hungry. The party befriended him by offering a generous quantity of rations to him and he promptly disappeared. They eventually fought the bugbears and brought the fight to Nothic's cave where the creature fell from the ceiling onto the bugbears' faces, ripping off flesh and barely waiting for them to bleed out before eating them.
Such a memorable encounter - the pcs are still spooked and amazed by this npc I'm so glad of how it turned out! This dude has so much potential honestly.
Sounds like just the amount of horror that I like!
I made the nothic a peek a boo obsessed guy who loved games.
What you've done with this creature is truly amazing! Very well done =) I was precisely thinking that this monster was lacking a bit of dimension in the rulebools, I'll try add something as you've done =)
My cleric: I am Death Cleric of Vecna
Vecna: Creating Nothics
Me in head: Oh boy that part will be intense
My party adopted the nothic as a pet. Called him Nothers.
Wow! Best story from LMoP that i have heard!
Sorry, but i need to steal it! It have so much sense right now! Im DMing Lmop right now , and i was wandering why nothic is in Phandalin, and couldnt invent anything nice... sorry but i need to steal it! :D
Even if my players will not check this storry, its always good to have it. :D
All Your videos are so helpfull :)
I'm only glad if you steal it, man:) Be my guest, and thank you for your comment!
Loved the way you voiced Nothic. Yes, he is definitely rare creature and it would be awful to lose him in a simple battle. I still not quite understand him. Do you think Nothic would fight to death? Or what is his motivation in that cave?
Rare, until you play dungeon of the mad mage. He seems to collect them.
In my game I made him a creature obsessed with magic shit and heard rumors of a magic forge in the mines and went to find it
I feel the nothic should be Urmon. The journal of Urmon is found in the mansion, so I just made the Nothic's treasure hoard be a chest with the name Urmon engraved on the lid. I even wrote up a (way too long) text from his journal that mentions heading into the cave under the mansion and stuff.
Very good idea!
That would be actually a really mental fuck, to have the soul of a friend you killed talking to you, on a sword
Very very interesting!
I buffed the nothics psychic abilities and he revealed to the party secrets about their back stories. Might have stirred up a thing or two. It's great
I've always thought of Nothics as Gollum-like and always wanted to run them like that. Good people tortured and transformed by their cruel addiction to wicked things.
When thinking about why the Nothic would be there in the basement, I wondered why glass staff would be working together with the black spider to begin with. So I tried to link them 2.
This is what I plan to use if me players get that far:
Glass staff used to be apprentice of the once human Nothic. During a evil ritual they where studying from a book they found all went wrong. Immortality does not come easy and Glass staffs master turned into a Nothic by Vecna. The Nothic would not harm glass staff because of there master/apprentice bond. Glass staffs personal goal is to help his former master. Find out if you can reverse what is done. But might be meddling with the wrong people to achieve this goal.
This makes it harder for the Nothic to join the players (what I read the most) he does not like the red brands, but would not easily backstab glass staff himself.
Best story ever
Thank you 😊
The group I ran through LMoP almost had a schism in the party over the Nothic.
The druid was the first to encounter the creature, and worked out a deal to pass through safely, learning his name "Tim", and even learning about some of the nearby traps.
After passing by, the barbarian decided that such an evil abomination shouldn't be allowed to exist, and rallied the other party members to betray the Nothic.
The druid was very upset by this and waited in an adjacent room that had been cleared while the rest of the party tried to trick the Nothic. Reaching into their minds, Tim discovered their betrayal and attacked them mercilessly. Downing the paladin, and nearly crippling the bard, the Nothic was holding his own until the barbarian delivered a killing blow.
The entire fight I described a maniacal laughter echoing through their heads, only fading as the Nothic breathed his last.
It took a few sessions for the druid to reintegrate into the party, and it definitely forced a discussion about how aggressive the party should be.
I never expected this from a monster I had never heard of before the module. A very interesting character to play with
Boah, awesome!
My players chose to have a social encounter with the nothic rather than fight it. It's spiraled into its own entire campaign. I love when players choose something different!
That's cool. Would you mind telling a little bit about that side campaign? 🤩
@@LutesDice First the players offered to have tea with the nothic (a running gag in our campaign). Since the nothic is a former wizard, I decided to make him oscillate between an upstanding gentleman and an insane, flesh-hungry beast - and someone who hated the latter part of himself and attempted to hold it back at all times. I named him Not, referring to the wizard he's "not" anymore. The party struck up a deal with Not to bring him the dead bodies of any Redbrands they killed and to keep him fed thereafter.
The party then wanted to explore the actual manor, so in between sessions I crafted a backstory for Not, created a ghost (Not's brother, a knight) that lives in the upper manor, and made the map for the manor. The upper part of the manor is smashed in from the orc siege centuries ago, with a giant boulder stuck in the ceiling, hovering through abjuration magic that has prevented anyone from entering the manor since the siege. In the middle of the great hall is an injured woman, frozen in time seconds from death. She is the ghost's wife. The ghost refuses to leave the library because he fears facing his nearly-dead lover; Not rarely ventures into the manor because he, too was fond of his sister-in-law and hates to see her in this state.
Importantly, because of the time passed, the magic on the manor, and the locations in which the brothers have been stuck, they have moments where they believe themselves to be the other brother. This makes getting too much information out of them rather tricky, as they contradict themselves and accuse the other brother of stealing important items (the ghost, Aldred Blackhawke, claims that Not stole "his" glass staff. Iarno Albrek, of course, was the one to actually steal it).
In the library is the secret to the manor's history: Not, when he was a wizard named Aldith Blackhawke, attempted to save the manor and the town of Phandalin from the orc siege by summoning an obyrith and using local ley lines to keep it under control. He partially succeeded, and the obyrith is now trapped in a half-summoned state - but it is slowly breaking free. The magical explosion of power is what transformed Aldith into a nothic and killed his brother. The power of the ley lines keeps his abjuration magic in place on the castle. This stasis magic is powerful enough to mess with the brothers' memories as well.
Back in the Redbrand hideout, Iarno Albrek escapes out a secret door the moment the party enters the hideout. He runs to Stonehill Inn and spins his tale of woe, claiming he has just escaped from the Black Spider's clutches after months of torture. When the PCs finished exploring the hideout and manor and made their way back to the inn, they find Iarno, who shares his tale with them. He claims that the Rockseeker Brothers are also being held captive in Cragmaw Castle, which I relocated next to Connyberry so that the players would run into Agatha. I made Agatha an "old friend" of Not/Aldith's, making her a key character to clear up the misunderstandings from the brothers.
There's a little more to it, but all that to say that the end goal of the campaign will be to un-summon or destroy the obyrith before it wipes out - well, pretty much the whole country.
That was very cool. Thanks for sharing.
I love the idea of putting the castle near Connyberry, I might even use it next time.
Also good job on playing Iarno.
Is Aldith Blackhawke your renaming of Aldith Tressendar?
@@LutesDice Yes, it is. I'm not sure why; I just liked the name Blackhawke better.
you could have the nothic use the secret entrance to come up on the farm/township, seeking or drawn to items in a shop...
The Nothic becomes the real boss of LMoP after the party traded items or favors for secret information or kills and shortcuts. It is now overpowered XD
I priced out nothic miniatures by the cost was too high. I found a channel called Dungeon Miser that makes them for less than a dollar.
This is such an amazing story and fixes why the black spider wasnt able to access the forge of spells (also a great way to make the nothic important hes so interesting) Did you give the magic sword some special ability?
Hey, thanks! :) Well, we haven't continued that story since then, so there was no need to come up with the stats. Maybe some day!
It killed my Mastiff so I killed it, and then my Mastiff revived because our cleric had spare the dying
In my campaign, my players had found a rather benign magic ring earlier. They didn't know what the ring did or how powerful it was, so I expected them to be more possessive from curiosity but they traded the ring. The Nothic hated the stink of the Bugbears, and wanted Glasstaff gone. When he found with weird instinct that my players didn't want to kill it, he conspired with them. In the fight that resulted, Glasstaff escaped, but the players gave the Nothic the magic ring, which is where we ended last session.
Anybody have suggestions for some good directions to take this. They trust the Nothic, and I was thinking of bringing him back in later. Since they know Carp found the secret entrance and he would likely revisit it once the redbrands have vacated, I was thinking that he may fall victim to the Nothic later. However, that may instill a sense in the players that they shouldn't leave monsters alive (perhaps true, but could lead to less creative encounters in the future).
I was going to have Glasstaff in his escape rally the remaining redbrands in sleeping giant, burn Toblin's inn and perhaps even kill Toblin's family as a way to get a doppelganger in the town. The family's bodies would be in the tavern, but hardly identifiable after the burns. The doppelganger would act as Toblin acting as if he lost his wife and son in the fire. Elsa however would be a loose end that eventually gets suspicious if the players don't find out any other way. Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome!
The idea about the doppleganger is absolutely amazing!!
In my opinion Nothic has really an incredible potential - I think the way you could strike a balance between making sense (Nothic eats Carp) and not stifling creativity is that when Nothic sees carp enter he doesn't kill him but more keeps him prisoner until the characters come back. Carp would probably be absolutely terrified out of his wits by a telepathic manically giggling creature keeping him prisoner in a cold dark cave but despite that it could show that Nothic can control itself and be valuable to keep around
And if the characters don't come back to Tresendar idk if carp would be kept prisoner and slowly become completely mad (potential future adventure hook? Villagers know smt is off about the old ruins / there's a vengeful crazy dude in a dark cave) or just not be taken prisoner at all and just caught, creepily inspected by Nothic and eventually bodily thrown out of the cave
@@fyrenoftelios767 We're a couple sessions down the line and it's worked out pretty well. A lot is still up in the air.
The helped clean up the debris of the inn, and upstairs they found the charred remains of Pip and Toblin. They couldn't recognize them though, but were suspicious that a man would be in Pip's room with him. Toblin doppelganger was of course 'grieving'. They talked to him about it, and he told them they had a guest staying at the inn and Pip was probably cleaning his room. They let it go, 'no reason to be worried if Toblin isn't'.
They then left town, a PC died and they spent 2 weeks going to Waterdeep to find a contact of Edermath to resurrect him. They'll be back next session, and the town has gone to pieces in their absence. Bugbears guarding the road in, Edermath executed, Black Spider successful in taking Wave Echo Cave and now taking sacrifices periodically from the town (I made the Forge require sacrifices to create magic items so the players won't abuse it when they succeed).
Thanks for the tips on the Nothic. Being 4 weeks now round trip, Carp will also be missing when they get to town. I'll probably make him a prisoner. Maybe the Nothic took a liking to him in a creepy obsessive way.
Since they have no clue about Toblin, Elsa the barmaid survived too so I'll have her mention she's growing more and more suspicious since she saw Toblin run upstairs during the fire to save Pip, and Toblin is acting strange
@@stephenfulford6227 oh wow that's amazing!! I had never imagined what would happen if Nezznar won and the PCs weren't here to stop him... I'm glad to have helped :D
My party and I ran into this thing and avoided it (maybe bribed?) a session or two ago because we weren't ready to deal with it at the time. We have considered going back to deal with it, however... a bit worried by the prospect, admittedly.
He's a cutie once you get to know him 😊
@@LutesDice I'll take your word for it ;)
My party befriended the nothic, and my bard kept fistbumping it. 😅
my party only saw the large eye at first, they thought it was a beholder, as they are new players and had no idea that a nothic was a thing, I do have mini figs for both, so they were really happyit was not a beholder, theywere lvl 3,lol beholder.
yeah so my character knew the nothic was there because he was once a redbrand and had to feed it several times and managed to kill it in the surprise round
Not gonna lie, I'm taking a lot of your ideas on this channel homie.
Be my guest! :)
@@LutesDice I only say it because it's good stuff 😎🤘
4:33 Mormons protected it???
Mormesk. The wraith =)