The heroes departed the forge of spells, a little disappointed at the shell left of the fabled location. They went North, following a booming noise until they found waves crashing against a cliffside in a large cave.
After marveling at the vast amount of water in this underground area, the party continued onward in the cave, coming into another chamber where they saw a cliff rising up in front of them. They found some rope hanging down from the edge and clambered their way up.
Next the heroes stumbled from a side passage into a large pillared chamber and suddenly found themselves under attack from giant spiders and humanoid monsters with spider heads. They also began to be pummeled by spells, as two of them were knocked unconscious by a freezing blast of cold. While Aina helped Amafrey and Blaaz up, Anarath cast a wall of force across the chamber to halt further spell attacks as he searched for the enemy caster. The heroes defeated the spiders and spider-like creatures and began to search for the spell caster as they were hammered with fireballs exploding over their heads.
Anarath heard a taunting voice in his own ear, but struck nothing when he swung. Finally, the wizard cast a fireball blindly and heard a voice call out in pain. Yet no one appeared. He continued to cast area spells toward the enemy, as his friends moved into the area. Amafrey swung his sword blindly and connected with something invisible. Finally, they heard a thud after Anarath cast a last spell into a hallway to the South. Investigating, they found a Drow mage that they had killed. They found a staff and notes on his body, and quickly searching the surrounding rooms they found Nundro Rockseeker and saved him.
Gudren and his brother offered a fifth of the profits of the mine to the party as a reward for their efforts, and the heroes took a well deserved rest in Phandalin.
GM Reflections
It is quite satisfying to finally have completed this campaign. Scheduling issues, geographic separation, and moves made it difficult to play consistently, but it was fun. It did become difficult to get excited about continuing at times when the plot was dragging along, and I learned some valuable lessons about keeping the plot moving. I think I’ll play a bit more active role in doing that as we either continue with these characters or transition to something new. I see that as speeding up time and allowing time to pass. Adding smaller adventures or dungeons within the larger arc. I do still really like XP-based leveling, although it is much slower. But using a VTT I feel that it’s easier to manage than actually deciding when to award milestone levels, especially since that can vary so widely and be so unclear in published adventures. Many will not find that opinion to their taste, which is alright with me.
The boss fight with Nezznar used a higher level mage stat block from Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse. It was difficult, but my players seemed to enjoy it. They carved through the giant spider and ettercap minions very quickly, and it became a cat-and-mouse game with Nezznar. The dice fell in their favor too, because there were a couple times when characters would have been killed had I rolled better. I was nervous about a TPK though when the two healing characters went down with the first Cone of Cold I threw out.
I thought the pacing went well for a finale though, and I still think that Lost Mines of Phandelver in its original form is an amazing adventure. It’s a great to introduce a new batch of players to the game, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it adapted in some fashion in almost every edition of D&D going forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment