Lost Mines of Phandelver is a terrible module for newbies.

[Man_Over_Game]

I ran it for the first time with a group of new players, and after our first session, I realized just how bad of a module it is for a new group.

It initially starts with the party coming across the ambush site where their employer's dead horses are found. Here, several goblins are hiding nearby to ambush anyone who investigates the horses. This is a problematic situation for new players, as:


Few clues could be picked up on that someone is hiding nearby.
It'd be difficult to reward the players for being cautious, as they approach from an open road.
It initiates the Surprise conditions on behalf of the enemies, which is a difficult ruleset for first-time players.
There are few interactive environmental effects can could be applied to a open field scenario like this.


Once the fight is completed, there isn't any means of a social encounter without knocking any of the goblins unconscious, which isn't a natural choice for players towards goblins (who are unlikely to be worth the effort in most scenarios, in terms of both intelligence or morality).

The traps leading to the goblin cave aren't too terrible, but it seems odd for creatures like goblins to set sophisticated traps like a snare. Additionally, the group has a wagon with oxen that they were tasked to guard, and they were already ambushed out in the open, causing an issue if they want to follow a path for an hour to find the goblin's hideout.

Once they do reach the hideout, the goblins have another point where they can see the players (in the thicket), but the players cannot see them. In order to see the goblins while they're lollygagging, they'd need to breach past the stream and likely lose any chance at catching the goblins unaware.

Additionally, once we get to the cave itself, the wolves deal a whopping 7 average damage when the average character in my party had a maximum of 9. The wolves are chained up, but those chains are set to break, on top of the howling that should probably be heard throughout the cave (or at least, through the crack behind the wolf pen where most of the goblins are).

Also, it's a dark cave, and someone is likely using a light source. Alerting the goblins to set off the flood trap is pretty dang easy to do, and it's not at all telegraphed in any way to prevent it.

Not to mention that it doesn't have a good breakpoint, with the goblin ambush being too little to end a session with, but including the cave being far too much. At what point should the players receive a level up? They've had to retreat from the cave (one person was dying from the flood trap pushing him towards a wolf), so I've decided the best move was to reward them the HP gain from level 2, gaining the rest of the level up benefits once they bested the goblin hideout.

I found myself struggling to include options for our medicine/nature cleric, or our socialite Bard. I had to pull punches, reducing the wolves to dealing the same damage as the goblins, and they still ended up with a dying party member in their second fight with the spell slots of a level 1 team.


The module feels like it doesn't reward good actions as much as punish mistakes, without telling you what mistakes you made. It wouldn't be such a big deal, if this wasn't supposed to be a player's first experience of DnD. I tried to put in a lot of clues, but I still felt the players were blindsided despite my best efforts.



I've heard LMoP was a good dive for first time players, but I'm disappointed so far.

What are your thoughts on it? Do you disagree with me?

[Tanarii]

Goblins seek to trap and enslave any creatures they encounter, but they flee from opposition that seems too daunting. For miles around their lair, they employ pit traps, snares, and nets to catch the unwary, and when their hunting patrols encounter other beings, they always look for ways to capture their foes instead of killing them.
Volos p40

[Lupine]

My first ever D&D experience was lost mine of Phandelver, with a first experience with D&D DM.

I think the module has its ups and downs, but is meant for groups who have never played D&D before. For example, the ambush. A first time DM isn’t going to have them cover ducking. I’m mobile, right now, so I can’t sat much, but I’ll put more thought into this when I’m back, if you like.

[Man_Over_Game]

Goblins seek to trap and enslave any creatures they encounter, but they flee from opposition that seems too daunting. For miles around their lair, they employ pit traps, snares, and nets to catch the unwary, and when their hunting patrols encounter other beings, they always look for ways to capture their foes instead of killing them.
Volos p40

Right, that makes the punishments forgiving, but doesn't do a good job of explaining what you did wrong.

I'd imagine a better example of a first-time module is being the defenders of a siege, rather then the offenders against stealth, traps, and hit-and-run tactics.

It comes off as an opportunity to grind, rather than to learn.

[Telok]

Goblins seek to trap and enslave any creatures they encounter, but they flee from opposition that seems too daunting. For miles around their lair, they employ pit traps, snares, and nets to catch the unwary, and when their hunting patrols encounter other beings, they always look for ways to capture their foes instead of killing them.
Volos p40

Because fluff text in a splat book is a good solution to a brutal module?

The only time I went through it was with a newbie DM (he'd been playing for a couple years) and it was pretty terrible.

A single gobbo crit downed someone on the first round of the ambush and the cleric was out of healing by the end just keeping people alive. The cave saw two people bringing in new characters because it was basically one long fight and the gobbos kept walking past the fighter to beat on the rest of the party. We lost the wagon when they chased us.

The town was annoying because we kept having to roll charisma checks all over the place and what we did or said always mattered less than the dice roll. Some thugs killed another character while we were split up and brutalized the other pc there before he fled. When we tried a dawn raid on a hideout all the enemies were awake and armored up. That was a TPK when the first fight sounded an alarm and brought everything else in the place down on us.

From what I've heard in local game groups that's kind of normal-ish. I've never read the module. I just keep hearing good things online and bad things in person.

[Boci]

My group got sick of fighting goblins, including the DM. The first batch was fine, the DM "mishandled" the ambush making it trivial to overcome, but the lair proved intense. The village and mansion was good, then we got to the castle and ended at fighting more goblins. That was where the group pretty much collectivly decided the model was not well written. I'm fairly expirienced, but the DM was new and so where the three over players.

[Trask]

What I found most grated on me for an adventure touting to be a teaching module is how much it seemed to encourage moral railroading, or at least an assumed ethos of play. Theres no provision for what the party might do if they instead kept the supplies and sold them instead of returning them, and no mention of what might happen if the PCs try and reason with the redbrands instead of killing them. IME these are all things that would definitely come up with a party new to the game.

[Boci]

What I found most grated on me for an adventure touting to be a teaching module is how much it seemed to encourage moral railroading, or at least an assumed ethos of play. Theres no provision for what the party might do if they instead kept the supplies and sold them instead of returning them, and no mention of what might happen if the PCs try and reason with the redbrands instead of killing them. IME these are all things that would definitely come up with a party new to the game.

I don't know if my DM invented this himself (okay, I know he invented some of the details, because WotC wouldn't publish them in a model), but two of our party had a reason to hate the redbrands added to our backstory by the DM, so joining them was not really an option for us at least.

[Petrocorus]

Few clues could be picked up on that someone is hiding nearby.
It'd be difficult to reward the players for being cautious, as they approach from an open road.
It initiates the Surprise conditions on behalf of the enemies, which is a difficult ruleset for first-time players.
There are few interactive environmental effects can could be applied to a open field scenario like this.


Since the PC are on escort duties, have been told that the road could be dangerous, and are facing the aftermath of an attack; they should be allowed a Perception check to spot the Goblins. Even with their +6 to Stealth, there are reasonable chance one of the PC spots them.



Once the fight is completed, there isn't any means of a social encounter without knocking any of the goblins unconscious, which isn't a natural choice for players towards goblins (who are unlikely to be worth the effort in most scenarios, in terms of both intelligence or morality).

If they are at 0 HP, they're not dead. The can be stabilized and revived for interrogation. The PC have at least 3 rounds to do this.
This is a point of rule the DM should explain to the payers.



The traps leading to the goblin cave aren't too terrible, but it seems odd for creatures like goblins to set sophisticated traps like a snare. Additionally, the group has a wagon with oxen that they were tasked to guard, and they were already ambushed out in the open, causing an issue if they want to follow a path for an hour to find the goblin's hideout.

This is a real issue. I'd got the problem every time i ran this module.
You basically have to DM-fiat that nothing will happen to the wagon while the PC go for the goblin hideout; or to DM-fiat that the PC can reach Phadalin, deliver the wagon and come back to go to the hideout (which take one full day IIRC) and that the goblins won't even notice the patrol hasn't come back.
This does break the suspension of disbelief.



Once they do reach the hideout, the goblins have another point where they can see the players (in the thicket), but the players cannot see them. In order to see the goblins while they're lollygagging, they'd need to breach past the stream and likely lose any chance at catching the goblins unaware.

It's specified this 2 goblins are not very attentive, to give the PC a chance.
The PC should know or then learn the merits of recon.



Additionally, once we get to the cave itself, the wolves deal a whopping 7 average damage when the average character in my party had a maximum of 9. The wolves are chained up, but those chains are set to break, on top of the howling that should probably be heard throughout the cave (or at least, through the crack behind the wolf pen where most of the goblins are).

The stream makes a lot of constant noise and the wolf are used to bark, so the goblins won't notice or pay attention to the barking.
The chain doesn't automatically breaks. The PC should be able to pass the kennel without dealing with the wolf, or they could kill one or maybe two wolves at range before the third one breaks the chain.



Also, it's a dark cave, and someone is likely using a light source. Alerting the goblins to set off the flood trap is pretty dang easy to do, and it's not at all telegraphed in any way to prevent it.

The PC can see the cave is dark and probably know the goblins have darkvision (it's like common knowledge for anyone living in rural areas of the FR, as the DM, you should tell them this). They also know this is an hideout with they-don't-know-how-many goblins inside.
If they decide to use lights before making a recon, it's on them.



Not to mention that it doesn't have a good breakpoint, with the goblin ambush being too little to end a session with, but including the cave being far too much.

The breakpoint is supposed to be after the hideouts, but this indeed makes for a very big first session.
There is a possibility to make a session 0 for PC and party building, and use this first encounter as a tutorial at the end of session 0.



At what point should the players receive a level up?

They normally receive the level 2 after completing the hideout.



They've had to retreat from the cave (one person was dying from the flood trap pushing him towards a wolf),

Doesn't the flood trap normally push them outside the cave?



I found myself struggling to include options for our medicine/nature cleric, or our socialite Bard.

The Bard will have opportunities to shine in Phandalin, and with some of the sidequest (Agatha notably).
Medicine is really not a useful skill, but this is more a problem from the game than from the module.
A Nature Cleric with Animal Handling or Survival surely have his uses in the first part of the module.



I had to pull punches, reducing the wolves to dealing the same damage as the goblins, and they still ended up with a dying party member in their second fight with the spell slots of a level 1 team.

The module feels like it doesn't reward good actions as much as punish mistakes, without telling you what mistakes you made. It wouldn't be such a big deal, if this wasn't supposed to be a player's first experience of DnD. I tried to put in a lot of clues, but I still felt the players were blindsided despite my best efforts.

What are your thoughts on it? Do you disagree with me?

The thing is, this module, like the DD5 in general is hard for level 1 PC. They are fragile, not have that many features and can pay any mistake or a bad roll streak at the high price. Level 1 in general is very punishing.
You need to be very clear and insistent on this with your players, especially new players. They need to be careful and think what they do thoroughly.
And even then, bad rolls can happen.
This module, or at least the firsts parts, are rewarding for players who do good things like doing recon, looking for traps, think beforehand about the potential defence of their foes, etc.

I wonder, what is the party composition?

[Segev]

I haven't tried this one, but I will suggest an alternative for those who agree with the OP that this isn't a good module: Tales From the Yawning Portal has Sunless Citadel as its first dungeon.

While there are some issues with how it suggets you run the final boss (the writers updating the module clearly forgot that barkskin and entangle are both Concentration spells, for example), and it's a little weird to have a white wyrmling in such cramped quarters (in 3.5, it was a tiny monster; here, it's Medium), but it's overall pretty good and pretty well-balanced.

When I ran it, I dropped it into Chult, and as long as you ignore water table issues (which is easy to do for most groups), it works just fine. The white wyrmling doesn't actually suffer tactically for the size shift, and I resolved the advice on the final boss's tactics by giving him three potions of barkskin which I had him visibly drink one of before the fight started. This let him fight as advertised, and also gave the party two potions of loot (so they didn't feel at all cheated by the boss getting a "freebie" concentration effect).

So, I do recommend that one as a newbie experience. It starts with small fights that are straight-forward and actually pretty easy even for 4 first level characters, has some use of terrain and traps that clearly tell you what you did wrong if you trip them (or, if you didn't do anything wrong, don't punish you too much for bad rolls), and is a good feel for both dungeon-delving with kick-in-the-door style play and for interacting with a dungeon's inhabitants as a living, breathing ecology.

[HappyDaze]

The traps leading to the goblin cave aren't too terrible, but it seems odd for creatures like goblins to set sophisticated traps like a snare.

Without getting into the rest, why do you consider a snare to be a sophisticated trap? According to Wikipedia (yeah, not scholarly, but this is D&D) "Snares are one of the simplest traps and are very effective. They are cheap to produce and easy to set in large numbers."

[Man_Over_Game]

The chain doesn't automatically breaks. The PC should be able to pass the kennel without dealing with the wolf, or they could kill one or maybe two wolves at range before the third one breaks the chain.




Doesn't the flood trap normally push them outside the cave?


I wonder, what is the party composition?

That's actually exactly what happened with the wolves. One person scouted forward with Light while some of the rest of the party were dispatching the wolves with ranged attacks. The halfling rogue was partially near the entrance to the pen area and I ruled he got pushed near the last remaining wolf after the third round. I had explained the wolves were breaking out of the chains, but it was terrible timing on all fronts.

I had the players who succeeded on their strength checks be able to make a second check with their Reactions to catch those who were being flooded. Someone caught the Cleric, but failed to catch the Rogue.

I ruled it as 1d6 Bludgeoning damage and Prone, Wolf dealt 1d4+2 after breaking free (nerfed from a normal wolf), rogue was now dying.

The party comp is a Bard, Life Cleric, Big Weapon Fighter, Ranger, and a Rogue. Three of them are experienced with DnD, 4 of them are new to 5e. Busy atm, will answer more questions later

[Tanarii]

Right, that makes the punishments forgiving, but doesn't do a good job of explaining what you did wrong.

I'd imagine a better example of a first-time module is being the defenders of a siege, rather then the offenders against stealth, traps, and hit-and-run tactics.

It comes off as an opportunity to grind, rather than to learn.


Because fluff text in a splat book is a good solution to a brutal module?
The Mm says similar things about alarm traps. Point was it's not out of character for a goblin (or other humanoid) lair at all. They're dangerous. I completely agree that assaulting a humanoid lair is (and should be) a suicidal prospect for any group of 1st level PCs. Even sneaking up or into one should be extremely fraught with peril, and should basically only be good for one assault.

Honestly though, the module sounds like a bit of walk in the park. Not really, but my baseline for brutal is Keep On the Borderlands / Caves of Chaos. I've run players, in both BECMI and converted to 5e, though it. That's brutal module. I've never seen a party survive the first attempt on the Caves intact, and in BECMI I never saw one that didn't TPK unless they were players who'd run through it before.

[Petrocorus]

Honestly though, the module sounds like a bit of walk in the park. Not really, but my baseline for brutal is Keep On the Borderlands / Caves of Chaos. I've run players, in both BECMI and converted to 5e, though it. That's brutal module. I've never seen a party survive the first attempt on the Caves intact, and in BECMI I never saw one that didn't TPK unless they were players who'd run through it before.
Now you're getting me interested.



That's actually exactly what happened with the wolves. One person scouted forward with Light while some of the rest of the party were dispatching the wolves with ranged attacks.

Then your player learnt the hard way the main problem with halfling rogues: the lack of darkvision.
The goblin has a passive perception of 9. A Rogue without a light source should normally be able to sneak on him.



The halfling rogue was partially near the entrance to the pen area and I ruled he got pushed near the last remaining wolf after the third round. I had explained the wolves were breaking out of the chains, but it was terrible timing on all fronts.

So the rogue advertised his presence by using light in a dark area, got flooded for it, failed a Dex save then a Str save.
Then you ruled the flood pushed him in the worst place possible instead of outside as the module advise.
I don't think the issue here comes from the module.



I had the players who succeeded on their strength checks be able to make a second check with their Reactions to catch those who were being flooded. Someone caught the Cleric, but failed to catch the Rogue.

Good ruling.



The party comp is a Bard, Life Cleric, Big Weapon Fighter, Ranger, and a Rogue. Three of them are experienced with DnD, 4 of them are new to 5e. Busy atm, will answer more questions later
What race are the Bard and the Ranger? Do they have darkvision and Stealth?
Is there not a Nature Cleric?

[Boci]

Then your player learnt the hard way the main problem with halfling rogues: the lack of darkvision.

This seems to be in line with what the OP said: a module which punishes you for making a halfling rogue is a bad module for newbies.

[Mjolnirbear]

I ran it for the first time with a group of new players, and after our first session, I realized just how bad of a module it is for a new group.

It initially starts with the party coming across the ambush site where their employer's dead horses are found. Here, several goblins are hiding nearby to ambush anyone who investigates the horses. This is a problematic situation for new players, as:


Few clues could be picked up on that someone is hiding nearby.
It'd be difficult to reward the players for being cautious, as they approach from an open road.
It initiates the Surprise conditions on behalf of the enemies, which is a difficult ruleset for first-time players.
There are few interactive environmental effects can could be applied to a open field scenario like this.


Once the fight is completed, there isn't any means of a social encounter without knocking any of the goblins unconscious, which isn't a natural choice for players towards goblins (who are unlikely to be worth the effort in most scenarios, in terms of both intelligence or morality).

The traps leading to the goblin cave aren't too terrible, but it seems odd for creatures like goblins to set sophisticated traps like a snare. Additionally, the group has a wagon with oxen that they were tasked to guard, and they were already ambushed out in the open, causing an issue if they want to follow a path for an hour to find the goblin's hideout.

Once they do reach the hideout, the goblins have another point where they can see the players (in the thicket), but the players cannot see them. In order to see the goblins while they're lollygagging, they'd need to breach past the stream and likely lose any chance at catching the goblins unaware.

Additionally, once we get to the cave itself, the wolves deal a whopping 7 average damage when the average character in my party had a maximum of 9. The wolves are chained up, but those chains are set to break, on top of the howling that should probably be heard throughout the cave (or at least, through the crack behind the wolf pen where most of the goblins are).

Also, it's a dark cave, and someone is likely using a light source. Alerting the goblins to set off the flood trap is pretty dang easy to do, and it's not at all telegraphed in any way to prevent it.

Not to mention that it doesn't have a good breakpoint, with the goblin ambush being too little to end a session with, but including the cave being far too much. At what point should the players receive a level up? They've had to retreat from the cave (one person was dying from the flood trap pushing him towards a wolf), so I've decided the best move was to reward them the HP gain from level 2, gaining the rest of the level up benefits once they bested the goblin hideout.

I found myself struggling to include options for our medicine/nature cleric, or our socialite Bard. I had to pull punches, reducing the wolves to dealing the same damage as the goblins, and they still ended up with a dying party member in their second fight with the spell slots of a level 1 team.


The module feels like it doesn't reward good actions as much as punish mistakes, without telling you what mistakes you made. It wouldn't be such a big deal, if this wasn't supposed to be a player's first experience of DnD. I tried to put in a lot of clues, but I still felt the players were blindsided despite my best efforts.



I've heard LMoP was a good dive for first time players, but I'm disappointed so far.

What are your thoughts on it? Do you disagree with me?

Disclaimer: I like more heroic players and level one is a risky level for any class or any table. So my players got a 33 point buy, and also got a free feat at first level. The GWM cleave was the only ability used, but Inspiring Leader would have made things much easier had the bard (or I) remembered it.

My bard went unconscious at least twice, and the druid once. So yes, it can be difficult.

That said: I did have them roll for perception during the ambush, and they had good reason to be wary. They saw the ambush for what it was, but sadly the goblins were too sneaky to notice at first. The fight was still remarkably easy. The ambush wasn't an open field; the archer goblins had cover, but so did the players due to thick plant matter.

They used dancing lights and thaumaturgy at the entrance to the cave to lead the goblin scouts away. They bribed the wolves with horse meat they had gathered from the ambush site. The flood swept one character back out the cave, right into the arms of the sentries they had fooled (first unconsciousness). The party ran past the wolves, killed the sentries, and on the way back in, the bard went unconscious again trying to Thunderclap the wolves and then retreat.

They halved the 'eating cave' encounter by hiding and using Thaumaturgy's 'minor tremors' to chase them out of the cave. Then they moved to the pool cave, triggered the second flood trap (which caught the other half of the 'eating cave' gobboes). I had Klarg act overconfident and arrogant, joining the last fight too late, because everyone was out of spells, out of hit dice needed to heal, out of rages. But the barbarian blocked Klarg from entering the flood cave and thus protected her allies.

They succeed with clever trickery and general sneakiness. This was their second ever campaign. The bard was used to a monk, and after going down twice seem to learned her lesson that bards were much squishier.

Specific commentary: I've included some actions, allowing Medicine to 'look for weakness' in a contested check, granting a bonus on the next action. Next session they will interrogate the last goblin they captured, travel during pouring rain to Phandalin, and maybe need medicine or constitution checks to avoid catching a cold or suffering exposure. You could also include disease in the wolves' fangs or from the goblins' weapons. The goblin leader (not Klarg) offers a great social interaction (which my players skipped entirely) and, well, goblins aren't stupid... just because it's not written into the module doesn't mean you can't have the other goblins decide to negotiate, threaten, or lie and decieve. But I also warned the bard and the (noble) drow that there wouldn't be opportunities for High Society interaction, and that they'd be dealing mostly with commoners, townsmen, and bad guys.

They knew they were following goblins to the caves, because they succeeded at their tracking check. So they were sneaky when they arrived, and heard the goblins bickering out of boredom. I'm not sure why you feel they had no chance to avoid notice there. The thickets were difficult terrain, not impassable.

The light comment is absolutely a good point, and my players fortunately all had darkvision. But I don't see a problem with it either. They still have chances to see the goblin, they have chances to escape the flood, and it helps establish the tactical part of the game.

For the cart and oxen, they hid the cart, led the animals into the brush near food, and hid them as well. The wolves could have been taken care of socially (animal handling, animal friendship, druid, gnome, firbolg) and mine were.

It was a long series of small fights, and my players did fantastic. I've run LMOP before, and always found it to be a great module. It introduces Surprise, Ambushes, light level issues, and plenty of opportunities for trickery, skill usage (tracking, persuasion, animal handling, stealth, perception, intimidation, deception) just in the first two sections of the module. It took but a small suggestion to point out that the cave tunnels are narrow and easily held by the tank. The module introduces exploration, dungeon-delving, wandering monsters, social interaction, a touch of sandboxing and a touch of linear questing, and time pressures.

But no module is perfect; the dragon in Thundertree is too high-level to handle before the Wave Echo Cave, the Ogre in Wyvern Tor does a crapton of damage. As DMs, our job is to adapt challenges like these to our party. You can move encounters around, introduce sufficient wandering monsters to help level the party, reduce CRs, increase them, pluck out enemies. You're amazingly intelligent Man_Over_Game, and I have personally seen you modify the things you feel need modified with your homebrewing and ideas you introduce to the game. If you are not happy with the module, I know you are skilled enough to modify it in a way that suits your group.

My apologies for being all over the place in this post.

[stoutstien]

The first planned encounter in LMoP is probably credited to more TPK than all the others combined lol.

It's a rough one if played out with deadly intentions but the rest of the module is pretty sound for a premade.

[ProsecutorGodot]

One thing I've learned through my own experiences is that Goblins are a lot deadlier to a level 1 party than you expect.

It's obviously not perfect, as Stoutstein says that first encounter is pretty deadly, but at the time its only competition for starting module was Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I'm very certain of which of the two I would recommend to a new player. I'd probably still recommend it, despite Dragon Heist being a good introductory adventure in my opinion, the fact that it leans into the exploration and social pillars of play gets that mindset into a player nice and early.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

5e modules in general are pretty much on the "meh" side.

Not really worth paying for, the free AL adventures are pretty good, but they're free so that goes into my rating for them.

[Zetakya]

One thing I've learned through my own experiences is that Goblins are a lot deadlier to a level 1 party than you expect.


Their default equipment is a bit OTT for a random small band. Instead of scimitars and shortbows give them either a shortsword & shield or a sling & a club. That drops their damage by a point per hit per goblin, and drops their maximum by 2, which makes them a lot mopre predictable and safer to engage.

The Scimitar and Shortbow should be the equipment of the mooks in a bigger force, later on. When there's someone with more wealth equipping them. Not for independent cave-dwelling bands of savages.

[Boci]

Their default equipment is a bit OTT for a random small band. Instead of scimitars and shortbows give them either a shortsword & shield or a sling & a club. That drops their damage by a point per hit per goblin, and drops their maximum by 2, which makes them a lot mopre predictable and safer to engage.

The Scimitar and Shortbow should be the equipment of the mooks in a bigger force, later on. When there's someone with more wealth equipping them. Not for independent cave-dwelling bands of savages.

I don't think there's any damage difference between shortswords and scimitars in 5e. Did you mean daggers?

[Telok]

but my baseline for brutal is Keep On the Borderlands / Caves of Chaos. I've run players, in both BECMI and converted to 5e, though it. That's brutal module. I've never seen a party survive the first attempt on the Caves intact, and in BECMI I never saw one that didn't TPK unless they were players who'd run through it before.

I remember cutting my teeth on the keep, way back when. I think the main difference was that once we saw the place with all those cave entrances we knew we had to careful and sneaky. Plus I don't think we we rolled to get basic 'how are things around here' info out of the locals. I know nobody got killed in town by random bar bums.

Any ways our LMoP DM ended up rage quitting once we started deviating from the modules in order to avoid rolling dice.

[D.U.P.A.]

Cragmaw hideout is just too deadly of a dungeon for lvl1, especially if they are supposed go there just after Goblin arrows. Hell even Death house is much more forgiving, there are like 3 monsters of something and only like 1 is really on your way. But here you have to fight bunch of goblins, a trap and a Bugbear crit kills a player outright. With one hit die.

Then it becomes okay, but that first level of play was poorly balanced.

[Tanarii]

I remember cutting my teeth on the keep, way back when. I think the main difference was that once we saw the place with all those cave entrances we knew we had to careful and sneaky. Plus I don't think we we rolled to get basic 'how are things around here' info out of the locals. I know nobody got killed in town by random bar bums.Rumors were freely available in gygaxian modules. It was just that lots of them were partially or entirely false. :smallamused:


Any ways our LMoP DM ended up rage quitting once we started deviating from the modules in order to avoid rolling dice.
Ouch. Not overusing the dice is a tricky thing. Especially if this was early on and the newbie DM was used to 3e. Or other DMs that overused.
(I say this as a person who likes finding meaningful off-score ability checks, including at DC 5. But they still have to be important to the game, have a failure state other than more time, and not be something that should be an automatic success.)


Their default equipment is a bit OTT for a random small band. Instead of scimitars and shortbows give them either a shortsword & shield or a sling & a club. That drops their damage by a point per hit per goblin, and drops their maximum by 2, which makes them a lot mopre predictable and safer to engage.

The Scimitar and Shortbow should be the equipment of the mooks in a bigger force, later on. When there's someone with more wealth equipping them. Not for independent cave-dwelling bands of savages.
Oh I like the club and sling thing. Doesn't even change their CR.

[Imbalance]

I'm running it now and have had to adjust the difficulty on the fly. I'm running for all newbs from age 7 to 39, so killing them in their first experience with the game was something I've gone out of my way to avoid. They're finally in the lost mine now, and the kid gloves are off.

[Zhorn]

Any of the printed modules if done exactly as printed are going to throw up problems in terms of assumed player actions, and player character dispositions (good aligned altruistic heroes being the standard), or even just expected success on some DC skill checks.

I like LMoP mostly because it is a good framework to build from.
There's enough linearity that directing players towards the next intended step fairly clear.
The side quests have enough going on that you can flesh them out into other modules (twig blights in Thundertree if you read into the lore make a good hook for the Sunless Citadel, or the dragon cultists can be used to lay the groundwork for Tyranny of Dragons, etc)
It is a smallish localised region, but has enough spread out locations that you can do the exploration pillar
There's enough NPCs to mix up social interactions beyond just having only one quest giver (almost everyone in town leads to a different quest, or links to a person with a quest)
The adventure ends at a location that acts as a good stepping stone for some of the other printed modules

[SpawnOfMorbo]

I don't think there's any damage difference between shortswords and scimitars in 5e. Did you mean daggers?

Piercing and Slashing damage... Which means diddly squat in 5e on the player's side.

Honestly non-magical damage pretty much should just be "damage" at this point because it really doesn't matter.

But yeah, both are 1d6 damage.

[Petrocorus]

As visible from my previous post, i like LMoP.
I ran it twice completely, once with teens. And ran the first dungeon 4 times. Twice with teens.
Following the advices from this board, i did emphasized to my players that they needed to be extra-careful.
I also let them know beforehand that i have no qualms about letting them paying the price of their tactical mistakes.

2 of this times the goblins watcher on the bridge was killed before doing anything, once by a monk scaling with stealth and swording him, another time by getting sniped.

Once the party was flooded twice. One PC getting pushed back outside twice in a row under the laughs of his comrade. Hopefully he was a dwarven Cleric with the HP to take it.

I don't thing i ever floored a PC with the wolves. I remember one party dealt with them with Speak with animals, another with food, and another by shooting them.

Now, let's be clear, LMoP is not perfect and has its issues.

The first fight can clearly be deadly.
The cragmaw hideout can also be. When the goblin underboss use Sildar as bait, it can be difficult for a party to manage.
But the biggest problem is the bugbear. He's very dangerous on his own and has a wolf and two goblins with him, he can potentially one-shot any PC if he hits (hopefully he only has +4 to hit). So yes, there is a risk of TPK at this point if the PC are not careful or too tapped out.
The Young Green Dragon in Thundertree is also way too powerful for PC that are level 3 or 4 by this point.



This seems to be in line with what the OP said: a module which punishes you for making a halfling rogue is a bad module for newbies.
No. It punishes them for sending the halfling Rogue instead of someone with darkvision.
Hence my question about the Bard's and the Ranger's races. If one of them has darkvision and a decent Stealth, then he should have done the recon instead of the Rogue.



Oh I like the club and sling thing. Doesn't even change their CR.

Clubs are not finesse weapon, so it downgrade their damage output a little.

[Pex]

That ambush is brutal. Parties can and do win, but it can so easily be a TPK. It really sucks for the player who gets surprised and rolls low on initiative. The goblins get two rounds to do stuff before he can do anything. If they attack him with bows he can drop and have to make death saves, and he hasn't played the game yet. It is not a fun encounter.

There is an out for the DM with the goblin cave. The Goblin Boss wants the Bugbear Boss gone. Have a way for the players and goblins to form a truce. When I played it the party found the two goblin guards and captured them. They told us Little Boss wanted Big Boss gone. We agreed to help. They escorted us right to the Goblin Boss without having to fight anyone. We offered to kill Big Boss in exchange for them releasing Sildar unharmed. Goblin Boss agreed. Those goblin guards then escorted us straight to the bugbear and his wolf pet. We didn't have to fight any goblin. We killed the bugbear and wolf in four rounds, and all the goblins except the two guards went away. The goblin guards became NPC party members, but that was the DM's offer we accepted. It's enough for all the goblins to go away once the bugbear is gone.

In essence, if the party doesn't approach the goblins have the goblins approach the party. The party being victorious at the ambush proves to the goblins how tough they are. The two guards could approach the party waving a white flag asking for their help against the bugbear. Hopefully the party accepts. The scenario is easier because the party doesn't have to fight the goblins, and it teaches new players it's possible to talk to NPC adversaries for peaceful solutions. Talking doesn't work all the time, but it's good to know and recognize when it's possible.

I find the rest of the module to be fine. It can be tough at times, but the party can handle it at the appropriate level. If anything only the Flameskull approaches ambush level TPK territory, but it might help for the Spectator to warn the party about the Wraiths. The Wraiths can be avoided to finish the module and have the dwarves deal with them off camera afterwards. At least that's what happened with my group.

[Addaran]

This seems to be in line with what the OP said: a module which punishes you for making a halfling rogue is a bad module for newbies.

That's DnD as a whole though. Halfling rogue are so iconic ( Bilbo, favored class in 3.5, etc) but in reality, it totally suck at scouting in actual dungeon situations. You really need darkvision or else you're broadcasting your position to the enemies.

Saddly, it's a mistake new players can very easily make.

[Eldariel]

That's DnD as a whole though. Halfling rogue are so iconic ( Bilbo, favored class in 3.5, etc) but in reality, it totally suck at scouting in actual dungeon situations. You really need darkvision or else you're broadcasting your position to the enemies.

Saddly, it's a mistake new players can very easily make.

Well, Goggles of the Night aren't that expensive and Arcane Tricksters can learn Darkvision on level 7. But yeah, it's not perfect.

[BurgerBeast]

I don’t personally think LMoP is terrible, but I understand the complaints.

The first encounter and first dungeon are too hard.

The module really “shines” and comes off the tracks when the PCs reach Phandelver. The PCs have freedom to pursue leads and interact with townsfolk and decide which path to take. The Redbrands, if run as presented, can hardly be believed as even remotely successful villains, though. Their storyline is thrust upon the PCs in a way that makes little sense when you consider that they’re actually successful at having some control over the town.

What makes it good, in my opinion, is the structure of the town of Phandalin. With some work, an experienced DM can make it not only good, but in my opinion there is enough material there to inspire a 1-10 campaign at least.

The more I write this though, the more I’m starting to agree that it’s pretty terrible. A new DM shouldn’t have to make these changes for it to work well.

Maybe it’s because I’m used to older modules that were a lot less helpful.

How to fix it:

1. Make the initial ambush easier.
2. Start the PCs at level 2, level them up before the first dungeon, or make that dungeon easier.
3. Tone down the Redbrands. They are way too “in your face” - make them more subtle, and have them try to befriend the PCs and gently ease them out of town. Give a chance for interaction.
4. Upon reaching Phandalin, limit the number of hooks you give for side quests. You could even pick the ones you want to “open” in advance.

[Petrocorus]

If anything only the Flameskull approaches ambush level TPK territory,

Oh yeah, i forgot about that one. The Flameskull can totally TPK the PC.

Agatha also can if the party tries to fight her.



1. Make the initial ambush easier.

I think one way to do it is to let the PC make Perception checks instead of using their passive perception.
They are very realistically on their guards.
The hardness of this first encounter comes from the fact that the Goblins are set up to surprise the PC, but the PC should definitely have a chance not to be surprised.

[Eldariel]

I think one way to do it is to let the PC make Perception checks instead of using their passive perception.
They are very realistically on their guards.
The hardness of this first encounter comes from the fact that the Goblins are set up to surprise the PC, but the PC should definitely have a chance not to be surprised.

It's set up to be incredibly volatile: Goblins roll good Stealth and it doesn't matter what the PCs' passive perception is. A level 1 Rogue with 16 Wisdom, Observant and Expertise in Perception can only have 22 Passive Perception, while the Goblins have a full 20% chance of rolling 23-26. That's one fifth of the games where the PCs never had a chance of detecting the Goblins no matter what. However, if all the PCs get to roll, suddenly the Goblins have a very hard time of hiding with average rolls due to the probability of consecutive events, even though they should have relatively good odds. Both are problematic. Honestly, the big thing here is that the encounter difficulty entirely hinges on the surprise. If the Goblins get surprise, they can very well drop one-two PCs before the PCs get their first action (attacking at advantage, no less). If they don't, however, the encounter is suddenly quite easy.

Of course, since this is first level, the attacks themselves are quite volatile. Two lucky hits can drop your frontline fighter but on poor rolls they might never do any damage to the Wizard who doesn't even have Mage Armor on. There's very little between "dead" and "full HP" on the first level and this encounter can easily slide either way.

[Man_Over_Game]

In regards to the mentions on the ambush difficulty, my concern isn't over the difficulty of the fight itself but the difficulty of its detection.

[NecessaryWeevil]

The PC can see the cave is dark and probably know the goblins have darkvision (it's like common knowledge for anyone living in rural areas of the FR, as the DM, you should tell them this). They also know this is an hideout with they-don't-know-how-many goblins inside.
If they decide to use lights before making a recon, it's on them.



Given that we're discussing new players with 1st-level characters, what alternative recon strategy can reasonably be expected of them - particularly if, as in the halfling rogue example, their best scout lacks dark vision?

[micahaphone]

I would change the first encounter to not be an ambush, or at least not a full ambush. Perhaps the players see one or two goblins doing a poor job of butchering the dead horse, and there's more goblins in the brush.

As far as darkvision being mandatory for scouting, perhaps the goblins should have a few torches / campfires in the cave. Darkvision isn't perfect, and if you're living in that space it makes sense that you'd want to be able to see further than 60 feet or in color.

[Kane0]

I felt LMoP was pretty un-detailed and open ended, which is both a pro and con.

On one hand right from the start it forces DMs to fill in the blanks themselves rather than searching for the answer in the book which is a fundamental 5thism, but on the other hand this is an introductory adventure and that it really throwing new DMs into the deep end.

I had no trouble running it at all, but I went into it knowing it was a framework rather than a 'complete document'. There's a lot of room for personal touch, which is good because it's practically demanded of the DM as soon as it's interacted with.

[LurkytheDwarf]

If I remember correctly—and I haven't played it since it came out with the starter set—it definitely was much harder than our group expected. We had six players coming from 3.5, playing the pregens (doubling up on the dwarf cleric, the experience already paying off), and I thought most of the challenges were about right for us. Which in hindsight is a huge red flag. If five or four pregens or first time created characters without a good party balance tried to do the module, then yeah that could easily go downhill.

The only things I remember: the first goblin attack went smoothly, and we rested to regain surges/arcane recovery/use hit dice. The goblin lair we immediately knew was going to be a pain with the water and ascending terrain (if its the one I'm thinking of), but the wizard saved two slots to Magic Missile whatever the boss was and the bugbear went down pretty quick. The town was good with all the little additional quest objectives from the villagers. The dragon was the one that came out of left field. I can't remember how it went; if not all the party heard there was a dragon in those ruins or not, but it caught us by surprise and it took a lot of running around luring it one way then another so the healers could get to downed people. Of the last dungeon, I remember nothing. Did it start with a nothic or was that another side dungeon?

Anyway, I will echo I'm not the biggest fan of WoTC's adventures. If you had to use their material for a first-time game, I would also go with Sunless Citadel (I mean, whill a party ever do right by Meepo?). If someone where open to other ideas I would suggest Ragged Hollow Nightmare for 5e by Dungeon Age. It's short, sand-boxy, well-edited, and easy to use for a first time DM even.

[Petrocorus]

It's set up to be incredibly volatile: Goblins roll good Stealth and it doesn't matter what the PCs' passive perception is. A level 1 Rogue with 16 Wisdom, Observant and Expertise in Perception can only have 22 Passive Perception, while the Goblins have a full 20% chance of rolling 23-26. That's one fifth of the games where the PCs never had a chance of detecting the Goblins no matter what. However, if all the PCs get to roll, suddenly the Goblins have a very hard time of hiding with average rolls due to the probability of consecutive events, even though they should have relatively good odds. Both are problematic. Honestly, the big thing here is that the encounter difficulty entirely hinges on the surprise. If the Goblins get surprise, they can very well drop one-two PCs before the PCs get their first action (attacking at advantage, no less). If they don't, however, the encounter is suddenly quite easy.

That may be why i didn't have problems with it. I'm not a big fan of passive perception and even less a fan of letting the players getting in a bad predicament without having at least a roll or a clue that something could go wrong. So i always let the players roll for seeing the goblins and never had a whole party surprised.

In one of my iteration, the fight got quite easy when the Sorcerer Sleeped two of the four goblins.



Given that we're discussing new players with 1st-level characters, what alternative recon strategy can reasonably be expected of them - particularly if, as in the halfling rogue example, their best scout lacks dark vision?
If neither the Bard nor the Ranger have darkvision and a decent Stealth (i assume the Life Cleric and the big weapon Fighter have heavy armors), then they had no recon strategy at all.
Using light in this situation was obviously getting them noticed and having the alarm raised.
So in this situation, i don't really know what they could do. Maybe focusing on finishing the wolves then willingly raise the alarm expecting to have the goblins come out to be slain and hoping they're not too many.

[Boci]

That's DnD as a whole though. Halfling rogue are so iconic ( Bilbo, favored class in 3.5, etc) but in reality, it totally suck at scouting in actual dungeon situations. You really need darkvision or else you're broadcasting your position to the enemies.

Saddly, it's a mistake new players can very easily make.

The module could have mitigated that by using enemies that didn't have darkvision though, if they had considered common newbie traps and how to avoid them.

[Eldariel]

That may be why i didn't have problems with it. I'm not a big fan of passive perception and even less a fan of letting the players getting in a bad predicament without having at least a roll or a clue that something could go wrong. So i always let the players roll for seeing the goblins and never had a whole party surprised.

In one of my iteration, the fight got quite easy when the Sorcerer Sleeped two of the four goblins.

In my own run I was playing an Alert Vuman Wizard, which let me Sleep the ones on one side before they even got an action off (my owl spotted them). I personally would roll Hide somewhat separately; there's a problem with running 4 separate Hides (one is very likely to be low enough that it gets autospotted spoiling the whole ambush), which falls into what The Alexandrian discusses here (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/39430/roleplaying-games/art-of-rulings-14-group-actions). I like the Piggybacking variant I developed: one Goblin main rolls and others support roll. Rolls over the main roll get placed +2 higher in stealth, rolls under the main roll -2 lower. Succeeding or failing by 5 or more is ±2 extra. In practice, it works like this:

Main Goblin rolls 18.
Goblin 2 rolls 15.
Goblin 3 rolls 7.
Goblin 4 rolls 26.

They all have Stealth base of 18.
Goblin 2 rolled under 18 so gets put to 16.
Goblin 3 rolled 11 (-5x2) lower than 18 so gets put at 16 - 2 - 2 or 12.
Goblin 4 rolled 7 (+5x1) higher than 18 so gets put at 20+2 or 22.

This means that Goblin 3, who bombed their roll totally, still has a reasonableish stealth and isn't guaranteed to bomb the ambush (though quite likely). I use this with the party too: this way the guy in heavy armor with -1 Dex isn't guaranteed to **** you over, but good rolls can actually help them. Of course, Goblins are actually decent at stealth. The results here would be much different if they had somebody terrible at stealth: someone rolling a 0 would have -8 (though that's still Stealth 10, which is still reasonable for someone rolling a 0 and the lead Goblin could certainly have bailed him out by rolling well enough).

[jmartkdr]

One theme I'm seeing here is a lot of people noting how a skilled, experienced dm can easily adjust the module to be really good for new players - but the module isn't designed for just new players, but new dm's as well. So *any* need for adjustment is a flaw in the goal of introducing a brand new group to DnD. (And Oberoni fallacy, but in this case it's extra true because we have to assume that the person who's supposed to be fixing it doesn't know how.) It should work with a dm who's never done this before and doesn't know anything about how to balance encounters or adjust rules to cover for designer blind spots (ie party composition).

So yeah, it's not great.

[deljzc]

I have read and listened to reviews about this module numerous times and I STILL don't understand exactly how the first encounter works. I have heard so many different ways of dealing with it, it makes my head hurt.

To expect a new DM and new players to navigate through surprise, initiative and cover in their very first encounter is just not well designed. I mean it would literally take a new group 30 minutes + just to figure it all out. And likely a "redo" encounter to get the rolls correct.

I mean, when I ran the adventure, my new PC's were VERY cautious of the whole setup. The sent the armored up dwarf cleric (they were playing with the pre-made characters) to investigate the wagon/cart while the remaining characters stayed back like 100'.

The rogue decided to get into the woods. And the Fighter/Archer and wizard remained in the road with good sight lines.

And this was the setup I was presented with at the moment the encounter started.

Again, I've been reading and studying the rules for a while and I still don't know what to do here EXACTLY. What to say, what to roll, what to tell the players to roll and how to transition into the first round of combat with players/monsters positioned on the map and the table about to roll initiative.

Believe me, any help on this would be GREATLY appreciated. I don't want hand-waving answers or "roll surprise". I want specifics down to the roll itself and what I am comparing to, where you put all the players and monsters on a map, who has cover, who doesn't (and how much), etc. The more detail the better.

[Segev]

I mean, when I ran the adventure, my new PC's were VERY cautious of the whole setup. The sent the armored up dwarf cleric (they were playing with the pre-made characters) to investigate the wagon/cart while the remaining characters stayed back like 100'.

The rogue decided to get into the woods. And the Fighter/Archer and wizard remained in the road with good sight lines.

And this was the setup I was presented with at the moment the encounter started.

(...)

I don't want hand-waving answers or "roll surprise". I want specifics down to the roll itself and what I am comparing to, where you put all the players and monsters on a map, who has cover, who doesn't (and how much), etc. The more detail the better.

I fully get where you're coming from, but in the defense of the writers, it would be very hard to give precise instructions for every possibly configuration the PCs set up the fight with.

That said, it doesn't sound like this one was giving adequate instruction nor doing proper teaching of the system. Good tutorial-gameplay scenarios introduce concepts one at a time, building on them with more complex instances after the basics are down.

For a genuine tutorial game, a first combat being something either exactly set up as an arena/gladiatorial match, or essentially set up the same way, would be ideal: The PCs square off at roughly 60 feet with the enemy, maybe with a few obvious obstacles.

I keep touting Sunless Citadel because it was my first 5e module that I ran, and it worked well. As the PCs go from Oakhurst to the rumored location of the adventure, the first combat(s) they likely get into are with a random encounter or two that are really weak monsters that are highly aggressive and rather stupid. Of a specific kind that sets part of the tone. There's no provided terrain other than "a road," so it's likely an open-map combat of the party vs. some random number of these things. Very basic fight, with any complexity being created by player creativity.

Then, when they get to the site, there's some exploration-pillar stuff in the form of figuring out how to get past some terrain obstacle (with an obvious path provided, but still something to think about), and you get a more "surprise" situation with more relatively easy monsters. There's some difficult terrain to deal with, and there's likely party separation so that they need to hasten to get there to support their ally who starts off outnumbered. Then, there's some "hazards of exploration" stuff which can lead to more fights and dealing with more difficult terrain, followed by an honest-to-goodness trap of a very classic sort, and then another fight in an enclosed room.

This serves as a pretty good introduction to basic fight mechanics, including the possibility of Surprise in the first round.

[patchyman]

I ran this module for 3 children, aged 7, 9 and 11. The party composition was a water genasi wizard, an elf revised ranger and an elf monk. I added a dwarf divine soul sorcerer (the 4th Rockseeker brother) to round out the party.


This is a problematic situation for new players, as:


Few clues could be picked up on that someone is hiding nearby.
It'd be difficult to reward the players for being cautious, as they approach from an open road.
It initiates the Surprise conditions on behalf of the enemies, which is a difficult ruleset for first-time players.
There are few interactive environmental effects can could be applied to a open field scenario like this.


When I described the situation to the players, the 11 year old and the 9 year immediately said “it’s a trap!”. They were on their guard as the sorcerer approached the horses.

The monk’s passive Perception was high enough that he saw the goblins, but I didn’t give him a chance to warn the others before combat started.

As a consequence, the goblins didn’t get surprise (since the players were on their guard), but the players couldn’t target the goblins (because they were hidden and the monk rolled poorly on initiative).

The party won the battle without too much difficulty even without the wizard boosting his AC by taking cover from goblin arrows behind the wagon.

Also, I believe the module specifies that the goblins are knocking characters unconscious, so if there is a TPK, they will be taken as prisoners to the hideout.




The traps leading to the goblin cave aren't too terrible, but it seems odd for creatures like goblins to set sophisticated traps like a snare. Additionally, the group has a wagon with oxen that they were tasked to guard, and they were already ambushed out in the open, causing an issue if they want to follow a path for an hour to find the goblin's hideout.


As Petrococcus stated, snares are hardly sophisticated. They are exactly the sort of trap I would expect goblins or other bandits to set. Moreover, putting two traps on the way to the hideout telegraphs to the players what to expect traps once they reach the hideout.

As for the wagon, the players have a choice: they can either leave the wagon behind and risk losing it, or continue on to town and double back, risking the lives of any prisoners taken by the goblins. The party decided to take the risk of losing the wagon to see if they could save people. To me, this is D&D working as intended.



Once they do reach the hideout, the goblins have another point where they can see the players (in the thicket), but the players cannot see them. In order to see the goblins while they're lollygagging, they'd need to breach past the stream and likely lose any chance at catching the goblins unaware.

The goblins are inattentive and have a Passive Perception of 10. The ranger and the monk stumbled upon them when crossing the brook. One goblin was surprised and they killed the second without difficulty.



Additionally, once we get to the cave itself, the wolves deal a whopping 7 average damage when the average character in my party had a maximum of 9. The wolves are chained up, but those chains are set to break, on top of the howling that should probably be heard throughout the cave (or at least, through the crack behind the wolf pen where most of the goblins are).


I can’t help but feel that you may not have read the adventure closely. The module explicitly says that the goblins are used to the noise of the wolves and will not investigate if the characters attack them. The wolves require two successful Strength checks in order to break free of the chain (and if I remember correctly, they can only make one attempt per round).

Finally, and this is one of the reasons I feel the module was well-made, a character with Animal Handling can bypass the encounter by making an Animal Handling check, with Adv if they offer the wolves food. I liked that there were several points in the module where there were options besides “slaughter everything”.



Also, it's a dark cave, and someone is likely using a light source. Alerting the goblins to set off the flood trap is pretty dang easy to do, and it's not at all telegraphed in any way to prevent it.


My party went in without light, despite the fact that the wizard was blind. They found the crevasse up to the Bugbear, and a succesful Perception check allowed them to hear the discussion. They almost died against the Bugbear because the Ranger decided to surprise attack the Bugbear without waiting for the wizard (at disadvantage and with a +0 Ath) to climb up the crevasse.

[Segev]

As a consequence, the goblins didn’t get surprise (since the players were on their guard), but the players couldn’t target the goblins (because they were hidden and the monk rolled poorly on initiative).

If I understand the rules correctly, you technically ran this wrong: even with being "on guard," the fact that the PCs didn't notice the goblins means that all but the monk (who did notice them) were Surprised when combat started because the goblins appeared out of nowhere and the PCs didn't know they would start attacking RIGHT THEN.

[Democratus]

One problem I'm seeing is the mistake of conflating "bad things happen to the PCs" as "punishing players".

Low level PCs die. That's what they do. It's been a staple of D&D for 40 years. It's part of the fun - that the world is a dangerous place.

Your PC dies? Cool. That was dramatic. Roll up a new PC and keep on truckin'.

This is how players get better at adventuring. They lose characters, and then learn from the mistakes they made. Eventually you will have a party of smart, cautious adventurers who don't wander into ambushes, run down trapped hallways, or forget to check the rumor mill in town.

The deadliness of D&D module is a feature, not a bug.

[Pex]

That's DnD as a whole though. Halfling rogue are so iconic ( Bilbo, favored class in 3.5, etc) but in reality, it totally suck at scouting in actual dungeon situations. You really need darkvision or else you're broadcasting your position to the enemies.

Saddly, it's a mistake new players can very easily make.

Then you defy anyone playing a rogue without darkvision.

That is not how it works.


One problem I'm seeing is the mistake of conflating "bad things happen to the PCs" as "punishing players".

Low level PCs die. That's what they do. It's been a staple of D&D for 40 years. It's part of the fun - that the world is a dangerous place.

Your PC dies? Cool. That was dramatic. Roll up a new PC and keep on truckin'.

This is how players get better at adventuring. They lose characters, and then learn from the mistakes they made. Eventually you will have a party of smart, cautious adventurers who don't wander into ambushes, run down trapped hallways, or forget to check the rumor mill in town.

The deadliness of D&D module is a feature, not a bug.

Dying without even having played the game because 1) you were surprised and 2) rolled low for initiative is not a feature.

[Democratus]

Dying without even having played the game because 1) you were surprised and 2) rolled low for initiative is not a feature.

It's very much a feature.

You played the game: "I walk over to the dead horses to see what happened to them." *is* playing.

Being ambushed as a result of not being cautious is a valid result - and a fun one. Lesson learned and now you're a better player.

[stoutstien]

It's very much a feature.

You played the game: "I walk over to the dead horses to see what happened to them." *is* playing.

Being ambushed as a result of not being cautious is a valid result - and a fun one. Lesson learned and now you're a better player.

The dead horse in question is also placed on the start of the critical path and for inexperienced players/DM, before any player agency takes place.

[Laserlight]

Any of the printed modules if done exactly as printed are going to throw up problems in terms of assumed player actions, and player character dispositions (

Quoted for truth. It's a rare module where the writer doesn't assume the party will react one way, and apparently never consider that another party than his might do something entirely different. Which is fine, except sometimes they make the whole story hinge on that.

A couple of times I've had DMs flat out say "Look, the module assumes you do X, and there's no provision for anything else, so please figure out a reason your character would do X. Or just do it without a reason, whatever."

[Addaran]

Well, Goggles of the Night aren't that expensive and Arcane Tricksters can learn Darkvision on level 7. But yeah, it's not perfect.
That does help for sure, but it sucks that you need to get higher level to start doing the role you wanted well. If your DM lets you buy magic item, you'll probably need at least lvl 5? to have enough gold.


The module could have mitigated that by using enemies that didn't have darkvision though, if they had considered common newbie traps and how to avoid them.
Pretty hard to do when all the iconic D&D monsters have it. Goblins, kobolds, orcs, bugbear, gnolls, hobgoblins. Undeads, drows and demons too. Sure they could have used humans for the first encounters, but the problem is still there at session 2 when you start using anything else.


Then you defy anyone playing a rogue without darkvision.

That is not how it works.


That's pretty much exactly how it works. You can play a rogue without darkvision, but if you want to play a scout, you really need darkvision. As a human, having light helps you at very close range but mess your night vision long range and gives away your position. With a decent moon (dim light), you can see clearly enough to wander around in the wood. Anyone with darkvision see in full darkness just as good.

[Segev]

Quoted for truth. It's a rare module where the writer doesn't assume the party will react one way, and apparently never consider that another party than his might do something entirely different. Which is fine, except sometimes they make the whole story hinge on that.

A couple of times I've had DMs flat out say "Look, the module assumes you do X, and there's no provision for anything else, so please figure out a reason your character would do X. Or just do it without a reason, whatever."

This can be a big problem, yeah. I find that it's minimized if you can set that as the starting premise: "Figure out why your characters have already bitten this plot hook," is a lot fairer than, "Okay, you've done a few things in game, and now there's a plot hook dangling. PLEASE take it; it's the only one I have."

The difference is how the gating works. In the latter case, you're forcing players to potentially break character, or at least to shoe-horn characters who were just fine at the start of the game into something that doesn't fit them. In the former case, you're setting constraints on the kind of characters allowed in the game, which is far better.

"No drow, because this is a game about exterminating them and the side you're working with won't buy any Drizz't traitors-to-the-drow thing; your character would be dead before the game began," is a lot better than "yeah, sure, anything you want, oh, by the way, now that you've gotten to the start of act II, drow are a terrible idea and you can't actually play him anymore."

[stoutstien]

That does help for sure, but it sucks that you need to get higher level to start doing the role you wanted well. If your DM lets you buy magic item, you'll probably need at least lvl 5? to have enough gold.


Pretty hard to do when all the iconic D&D monsters have it. Goblins, kobolds, orcs, bugbear, gnolls, hobgoblins. Undeads, drows and demons too. Sure they could have used humans for the first encounters, but the problem is still there at session 2 when you start using anything else.



That's pretty much exactly how it works. You can play a rogue without darkvision, but if you want to play a scout, you really need darkvision. As a human, having light helps you at very close range but mess your night vision long range and gives away your position. With a decent moon (dim light), you can see clearly enough to wander around in the wood. Anyone with darkvision see in full darkness just as good.

Sight is only 1 of 20 odd senses that a scout would need to fill his role. Dark vision is nice to have but hardly required.

[elyktsorb]

Ah, I remember this, I don't remember having much difficulty with it at all. Mainly because I had a crab familiar and it's blindsight sh*ts all over the goblins trying to hide in the initial encounter.

[JellyPooga]

That's DnD as a whole though. Halfling rogue are so iconic ( Bilbo, favored class in 3.5, etc) but in reality, it totally suck at scouting in actual dungeon situations. You really need darkvision or else you're broadcasting your position to the enemies.

Saddly, it's a mistake new players can very easily make.

It's really unfortunate that so many GMs run Darkvision in a really inappropriate manner and have the likes of Goblins and Kobolds living their lives in pitch black darkness because they have Darkvision. About the only monsters that the "your lantern gives you away" should be a problem against is things like Undead that don't care about light or Giant Insects/Animals that naturally live in lightless environs. Living, sentient creatures like Goblins would, unless they're expecting human invaders or something, have their home lit, whether with lanterns, torches or simply a campfire. People like warmth and light and Darkvision provides neither. Living in a lightless environment with only Darkvision would be like living at night; stumbling into stuff, having difficulty finding things, difficulty reading (if that's a thing for you; granted, it generally isn't for goblins), never being able to see anything more than 60ft away, not to mention not having a fire means not having cooked food; something most sentient creatures prefer (and lighting a fire when you need it is a hell of a lot more effort than simply keeping one lit; seriously, ancient armies used to carry lit embers with them on the march rather than fuss around with lighting a new fire at every new camp-site). Sure, a goblin tribe could put out their lights if they knew there were invaders, but that would be a defensive tactic used only when required; not a standard operating status (as a rule).

You want your world to be immersive and make sense? Stop making your Goblins live in the dark and giving your players a needlessly hard time for not having Darkvision. Darkvision is a perk, a ribbon feature at best, not an essential game-changer.


I keep touting Sunless Citadel

I've played Sunless Citadel once and run it twice; once for a group new to the edition (3.5) and once for a group new to roleplaying. All three times I've played it were an absolute blast and for all the reasons you mention, I too think it's a great introductory adventure. Good pacing and mix of play styles, including exploration, social and combat aspects, as well as the notion that not every dungeon has to be a simple hack'n'slash affair; that you can make alliances, play factions off against each other and so forth. On top of that, it's got that bit of a twist in the end-boss encounter (no spoilers!), making the final victory a little bittersweet, leaving the players asking for another adventure and a more satisfying end. Really good intro adventure, for sure.

[Nagog]

I agree. I recently purchased a Starter's Pack for my younger sister and began running Phandelver with them, all of them new players, and it was very similar to what you've expressed. The first while feels heavily like a video game, a sentiment that leads new players to play as such rather than thinking outside the box and coming to their own solutions. It may be a good beginner's course for transitioning from video gaming to tabletop gaming, but for players new to fantasy gameplay in general it's lackluster at best.

[patchyman]

If I understand the rules correctly, you technically ran this wrong: even with being "on guard," the fact that the PCs didn't notice the goblins means that all but the monk (who did notice them) were Surprised when combat started because the goblins appeared out of nowhere and the PCs didn't know they would start attacking RIGHT THEN.

Technically, the rule is “the DM determines if a side is surprised”. Two players came upon a suspicious situation, drew an inference and acted accordingly (ie drew their weapons).

The adventure states that the goblins roll Stealth and the players roll Perception to try to see them and are surprised if they fail. Like all modules, the adventure assumes what the writers believe is the most likely fact matrix (the characters don’t correctly guess that there is an ambush).

A novice DM might conclude that the party is surprised even if the players tell him or her that they are preparing for an ambush, but a novice DM could also conclude that if the characters are expecting an ambush they probably aren’t going to be surprised.

[PraetorDragoon]

The main thing I remember of Lost Mines is that we had a big discussion with the DM as nobody had any intention at pursuing the goblins and was instead more interested in getting the cargo to the town. We only begrudginly went into the goblin cave because the DM really wanted us to go there. :smallbiggrin:

[patchyman]

Quoted for truth. It's a rare module where the writer doesn't assume the party will react one way, and apparently never consider that another party than his might do something entirely different. Which is fine, except sometimes they make the whole story hinge on that.

A couple of times I've had DMs flat out say "Look, the module assumes you do X, and there's no provision for anything else, so please figure out a reason your character would do X. Or just do it without a reason, whatever."

The three beginner modules I have played or run recently are “Death House”, “Lost Mine of Phandelver” and “Fall of Plaguestone”. Of the three, “Lost Mine” avoided the pitfall the best. You don’t follow the hint to Cragmaw hideout? The party continues on to Phandelver, where there are 6 sidequests that might interest them, including 2 that lead back to Cragmaw hideout.

[Democratus]

The dead horse in question is also placed on the start of the critical path and for inexperienced players/DM, before any player agency takes place.

False equivalency. Player agency took place before the adventure even began. They showed up, they rolled characters, maybe even chatted a bit about the game or other things.

Maybe you mean character agency?

[KorvinStarmast]

Their default equipment is a bit OTT for a random small band. Instead of scimitars and shortbows give them either a shortsword & shield or a sling & a club. That drops their damage by a point per hit per goblin, and drops their maximum by 2, which makes them a lot mopre predictable and safer to engage.

The Scimitar and Shortbow should be the equipment of the mooks in a bigger force, later on. When there's someone with more wealth equipping them. Not for independent cave-dwelling bands of savages. The problem with the goblins is the +2 dex mod, the expertise in stealth, and then their secondary trait (a level 2 rogue skill cunning action) which creates (or can create) a tactical problem for any new party as the goblins hit and run like a rogue would.
On the other hand, being a small creature in a world filled with large ones, the stealth expertise strikes me as a very realistic "in world" survival mechanism.

Make their dex 13 and they become more like D&D gobins, not a small band of rogue PCs.

[stoutstien]

False equivalency. Player agency took place before the adventure even began. They showed up, they rolled characters, maybe even chatted a bit about the game or other things.

Maybe you mean character agency?

I use them interchangeably but yes character agency could work also. I don't consider pregame activities as agency driven but I could see the argument for it.

The campaign practically starts with the scene with the goblin ambush.
All it would take is a little one prior to provide the party with some potential Intel and a decision point rather than, "hope you don't blow this roll and die."

[Willie the Duck]

A few thoughts:

The module does start with a very hard combat that by-the-numbers is hard to win and hard to detect. It really calls out for a DM who will reward player agency, and I will give it anti-credit for not specifying that.

Outside of that, a lot of what is being complained about is more issues with 5e, modern D&D, or D&D as a whole, and I think it is accurate.

Anyone who has read/watched a Tolkien novel/movie, or any of the D&D fluff, will want to play a halfling rogue. However, halflings haven't had any form of lightless vision since 2e. Obviously they can simply be the 'non-sneakster' part of rogues, yet Bilbo Baggins, the most iconic 'halfling rogue' of all times, does exactly that.
5e, by the book, is relatively harsh on attempting to make do without darkvision (perhaps because at-will illumination is relatively easy to acquire). Someone could spot the lying-in-wait goblins despite darkness-induced disadvantage, but it would be extremely challenging. In real life, people can and do sneak about in the dark, without light sources, oftentimes trying themselves to be sneaky, and accomplish their goals. D&D doesn't reflect that very well (again, because the primary avenue of addressing this challenge is to remove the darkness or find a way to see in it).
First level D&D (including 5e) is incredibly dangerous. This, despite it being 1) when people are learning the game/deciding if they like the game, and 2) exactly when the 'guard the caravan from bandits'/'wander into a mysterious trap-filled dungeon'-styles of play are most often promoted. Certainly there is a lot of credence to the idea that death in D&D is a learning experience and that a low-level premade adventure with characters that are simple to roll up (being 1st level), simple to slip into the adventure, and ones to which you haven't yet grown attached is the perfect time for that learning to happen. However, there is still a whole lot of 'well, I died.' 'what did you learn?' 'not to roll low, I guess.' Also, the game still leans heavily on what I call a captive audience mindset, where you will* stick with it through the relatively unfun portion to get to when the game starts to even out in terms of risk and you do usually die when you make bad decisions, and usually not otherwise.

*Either because it is 1974 and you are a wargamer, and all your FLGS acquaintances are playing this hot new thing and you'd better find out what it is all about, or it is ~1977-85 and you are 8-10 and your best friend just spent four weeks allowance on this game and by golly you are going to play it.

As to the module itself, other than the initial encounter, I find it okay. Exactly that. Not good, not bad, okay. Mind you, I've played or run most of the 'classically good' modules throughout the editions and not been overly impressed with most of them, either*.
*Not that I fault anyone on this, to be clear. Making premade modules to accommodate a hugely disparate gamer base is a task I don't wish on anyone. Plus, even though I haven't seen modules I find just amazingly great, I have found modules I find to be bad, so I'm always happy when I find one that isn't.

[Boci]

Anyone who has read/watched a Tolkien novel/movie, or any of the D&D fluff, will want to play a halfling rogue. However, halflings haven't had any form of lightless vision since 2e. Obviously they can simply be the 'non-sneakster' part of rogues, yet Bilbo Baggins, the most iconic 'halfling rogue' of all times, does exactly that.

This is a 5thed problem. Yes, previous edition halflings didn't have night vision either, but in 3.5 and 4thed neither did (non-drow) elves and half-elves, so it was much more normal to build a rogue without night vision. In fact in 3.5 core at least I think it might have been impossible to play a race that got a bonus to dexterity and had darkvision, though maybe gnomes could, but certainly no one else.

[Petrocorus]

One theme I'm seeing here is a lot of people noting how a skilled, experienced dm can easily adjust the module to be really good for new players - but the module isn't designed for just new players, but new dm's as well. So *any* need for adjustment is a flaw in the goal of introducing a brand new group to DnD. (And Oberoni fallacy, but in this case it's extra true because we have to assume that the person who's supposed to be fixing it doesn't know how.) It should work with a dm who's never done this before and doesn't know anything about how to balance encounters or adjust rules to cover for designer blind spots (ie party composition).

When i first run it, i was new to 5E, just like my players. Some of them were new to D&D.
I was not a new DM though, since i had mastered L5R, Vampire, Basic RP games, and maybe Star Wars D6.

The only adjustments i made to the campaign was to use Perception check instead of passive Perception and to throw away the under-optimized pre-gen and made my own using the PHB (and actually based on OotS, with a big failure on Durkon Thundershield's name translation).




I mean, when I ran the adventure, my new PC's were VERY cautious of the whole setup. The sent the armored up dwarf cleric (they were playing with the pre-made characters) to investigate the wagon/cart while the remaining characters stayed back like 100'.

The rogue decided to get into the woods. And the Fighter/Archer and wizard remained in the road with good sight lines.

And this was the setup I was presented with at the moment the encounter started.

According to the module itself, you're supposed to roll 1 single Stealth check for all the goblins and compare this to the PC's passive Perceptions.
All PC whose passive Perc is below the Goblins' check are surprised.

And i concur this is a problem because in the situation you present, the PC clearly should all have a Perception check and the goblins should probably make individual Stealth check. I consider they should have a check even without taking such precaution, given the situation.

And this is clearly difficult to adjudicate for a newbie DM, unless he thoroughly read the rules, but i'm not even sure the rules in the starter set are described well enough.



As Petrococcus stated, snares are hardly sophisticated. They are exactly the sort of trap I would expect goblins or other bandits to set. Moreover, putting two traps on the way to the hideout telegraphs to the players what to expect traps once they reach the hideout.

I was not the one making this point, i think it was Tanarii.



The goblins are inattentive and have a Passive Perception of 10. The ranger and the monk stumbled upon them when crossing the brook. One goblin was surprised and they killed the second without difficulty.
I think it's 9. They have a Wis penalty.


It's really unfortunate that so many GMs.... not a standard operating status (as a rule).

You want your world to be immersive and make sense? Stop making your Goblins live in the dark and giving your players a needlessly hard time for not having Darkvision. Darkvision is a perk, a ribbon feature at best, not an essential game-changer.

The module actually concur with you. In both the Cragmaw Hideout and the Cragmaw Castle, the living areas are lit and the corridors and entrances are unlit.
In the case of the hideout, having the entrance unlit with a watcher on some height is clearly a defence mechanism.

[Segev]

Technically, the rule is “the DM determines if a side is surprised”.

You're right, my bad. Then your call was perfectly reasonable.

[Addaran]

Sight is only 1 of 20 odd senses that a scout would need to fill his role. Dark vision is nice to have but hardly required.

I was mostly answering to the arguments that even they can use light since the enemy should have lights too, even with darkvision. Sure you can scout with zero vision, but you'll be extremely slow or you'll risk hitting something, making noise. If a trap spring, you won't see it coming either.


It's really unfortunate that so many GMs run Darkvision in a really inappropriate manner and have the likes of Goblins and Kobolds living their lives in pitch black darkness because they have Darkvision. About the only monsters that the "your lantern gives you away" should be a problem against is things like Undead that don't care about light or Giant Insects/Animals that naturally live in lightless environs. Living, sentient creatures like Goblins would, unless they're expecting human invaders or something, have their home lit, whether with lanterns, torches or simply a campfire. People like warmth and light and Darkvision provides neither. Living in a lightless environment with only Darkvision would be like living at night; stumbling into stuff, having difficulty finding things, difficulty reading (if that's a thing for you; granted, it generally isn't for goblins), never being able to see anything more than 60ft away, not to mention not having a fire means not having cooked food; something most sentient creatures prefer (and lighting a fire when you need it is a hell of a lot more effort than simply keeping one lit; seriously, ancient armies used to carry lit embers with them on the march rather than fuss around with lighting a new fire at every new camp-site). Sure, a goblin tribe could put out their lights if they knew there were invaders, but that would be a defensive tactic used only when required; not a standard operating status (as a rule).

You want your world to be immersive and make sense? Stop making your Goblins live in the dark and giving your players a needlessly hard time for not having Darkvision. Darkvision is a perk, a ribbon feature at best, not an essential game-changer.


I strongly disagree. Even if they don't know enemies are coming, goblins/kobolds would usually not have lights because they are so low on the food chain. PC races hunts them and orcs/drows would enslave them. Kobolds even have sunlight sensitivity, so they don't like bright lights.
A particularly brilliant full moon might bathe the land in dim light. You don't stumble into stuff in that situation. Reading is useless for most of those races ( theoretically they know how to read by rules, but they often don't have something as costy as books and don't value that kind of knowledge).
The only thing that makes sense is for warmth and cooked food. If there's a natural airway or they can dig a chimney in the cavern, they'd probably keep the cooking fire in the back, so it doesn't attract enemies and at that point, they know intruders are there. It makes sense for the sentinels to be far from the light sources, since almost nothing can see well past 60fts in the dark. At worst, they'll see each others at the same time, at best, they have a huge advantage against their natural enemy, the humans.

Even if you make most smart enemies always use lots of light, darkvision is far better then a ribbon just for undeads, all the non-sentient beasts and demons/devils you'll fight.




5e, by the book, is relatively harsh on attempting to make do without darkvision (perhaps because at-will illumination is relatively easy to acquire). Someone could spot the lying-in-wait goblins despite darkness-induced disadvantage, but it would be extremely challenging. In real life, people can and do sneak about in the dark, without light sources, oftentimes trying themselves to be sneaky, and accomplish their goals. D&D doesn't reflect that very well (again, because the primary avenue of addressing this challenge is to remove the darkness or find a way to see in it).


It's true that in real-life people sneak without light sources, however, they don't usually do it to people with darkvision. Someone sneaking blindly-ish against someone with night-vision googles would have a way harder time i'm guessing.

[Pex]

It's very much a feature.

You played the game: "I walk over to the dead horses to see what happened to them." *is* playing.

Being ambushed as a result of not being cautious is a valid result - and a fun one. Lesson learned and now you're a better player.

Make sure day is schedule free to try out new game, planned two weeks in advance.

1 hour travel time to get to game location. Buy lunch/dinner/snacks from store.

30 minutes talking to the other players to get to know one another.

Spend 15 minutes creating characters or learning the pre-gens.

DM spends 5 minutes introducing the adventure.

Find the broken cart. You are surprised. Hit with an arrow. Roll initiative, Rolled a 4. Hit with an arrow. You drop. Do nothing but roll death saves while others play. Lesson learned. Waste of time.

[JellyPooga]

I strongly disagree.

What about the orcs and such that are further up the food chain? Many GMs run them similarly to the way they run the "lower" creatures, with little to no reason. I've even seen "civilised" races like Drow and Duergar being run that way, including scenarios including laboratories, forges and libraries where even a little light would be wanted, if not actively required.

[stoutstien]

What about the orcs and such that are further up the food chain? Many GMs run them similarly to the way they run the "lower" creatures, with little to no reason. I've even seen "civilised" races like Drow and Duergar being run that way, including scenarios including laboratories, forges and libraries where even a little light would be wanted, if not actively required.

Even if you run goblins or kobolds as little paranoid people with a hyper
Focus on avoidance they would seek dim light conditions not darkness.
With so many NPCs having darkvision darkness is not a sound defense and giving yourself disadvantage on all perception checks based on sight is counterintuitive to this logic.

[Willie the Duck]

It's true that in real-life people sneak without light sources, however, they don't usually do it to people with darkvision. Someone sneaking blindly-ish against someone with night-vision googles would have a way harder time i'm guessing.

Yes I'm sure it would. There's certainly a lot of evidence from the early part of the US involvement in Afghanistan that would suggest that night-vision goggles and the like are a phenomenal advantage.

Regardless, 5e doesn't particularly have a lot of mechanisms in place for adjudicating this. IRL, you can hunch down, you can attempt to sneak behind bushes. You can use upwind/downwind to your advantage, use the noise of running water, do all sorts of things that Arnie does in Predator (yes, the mud thing if darkvision were still thermal-based, but also just line-of-site type issues and the like). D&D mostly addresses this with lots of ways to gain darkvision (or illuminate the area).


This is a 5thed problem. Yes, previous edition halflings didn't have night vision either, but in 3.5 and 4thed neither did (non-drow) elves and half-elves, so it was much more normal to build a rogue without night vision. In fact in 3.5 core at least I think it might have been impossible to play a race that got a bonus to dexterity and had darkvision, though maybe gnomes could, but certainly no one else.

This doesn't make halflings good at being sneakster rogues. It just makes the rest of 3.5 core in the same boat (and yes, I seem to recall quite a few dwarven rogues, if you actually had to play through the levels before you could ECL your way out of lacking darkvision). Now, I imagine what with the increased granularity of 3e's penalty system meant that you could stack benefits such to offset the blindness penalties, and perhaps the end result is less onerous than 5e's disadvantage.

[Zetakya]

I don't think there's any damage difference between shortswords and scimitars in 5e. Did you mean daggers?

Yes. Or rather, I misremembered short swords as being d4. Was that 3.5 small weapon rules for them? I forget.


Oh I like the club and sling thing. Doesn't even change their CR.

Yeah, it's just... They are too well equipped for savages in a cave, as presented in the DMG. A little bit of down-tuning is appropriate, IMO.


The problem with the goblins is the +2 dex mod, the expertise in stealth, and then their secondary trait (a level 2 rogue skill cunning action) which creates (or can create) a tactical problem for any new party as the goblins hit and run like a rogue would.
On the other hand, being a small creature in a world filled with large ones, the stealth expertise strikes me as a very realistic "in world" survival mechanism.

Make their dex 13 and they become more like D&D gobins, not a small band of rogue PCs.

That's -1 to hit, damage, Dec save and AC. I think that might go too far and make them just not a threat, but I could be wrong.

The stealth thing is pretty easily countered by some very common spells and equipment, if you're playing with a reasonable interpretation of stealth. They do need to actually be out of sight at the very least to hide like that. Ordinary stealth is a good way to get players thinking outside the box. Especially as a good number of the Cantrips have anti-stealth functionality if you apply them intelligently.

[Petrocorus]

What about the orcs and such that are further up the food chain? Many GMs run them similarly to the way they run the "lower" creatures, with little to no reason. I've even seen "civilised" races like Drow and Duergar being run that way, including scenarios including laboratories, forges and libraries where even a little light would be wanted, if not actively required.

I agree with your point.
OTOH, i saw many dungeons/lair with torches and braziers lighting and warming rooms with no airway or ventilation whatsoever.
Both break the suspension of disbelief for me.

[Boci]

This doesn't make halflings good at being sneakster rogues. It just makes the rest of 3.5 core in the same boat (and yes, I seem to recall quite a few dwarven rogues, if you actually had to play through the levels before you could ECL your way out of lacking darkvision). Now, I imagine what with the increased granularity of 3e's penalty system meant that you could stack benefits such to offset the blindness penalties, and perhaps the end result is less onerous than 5e's disadvantage.

But you compare one to another race in the same edition. Halflings in 3.5 were good at sneaking. They were small so they got +4 to hide, they had a racial +2 to move silently and their racial bonus to dexterity further boosted both. They also got bonuses to jump climb and listen, not insignificant rogue skills. The lack of dark vision mattered less in an edition where humans couldn't get a bonus to dexterity and elves and half-elves didn't have dark vision either.


Yes. Or rather, I misremembered short swords as being d4. Was that 3.5 small weapon rules for them? I forget.

Swordsword and scimitars would both deal 1d6 in 3.5, reduced to 1d4 for a small creature. Scimitars were a superior weapon in pure stats in 3.5, because they had a higher crit range (though they also weren't light weapons).

[Addaran]

What about the orcs and such that are further up the food chain? Many GMs run them similarly to the way they run the "lower" creatures, with little to no reason. I've even seen "civilised" races like Drow and Duergar being run that way, including scenarios including laboratories, forges and libraries where even a little light would be wanted, if not actively required.

Orcs, i could easily see going both ways. Either barbarian savage that scoff at the cold and just don't need light. Or a prideful warband that doesn't need to hide, enjoy cooked meat and might even have forge. Something like hobgoblin definitively fit the warband/civilization camp, with them being lawful and military in nature.

Drow and Duegar also would definitively have lights. Even more so in the scenarios you describe. Probably just dim-light from phosphorescence/magic spells, since they don't like bright light, but they are really civilised and wants/needs luxury. Might keep hallways or chokeholes to enter the city completly dark for defense against surface-dweller or they might just be too prideful to care. Scouting/hunting parties wouldn't use light though, there's even more dangerous stuff in the underdark...

[Tawmis]

What are your thoughts on it? Do you disagree with me?

I think it depends.

If it's a DM who has some experience underneath their belt; it's a great module for first time players.
For me, as a DM - if I was running this - I'd coach my players through the ambush. If there was a Ranger or the like I might say, "This would be a good opportunity to do a Survival check - to investigate your surroundings."

And for the traps, I'd coach that goblins can be crafty - if there's a rogue or the like say, "If you're heading for the goblin lair; there's a good chance they've set up traps that they're aware of. It would be a good opportunity for the rogue to look for traps."

And do some hand holding, as a DM to make my players familiar with what their characters can do and how specific skills work and when to use them, so that they get comfortable asking, "Can I use survival to check for XYZ?"

However, for a brand new DM? It's not ideal. Not because of the ambush. But because when you get to town - the players can find up to like 8 different quests - which may be overwhelming for a new DM. This is why I've recommended to new DMs to take a look and make it so certain quests are unlocked after "X" trigger is done. Like no mention of the (spoiler) who knows about the spellbook until the party finds out about the (spoiler) in the nearby hills. This way it remains manageable for the new DM.

[Democratus]

Make sure day is schedule free to try out new game, planned two weeks in advance.

1 hour travel time to get to game location. Buy lunch/dinner/snacks from store.

30 minutes talking to the other players to get to know one another.

Spend 15 minutes creating characters or learning the pre-gens.

DM spends 5 minutes introducing the adventure.

Find the broken cart. You are surprised. Hit with an arrow. Roll initiative, Rolled a 4. Hit with an arrow. You drop. Do nothing but roll death saves while others play. Lesson learned. Waste of time.

Make sure straw man is fully stuffed. :smallconfused:

[Segev]

Make sure straw man is fully stuffed. :smallconfused:

I don't see a straw man, here. I see a legitimate concern over the notion that you should just "suck it up" and "learn" from losing a character in your very first fight in your very first game.

The hour drive to the site might be a bit excessive, but I imagine it's anecdotal rather than made up. Unless you're playing Mimes of Phantomverse with a large party of throw-away PCs that the players control several of, at the very least your first experience is spending all combat dying and possibly dead until the party can get to a location where a new PC is miraculously waiting for recruitment.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Make sure straw man is fully stuffed. :smallconfused:

That's ignoring that with as long as Pex has discussed this edition, he should know that the final line is incorrect as well.

Find the broken cart. You are surprised. Hit with an arrow. Roll initiative, Rolled a 4. Hit with an arrow. You drop. Do nothing but roll death saves while others play. Lesson learned. Waste of time.

There are no surprise rounds in 5E.
Find Broken Cart -> You are surprised -> Roll Initiative (you roll low) -> Hit with an arrow -> You can't act, but your reaction is now available -> Potentially react to second arrow.

Okay, so it isn't a huge improvement but it's something.

I understand the point of the argument, it would feel pretty bad to spend any length of preparation just to have a character die suddenly. This problem isn't unique to Lost Mines of Phandelver though. As I mentioned earlier, the only other low level prebuilt was Hoard of the Dragon Queen at the time of the editions release (2014), and my group ran into something very similar to the nightmare scenario that Pex describes. HotDQ is even more punishing to new players, my biggest regret in learning 5E (2017) is that I chose HotDQ as the starting module for my brother to run and the catastrophe it created killed the hobby for him.

The first (or early) encounters in a module are very important for learning as new players and making them super deadly is a little too easy.

[JellyPooga]

Orcs, i could easily see going both ways. Either barbarian savage that scoff at the cold and just don't need light. Or a prideful warband that doesn't need to hide, enjoy cooked meat and might even have forge. Something like hobgoblin definitively fit the warband/civilization camp, with them being lawful and military in nature.

Drow and Duegar also would definitively have lights. Even more so in the scenarios you describe. Probably just dim-light from phosphorescence/magic spells, since they don't like bright light, but they are really civilised and wants/needs luxury. Might keep hallways or chokeholes to enter the city completly dark for defense against surface-dweller or they might just be too prideful to care. Scouting/hunting parties wouldn't use light though, there's even more dangerous stuff in the underdark...

Precisely. Which is why I said it was unfortunate that many GMs make more of an issue about the whole "lantern gives you away" thing on account of Darkvision. In many, if not most, cases light should have active sources rather than a tribe, colony or settlement relying solely on Darkvision. Which in turn renders Darkvision a handy ribbon ability rather than an essential tool to acquire at all costs if you want to participate in a certain style of play (i.e. stealth).

[Yora]

I am currently running Against the Cult of the Reptile God for the second time, and I am really wondering why this is for first level. I don't know about how hard the fights were balanced in the original rules, but this really is not an adventure to start new players with. Which is something that is kind of implied with 1st level adventures.

Fortunately, all the players in my group played before and we're actually having a great time with it. But the adventure starts with a really vague objective (people have gone missing in this area) and no obvious adventure site anywhere nearby. Players are supposed to strike up random conversations by knocking at the doors of random houses. That can really go floundering very quickly. And then the first actual encounter with enemies is most likely with a very high probability that the party will be ambushed at bight while sleeping at an inn. Probably split up over several rooms with an evil priest casting silence to keep anyone from waking up, and quite likely with several PCs being poisoned. That's as unfair a fight as it can get.

It entirely deserves its reputation of being a great classic adventure. But even with enemies to face a 1st level party, this really is not a suitable introduction to the game. This is advanced players material.

[Boci]

I am currently running Against the Cult of the Reptile God for the second time, and I am really wondering why this is for first level. I don't know about how hard the fights were balanced in the original rules, but this really is not an adventure to start new players with. Which is something that is kind of implied with 1st level adventures.

I'd contest that. Veterran group will still run modules and start games at level 1. There's nothing wrong with a module starting at 1st level aimed at expirienced players.

[Yora]

Which i think reveals a different problem with how adventures are labled. 1st level adventures can be for experienced GMs and players, but we also need high level adventures for GMs who never have really ran adventures for higher level parties before.

Though I think there's an even deeper problem with most adventures being written as reference manuals and almost no adventures existing that attempt to explain to newer GMs why they do the things they are doing, how the things are intended to be used in practice, and why they are good practices for GMs to use in their own creations.

[Addaran]

Precisely. Which is why I said it was unfortunate that many GMs make more of an issue about the whole "lantern gives you away" thing on account of Darkvision. In many, if not most, cases light should have active sources rather than a tribe, colony or settlement relying solely on Darkvision. Which in turn renders Darkvision a handy ribbon ability rather than an essential tool to acquire at all costs if you want to participate in a certain style of play (i.e. stealth).

I was mostly thinking weaker races like goblins/kobolds in my first answer. It's very true that it's an issue in some other cases you mentioned ( especially drows and duegars) I still think Darkvision is way more then a ribbon though. Just for undeads, beasts, demons/devils and stuff like encountering scouting/raiding parties.

[Petrocorus]

But you compare one to another race in the same edition. Halflings in 3.5 were good at sneaking. They were small so they got +4 to hide, they had a racial +2 to move silently and their racial bonus to dexterity further boosted both. They also got bonuses to jump climb and listen, not insignificant rogue skills. The lack of dark vision mattered less in an edition where humans couldn't get a bonus to dexterity and elves and half-elves didn't have dark vision either.

The availability of low-light vision and darkvision through magic items or class features also made a difference.
In 5E, you're not sure at all to ever find a Goggle of Night, and IIRC, only Devil's Sight and Shadow Sorcerer gives you permanent darkvision. Shadow Monk gives the Darkvision spell, but else you have to rely on a caster or be a caster yourself to acquire darkvision if you don't racially have it.



There are no surprise rounds in 5E.
Find Broken Cart -> You are surprised -> Roll Initiative (you roll low) -> Hit with an arrow -> You can't act, but your reaction is now available -> Potentially react to second arrow.
And i'll add to this (once again) that surprised is not automatic and should not be. It may certainly be hard for a newbie DM to adjudicate this, but the PC should have a legitimate chance not to be surprised.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

The availability of low-light vision and darkvision through magic items or class features also made a difference.
In 5E, you're not sure at all to ever find a Goggle of Night, and IIRC, only Devil's Sight and Shadow Sorcerer gives you permanent darkvision. Shadow Monk gives the Darkvision spell, but else you have to rely on a caster or be a caster yourself to acquire darkvision if you don't racially have it.


And i'll add to this (once again) that surprised is not automatic and should not be. It may certainly be hard for a newbie DM to adjudicate this, but the PC should have a legitimate chance not to be surprised.

Combat Step by Step

* Determine surprise: The GM determines whether anyone involved in the combat encounter is surprised.

* Establish positions: The GM decides where all the characters and monsters are located. Given the adventurers’ marching order or their stated positions in the room or other location, the GM figures out where the adversaries are?how far away and in what direction.

* Roll initiative: Everyone involved in the combat encounter rolls initiative, determining the order of combatants’ turns.

* Take turns: Each participant in the battle takes a turn in initiative order.

* Begin the next round: When everyone involved in the combat has had a turn, the round ends. Repeat step 4 until the fighting stops

Surprise

A band of adventurers sneaks up on a bandit camp, springing from the trees to attack them. A gelatinous cube glides down a dungeon passage, unnoticed by the adventurers until the cube engulfs one of them. In these situations, one side of the battle gains surprise over the other. The GM determines who might be surprised. If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other. Otherwise, the GM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing side. Any character or monster that doesn’t notice a threat is surprised at the start of the encounter. If you’re surprised, you can’t move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can’t take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren’t.


====


There is a surprise round, it's just not called that, it's the first round of combat. Calling it the surprise round works fine as it's the common English way of saying "the first round in which surprised creatures lose their actions and can't move".

In 5e you lose your first turn, which technically works the same way as previous editions. You still roll initiative but can't do anything.

[Man_Over_Game]

Combat Step by Step

* Determine surprise: The GM determines whether anyone involved in the combat encounter is surprised.

* Establish positions: The GM decides where all the characters and monsters are located. Given the adventurers’ marching order or their stated positions in the room or other location, the GM figures out where the adversaries are?how far away and in what direction.

* Roll initiative: Everyone involved in the combat encounter rolls initiative, determining the order of combatants’ turns.

* Take turns: Each participant in the battle takes a turn in initiative order.

* Begin the next round: When everyone involved in the combat has had a turn, the round ends. Repeat step 4 until the fighting stops

Surprise

A band of adventurers sneaks up on a bandit camp, springing from the trees to attack them. A gelatinous cube glides down a dungeon passage, unnoticed by the adventurers until the cube engulfs one of them. In these situations, one side of the battle gains surprise over the other. The GM determines who might be surprised. If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other. Otherwise, the GM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing side. Any character or monster that doesn’t notice a threat is surprised at the start of the encounter. If you’re surprised, you can’t move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can’t take a reaction until that turn ends. A member of a group can be surprised even if the other members aren’t.

An easy checklist to solve Initiative/Surprise confusion is:

Initiative is rolled as soon as both sides are aware of hostiles, or when something would cause this. Examples include kicking a door down, spotting a hidden combatant, or a hidden combatant making an attack.
Even though a creature may announce their attack before combat starts, they still have to obey Initiative order (which means that an ally or enemy may act sooner).
If you (or any combatant) is Hidden when initiative is rolled, you must make a Stealth Check contested against all of your enemies' Passive Perception to remain Hidden.
If you were revealed to any creature as part of the Surprise check, you are no longer Hidden at the start of combat.
If you are not aware of any of your enemies from the Surprise check, you are Surprised for the round.


So someone with a Passive Perception of 9 can only be Surprised if all of his enemies rolled a 10 or higher on their Stealth check (with any "unhidden" enemies effectively rolling a 0). The Surprised condition effectively means "unprepared for the first 6 seconds of combat", and that could include a guard on duty.

This would mean that it's impossible to Surprise an opposing group if a single member of your party was not Hiding, although a Hiding member of your group might still be Hidden at the start of combat if he rolled higher than the entire opposition's Passive Perception.

In regards to waiting to roll initiative, the only exception I could foresee to this general rule is if something is time-sensitive in terms of minutes. For example, several traps might trigger on a timed cycle every few rounds, or a spell-bomb might go off in 2 minutes (20 rounds).

[Petrocorus]

If you (or any combatant) is Hidden when initiative is rolled, you must make a Stealth Check contested against all of your enemies' Passive Perception to remain Hidden.
So someone with a Passive Perception of 9 can only be Surprised if all of his enemies rolled a 10 or higher on their Stealth check (with any "unhidden" enemies effectively rolling a 0). The Surprised condition effectively means "unprepared for the first 6 seconds of combat", and that could include a guard on duty.


That what the rules in the Chapter 9 of the PHB (Combat) say. But rules in the Chapter 7 (Using ability score) say passive Perception is to be used "even if they aren't searching". So when the someone is on his guards looking for anything hidden, they should have a Perception check.

[BurgerBeast]

If you (or any combatant) is Hidden when initiative is rolled, you must make a Stealth Check contested against all of your enemies' Passive Perception to remain Hidden.


Wait... what? Where does it say this in the rules?

[Democratus]

I don't see a straw man, here. I see a legitimate concern over the notion that you should just "suck it up" and "learn" from losing a character in your very first fight in your very first game.

It's the very definition of a straw man. Create very specific situation with extreme conditions and then claim that if this situation is unacceptable - the entire argument is void. That's what a straw man is.

There are a lot of ways to enjoy D&D. My first 3 characters died at 1st level - two of them the first time dice were thrown in anger. Old man Gygax himself killed one of my beginning characters for "excessive risk-taking". I loved every minute of it - taking it as a challenge to do better next time.

I've run hundreds of new players through D&D, and the death toll is quite high.

The point being, this is not bad-wrong-fun. It's an entirely valid way to enjoy the hobby.

[Corsair14]

I agree OP. Its actually a very challenging adventure, especially the goblin caves early on. I have played it twice, we TPK'd against the bug bear the first time when it was our intro into 5th. The second time I was on deployment with new players and due to my experience I played a ranger to give myself a slight nerf and didn't metagame purposely taking a backseat role for this early encounter. We still almost TPK'd. I haven't played past the bandit caves as the team I was playing with redeployed back to the States. We didn't have a lot of time since we were all night shift and after working for 12 hours we met up at 7am and generally played til 9-930 and went and crashed to rinse and repeat at 5pm. So perhaps lack of sleep played a factor in our decision making and getting more punch drunk as the game went on.

[deljzc]

See, we're back to debated what EXACTLY happens in this first fight of this adventure. No one has yet to walk me through step by step, roll by roll of what is happening in the first encounter at the wagon.

The most simple way, if the party stays all together and walks to the wagon together is this (I think):

1. Is there any roll to see if the characters see/hear the goblins hiding as they approach the wagon? Not sure about this.

2. If not, roll for surprise. Using the Goblin's stealth bonus, they roll a d20 + 6. You only roll one die for the entire group. Get score. Compare that score vs. each players passive perception (normally between 10-14 for 1st level characters). A tie score goes to the player (not surprised). Determine who is surprised (in over 50% of the rolls it will be the entire party).

3. Establish position of each player and goblin. Note (I guess), you might rule some players have partial cover from the cart against some of the goblin ranged attacks (but I doubt it).

3. Enter combat and roll initiative.

4. Since very few 1st level characters have reaction options (so let's ignore that), you go through round 1 where any surprised character can't move or take actions. If I remember correctly 2 of the Goblins move and engage in melee attacks. 2 of the Goblins stay in the trees/woods and fire arrows. 4 attacks.

5. Enter round 2. Roll for initiative. No one is surprised anymore. I would assume the 2 goblins in the woods/trees have half cover from ranged attacks? +2 AC?

This is the SIMPLE rules if everyone is together at the cart location.

I get very confused with surprise if the party is separated. What if one person goes forward? Can party members that are like 50-60' away still be surprised (I guess they can). If that's the case (and the whole party is surprised 50%+ of the time) is the person that moves forward alone just a goner? 4 attacks against him (I would assume the logical things to play is all the goblins attack the one guy). And THEN we start round 2?

Is this Rules as Written?

[Boci]

The point being, this is not bad-wrong-fun. It's an entirely valid way to enjoy the hobby.

The premise of the thread is playing with newbies. High lethality is a valid way to enjoy the hobby yes, but is it a good way to introduce someone to it? Just because you enjoyed it as a new player doesn't mean its good for everyone.

[Segev]

It's the very definition of a straw man. Create very specific situation with extreme conditions and then claim that if this situation is unacceptable - the entire argument is void. That's what a straw man is.

There are a lot of ways to enjoy D&D. My first 3 characters died at 1st level - two of them the first time dice were thrown in anger. Old man Gygax himself killed one of my beginning characters for "excessive risk-taking". I loved every minute of it - taking it as a challenge to do better next time.

I've run hundreds of new players through D&D, and the death toll is quite high.

The point being, this is not bad-wrong-fun. It's an entirely valid way to enjoy the hobby.

No, a straw man is making an argument that is not what anybody is saying, designed to be easily defeated, and then claiming that, because you beat that argument, all other arguments that support a similar position are also beaten. “I defeated Bob’s argument!” Says the guy who just debated a scarecrow stuffed with straw that is holding a sign that says something Bob never said.

Making an extreme case that falls within the bounds of an argument being made is a valid way to point out that there are cases where it’s a problem.

Moreover, this particular case is only extreme in the hour of driving to get to the location. Everything else is rather feasible, and the important bit is the fact that the very first bit of play, where the mechanics start to matter, the new player is shown that D&D is no fun, because he gets the least fun part of it shoveled into him hard and hasn’t yet seen any of the fun of it.

That isn’t a straw man unless you can definitively say that it will almost never happen with the goblin ambush as written.

In which case, the debate is over how the goblin ambush typically will and should be expected to go for total newbie players.

[Tanarii]

2. If not, roll for surprise. Using the Goblin's stealth bonus, they roll a d20 + 6. You only roll one die for the entire group. Get score. Compare that score vs. each players passive perception (normally between 10-14 for 1st level characters). A tie score goes to the player (not surprised). Determine who is surprised (in over 50% of the rolls it will be the entire party).Roll separately for each Goblin. If any goblin fails to beat the passive score of a PC, that PC is not surprise. In other words, only the lowest Goblin roll matters.

So how many goblins are there? (I see from below it's 4, so I've removed the other chances)
4 goblins: passive perception of 10 is a 40% chance to be surprised, 12 is a 24%, and 14 is a 13%.


3. Establish position of each player and goblin. Note (I guess), you might rule some players have partial cover from the cart against some of the goblin ranged attacks (but I doubt it).
With surprise the starting positions should be 2d6x5ft apart and without 2d6x10ft apart. Unless DM fiats.
Cover and exact position is either DM fiat or a group discussion or both.


3. Enter combat and roll initiative.
This happens before you roll for surprise doesn't it? I forget without looking at the book.


4. Since very few 1st level characters have reaction options (so let's ignore that), you go through round 1 where any surprised character can't move or take actions. If I remember correctly 2 of the Goblins move and engage in melee attacks. 2 of the Goblins stay in the trees/woods and fire arrows. 4 attacks.They may not be able to close for melee. Although with Goblins that's worse, not better. Since they are very good at sniping from cover.

Players may get to attack since surprise is not assured.


5. Enter round 2. Roll for initiative.Initiative was already established you don't reroll. Unless your DM is using an optional variant.


I get very confused with surprise if the party is separated. What if one person goes forward? Can party members that are like 50-60' away still be surprised (I guess they can). If that's the case (and the whole party is surprised 50%+ of the time) is the person that moves forward alone just a goner? 4 attacks against him (I would assume the logical things to play is all the goblins attack the one guy). And THEN we start round 2?

Is this Rules as Written?Two options. Treat them as a second group, in which case they get to enter combat on their turn when they become aware of combat. Or just treat it as a single group.

Either way, I'd hope the guy in front is a scout, sneaking and looking out at the same time. If they're just tromping up always send either the fastest guy who is good at dodging and running away, or the most heavily armored guy. :smallamused:

[Daphne]

Roll separately for each Goblin. If any goblin fails to beat the passive score of a PC, that PC is not surprise. In other words, only the lowest Goblin roll matters.
Shouldn't this be a group check though? They are trying to ambush the party as a group. Additionally, rolling stealth separately makes it very hard for the party to sneak, as the chance of at least one PC rolling low is very high.

[Tanarii]

Shouldn't this be a group check though? They are trying to ambush the party as a group. Additionally, rolling stealth separately makes it very hard for the party to sneak, as the chance of at least one PC rolling low is very high.
By default, dexterity (stealth checks) to hide are not a group check. Surprise checks explicitly are not, per the surprise section rules. Yes, rolling stealth or surprise separately makes it very hard for the party to sneak and for the party to achieve surprise. This is why scouts work in small groups and spread out (ie use the separate parties rule). Working as intended, it's a feature not a bug, etc etc.

That said technically your DM can call for a group check whenever they feel it should apply. But with ambush you're making surprise a LOT easier the baseline. Players will probably love it right up until they are on the recieving end.

Let me clear though: I'm a fan of a group stealth checks for something like "move through the town without alerting any of the patrols" or "trail the bad guy without letting him know he's being followed in a crowded city". Heck, for the latter using more people might give everyone advantage, since he'll see the same face less often! It's just for hiding/surprise that I'm not a fan of turning it into a group check.

edit: underlined the tl;dr part of the post. :smallamused:

[patchyman]

It is the nature of the game, and has been adopted as the philosophy of 5e, that there are several ways to run the first encounter which are equally valid.

To me, this is the counterpoint to playing a game where the players themselves have several ways of dealing with an encounter, all of which are valid.

I described above how I dealt with the encounter. In the adventure module itself, there are two clues that there may be an ambush: at the end of the introductory blurb, the players are warned that there may be outlaws or bandits on the Triboar trail. Second, the description of the dead horses draws attention to black fletched arrows sticking out of them.

The rule is that the DM decides if circumstances warrant surprise. IMO, if the characters make clear by their words or actions that they are expecting an ambush, that is sufficient to negate surprise. This would include what you describe below: sending a scout ahead to check out the horses.

The goblins are still hidden, and they can’t be targetted unless they are seen.

The other thing to remember is that it is the DM that calls for rolls. I would prompt the non-scout players with what they are doing while the scout is checking the horses. If any of them say anything that suggests that they are searching for an ambush, I would ask them to roll a Perception check.

I mentally placed the goblins before asking the players to place their characters. There probably will be a couple of characters with partial cover from the wagon. (For instance, anyone standing next to the wagon would have partial or full cover from ranged attacks from the other side of the wagon).

The two melee goblins may be forced to attacked a heavily armored target on their first turn or forego their attack.

You don’t need to roll initiative on Round 2. Initiative carries over from Round 1.

The scout taking all 4 attacks is actually good for the group, because it means 1 guy goes down to 0 while everyone else is at full health. The next round, one of the other characters moves close enough to cast Healing Word (or Cure Wounds on the following round), while the others fight the goblins. Once the goblins lose the advantage of surprise, they are outmatched by the party.


See, we're back to debated what EXACTLY happens in this first fight of this adventure. No one has yet to walk me through step by step, roll by roll of what is happening in the first encounter at the wagon.

The most simple way, if the party stays all together and walks to the wagon together is this (I think):

1. Is there any roll to see if the characters see/hear the goblins hiding as they approach the wagon? Not sure about this.

2. If not, roll for surprise. Using the Goblin's stealth bonus, they roll a d20 + 6. You only roll one die for the entire group. Get score. Compare that score vs. each players passive perception (normally between 10-14 for 1st level characters). A tie score goes to the player (not surprised). Determine who is surprised (in over 50% of the rolls it will be the entire party).

3. Establish position of each player and goblin. Note (I guess), you might rule some players have partial cover from the cart against some of the goblin ranged attacks (but I doubt it).

3. Enter combat and roll initiative.

4. Since very few 1st level characters have reaction options (so let's ignore that), you go through round 1 where any surprised character can't move or take actions. If I remember correctly 2 of the Goblins move and engage in melee attacks. 2 of the Goblins stay in the trees/woods and fire arrows. 4 attacks.

5. Enter round 2. Roll for initiative. No one is surprised anymore. I would assume the 2 goblins in the woods/trees have half cover from ranged attacks? +2 AC?

This is the SIMPLE rules if everyone is together at the cart location.

I get very confused with surprise if the party is separated. What if one person goes forward? Can party members that are like 50-60' away still be surprised (I guess they can). If that's the case (and the whole party is surprised 50%+ of the time) is the person that moves forward alone just a goner? 4 attacks against him (I would assume the logical things to play is all the goblins attack the one guy). And THEN we start round 2?

Is this Rules as Written?

[Democratus]

No, a straw man is making an argument that is not what anybody is saying, designed to be easily defeated, and then claiming that, because you beat that argument, all other arguments that support a similar position are also beaten. “I defeated Bob’s argument!”

Which is exactly what was offered.

I find it funny timing that I read this posted today in social media, regarding someone playing 5th edition for the first time.

"One thing I don’t like about it is that it makes survivability, particularly at the low levels, that much more likely. Before our campaign began, our DM asked us if we wanted a deathless campaign. My reaction was a big WTF? What good is a role-play game if no death is involved? Fortunately, everybody agreed that mortality should be a thing, and that’s how we’re playing (and even then, it was hard for PCs to die, despite our best efforts. LOL).

There is less risk in 5E. Less risk diminishes the reward, in my opinion."

Different players like different things. So long as people are having fun, it's all gravy.

[patchyman]

By default, dexterity (stealth checks) to hide are not a group check. Surprise checks explicitly are not, per the surprise section rules. Yes, rolling stealth or surprise separately makes it very hard for the party to sneak and for the party to achieve surprise. This is why scouts work in small groups and spread out (ie use the separate parties rule). Working as intended, it's a feature not a bug, etc etc.


I agree with your analysis, but in this case, the module calls out that you roll once for all the goblins.

[Segev]

Regarding surprise and noticing the goblins, most of the modules I've read (which is...3, if you count Tales From the Yawning Portal as one module) tend to have any intended-to-be-hidden groups have a flat DC to notice them. Usually phrased as, "Characters with a Passive Perception of X notice the [whatevers]; everyone else is surprised," or some variant on that. It's a "specific vs. general" thing, but it's also a simplicity thing AND a way to try to get an ambush to actually have a reasonable shot of working. Usually, X is the Passive Stealth of the [whatevers] that are setting the ambush.



Different players like different things. So long as people are having fun, it's all gravy.

Indeed. And when people aren't having fun, there's a problem. The problem here being that there's a high risk of newbie players not having fun with this supposedly introductory module's inaugural invocation of the most mechanically-intense subsystem.

[Man_Over_Game]

Wait... what? Where does it say this in the rules?

Player’s Handbook, p. 189:

"If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other. Otherwise, the DM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing side. Any character or monster that doesn’t notice a threat is surprised at the start of the counter."

It also mentions in the sidebar that you:

Determine Suprise
Establish Positions
Roll for Initiative

In that order.

You could interpret the "compares the Dexterity (Stealth) check" as "compare your original stealth roll", but I'm not a fan of referring to a previous roll for an ability check as I think it allows weird, gamist concepts without adding much, so I have you make a new Stealth check if anything tries to challenge it.

[patchyman]

Regarding surprise and noticing the goblins, most of the modules I've read (which is...3, if you count Tales From the Yawning Portal as one module) tend to have any intended-to-be-hidden groups have a flat DC to notice them. Usually phrased as, "Characters with a Passive Perception of X notice the [whatevers]; everyone else is surprised," or some variant on that. It's a "specific vs. general" thing, but it's also a simplicity thing AND a way to try to get an ambush to actually have a reasonable shot of working. Usually, X is the Passive Stealth of the [whatevers] that are setting the ambush.

Indeed. I think this would have been a better way to have done it in LMoP (probably with a DC of 15 as is used for some other traps in the adventure), but I will not call the module terrible because it did not do this (responding to the OP, not you).

[GlenSmash!]

My first D&D session and campaign was as a player in LMoP. I loved it, but now I can see and definitely agree it's not new player friendly, and even worse it's not new DM friendly.

I've found the introductory AL adventures for each season like https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/DDEX31_HarriedHillsfar.pdf work a lot better for introducing new players and DMs to the game.

[deljzc]

I'm more confused now than ever.

Surprise is a roll FROM EACH GOBLIN? When almost everything else you do with monsters is a group roll?

And you take the LOWEST ROLL from the four goblins as the threshold value to compare passive perception?

Is that what the group here thinks? Or is this just another example of playing D&D any way you want?

Why can't one person here say "this is the rules as written" for this simple encounter?" WTF kind of game is this? And yes, I'm getting frustrated because I can't see agreement on any ONE PART of this encounter. Not one.

And then another person here plays the entire encounter without surprise at all because there are too many clues to monsters being nearby that any caution displayed by the characters at all means no surprise?

Is that how you run surprise forever? Any time the characters are cautious and expecting a bad event, no surprise is possible? Is that a rule?

Look, this isn't hard. Someone tell me EXACTLY how to play this encounter as a learning tool. Maybe I don't want to play it that way, fine. Maybe I want to go against rules as written.

But if we can't agree on how to play out this simple encounter, I don't understand how we could every agree on anything more complicated.

[Boci]

I'm more confused now than ever.

Surprise is a roll FROM EACH GOBLIN? When almost everything else you do with monsters is a group roll?

And you take the LOWEST ROLL from the four goblins as the threshold value to compare passive perception?

Is that what the group here thinks? Or is this just another example of playing D&D any way you want?

Why can't one person here say "this is the rules as written" for this simple encounter?" WTF kind of game is this? And yes, I'm getting frustrated because I can't see agreement on any ONE PART of this encounter. Not one.

Because to avoid in depth group discussion, some key parts of D&D 5th ed are "the DM decides". It speeds up gameplay, but leads to inconsistent results when different people/groups compares notes on an encoutner.

[deljzc]

Because to avoid in depth group discussion, some key parts of D&D 5th ed are "the DM decides". It speeds up gameplay, but leads to inconsistent results when different people/groups compares notes on an encoutner.

Then why even have rules?

Honestly, none of you have been helpful at all. You create MORE confusion. This edition was supposed to streamline some of this stuff. Keep it simple. Instead, not one experienced player can answer a simple question and hides behind "well, the DM makes the rules".

Hell, I could've figured that out.

The level of variety of rules for this one encounter is too great. This is a level 1 encounter with simple monsters with no special abilities vs. level 1 characters with no special abilities (or very limited).

And there is not once consensus on even the FIRST STEP of the Player's Handbook of "Steps to an Encounter", which is "Determine Surprise".

There are the following options (and according to you all are Rules as Written, since the DM is the rules as written):

Option 1: No surprise is possible. Too many clues and/or cautious parties can't be surprised.

Option 1a: Maybe (and I don't think this is correct), a Stealth (Hiding) vs. Passive Perception is rolled BEFORE combat as the players approach the wagon. This seems to me to be double dipping on this roll, but who knows at this point. And again, hiding by a group of Goblins: 1 die or 4 die? Who knows.

Option 2: Roll ONE DIE for the group of Goblins (like initiative is rolled for an entire group). Add the +6 stealth modifier for Goblins. Compare roll to each players' passive perception individually. Anyone lower than the roll is surprised. Any tie or higher is not surprised.

Option 3: Roll FOUR DICE (one for each Goblin). Lowest roll +6 becomes the defacto score (as that Goblin made the most noise I guess). As in option 2, compare this low roll (+6) to all the players passive perception.

Enter combat and roll initiative.

So how do you do it? 1, 1A, 2 or 3? And if not one of the choices above, tell me why.

[Segev]

I'm more confused now than ever.

Surprise is a roll FROM EACH GOBLIN? When almost everything else you do with monsters is a group roll?

And you take the LOWEST ROLL from the four goblins as the threshold value to compare passive perception?

Is that what the group here thinks? Or is this just another example of playing D&D any way you want?

Why can't one person here say "this is the rules as written" for this simple encounter?" WTF kind of game is this? And yes, I'm getting frustrated because I can't see agreement on any ONE PART of this encounter. Not one.

And then another person here plays the entire encounter without surprise at all because there are too many clues to monsters being nearby that any caution displayed by the characters at all means no surprise?

Is that how you run surprise forever? Any time the characters are cautious and expecting a bad event, no surprise is possible? Is that a rule?

Look, this isn't hard. Someone tell me EXACTLY how to play this encounter as a learning tool. Maybe I don't want to play it that way, fine. Maybe I want to go against rules as written.

But if we can't agree on how to play out this simple encounter, I don't understand how we could every agree on anything more complicated.

I'm honestly surprised the encounter doesn't have a line in its set up to the effect of, "PCs with Passive Perception of at least 16 notice the goblins in hiding; everyone else is surprised." Most modules have that. It eliminates the guesswork.

[Pex]

It's the very definition of a straw man. Create very specific situation with extreme conditions and then claim that if this situation is unacceptable - the entire argument is void. That's what a straw man is.

There are a lot of ways to enjoy D&D. My first 3 characters died at 1st level - two of them the first time dice were thrown in anger. Old man Gygax himself killed one of my beginning characters for "excessive risk-taking". I loved every minute of it - taking it as a challenge to do better next time.

I've run hundreds of new players through D&D, and the death toll is quite high.

The point being, this is not bad-wrong-fun. It's an entirely valid way to enjoy the hobby.

I didn't create a new scenario. It's been the same scenario you're critiquing - a PC dying before the player has a chance to play. The opening ambush is not a fun encounter.

For the record it wasn't my PC, but it did happen to another player.

A DM having a high PC death count is not something worthy to brag about, but that's another topic.

[Boci]

Then why even have rules?

Honestly, none of you have been helpful at all. You create MORE confusion. This edition was supposed to streamline some of this stuff. Keep it simple. Instead, not one experienced player can answer a simple question and hides behind "well, the DM makes the rules".

We're not hiding behind that. That's the literal rules:

"Determine surprise: The GM determines whether anyone involved in the combat encounter is surprised."

The edition is streamlined, for play. Not for internet discussions. This is an important difference. At a game table, "DM decides" is fast and smooth in most cases. In a forum discussion it is not, but that wasn't the intention.

[ProsecutorGodot]

You could interpret the "compares the Dexterity (Stealth) check" as "compare your original stealth roll", but I'm not a fan of referring to a previous roll for an ability check as I think it allows weird, gamist concepts without adding much, so I have you make a new Stealth check if anything tries to challenge it.
Or, it's not referring to a previous stealth check but an existing stealth check.

When you, the DM, ask for a Stealth check, you already know what circumstances that check would be competing with. If they say "we approach the cart stealthily" and you allow them to roll for it, then make them roll additional stealth checks when they reach the cart and trigger combat, I guarantee you'll see some eyes roll.

If you believe that they aren't being as stealthy as they first were when you had them roll, you probably should have had them roll new stealth checks prior to combat, I'd be more than willing to bet a player will feel cheated if you force them to roll new ones when they had already rolled a pretty good one and haven't taken any actions that would reveal themselves.

1 - If no one is being stealthy, disregard. This means no one has made a stealth check and are immediately noticed.
2 - Otherwise, if PC or NPC have made stealth checks, reference those checks to the passive perception of the opposition. This is how it works while stealthing in exploration, why would this change when combat triggers?
3 - Any creature that fails to beat the lowest stealth check from the opposition is surprised.

Personally, I pretty vehemently disagree with your interpretation of this. The wording implies that the stealth checks are from creatures already hiding, as in they're already hidden from the creatures trying to spot them. They shouldn't have to roll again, they had to have already been hidden from the targets to even check for surprise.

Surprise is already a difficult enough mechanic to use, this sort of interpretation of "confirming surprise" like confirming a crit in prior editions makes it seem more luck based than tactical.

EDIT: I think the rules for hiding are actually pretty good at seeing that it uses an existing roll

When you try to hide, make a Dexterity (Stealth) check. Until you are discovered or you stop hiding, that check's total is contested by the Wisdom (Perception) check of any creature that actively searches for signs of your presence.

The contest that it describes in determining surprise is definitely referring to being discovered, not being discovered before initiative is rolled confers mechanical benefit in the form of surprise. If it were expecting you to make a new roll to determining surprise, it would definitely say so.

[deljzc]

And P.S.

You spend THREE pages arguing/debating whether this a good module for newbies but CAN'T EVEN AGREE HOW TO RUN THE FIRST ENCOUNTER!!!

Some have dismissed the ENTIRE module because this fight is too hard yet HOW you run this first encounter decides that fate. Hell, if you play the PC's can't be surprised, it's most certainty NOT too hard a fight.

So how can you even begin to answer the question: Is this a good module? When every DM's runs this module pretty much completely differently. It's the most open ended question in the history of questions.

[Boci]

And P.S.

You spend THREE pages arguing/debating whether this a good module for newbies but CAN'T EVEN AGREE HOW TO RUN THE FIRST ENCOUNTER!!!

We're not a hivemind. The OP asked the forum's opinion on a module, and surprisingly different people had different. Some people liked, some people didn't. And they often cited different reasons. I liked it, up until the castle, then it lost me. My critisism didn't even invovle the first encounter. I only it can turn bad because I've heard that story from other people.

[Willie the Duck]

Honestly, none of you have been helpful at all. You create MORE confusion.
Before you find yourself added to a bunch of ignore lists, it should be pointed out that the existence of disagreement over the rules is helpful information. It means that you are not alone in this confusion. That might not give you a solid answer, but when there isn't one forthcoming (or perhaps there is one solid one, but if it is so inscrutable that multiple members of the game-rules-navel-gazing-society disagree on what it is, exactly what good is it?), that is the best information to receive.


Then why even have rules?
Look, there are bad rules (or poorly presented rules). This is not unique. 3e, to which 5e keeps getting compared, has drown healing (and just as poor illumination rules as 5e). 1E AD&D has initiative rules that are so poorly presented that there are ongoing debates about edge cases going forty years later. Now, the existence of these instances of poor/poorly worded rules don't invalidate the concept of having rules in the first place, but they are a strong argument for instead using something that works for you and your group. Honestly, neither the 'DM decides' portion of this, nor the 5e stealth rules in total, are really that bad, they just are not clear. In many ways it is better than rules that are exceedingly clear cut but bad (IMO, of course, others might disagree).

ATM, based on your apparent need for certitude, I'd suggest taking Segev's advise and have them simply negate the surprise if someone has a sufficient passive perception.

[Petrocorus]

The most simple way, if the party stays all together and walks to the wagon together is this (I think):

1. Is there any roll to see if the characters see/hear the goblins hiding as they approach the wagon? Not sure about this.

If the party actively look for danger (as they realistically should) then they are allowed a Perception check.



2. If not, roll for surprise. Using the Goblin's stealth bonus, they roll a d20 + 6. You only roll one die for the entire group. Get score. Compare that score vs. each players passive perception (normally between 10-14 for 1st level characters). A tie score goes to the player (not surprised). Determine who is surprised (in over 50% of the rolls it will be the entire party).

This is what the module calls for, for the sake of simplicity, and this is where the problem comes from.
-First, a stealth check should not be a group check, per the rules for group checks (PHB p175). "In such a situation, the characters who are skilled at a particular task help cover those who aren't". You cannot cover for someone else when it comes to hiding, IMHO.

-Two, this is not how group checks work. "To make a group ability check. everyone in the group makes the ability check. If at least half the group succeeds, the whole group succeeds. Otherwise, the group fails."
And doesn't seem to work with contested check.

The simplification made in the module is what help the Goblins surprising the PC so easily. And surprise is what makes the encounter so difficult.
If only half the party is surprised, then the encounter is way less deadly. A single Sleep or Thunderwave, or lucky strike from a GWM Vuman can down 2 goblins in one action, while the goblins can hardly down more than one PC per round.



I get very confused with surprise if the party is separated. What if one person goes forward? Can party members that are like 50-60' away still be surprised (I guess they can).
They are more easily surprised because they have less chance to see the goblins. Though by strict application of what the module propose, that would be the same.



If that's the case (and the whole party is surprised 50%+ of the time) is the person that moves forward alone just a goner? 4 attacks against him (I would assume the logical things to play is all the goblins attack the one guy). And THEN we start round 2?

They have +4 to hit and 1d6 +2 damages (average 5,5). So against your average Dwarven Thunder Cleric with chainmail, shield and 16 Con i.e AC 18 and 11 HP, they have 35% to hit times 4 goblins times 5,5 damages per goblin =7,7 average damages which is not enough to floor him.

Even if he's down, he's not dead for at least 3 rounds and the rest of the party still have time to save him while killing several goblins.



Surprise is a roll FROM EACH GOBLIN? When almost everything else you do with monsters is a group roll?

Do you make group rolls for attack and damage?
Do you always make group rolls for NPC perception when they try to look for hidden PC?
Do you make group rolls for the PC when they try to sneak on NPC? Even if some of them have heavy armors?

Yes, the DM, can call for individual rolls for the NPC trying to hide.



And you take the LOWEST ROLL from the four goblins as the threshold value to compare passive perception?

If the DM calls for individual Stealth rolls, this is how it plays for determining surprise.
Though some PC can still be surprised, and the NPC with better rolls still benefit from being hidden.



Why can't one person here say "this is the rules as written" for this simple encounter?" WTF kind of game is this?
Because this is 5E and the rules are written not to be very explicit in order to make room for interpretation.



And there is not once consensus on even the FIRST STEP of the Player's Handbook of "Steps to an Encounter", which is "Determine Surprise".

There are the following options (and according to you all are Rules as Written, since the DM is the rules as written):

Option 1: No surprise is possible. Too many clues and/or cautious parties can't be surprised.

Option 1a: Maybe (and I don't think this is correct), a Stealth (Hiding) vs. Passive Perception is rolled BEFORE combat as the players approach the wagon. This seems to me to be double dipping on this roll, but who knows at this point. And again, hiding by a group of Goblins: 1 die or 4 die? Who knows.

Option 2: Roll ONE DIE for the group of Goblins (like initiative is rolled for an entire group). Add the +6 stealth modifier for Goblins. Compare roll to each players' passive perception individually. Anyone lower than the roll is surprised. Any tie or higher is not surprised.

Option 3: Roll FOUR DICE (one for each Goblin). Lowest roll +6 becomes the defacto score (as that Goblin made the most noise I guess). As in option 2, compare this low roll (+6) to all the players passive perception.

Enter combat and roll initiative.

So how do you do it? 1, 1A, 2 or 3? And if not one of the choices above, tell me why.

Personally, this is how I myself run this. Other DM's mileage may vary.

-First, i make a Stealth check for each goblin, because i consider the situation does not call for a group check and one goblin can always mess up.

-Two, i compare their Stealth check with the Passive Perception of the PC that are not actively looking for danger and the results of the Perception checks of the PC who are actively looking for danger.

-Every PC whose Passive Perception or perception check is lower than all the goblins' Stealth is surprised. Every goblins whose Stealth check is higher than all the Perception (passive or check) of the PC is hidden from all of them and has advantage on his first attack.

This is not the simplest way to do it, but this is the one who is the fairer to the PC IMHO and match the best my understanding of the rules.

The passive Perception of level 1 PC goes from 9 to 17, most of them have between 10 and 14. With +6 to Stealth, the goblins have 45% of chance of surprising any PC. 65% of chance of surprising most of PC. This is indeed too hard for newbie player if we run it the way it is written in the module.

[deljzc]

If the party actively look for danger (as they realistically should) then they are allowed a Perception check.


This is what the module calls for, for the sake of simplicity, and this is where the problem comes from.
-First, a stealth check should not be a group check, per the rules for group checks (PHB p175). "In such a situation, the characters who are skilled at a particular task help cover those who aren't". You cannot cover for someone else when it comes to hiding, IMHO.

-Two, this is not how group checks work. "To make a group ability check. everyone in the group makes the ability check. If at least half the group succeeds, the whole group succeeds. Otherwise, the group fails."
And doesn't seem to work with contested check.

The simplification made in the module is what help the Goblins surprising the PC so easily. And surprise is what makes the encounter so difficult.
If only half the party is surprised, then the encounter is way less deadly. A single Sleep or Thunderwave, or lucky strike from a GWM Vuman can down 2 goblins in one action, while the goblins can hardly down more than one PC per round.


They are more easily surprised because they have less chance to see the goblins. Though by strict application of what the module propose, that would be the same.


They have +4 to hit and 1d6 +2 damages (average 5,5). So against your average Dwarven Thunder Cleric with chainmail, shield and 16 Con i.e AC 18 and 11 HP, they have 35% to hit times 4 goblins times 5,5 damages per goblin =7,7 average damages which is not enough to floor him.

Even if he's down, he's not dead for at least 3 rounds and the rest of the party still have time to save him while killing several goblins.


Do you make group rolls for attack and damage?
Do you always make group rolls for NPC perception when they try to look for hidden PC?
Do you make group rolls for the PC when they try to sneak on NPC? Even if some of them have heavy armors?

Yes, the DM, can call for individual rolls for the NPC trying to hide.


If the DM calls for individual Stealth rolls, this is how it plays for determining surprise.
Though some PC can still be surprised, and the NPC with better rolls still benefit from being hidden.


Because this is 5E and the rules are written not to be very explicit in order to make room for interpretation.



Personally, this is how I myself run this. Other DM's mileage may vary.

-First, i make a Stealth check for each goblin, because i consider the situation does not call for a group check and one goblin can always mess up.

-Two, i compare their Stealth check with the Passive Perception of the PC that are not actively looking for danger and the results of the Perception checks of the PC who are actively looking for danger.

-Every PC whose Passive Perception or perception check is lower than all the goblins' Stealth is surprised. Every goblins whose Stealth check is higher than all the Perception (passive or check) of the PC is hidden from all of them and has advantage on his first attack.

This is not the simplest way to do it, but this is the one who is the fairer to the PC IMHO and match the best my understanding of the rules.

The passive Perception of level 1 PC goes from 9 to 17, most of them have between 10 and 14. With +6 to Stealth, the goblins have 45% of chance of surprising any PC. 65% of chance of surprising most of PC. This is indeed too hard for newbie player if we run it the way it is written in the module.

This is not that bad. Although, this clarifies surprise to me as follows (and I want to be consistent).

You roll one die for each monster (or each player). Okay. I get that. I got different answers on this one point on this same message board a while back. Thus my confusion (and frustration).

So I roll 4d20 = 5, 8, 10, 15

Add the +6 stealth ability of Goblins = 11, 14, 16, 21

Compare vs. the passive perceptions of the characters (let's say): 10, 12, 12, 14

So in THIS case, I have one player who is surprised (the 10). And I have two Goblins that have advantage on their attack rolls (the 16 and the 21). Just for clarity, if the goblins that have advantage plan to rush out of the woods and melee attack, is that still advantage? Or were you specifically thinking ranged attack from a hidden state only getting advantage?

I'm not nitpicking, just trying to follow along with your thinking, because you, at least, took the time to explain to me how you do it step by step. And so far, this is the best interpretation of the rule I've seen.

I want to create some consistency in my rules for the players on how surprise works for both MONSTERS AND PLAYERS trying to "set up" surprise. This mostly means, lying-in-wait, or sneaking up on stationary enemies. There is also the "dropping from above" or being naturally hidden (like monsters sometimes are).

I also agree with you surprise should be a roll of some sort. I don't like the "This encounter has a 16 value for surprise".

Also, since your answer is closest to what I think is fair and reasonable. You don't "double check" hidden, correct?

Let's say there is a monster hanging on the ceiling of a room. You don't roll once to see if the character notice the monster and then again for "surprise". Since the monster's intent is to attack immediately, those conditions/checks are all wrapped up into one roll: Surprise.

[Petrocorus]

This is not that bad. Although, this clarifies surprise to me as follows (and I want to be consistent).

You roll one die for each monster (or each player). Okay. I get that. I got different answers on this one point on this same message board a while back. Thus my confusion (and frustration).

This is because:
- This is still up to the DM to adjudicate for individual check or group check. Some DM prefer group checks for reasons that may be legitimate.
- Many modules pre-set the Stealth check for the monsters, that become a DC for the Perception check / passive perception for the PC.
As others have said, you'll find things like "any PC whose passive perception is below 15 is surprised". And many DM use this like written, but of course the DM is allow to adjudicate this.

You have to remember that passive Perception (passive checks in general) are passive, as the name says. They should not be used when the PC are actively doing something, unless it is a repetitive task, or the DM wants to keep the results secret (though he may make the roll himself or have the players make the rolls in advance), or if the PC could not be actively looking for what is coming.
If the PC actively try to do something, which usually means they take an action for this or are moving at a slow pace to let the roguish guy look for traps, they normally make a check. Unless the DM determines they auto-fail or auto-succeed because of the circumstances.
If the PC are looking for potential dangers, including a potential ambush, they are allowed a check.
At least, this is my personal understanding of the rules.



So I roll 4d20 = 5, 8, 10, 15

Add the +6 stealth ability of Goblins = 11, 14, 16, 21

Compare vs. the passive perceptions of the characters (let's say): 10, 12, 12, 14

So in THIS case, I have one player who is surprised (the 10). And I have two Goblins that have advantage on their attack rolls (the 16 and the 21).

This is how i'd run it.



Just for clarity, if the goblins that have advantage plan to rush out of the woods and melee attack, is that still advantage?

No. Because in this case, he actively stops to hide. He's giving up is advantage before attacking.
I may allow 5 ft of movement before losing his advantage, depending on the situation.



Or were you specifically thinking ranged attack from a hidden state only getting advantage?

Range mostly, but it can be melee if a PC comes in melee range of an hidden NPC without noticing him. To attack another NPC he did notice, for instance.
This is a case when an assassin wait for his target behind a corner to stab him, for example.



I'm not nitpicking, just trying to follow along with your thinking, because you, at least, took the time to explain to me how you do it step by step. And so far, this is the best interpretation of the rule I've seen.

I want to create some consistency in my rules for the players on how surprise works for both MONSTERS AND PLAYERS trying to "set up" surprise. This mostly means, lying-in-wait, or sneaking up on stationary enemies. There is also the "dropping from above" or being naturally hidden (like monsters sometimes are).

I also agree with you surprise should be a roll of some sort. I don't like the "This encounter has a 16 value for surprise".

This is the passive Stealth of the creature, in general.



Also, since your answer is closest to what I think is fair and reasonable. You don't "double check" hidden, correct?

No. Unless there are two actions involved. One check to come close silently from afar, one check for hiding.



Let's say there is a monster hanging on the ceiling of a room. You don't roll once to see if the character notice the monster and then again for "surprise". Since the monster's intent is to attack immediately, those conditions/checks are all wrapped up into one roll: Surprise.
If they tried to see it, and failed their roll(s), or if they didn't looked for it and their passive is too low, then i consider they will be surprised.
Unless the monster try to move before attacking (which doesn't include dropping from the ceiling), like for attacking someone who's not below it, or moving to another room.

If the players never mention during the game they are looking for traps/monsters/ambush/dangers, well, it's on them and they pay the price.

[Hail Tempus]

The goblin encounter was my first fight as a DM in 5e, and for my group of players as well. The goblins rolled 9 on their Stealth check and surprised nobody. The party ranger went first and turned one of the goblins into a kabob with an arrow. The rest of the party cleaned up the encounter without taking any damage.

Looking back on it, they got lucky, and as a first-time DM, I didn't know what I didn't know. That encounter could have gone really bad, and having people lose their characters the first time out might well have killed some of their interest in continuing to play. The designers of the encounter should have erred on the side of making it an easy encounter. for a novice group.

[Pex]

And P.S.

You spend THREE pages arguing/debating whether this a good module for newbies but CAN'T EVEN AGREE HOW TO RUN THE FIRST ENCOUNTER!!!

Some have dismissed the ENTIRE module because this fight is too hard yet HOW you run this first encounter decides that fate. Hell, if you play the PC's can't be surprised, it's most certainty NOT too hard a fight.

So how can you even begin to answer the question: Is this a good module? When every DM's runs this module pretty much completely differently. It's the most open ended question in the history of questions.

And we're not newbies, which proves the point it is a terrible module for newbies. :smallbiggrin:

[Tanarii]

I agree with your analysis, but in this case, the module calls out that you roll once for all the goblins.
Okay. I was unaware of the module specifics. (Edit: and yeah, makes the first in question a LOT more likely to result in surprised PCs.)

Also while I agree thay surprise says the DM determines when surprise might happen or whatever, it also then goes on to state the mechanics of surprise. Its not provably wrong to interpret those as two seperate clauses/rules, one giving a general rule and the other a detailed option. But IMO it makes more sense to interpret the first as an introductory statement and the latter tells you HOW the DM determines surprise.


You have to remember that passive Perception (passive checks in general) are passive, as the name says. They should not be used when the PC are actively doing something,This is not correct. The word passive in passive check (or passive score) has nothing to do with if the PC is passive or active. It means the player is passive, ie not rolling any dice.

It very clearly states what a passive check is in the first sentence of the rule for them. Nowhere does it say anything about PCs being passive or active in the rule for them.

[Petrocorus]

This is not correct. The word passive in passive check (or passive score) has nothing to do with if the PC is passive or active. It means the player is passive, ie not rolling any dice.

It very clearly states what a passive check is in the first sentence of the rule for them. Nowhere does it say anything about PCs being passive or active in the rule for them.

You do have a point.

But then when do you use passive score and when do you use ability check?

Because it is said in the sidebar about hiding p177 "When you try to hide, make a Dexterity (Stealth) check. Until you are discovered or you stop hiding, that check's total is contested by the Wisdom (Perception) check of any creature that actively searches for signs of your presence.".
So it does call for a check when someone tries to find a hiding creature.

Later in the same sidebar, in the "passive perception" paragraph, it is said "When you hide, there's a chance someone will notice you even if they aren't searching. To determine whether such a creature notices you, the DM compares your Dexterity (Stealth) check with that creature's passive Wisdom (Perception) score."
So the passive score is used when the other creatures are not searching.

And i assume that what is true for hidden creatures is also true for secret doors and traps.

If we mostly use the passive perception/investigation like the rule in the "passive checks" paragraph p175 proposes: " Such a check can represent the average result for a task done repeatedly, such as searching for secret doors over and over again, or can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster"; then a PC below level 4 (in point-buy) would never be able to find a secret door/trap/hidden monster with a DC above 17, bar the Observant feat or some other feature giving a bonus.

[animewatcha]

There is a fighting style called Interception in Unearthed Arcana. Gotta be using a melee simple weapon, melee Martial weapon, or a shield. Expend reaction to reduce damage of incoming hit point damage of target within 5 feet of you. I think that WOTC ruled ( elsewhere ) that the 'you can see within 5 feet of you' includes yourself as a potential target. THis can be fluffed as clanging of weapons/shields. Give this to ALL your meleers for free to help start out learning 5e. In future campaigns, this freebie is not available because they are more use to mechanics and to plan more thoroughly/creatively. A fighter could still choose it as their fighting style.


Interception(UA)
When a creature you can see hits a target that is within 5 feet of you with an attack, you can use your reaction to reduce the damage the target takes by 1d10 + your proficiency bonus (to a minimum of 0 damage). You must be wielding a shield or a simple or martial weapon to use this reaction.

[patchyman]

Then why even have rules?

Honestly, none of you have been helpful at all. You create MORE confusion. This edition was supposed to streamline some of this stuff. Keep it simple. Instead, not one experienced player can answer a simple question and hides behind "well, the DM makes the rules".

Hell, I could've figured that out.

The level of variety of rules for this one encounter is too great. This is a level 1 encounter with simple monsters with no special abilities vs. level 1 characters with no special abilities (or very limited).

And there is not once consensus on even the FIRST STEP of the Player's Handbook of "Steps to an Encounter", which is "Determine Surprise".

There are the following options (and according to you all are Rules as Written, since the DM is the rules as written):

Option 1: No surprise is possible. Too many clues and/or cautious parties can't be surprised.

Option 1a: Maybe (and I don't think this is correct), a Stealth (Hiding) vs. Passive Perception is rolled BEFORE combat as the players approach the wagon. This seems to me to be double dipping on this roll, but who knows at this point. And again, hiding by a group of Goblins: 1 die or 4 die? Who knows.

Option 2: Roll ONE DIE for the group of Goblins (like initiative is rolled for an entire group). Add the +6 stealth modifier for Goblins. Compare roll to each players' passive perception individually. Anyone lower than the roll is surprised. Any tie or higher is not surprised.

Option 3: Roll FOUR DICE (one for each Goblin). Lowest roll +6 becomes the defacto score (as that Goblin made the most noise I guess). As in option 2, compare this low roll (+6) to all the players passive perception.

Enter combat and roll initiative.

So how do you do it? 1, 1A, 2 or 3? And if not one of the choices above, tell me why.

Have you run the module? It seems to me the situation is rather more clear than you are suggesting in your post.

This is what the module says:



Review the goblin statblock in Appendix B. Since the goblins are hiding, you'll need to know their Stealth skill modifier: +6.
Check to see who, if anyone, is surprised. The party cannot surprise the goblins, but the goblins might surprise some or all of the characters. Make a Dexterity(Stealth) check for the goblins, rolling once for all of them. Roll a d20, add the goblins' Stealth skill modifier (+6) to the roll, and compare the result to the characters' passive Wisdom(Perception) scores. Any character whose score is lower than the goblins' check result is surprised and loses his or her turn during the first round of combat (see "Surprise" in the rulebook).


As far as I am concerned, the only question that is somewhat ambiguous is whether the party's actions can negate surprise. When I ran the module, I ruled that it could. In support of this, I pointed to the rule in the PHB: "The DM determines who might be surprised." If the party's actions demonstrate that they would not be surprised by the ambush, then the goblins will not surprise them.

The fact that the party's actions can change what is written in the rulebook isn't just a feature of the game. It *IS* the game.

I'm not trying to rag on you. This is something that even experienced players and DMs can have difficulty with, and different DMs will likely rule differently.

But it is incorrect to state that the module does not indicate what the rules are.

[Tanarii]

The only problem being those rules directly contradict the PHB rules.

[patchyman]

And we're not newbies, which proves the point it is a terrible module for newbies. :smallbiggrin:

Being someone who occasionally flirts with being a logician, your statement doesn't prove that it is a terrible module for newbies: it proves that it is a terrible module for people who are NOT newbies. :smallbiggrin:

[patchyman]

Okay. I was unaware of the module specifics. (Edit: and yeah, makes the first in question a LOT more likely to result in surprised PCs.)

Also while I agree thay surprise says the DM determines when surprise might happen or whatever, it also then goes on to state the mechanics of surprise. Its not provably wrong to interpret those as two seperate clauses/rules, one giving a general rule and the other a detailed option. But IMO it makes more sense to interpret the first as an introductory statement and the latter tells you HOW the DM determines surprise.

I disagree that the first is an introductory statement but I agree that the latter clauses tell you how the DM determines surprise. I tend to view it as a logical routine.

1. Is there a chance that someone might be surprised? (Y/N)

1.1 If N, Not Surprise.

1.2 If Y, compare Dex(Stealth) to Wis(Perception)


1.2.1 If Dex(Stealth)>Wis(Perception), then Surprise


1.2.2 If Wis(Perception)>Dex(Stealth), then Not Surprise

1.3 END PROGRAM.

In principle, it is the DM that calls for a Dex(Stealth) check, not the player, so if the DM does not think that the player will be able to sneak, the DM will not call for a check and you get the same result either way.

However, I am always in favour of interpreting rules in such a way that they force the DM to ask themselves "Does this make sense?" before any dice are rolled.

[Tanarii]

I guess I agree that the DM needs to judge if there is any chance of surprise. But IMO the answer to that question is provided when one side is intentionally trying to ambush the other. If yes, then proceed to resolution mechanic.

[Man_Over_Game]

You do have a point.

But then when do you use passive score and when do you use ability check?



A solution that works for me, and is very straightforward, is using a passive score as a "defense" when an active score is an "offense".

For example, someone searching for a hidden creature would make an active Perception roll against a passive Stealth value. Someone hiding their location/action from a creature that knows where they are rolls an active Stealth roll against a passive Perception value.

Unless it's a saving throw, you shouldn't have to tell someone to roll for something they didn't ask for. At least, not when we already have passive scores that are already a rough average of your active score.

[MeeposFire]

Passive scores are to both help the DM make their life easier (reducing roles and potentially simplifying things) and also to keep things hidden so that you do not give away information that would ruin the situation if players were told to roll (for example an enemy is sneaking up on the PCs who are not actively declaring they are searching so then you can use a passive perception to know whether the enemy is detected without the PCs knowing unless they succeed).

[HappyDaze]

As far as I am concerned, the only question that is somewhat ambiguous is whether the party's actions can negate surprise. When I ran the module, I ruled that it could. In support of this, I pointed to the rule in the PHB: "The DM determines who might be surprised." If the party's actions demonstrate that they would not be surprised by the ambush, then the goblins will not surprise them.

The fact that the party's actions can change what is written in the rulebook isn't just a feature of the game. It *IS* the game.

I'm not trying to rag on you. This is something that even experienced players and DMs can have difficulty with, and different DMs will likely rule differently.

But it is incorrect to state that the module does not indicate what the rules are.

I would say that the party members' actions might be sufficient to grant disadvantage or advantage on the goblins' Dexterity (Stealth) check, but I would be unlikely to simply have them make success or failure automatic.

[Pex]

Being someone who occasionally flirts with being a logician, your statement doesn't prove that it is a terrible module for newbies: it proves that it is a terrible module for people who are NOT newbies. :smallbiggrin:

https://i.postimg.cc/vTJm6dF4/extrapolate.png
:smallbiggrin:

[patchyman]

I also wanted to address the second point raised as to why LMoP is a “terrible” module: the supposed deadliness of the first encounter.

Quoted from the module:


In the unlikely event that the goblins defeat the adventurers, they leave them unconscious, loot them and the wagon, then head back to Cragmaw hideout. The characters can continue on to Phandelin, buy new gear at Barthen’s Provisions, return to the ambush site, and find the goblins’ trail.”


The fight is very variable, as most low level fights are, but by the book, it is not deadly.

[Pex]

I also wanted to address the second point raised as to why LMoP is a “terrible” module: the supposed deadliness of the first encounter.

Quoted from the module:


The fight is very variable, at most low level fights are, but by the book, it is not deadly.

The players don't know that. The party can still win, but one PC dies. It can feel like a cop out if it is TPK but not really. What will new players think should a TPK happen again in the future only this time it's a real TPK?

[HappyDaze]

I also wanted to address the second point raised as to why LMoP is a “terrible” module: the supposed deadliness of the first encounter.

Quoted from the module:


The fight is very variable, as most low level fights are, but by the book, it is not deadly.

If the goblins loot the PCs, then how do the PCs have the funds ro re-equip themselves when they get back to town?

[patchyman]

The players don't know that. The party can still win, but one PC dies. It can feel like a cop out if it is TPK but not really. What will new players think should a TPK happen again in the future only this time it's a real TPK?

They can think any number of things, from:
- this is the tutorial fight, makes sense that the DM wouldn’t kill us;
- the goblins don’t want to kill us for some reason (absolutely true, the members of the caravan that was attacked were taken prisoner, not killed);
- the DM doesn’t have the guts to kill the party (not recommended you say this to his face);
- The goblins took my stuff, now they MUST DIE!!!

From experience, most gamers will immediately default to the last point.

Also, if the goblins are knocking people unconscious, this should be true even if the fight isn’t a TPK.

[Tanarii]

You have to make a melee attack with the final blow to knock them unconcious. So either the module is teaching folks the wrong thing in this 'tutorial mode', or the DM has to know not to land a final blow on anyone with a ranged attack.

[patchyman]

If the goblins loot the PCs, then how do the PCs have the funds ro re-equip themselves when they get back to town?

Of the top of my head, I can think of 5 ways characters could get weapons without money.

Overcoming challenges, including unexpected ones, is the whole point of playing an RPG (and being an adventurer).


You have to make a melee attack with the final blow to knock them unconcious. So either the module is teaching folks the wrong thing in this 'tutorial mode', or the DM has to know not to land a final blow on anyone with a ranged attack.

Two of the goblins are engaging in melee and two are using their bows. Even if the DM overlooks this rule and the downing blow is caused by a bow, I think the players will forgive him.

[Segev]

Why don’t the goblins take the PCs prisoner if they took the caravan prisoner? Why leave them alive and free? Goblins aren’t known for squeamishness or compassion.

[HappyDaze]

Of the top of my head, I can think of 5 ways characters could get weapons without money.
Do tell.

Weapons, armor, gear, and (if a wizard) a spellbook? That's a lot of stuff for a bunch of nobodies (1st level starting characters) to somehow replace.

[Segev]

Do tell.

Weapons, armor, gear, and (if a wizard) a spellbook? That's a lot of stuff for a bunch of nobodies (1st level starting characters) to somehow replace.

Hope they have a rogue who can steal all that stuff? :smallamused::smalltongue:

This actually is one reason why I'm surprised the module doesn't have teh goblins capture them. An "escape from prison" segment to the module could get them to where their own loot is stored, and start from a different point in that particular dungeon.

[patchyman]

Do tell.

Weapons, armor, gear, and (if a wizard) a spellbook? That's a lot of stuff for a bunch of nobodies (1st level starting characters) to somehow replace.


1. Get the weapon and armor on credit (may require a Persuasion check);
2. Break into a weapon shop and steal weapons armor and provisions;
3. Go full murderhobo and kill the shopkeeper and just take the gear (they are commoners, so should be doable even unarmed);
4. Remember that the owner of the wagon is the one who hired them to guard it: convince him to spot you arms and armor for the purposes of getting it back;
5. A second merchant in the town has also lost goods to the goblins: get hired to recover their goods, use advance to purchase gear;
6. There is a retired adventurer in town: appeal to his good nature and borrow gear from him;
7. Town is in thrall of a street gang who will inevitably butt heads with the characters. Jump one of them and take their stuff;
8. Get a job in one of the surrounding farms and earn the money.
9. Have the characters use their backgrounds;
10. Anything else the characters think up (using Intimidation to shake down people, run a Ponzi scheme, start a cult);
11. Go after the goblins unarmed, jump a couple, take their stuff;
12. Wring hands and complain module is too hard.

Wizard doesn’t need a new spell book. Per PHB, until he recovers his spellbook he can’t change his spell layout, but his memorized spells remain memorized.

[Tanarii]

Hope they have a rogue who can steal all that stuff? :smallamused::smalltongue:

This actually is one reason why I'm surprised the module doesn't have teh goblins capture them. An "escape from prison" segment to the module could get them to where their own loot is stored, and start from a different point in that particular dungeon.As well as being far more in character with Goblins, who specifically try to capture and enslave others.

[TigerT20]

1. Get the weapon and armor on credit (may require a Persuasion check);
2. Break into a weapon shop and steal weapons armor and provisions;
3. Go full murderhobo and kill the shopkeeper and just take the gear (they are commoners, so should be doable even unarmed);
4. Remember that the owner of the wagon is the one who hired them to guard it: convince him to spot you arms and armor for the purposes of getting it back;
5. A second merchant in the town has also lost goods to the goblins: get hired to recover their goods, use advance to purchase gear;
6. There is a retired adventurer in town: appeal to his good nature and borrow gear from him;
7. Town is in thrall of a street gang who will inevitably butt heads with the characters. Jump one of them and take their stuff;
8. Get a job in one of the surrounding farms and earn the money.
9. Have the characters use their backgrounds;
10. Anything else the characters think up (using Intimidation to shake down people, run a Ponzi scheme, start a cult);
11. Go after the goblins unarmed, jump a couple, take their stuff;
12. Wring hands and complain module is too hard.

Wizard doesn’t need a new spell book. Per PHB, until he recovers his spellbook he can’t change his spell layout, but his memorized spells remain memorized.

Not many of these will provide foci though, so how will casters... cast?

[micahaphone]

As well as being far more in character with Goblins, who specifically try to capture and enslave others.

To be fair, name me an evil group that doesn't engage in slavery (in 5th ed at least). goblinoids, orcs, drow, duregar, gith, aboleths, mindflayers, hell even Grungs are slavers.



---------edit-----------------------


Not many of these will provide foci though, so how will casters... cast?

They can collect the components they need for a DIY component pouch. Hopefully no one took chromatic orb
"As you're walking to town, you trip and fall on your face. When you turn around to look at the rock, it has a surprising luster to it, maybe 50 gp worth of luster"

[stoutstien]

To be fair, name me an evil group that doesn't engage in slavery (in 5th ed at least). goblinoids, orcs, drow, duregar, gith, aboleths, mindflayers, hell even Grungs are slavers.

Slaadi, gnolls, and troglodytes come to mind. Troglodytes kidnap but slavery is not the goal

[Luccan]

AFB, but don't the PCs get paid just for bringing the wagon they were already escorting into town? I don't know if it's enough to equip the whole party, but they'll have some cash of they decide to go to town instead of chasing them into the woods. Not saying that makes this a good opener, but there is a module supported method of acquiring funds that can be turned into gear.

Assuming your casters have Material Component spells, as long as it isn't something they need a valuable item for, I'd let the group gather material components with a Survival check or just clever thinking (I'm sure they could acquire a bit of fleece from some piece of clothing, for instance). If it does require an expensive item, well, they wouldn't be able to cast it yet anyway if they took starting equipment rather than rolling money.

[patchyman]

They can collect the components they need for a DIY component pouch. Hopefully no one took chromatic orb
"As you're walking to town, you trip and fall on your face. When you turn around to look at the rock, it has a surprising luster to it, maybe 50 gp worth of luster"

Very few 1st level casters have Chromatic Orb, precisely because they cannot afford the focus.

[Democratus]

The fact that the party's actions can change what is written in the rulebook isn't just a feature of the game. It *IS* the game.

This is a beautiful description of RPGs.

Thanks for posting it. :smallsmile:

[HappyDaze]

1. Get the weapon and armor on credit (may require a Persuasion check);
2. Break into a weapon shop and steal weapons armor and provisions;
3. Go full murderhobo and kill the shopkeeper and just take the gear (they are commoners, so should be doable even unarmed);
4. Remember that the owner of the wagon is the one who hired them to guard it: convince him to spot you arms and armor for the purposes of getting it back;
5. A second merchant in the town has also lost goods to the goblins: get hired to recover their goods, use advance to purchase gear;
6. There is a retired adventurer in town: appeal to his good nature and borrow gear from him;
7. Town is in thrall of a street gang who will inevitably butt heads with the characters. Jump one of them and take their stuff;
8. Get a job in one of the surrounding farms and earn the money.
9. Have the characters use their backgrounds;
10. Anything else the characters think up (using Intimidation to shake down people, run a Ponzi scheme, start a cult);
11. Go after the goblins unarmed, jump a couple, take their stuff;
12. Wring hands and complain module is too hard.

Wizard doesn’t need a new spell book. Per PHB, until he recovers his spellbook he can’t change his spell layout, but his memorized spells remain memorized.

Any of those based on Persuasion are likely to be at Disadvantage since your naked selves have already clearly proven you can't handle the goblins.

[Luccan]

Any of those based on Persuasion are likely to be at Disadvantage since your naked selves have already clearly proven you can't handle the goblins.

I'd advise against having the goblins literally strip the PCs, particularly in their first game. Clothing hardly qualifies as equipment anyway.

[micahaphone]

I'd advise against having the goblins literally strip the PCs, particularly in their first game. Clothing hardly qualifies as equipment anyway.

Everyone knows that goblins steal socks, though. The one bit of clothing a goblin can never create themselves.....


Really puts the fire of revenge into the players, too.

[Luccan]

Everyone knows that goblins steal socks, though. The one bit of clothing a goblin can never create themselves.....


Really puts the fire of revenge into the players, too.

The goblin Sock Market is cutthroat... Actually the one bit of clothing that I might recommend stealing is the PC's shoes. Then describe how painful and annoying the trip to town is without them. You don't even have to have a mechanical effect, just make it clear the characters feel inconvenienced by the theft. It's funny, makes sense (shoes will wear out pretty fast running through the woods everyday and there's no mention of a cobbler in the cave), and make the any players getting into the RP just a little more likely to want to chase them down.

[KorvinStarmast]

Player’s Handbook, p. 189:

"If neither side tries to be stealthy, they automatically notice each other. Otherwise, the DM compares the Dexterity (Stealth) checks of anyone hiding with the passive Wisdom (Perception) score of each creature on the opposing side. Any character or monster that doesn’t notice a threat is surprised at the start of the counter."

It also mentions in the sidebar that you:

Determine Suprise
Establish Positions
Roll for Initiative

In that order.

I wish more DM's would internalize this process.

From my experience: what's nice about roll20 DMing is that I can hide the group stealth attempt, or the individual stealth attempt, and I have a 3x5 card with the party's various passive perception scores. This helps me adjudicate surprise. I do sometimes give the hiders advantage if they have spent a lot of time and effort on the ambush set up, but they can still have part of the ambush team roll a very low number and blow the surprise.

Kind of like in real life. The bigger the party you have trying to set an ambush, the more chances are that old Mahoney over there picks the wrong time to sneeze ...
(I am thinking back to a field exercise in 1978 ...yikes, I'm old!)

[Boci]

The goblin Sock Market is cutthroat... Actually the one bit of clothing that I might recommend stealing is the PC's shoes. Then describe how painful and annoying the trip to town is without them. You don't even have to have a mechanical effect, just make it clear the characters feel inconvenienced by the theft. It's funny, makes sense (shoes will wear out pretty fast running through the woods everyday and there's no mention of a cobbler in the cave), and make the any players getting into the RP just a little more likely to want to chase them down.

HappyDaze's point still applies. If you have armourless, weaponless, shoeless guys come in and ask for weapons to defeat the goblins, that sound like disadvantage on a persuasion check, even if they still have the rest of their clothes.

[Petrocorus]

For example, someone searching for a hidden creature would make an active Perception roll against a passive Stealth value. Someone hiding their location/action from a creature that knows where they are rolls an active Stealth roll against a passive Perception value.


Just so i understand your point correctly.
If a PC hides from a NPC (is not in sight of the NPC), do you make him roll a Stealth check or use the passive score? Against the NPC's passive score?
If then the NPC tries to find the PC (because he heard him or somehow know he's around here), do you have the NPC? Against the PC's passive score or against the result of the hide check?
Do you consider this as a contested roll?

[Luccan]

HappyDaze's point still applies. If you have armourless, weaponless, shoeless guys come in and ask for weapons to defeat the goblins, that sound like disadvantage on a persuasion check, even if they still have the rest of their clothes.

Could be. And again, I only might recommend it. If you come to the conclusion that it's going to screw the players over further, you probably shouldn't do it. But I recommended against fully stripping a party of first time players for reasons unrelated to mechanical effects

[patchyman]

HappyDaze's point still applies. If you have armourless, weaponless, shoeless guys come in and ask for weapons to defeat the goblins, that sound like disadvantage on a persuasion check, even if they still have the rest of their clothes.

Depends. The merchant that paid you has a vested interest in sending you back out equipped: they lose their wagon of stuff otherwise. I don’t think disadvantage on Persuasion is justified in that case.

Apart from him, no one in the town knows you were defeated by the goblins. This is where that Deception skill comes in handy...

[Segev]

Somebody mentioned using Backgrounds. This is certainly an area where a Soldier background's feature to requisition things would come in handy!

[Boci]

Depends. The merchant that paid you has a vested interest in sending you back out equipped: they lose their wagon of stuff otherwise. I don’t think disadvantage on Persuasion is justified in that case.

The merchant has already lost their wagon. The PCs had their chance and were defeated by the goblins. Now they're asking the merchant to invest more in a group of indeviduals who have done nothing to prove themselves and one very big thing to imply they're in over their heads.

Deception is probably a better way to go, though that is now 2 checks they need to pass, deception and persuasion.

[Segev]

The merchant has already lost their wagon. The PCs had their chance and were defeated by the goblins. Now they're asking the merchant to invest more in a group of indeviduals who have done nothing to prove themselves and one very big thing to imply they're in over their heads.

Deception is probably a better way to go, though that is now 2 checks they need to pass, deception and persuasion.

Oh no! An encounter with more than one roll! :smallamused:

I don't really see this as a problem. Though I do think it's still silly that the goblins would just leave them unconscious on the road.

[Boci]

Oh no! An encounter with more than one roll! :smallamused:

At the risk of starting that conversation again, if you're using a successful deception check to remove disadvantage on a persuasion check, which you still have to pass...

[Snails]

The goblin Sock Market is cutthroat... Actually the one bit of clothing that I might recommend stealing is the PC's shoes. Then describe how painful and annoying the trip to town is without them. You don't even have to have a mechanical effect, just make it clear the characters feel inconvenienced by the theft. It's funny, makes sense (shoes will wear out pretty fast running through the woods everyday and there's no mention of a cobbler in the cave), and make the any players getting into the RP just a little more likely to want to chase them down.

Yes, the righteous anger at meeting the goblins who are now wearing their shoes, that will be precious.

[TigerT20]

Yes, the righteous anger at meeting the goblins who are now wearing their shoes, that will be precious.

I'm just imagining if that party is all half-orcs, orcs, firbolgs, barbarians and goliaths and there's just... four foot tall goblins in like, size 20 shoes.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I'm just imagining if that party is all half-orcs, orcs, firbolgs, barbarians and goliaths and there's just... four foot tall goblins in like, size 20 shoes.

Even better, lean on that comedy more and have them stuff the shoes/boots with dirt and leaves so that they appear taller. You can even impose some movement/stealth/acrobatics penalty on them for the first round of combat before they decide better of it, after all being alive is preferable to being a taller corpse.

[Segev]

At the risk of starting that conversation again, if you're using a successful deception check to remove disadvantage on a persuasion check, which you still have to pass...

Still don't see a problem, especially since even ultimately failing this encounter doesn't eliminate other ways of getting gear.

[Boci]

Still don't see a problem, especially since even ultimately failing this encounter doesn't eliminate other ways of getting gear.

Never said it was a problem, just pointing out the mechanics of the proposed solution. The origional post I was resping to when you first quoted me was trying to find way around disadvantage on the persuasion check.

[Segev]

Never said it was a problem, just pointing out the mechanics of the proposed solution. The origional post I was resping to when you first quoted me was trying to find way around disadvantage on the persuasion check.

Ah. Yeah, I agree that trading an extra skill roll for doing the "primary" one without Disadvantage when it would otherwise apply is fair.

[patchyman]

The merchant has already lost their wagon. The PCs had their chance and were defeated by the goblins. Now they're asking the merchant to invest more in a group of indeviduals who have done nothing to prove themselves and one very big thing to imply they're in over their heads.

The “Sunk Cost Fallacy” is a real thing. The merchant has two bad options here: write off the wagon as a loss, or give the adventurers a chance to redeem themselves.

[HappyDaze]

The “Sunk Cost Fallacy” is a real thing. The merchant has two bad options here: write off the wagon as a loss, or give the adventurers a chance to redeem themselves.

Or do nothing and wait for the adventures to invariably go after their own stuff at no additional cost to the merchant.

[Luccan]

Or do nothing and wait for the adventures to invariably go after their own stuff at no additional cost to the merchant.

Seems kinda meta

[Boci]

Seems kinda meta

Depends how you run games. If PCs are special, largely unique, then yes it is meta. But if adventurers are a thing in the world, then people would know about them. Specifically NPCs would not assume the PCs were their only hope, and that there were other, potentially more powerful and/or competent indeviduals who don't lose to goblins.

[Segev]

Seems kinda meta

Why? The PCs are the kind of people their players play them as. And the players are people we can predict well enough to be pretty sure that this is what they’ll try. Why couldn’t the merchant figure the same thing?

[patchyman]

Depends how you run games. If PCs are special, largely unique, then yes it is meta. But if adventurers are a thing in the world, then people would know about them. Specifically NPCs would not assume the PCs were their only hope, and that there were other, potentially more powerful and/or competent indeviduals who don't lose to goblins.
Other adventurers would have no incentive to return the goods to the merchant. The marginal cost to the existing adventurers is to re-equip them with basic gear.

[JackPhoenix]

The only problem being those rules directly contradict the PHB rules.

Those rules also pre-date PHB rules, so there's that. HotDQ had the same problem with the rules being in few cases changed between the module being written and the final rules being released.

One of them is that being attacked while down only causes one failed death save, another is that stat blocks of some enemies have changed (I think Assasin went from CR3 assumed in the book to CR7, or something like that, making the encounter much harder than intended).

[Man_Over_Game]

Just so i understand your point correctly.
If a PC hides from a NPC (is not in sight of the NPC), do you make him roll a Stealth check or use the passive score? Against the NPC's passive score?
If then the NPC tries to find the PC (because he heard him or somehow know he's around here), do you have the NPC? Against the PC's passive score or against the result of the hide check?
Do you consider this as a contested roll?

Hiding PC would roll to Hide against the NPC's Passive Perception, but only if the NPC already knew where he was. Otherwise, you're just successfully Hidden (since there's nothing to contest it when you made your roll).

The NPC would roll against the PC's Passive Stealth if the NPC was actively looking for something.

The idea is that the offender won't always know if they're successful, and the defender won't always know they were just contested against.

For example, this allows you to run two stealth groups hiding/scouting against one another, which would otherwise be a convoluted scenario with some incidental metagaming involved.

However, I am of the bias that Stealth is too weak whil Perception is too strong. This does effectively ignore the fact that Passive Perception is supposed to be actively checked against your current Stealth value whenever it's relevant (I guess whenever it would be initially possible for the Seeker to potentially spot the Hider), and I think that rule is stupid.

This would effectively create a scenario where a a creature that hides before their approach would be Hidden indefinitely, either until something obvious reveals them (such as them entering an area of bright light surrounded by baddies), or another creature makes a successful Search Action (meaning they're actually searching for something). Generally speaking, I feel a Hidden creature should be successful if it's not challenged.

So it's a houserule, but it certainly is a lot less confusing than the original while making Stealth a lot better.

[HappyDaze]

Other adventurers would have no incentive to return the goods to the merchant.

They would have just as much reason as the PCs, which is to say, however much the DM wants them to have.

Really, it is just better that the victorious goblins kill off the defeated PCs. That way the next group of PCs can potentially gather even more treasure in the looted belongings of the departed!

[NorthernPhoenix]

If you know what you're doing as DM even slightly, the module is very easy to adapt for your players, even if they're brand new. This includes the lethality of the first fight, which is easily adjustable. The problem with the module is that it doesn't teach a new DM how to do this, so i'd definitely say it's a bad module for new DMs.

[Willie the Duck]

If you know what you're doing as DM even slightly, the module is very easy to adapt for your players, even if they're brand new. This includes the lethality of the first fight, which is easily adjustable. The problem with the module is that it doesn't teach a new DM how to do this, so i'd definitely say it's a bad module for new DMs.

I'll buy that, or at least would like to explore it further.

Does anyone have suggestion for a good module for teaching DMs with which we could compare it?

[KorvinStarmast]

I'll buy that, or at least would like to explore it further.

Does anyone have suggestion for a good module for teaching DMs with which we could compare it?There is a very short module called "The Masters Vault" that hand walks DM and players through it. But it is built for roll20.

Sunless Citadel is a quite good Intro adventure with plenty of many kinds of checks.

[Petrocorus]

Sunless Citadel is a quite good Intro adventure with plenty of many kinds of checks.
I've just finish the Sunless Citadel. I've read it mostly because of the comment on this thread.
And if i understand the appeal and how it may be good for newbie players, i don't think it's that good for newbie DM.

First, there are no indication on how to attribute XP to the PC, which is a problem for newbie DM since the first part is expected to be solved by negotiation. A DM who hasn't read the DMG (and even then) will just not know how many XP to gives them.

They can also encounter several monsters that are resistant to non-magical damage and fire, while they may be only level 2. Plus two bugbears that may surprise them, at the same level. They may still be level 1 when they encounter the wyrmling.

So the module has its share of TPK situations and does needs some work and planning on the DM part.

I wonder, no one has talk about the Essential Kit. Does anyone know if its good?

[patchyman]

I'll buy that, or at least would like to explore it further.

Does anyone have suggestion for a good module for teaching DMs with which we could compare it?

It hasn’t been adapted to 5e (that I know of), but “Beyond the Crystal Cave” was super fun to run, and it made the players cycle through the Combat, social and exploration pillars.

[Democratus]

Sunless Citadel is a quite good Intro adventure with plenty of many kinds of checks.

Good call! It's my favorite module from the 3e era and one of the best beginner modules out there.

It has evocative locations, multiple factions, and Meepo!

Players liked it so much they asked that I write a sequel to the module years later.

[Segev]

Good call! It's my favorite module from the 3e era and one of the best beginner modules out there.

It has evocative locations, multiple factions, and Meepo!

Players liked it so much they asked that I write a sequel to the module years later.

There was, in 3e, an adventure path that sprang off of it, following the Gulthias plotline. I learned about it while researching the 5e version of the dungeon for my own group. Sadly, I don't know where to find any of those actual campaign resources, or I'd point you in the right direction. Ashalderon is an interesting figure from what I've been able to piece together.

[Democratus]

There was, in 3e, an adventure path that sprang off of it, following the Gulthias plotline. I learned about it while researching the 5e version of the dungeon for my own group. Sadly, I don't know where to find any of those actual campaign resources, or I'd point you in the right direction. Ashalderon is an interesting figure from what I've been able to piece together.

I had fun making my own sequel. In that particular game world, if you killed a vampire then all the undead created by it were also destroyed. It's a big deal to kill a master vampire - and it explains why their spawn are so hell bent on protecting them.

But the Gulthias tree created an exception to this rule. It kept all the children of Gulthias alive even after his destruction.

Then the PCs came along and destroyed the tree. The magic keeping all the Children of Gulthias was going to fade in a year (when the white fruit would bloom). This gave them a year to plot and execute revenge on the PCs.

Mayhem, as it often does, ensued.