Advice for a new DM/group

[Carontir]

Hello,

We are a small group who have played roleplaying games together for almost 30 years now. We have played several other games, but never D&D. After playing Hackmaster for the last couple of years, we thought we should try something new...

My thought (after reading some reviews) is to start out with Lost Mine of Phandelver and then move on to Storm King’s Thunder.

Now then, my group consists of only 3 people, and I think I read somewhere that the campaigns are designed for a bigger group.
Any advice on how to best handle this in this system? Would it be easier/better to scale the adventures down, or to add some npcs to group? Would it even be possible with only three people?
And if they where to try it with only three, which classes would be recommended?
Any other advice would also be appreciated.

I am looking forward to learn a new system. It is always exciting. :)

Carontir

[Man_Over_Game]

I actually did Lost Mines of Phandelver for a new group after not DMing for a while!

Don't.

Seriously, don't.

I had made the mistake of reading everywhere that LMoP was a great starter module, and then found out firsthand that it's a great starter module after the intro goblin scenario. Up until that point, it's probably one of the worst, with the very first encounter basically leading your players into an ambush they couldn't easily predict, followed by a flood trap that's almost impossible to avoid, and then leading up to a Bugbear fight where a sensible DM would have the players work with the goblins to take him down (and doing that is actually really hard to pull off).

Take it from me, you'll probably have a much easier time making your own stuff as long as you have a good grasp on the mechanics. You can even erase the goblin cave stuff for another scenario of your making - it's not even that relevant to the plot - and then lead the players to Phandalin afterwards (which is where most of the good stuff about the campaign starts).

If you do decide to run LMoP, do consider spacing out some of the missions in town. Keeping your players focused on a distinct goal also helps them communicate together better, and there are a lot of distractions available in Phandalin.



As far as character classes go:

As long as the players aren't redundant with their niches, so that they have to rely on one another for different specialties, there's not really a wrong answer. I will say that smaller parties generally do benefit from having more tanky characters, since it's a lot harder to form a defensive line with only 1 or 2 characters. Once you have about 5 or so characters in a party, you can be a bit more lenient as players have more tools to work together with, through things like summons, walls, ground effects, OAs, and just plain Medium Armor on some casters.


As far as good DM habits to make go:

Allow exceptions based on circumstance with creativity, not just creativity. (That is, if they ask for an exception to the rules, make sure there's an environmental reason, or a resource they spent that they're leveraging, to allow that exception. It'll reward them for learning about the environment, and feel that they can rely on their abilities without worrying about retconning things).

Make skills better than you think they should be. Unless you're charging through an armored fortress or convincing a conman, a 15 on a skill check should succeed at almost anything.

Don't make up too much content beforehand. Your players will help you figure out what needs to happen and where, and having a bunch of detailed content keeps you from listening to your players and adapting around them, as you try to make that content come into play. And if you don't shoehorn them into playing what you made, you'll suffer from DM burnout as you spend too much work for very little payout. You can make NPCs, powers, even generic battlemats, as long as you understand that you're making this stuff to be "modular", so it can fit anywhere it sits comfortably.

Ask players to know their abilities. First few sessions is fine to have someone stop to read how something works, but it's okay to be firm that they know their most frequently-used powers.

Describe it from the narrative perspective of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. When a player asks to do something, try starting your sentences with "As you...". You'll find that the rest comes more smoothly as you adapt your verbiage around this perspective.

When making your own encounters, expect combat to take about 3 rounds total. Taking into account a 33% miss chance for both sides, that means that your enemy team should have about enough damage to kill the player party in 2-3 rounds, while the players deal enough damage to kill the monsters in about 2 rounds (you probably want things to be on the easier side for the players).

Players deal about 10 damage each round at level 1, gaining about 3 damage each level after.

Players start with about 11 HP and gain 7 HP each level after.

Do note that this means that players are exceptionally squishy at levels 1 and 2, and 5e isn't very balanced at that level. Each of your "Minion"-type monsters should only be dealing 1d4 damage, and even your boss monsters shouldn't be doing more than an average of 5 damage per hit at level 1. After level 3, you can stop worrying so much about balance, as it'll come more down to circumstance and adaptability for your players' chances of survival.

It's generally better to have more enemies than stronger enemies. Stronger enemies are more predictable, generally only get a limited number of actions per turn, don't move around much, deal burst damage (which means less opportunity for the player to react to), and are susceptible to single-target debuffs. They're also just boring, since your players aren't gaining any ground after several turns of action. Having lots of disposable enemies means that everyone feels like they're contributing in every round.

If it's expensive, reward it. For instance, the Ready Action is pretty weak except in very niche circumstances, yet it requires the player to adapt to the environment and take a risk that a specific thing is going to happen. By incentivizing the player's attempt to adapt to your world and take risks, they'll feel encouraged to do more of that going forward, which adds drama and intensity to the scene for the whole table. So once you get a handle on what is - or isn't - very good, try to reward the things your players are trying to do that normally wouldn't be very rewarding. At the very least, they believed that it should be worthwhile, and very rarely is that something worth ignoring.

It might not be efficient for your monsters to provoke Opportunity Attacks, but it does feel very rewarding to your players (and there's a lot of player powers in the game that focus around Opportunity Attacks). So do try to make sure the Barbarian is ignored to attack the Wizard every once-in-a-while. If a fight ends up being too easy, you can always just make the next one a little harder.

Don't be the one to determine what your players' motivations are for working together. Have them figure out why they're working together before the game starts. It'll help everyone a lot, especially with you so that you aren't dividing your attention into making sure the party stays together. A DM already has a lot to focus on, group cohesion shouldn't be one of them.


It's...a lot, but I can promise you these are all things I ended up learning the long way 'round, I'm just hoping it helps you from having to do so, too. Good luck, noobie!

[Vegan Squirrel]

The game is typically designed for a party of 4 characters, so you can always scale down the encounters a little by reducing the number of monsters proportionally when the players are outnumbered. I can't speak to these modules specifically (I haven't run modules), but in general a 3 person party seems to work well. At low levels, I'd probably supplement them with an NPC, because 1st level characters, especially, can be quite fragile. Once they've gained a few levels, you'll probably have a decent handle on things and can adjust as seems right.

As for character types, you're generally fine letting them play what they want to play. Healing's really nice to have available (not necessarily a dedicated healer, but at least the ability to heal an unconscious ally once in a while), and a tanky character to engage the brutes can help, but all sorts of parties can find success. If you're adding an NPC, I'd have them fill any roles which seem missing. If the party's pretty well balanced as-is, then a cleric or paladin is usually a nice addition (a little healing, a little tanking).

[kaoskonfety]

As a quick clarifying: "My group is 3 people" - does this include you? The gap from 4-6 Characters and 2 Characters is *much* larger than the gap between 4-6 characters and 3: action economy and what not. My understanding is most modules are baked with the 4-6 in mind. RE-balancing these for 3 isn't bad, for 2 might stretch some credibility.

I'm not directly familiar with the modules you've quoted, so I do not know if they've got 'built in' rules for adjusting the encounters - something I always like cause the few time I'm running a module is when I lack the time to do the work myself and I kinda desperately need this kinda cheat sheet. See if you can find such a module if you have a smaller group.

The "easy" answer for encounter balancing with missing player is to shave down the number of critters an appropriate amount, dropping 1/4, or 1/3 of the goblins for instance, or pulling the total HP of stand-alone big bads similarly, and a mix of the 2 as needed.

I'm often running games with 2 or 3 player-characters and the combat always is swings bigger: one PC dropped early in a fight from a couple critical turns "fair fight" into "Dear God Run". And a well built "nuker" PC can one shot stuff that looks fair if they land one good hit.

Try and make the bads have motivation to capture and use the PC's rather than kill - and heck do the same the other way and give them a few combat objectives that are not "reduce everything to zero HP and loot the field". One of my favourite low level "you figure it out" quests is giant ants: unharmed giant ants (or whatever dog to man sized critter makes you laugh). Bring me 5. Yes the colony has several dozen and a near telepathic chemical communications system, not my problem, that's what quest giver X is paying you for. Chop chop. I need them tomorrow night. No not before, at sunset tomorrow night.

[J-H]

You could start at level 2 instead of level 1. There's not much added complexity, and it helps the party have a few more resources to survive with.

There are plenty of alternatives to published adventures out there. Adventure Lookup shows 137 with a starting level of 1 or 2 for 5e. Some are free, some are not.
https://www.adventurelookup.com/adve...vel=%E2%89%A42

[schm0]

Any advice on how to best handle this in this system? Would it be easier/better to scale the adventures down, or to add some npcs to group? Would it even be possible with only three people?

Yes, yes, and yes!

If you are concerned about encounter balance, use this handy tool to scale up or scale down all the encounters in LMOP.

For future balancing concerns, I would use Kobold Fight Club for a rough estimate for your encounters. I use this tool pretty much every week.

If you are up for some reading, and don't have the PHB or DMG, I'd download the D&D 5e SRD which contains more than enough to expand on what LMOP provides. In regards to encounters, pay close attention to Challenge Rating. Tips and guidelines for balancing encounters can be found in both the DMG and a supplemental book entitled Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Neither is required for you to run an adventure, but they do contain additional information specifically tailored to this question. Of course, google is always helpful in this regard as well.

And if they where to try it with only three, which classes would be recommended?

You can't go wrong with the classic trilogy of wizard, cleric and fighter. If you are purchasing Lost Mines, they should come with pre-generated characters. Just use those. The SRD contains more subclasses that you can pick and choose from as well.

Any other advice would also be appreciated.

I would disagree with the other poster that said Lost Mines of Phandelver should be avoided. It is generally agreed amongst many in the community as a very well designed module, especially for someone new to the system. That being said, it does not hold back. Level 1 characters are notoriously fragile, and this is apparent in the earliest parts of the adventure. If your players are cautious, curious and experienced TTRPG players, you should be fine. If you are still worried, just use the links I provided above and scale the encounters to whatever you think is appropriate.

Adjust and learn. Prepare your sessions and read the text, it usually spells out precisely how to do things. I would read the first few paragraphs of each chapter to understand where the plot takes the party and what is expected to happen at each chapter before you run the adventure. While it is explicitly stated, it is very easy to gloss over what the overarching plot is and who the villains and various players are.

Most of all, have fun!

Good luck!

[Composer99]

LMoP is a great first module. If you run it with the goblins having a decent sense of self-preservation (so running over fighting to the death), you shouldn't have too much concern over fragile PCs.

I'ma edit in a remark about SKT when I'm back on my laptop (on a phone at the moment).

Spoiler: Storm King's Thunder spoiler

Show

So, the PCs end up spending a bunch of the early part of the adventure free roaming around the Sword Coast - with a frost giant adventurer in tow. If you're worried about the frost giant overshadowing the PCs, consider finding ways to have him cross paths with them from time to time without constantly being with them, and then he suggests joining together towards the midpoint of the adventure.

[Man_Over_Game]

I would disagree with the other poster that said Lost Mines of Phandelver should be avoided. It is generally agreed amongst many in the community as a very well designed module, especially for someone new to the system.

For context, I made a thread discussing my...criticisms of the module a long while back, and it seems that some other folks who experienced it as beginners felt the same way.

In case folks are interested, the thread is Lost Mines of Phandelver is a terrible module for newbies.

Sunless Citadel is a much better module for noobies, IMO. It's straightforward, has several points where you can talk your way out of problems, multiple different avenues for solutions, varied enemy types... The biggest issue I've ran into with it is that some of the possible enemies are really tough (but they're obvious and negotiable, it's like picking a fight with Gandalf), and there aren't a lot of opportunities for social characters (it's a dungeon).

The fact that SC is a dungeon actually plays out in the DM's favor, since it's enough to get the players to level 3, while being self-contained enough to fit in any campaign. It's a modular tutorial level, for both players and DMs.

[Grod_The_Giant]

By three people you mean three players, right? A three-player party should be fine in most of the published adventures. Maybe bump them up a level from what the book recommends for a given area, but three RPG veterans shouldn't have much trouble. At worst, encounters there were supposed to be overpowering and scary get a little more so, but 5e has a lot of give to it. Parties can punch well above their weight class if they have short encounter days, and that tends to be the case in modules.

Speaking of, I can't recommend either LMoP or SKT. The former is a decent introductory module... for people who are completely new to RPGs. It's about the most vanilla D&D imaginable, with little in the way of interesting characters, locations, or scenarios. You guys will probably be bored to tears. The latter is just... it's not a good module.

Spoiler: Actually being used to hide spoilers

Show

• The module opens with a boring mini-arc designed to rush you to fifth level and nothing else.
• Once your characters are high enough level that they can interact with giants without dying, a wizard literally picks them up and flies them to the plot.
• After the initial giant attack, the party is supposed to wander around the wilds for a level or two before finding the ally NPC, occasionally hearing word of giant attacks. The sixty-page chapter includes plenty of little adventure sites and points of interest, and would be a great resource for a hex-crawl. For a campaign that theoretically has a pressing plot with giants attacking people, it's not as helpful.
• There are five chapters and another sixty pages dedicated to presenting strongholds for hill, stone, frost, fire, and cloud giants. The players will have a reason to visit... one of them. It wouldn't be hard to fix the narrative so they have to visit more, or even all...but all five strongholds are presented for parties of level eight characters, and the adventure continues afterwards with the expectation that you're level nine. I've got no idea how well they're put together, considering the difference in power between the different giant types. A quick skim through my copy of the book makes me think that the more powerful the giant, the more you're just dealing with their minions--YMMV.
• There's a sixth giant stronghold, this time for storm giants.
• Then you go deal with kraken cultists who, having played essentially no role in the module to date, turn out to have kidnapped the king of the storm giants.
• The final encounter is with an ancient blue dragon who's apparently behind it all, despite having appeared I think once up until this point. Ancient blue dragons, in 5e, are CR 23 foes. The players, at this point, are expected to be level 10. But that's fine, because five storm giants (CR 13) are joining you, and they're plenty capable of thrashing the dragon by themselves.

Could you make a decent campaign out of the book? Probably-- open with the party free-adventuring in the north until they find the temple where the plot really kicks off, then change the storyline so that the players have to tackle each of the five giant dens in turn. Liberally scatter hints and mentions of the dragon behind everything, and even have her make an appearance or two in person. Rewrite the kraken chapter as a quest for a dragon-slaying artifact of some sort, then run the final confrontation without any attendant giants. If you can get the party up to 14th or 15th level, they should be able to handle an ancient blue dragon with enough preparation.

Alternately, you could grab a copy of Tales from the Yawning Portal and run Against the Giants--that'll hit similar themes, with the added bonuses of being one of the classic D&D adventures and not requiring you to rewrite three-quarters of the module.

(Source: I tried to get a SKT campaign going and gave up in disgust when I realized how bad the book was)

Instead, I'd suggest Curse of Strahd, Out of the Abyss, or Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I've heard good things about Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, but it's short and you'll probably wind up wishing you were playing some other fantasy RPG with better skill and social rules. Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus and Temple of Annihilation look cool, but I've never gotten a chance to check them out. I've played or run the first three, though!

• Curse of Strahd is a Ravenloft adventure, and is excellent. Castle Ravenloft is a D&D classic, Strahd is a great villain, and the various adventure sites around Barovia are generally very well done. Having a three-person party would actually work very well-- having one person play Ireena (the lady the vampire is obsessed with) and one person play Ismark (her adoptive brother), and the third play Esmerelda (Van Helsing Richten's apprentice, currently abandoned and trying to find him). That'll tie your party really tightly to the plot and setting and give you hugely increased emotional stakes.
• Out of the Abyss is an Underdark adventure. The quality is a little choppier than CoS, but it's usually pretty high and there are some truly awesome set pieces in there. (I will always remember Demogorgon bursting out of the lake, defending the Maze Engine, and all the many mushroom friends.) It's essentially a 1-20 campaign, too.
• Ghosts of Saltmarsh is something I've only played, not run, but there's plenty of good, thematic stuff in there. It's technically an adventure anthology, not a module, so you'll have to do a little extra work to link the chapters together into a coherent campaign, but doing so wouldn't be hard. My friend is DMing it for the first time in many years and we haven't run into any (writing-related) difficulties so far.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

By three people you mean three players, right? A three-player party should be fine in most of the published adventures. Maybe bump them up a level from what the book recommends for a given area, but three RPG veterans shouldn't have much trouble. At worst, encounters there were supposed to be overpowering and scary get a little more so, but 5e has a lot of give to it. Parties can punch well above their weight class if they have short encounter days, and that tends to be the case in modules.

Speaking of, I can't recommend either LMoP or SKT. The former is a decent introductory module... for people who are completely new to RPGs. It's about the most vanilla D&D imaginable, with little in the way of interesting characters, locations, or scenarios. You guys will probably be bored to tears. The latter is just... it's not a good module.

Spoiler: Actually being used to hide spoilers

Show

• The module opens with a boring mini-arc designed to rush you to fifth level and nothing else.
• Once your characters are high enough level that they can interact with giants without dying, a wizard literally picks them up and flies them to the plot.
• After the initial giant attack, the party is supposed to wander around the wilds for a level or two before finding the ally NPC, occasionally hearing word of giant attacks. The sixty-page chapter includes plenty of little adventure sites and points of interest, and would be a great resource for a hex-crawl. For a campaign that theoretically has a pressing plot with giants attacking people, it's not as helpful.
• There are five chapters and another sixty pages dedicated to presenting strongholds for hill, stone, frost, fire, and cloud giants. The players will have a reason to visit... one of them. It wouldn't be hard to fix the narrative so they have to visit more, or even all...but all five strongholds are presented for parties of level eight characters, and the adventure continues afterwards with the expectation that you're level nine. I've got no idea how well they're put together, considering the difference in power between the different giant types. A quick skim through my copy of the book makes me think that the more powerful the giant, the more you're just dealing with their minions--YMMV.
• There's a sixth giant stronghold, this time for storm giants.
• Then you go deal with kraken cultists who, having played essentially no role in the module to date, turn out to have kidnapped the king of the storm giants.
• The final encounter is with an ancient blue dragon who's apparently behind it all, despite having appeared I think once up until this point. Ancient blue dragons, in 5e, are CR 23 foes. The players, at this point, are expected to be level 10. But that's fine, because five storm giants (CR 13) are joining you, and they're plenty capable of thrashing the dragon by themselves.

Could you make a decent campaign out of the book? Probably-- open with the party free-adventuring in the north until they find the temple where the plot really kicks off, then change the storyline so that the players have to tackle each of the five giant dens in turn. Liberally scatter hints and mentions of the dragon behind everything, and even have her make an appearance or two in person. Rewrite the kraken chapter as a quest for a dragon-slaying artifact of some sort, then run the final confrontation without any attendant giants. If you can get the party up to 14th or 15th level, they should be able to handle an ancient blue dragon with enough preparation.

Alternately, you could grab a copy of Tales from the Yawning Portal and run Against the Giants--that'll hit similar themes, with the added bonuses of being one of the classic D&D adventures and not requiring you to rewrite three-quarters of the module.

(Source: I tried to get a SKT campaign going and gave up in disgust when I realized how bad the book was)

Instead, I'd suggest Curse of Strahd, Out of the Abyss, or Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I've heard good things about Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, but it's short and you'll probably wind up wishing you were playing some other fantasy RPG with better skill and social rules. Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus and Temple of Annihilation look cool, but I've never gotten a chance to check them out. I've played or run the first three, though!

• Curse of Strahd is a Ravenloft adventure, and is excellent. Castle Ravenloft is a D&D classic, Strahd is a great villain, and the various adventure sites around Barovia are generally very well done. Having a three-person party would actually work very well-- having one person play Ireena (the lady the vampire is obsessed with) and one person play Ismark (her adoptive brother), and the third play Esmerelda (Van Helsing Richten's apprentice, currently abandoned and trying to find him). That'll tie your party really tightly to the plot and setting and give you hugely increased emotional stakes.
• Out of the Abyss is an Underdark adventure. The quality is a little choppier than CoS, but it's usually pretty high and there are some truly awesome set pieces in there. (I will always remember Demogorgon bursting out of the lake, defending the Maze Engine, and all the many mushroom friends.) It's essentially a 1-20 campaign, too.
• Ghosts of Saltmarsh is something I've only played, not run, but there's plenty of good, thematic stuff in there. It's technically an adventure anthology, not a module, so you'll have to do a little extra work to link the chapters together into a coherent campaign, but doing so wouldn't be hard. My friend is DMing it for the first time in many years and we haven't run into any (writing-related) difficulties so far.

I haven't played the mods the OP was interested in, but strangely (or maybe not strangely) enough these ones are 3 of my favorites. Ghosts of Saltmarsh isn't all linked together, and I'd suggest re-fluffing some of the pirate based adventures so that they flow a bit better (which is very doable). It's smaller scale and might fit well with a group of gamers familiar with previous editions.
Out of the Abyss is an epic adventure, and one of the main criticisms (too many NPCs) might work in your favor for a smaller group. I'd agree with the poster who said start at 2nd for this one.
I've played Strahd, and had a great time. There is an NPC or 2 that could help out as well, and 2nd is probably also a good place to start with a smaller group.
One other general thought is that some of the older mods are balanced for older characters. Some of the new subclasses are definitely stronger, so if your players pick one of those that will help somewhat.

[ChaosStar]

Reading an MLP fanfic where the Rainbooms(7 players) are newbies to D&D and doing Lost Mines of Phandelver. Going pretty well, they just beat the Bugbear and got to level 2. Seems fine for new players to me. Group consists of a Monk, Sorcerer, Ranger, Druid, Paladin, Rogue, and Bard. Author is actually playing it out with dice rolls and everything.https://www.fimfiction.net/story/358...-highs-dd-club Link for anyone who wants to read.

[KorvinStarmast]

Sunless Citadel is a much better module for noobies, IMO.

Not only is it good for newbies, it's good for oldbies. I ran some veteran D&D players through it, and they thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Carontir]

Thx for a lot of great answers! :)

And yes, I do have three players in addition to myself.

I have read a lot of good things about Curse of Strahd, and also that some people didn’t like it. But that seemed more like they didnÂ’t like the style than that they thought it was a bad adventure.

I will probably run it some time, but not as our first D&D adventure.

I will, most likely, run Lost Mine of Phandelver. At least parts of it. (I have already ordered it.) We can use it to learn the rules, and then we can see. If we enjoy it, we can continue from there, if we donÂ’t we can just start over with something else. :)

Thx again! :)

Carontir

[Unoriginal]

Curse of Strahd is a meatgrinder at the start, and afterward it's a "the BBEG should kill the PCs right now but he's unwisely playing with them until it backfires on him" scenario.

Many people like that kind of things, but many don't, so the players knowing what's on the menus and choosing it is important.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Curse of Strahd is a meatgrinder at the start, and afterward it's a "the BBEG should kill the PCs right now but he's unwisely playing with them until it backfires on him" scenario.

Not just the start. The Death House and Old Bonegrinder are bad, but the campaign's only combat death was at the hands of Baba Lysaga in Berez, the werewolf attack at Van Richten's Tower was nearly a TPK, and just... everything about the Amber Temple.

Spoiler: Mini-rant

Show

I think that might have been the only time I've downgraded an encounter when running a module. 9th level characters against one (hidden) arcanaloth and three (hidden in other rooms and peering through arrow slits) flameskulls? Someone must have forgotten that those things can throw fireballs, because I'm pretty sure a by-the-book experience would go roughly like so:

• "Ah, there's the central hall... wouldn't be surprised if that giant statue comes to life, but looks clear enough. Probably a hub area. Eyes open as we go down the stairs!"
• <three fireballs and a chain lightning hit the party in the surprise round>
• "I'm sorry, how many dice did you just pick up?"

At least when I ran it, there was an interesting sort of tipping point two-thirds of the way through the campaign where Strahd realizes that the PCs are actually a threat to him, and the narrative switches from "at the mercy of the archvillain" to "the beast is most dangerous when it's cornered." It's really satisfying to watch the party slowly realize that they actually have a chance of saving Barovia.