I just want to start playing with my friends!” Then let us boil down our advice and deliver the best tips for running the first chapter of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk: Mutates are introduced, a class of enemies that are aberrations of previously known monsters that a player might have encountered in the past. Humanoid creatures mutated will obtain abilities to deal with psychic nightmare blasts and will have webbed wings sprouting from their bodies. Drag & Drop over 85 magic items onto a character sheet to instantly arm a character, including brand new Mind Crystals that allow casters to manipulate spells (double your range or cast a spell as a bonus action!) What makes for powerful moments in an adventure? How does a new player experience those events? Here are a few tips we’ve gathered that will help level up your adventure in Phandalin. Forma Connection WithGundren Artist: Scott Murphy

The significant changes that someone familiar with the original release will notice are more artwork and battle maps, and some NPC have been altered to create a world filled with more than just humans. You can access all of the monsters and magic items from Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk in and out of the game. Phandelver and Below doesn't feel like it's for new players anymore, and the majority of this book isn't going to be for those who have already experienced Lost Mines of Phandelver before. Who this book will be for are those who have somehow missed out on playing one of the most played and widely available D&D 5th edition adventures but are already knowledgeable Dungeons & Dragons players. What Is There For The Players? Its first four chapters are a remaster of Lost Mines of Phandelver, a beginner-friendly adventure that was part of the original 2014 D&D starter set. After a simple delivery gone wrong, players must explore the town of Phandalin – and the titular Mines of Phandelver – to thwart plots that threaten the idyllic and welcoming town. where a malevolent cult threatens to overtake the region. Together with your party, solve mysteries and stamp out growing corruption as you uncover more about the peculiar happenings plaguing the town.

Who is Phandelver and Below for?

One of the hallmarks of memorable adventure is when seeds of information planted earlier on blossom into realizations of what is to come, or provide hints on how to overcome a particular obstacle. Laying this groundwork as a DM is extremely rewarding when it ultimately pays off. Fortunately, these seeds are plenty and scattered throughout this first chapter, offering bountiful opportunity to capture your players’ engagement. Just as a yearning to help dear Gundren makes for powerful motivation at the adventure’s start, painting Phandalin as a town worth fighting for will cement your players’ desire to defend it—especially important in later chapters, when aberrant forces begin to warp the settlement. While the mining town and its inhabitants are greatly expounded on in the second chapter of the adventure, consider breathing life into the road to Phandalin, raising expectations for a vibrant, safe haven. Despite these teething problems, Phandelver and Below does a lot right. It balances classic D&D tropes with creative surprises excellently – yes, there are Mind Flayers, but not as we know them. Almost every recognizable monster you meet has a secret twist, and the new creatures introduced are unique in the most horrible ways possible. Here's where it gets weird. The Lost Mines of Phandelver has been out for so long and is so widely available, being actively promoted for new players, it's going to be hard to find people who have been playing D&D who don't already know what half of this book is about.

It goes without saying that Phandelver and Below has appeal for fans of the original starter set. This is a chance to relive what might have been your first-ever D&D adventure, after all. Many of the tweaks are cosmetic or focus on moving Phandelver on from its starter set status, removing the more obvious DM advice –but the heart of the campaign remains. No new races or subclasses to do with these threats is a strange omission, but it may also be as OneD&D is ramping up for 2024 there's less of a desire to add new options for character creation that are going to immediately be contradicted/invalidated. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk Review | Final Thoughts From the press event alone, it’s not clear how extensive the changes to NPCs are. Only one example was shown – new art reveals that Phandalin’s DnD Druid, Reidoth, is now a woman.

Enemies Aplenty

Triboar Trail? Try “Tutorial!” The earliest encounters offer a taste of everything, letting you and your players become comfortable with both the rules of D&D and the three pillars of adventure. At least, that’s true in the first half. Phandelver and Below gives inconsistent support for DMs throughout, sometimes offering copious amounts of hand-holding, and other times expecting a veteran level of DMing knowledge. NPCs with adorable, horrifying, or hor-dorable traits make a mundane place feel memorable. Story-driven mechanics give combat encounters a new spin. And the second half of the story is tied together neatly with mechanics that prove the severity of the situation to your players – and adjust the difficulty of the final fight depending on their actions earlier on. Plant tidbits of information early and often. If the players are invested in figuring out the connections they form, the rewards are all the sweeter!