This begins our walkthru of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk. I’ll be making changes as we go along, as I have some real issues with the second half of this adventure (not the least of which is that it is just tacked on to the first five levels, like it isn’t even part of the same thing other than location, Seriously. Ugh). Now, that said, I did buy this on Foundry VTT, and I love that it is all pre-built for me, so we’ll see what changes I actually make. To learn about the characters, see the main summary post for this adventure. (I chose this featured image because it is nice art, which has literally nothing to do with the adventure……so, um….).
Session 1
The players meet with Gundrin and Sildar in Neverwinter and agreed to help them. I can’t recall why they did this, other than I guess the players know that’s how this adventure starts……
We are running this on Foundry VTT, and are experimenting with 3d Canvas, a module that turns the scene into 3d! I’m only using it as 2.5d right now, where the tokens are 3d and walls and doors exist, but I’m not placing any objects (tiles). The map is basically flat, but you can look at it like it is 3d. You’ll notice I made the horses dead. Seriously, bandits aren’t going to leave valuable live horses around. Just a change that makes zero sense. Also, that black square in the middle? Well, the players can’t see that! It’s a link to the journal for the scene.
So, sure, if you use a VTT and put out a map, your players know something is coming. OTOH, they’ve been playing long enough to play along. So, they went to the horses, two of them did (the picture above is not what really happened, just a screen shot I just took when recreating the scene for this post). The goblins fired arrows at random characters and hit and missed a lot. I probably didn’t play by the rules here, as I had them still hidden after shooting (and hitting even, oops). Also, why wouldn’t the goblins shoot and go up the ridge and be out of site? So, sure, whatever.
The characters fought and were never in real danger due to a lot of missing by the goblins and a lot of big damage rolls taking out goblins quickly. They then investigated the horses and confirmed that these were the horses of their employers. They hid the wagon in the woods and proceeded down the path.
Here is where I made another change. There are traps on the trail, but there are a lot of goblin footprints and they are dragging prisoners. They’d have to go AROUND THE TRAPS to do so, so I decided it should be fairly easy to spot the traps, which the characters did.
The characters arrived at the cave entrance w/o incident, and we broke for the night. Not my best notes, but I didn’t take any and it’s been 12 days…..and I have covid so my brain is mush. I’ll do better….
Changes I Made and Why
As pointed out, I changed the horses being alive. This change was made, I presume, because some people don’t like innocent dead animals. But, ok, if they aren’t dead, 100% bandits will take them, as they are very valuable. I put them in dead, as my players wouldn’t find it offensive (I get others might…..but then don’t have them there).
I also changed the traps and if they could be seen. I’m not sure how a lot of goblins drag bodies around (and generally walk around) traps on a dirt trail w/o leaving obvious signs there is a trap. I wish I had thought of another way to handle this, as traps can be interesting if you offer your players ways to disarm/defeat them (and not just have them be resource taxation). I think this is an example of sloppy design. If others have thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them.
Here is a link to the main Phandelver Walkthru page.