You'll also want to stick to the static damage output of goblins at level 1 to ensure you avoid any major damage spikes that drop characters in a single hit. It's good practice and will help you with many of the other battles in this adventure. It will get both you and your players used to battles that don't use a grid or miniatures. This first battle is a great chance to try your hand at Theater of the Mind combat instead of using maps and minis. It would suck for new D&D players to start their D&D experience with a total-party kill (TPK) so be careful. The first thing to remember in this battle is that level 1 characters are extremely fragile. This is a built-in group connection and ties them to a specific NPC in the town of Phandalin when they arrive. You might also have all of the characters tied to a single faction such as the Harpers, Lord's Alliance, Zhentarim, Order of the Gauntlet, or Emerald Enclave. You can use Fiasco-style relationships to get all the characters tied together if you have the time.
Questions like this help tie charaters together early and move some of the storytelling over to the players.
Instead of piling quests on them that may or may not be relevant, only expose the hooks that tie to the backgrounds of the characters. The town of Phandalin is packed with quests, many of which are tied to these character backgrounds. These backgrounds can help you choose which hooks to highlight in the rest of the adventure. When your players have chosen backgrounds, read them over and write them down, perhaps on a campaign worksheet. You can email these pre-generated characters to your players before your game so they can use them as the seeds when building their own custom characters. Even if your players bring custom-built characters from the Player's Handbook, you may want to recommend that they choose backgrounds from the Starter Set pre-generated characters to better tie them to the story. The backgrounds included with the pre-generated characters in Phandelver are written to hook characters into this adventure.
#DUNGEON AND DRAGONS STARTER SET AND MASTER GUID SERIES#
You can also watch my four-episode video series on Running Phandelver. If this is your first time running Dungeons & Dragons, you may want Starting Strong at your First D&D Game. In this article we'll discuss tips and tricks for getting the most out of running this wonderful D&D adventure. The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Starter Set includes an adventure that exemplifies the pace and feeling of the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons.Īs the introductory adventure to the fifth edition of D&D, Lost Mine of Phandelver is likely the most-played adventure of D&D 5e. New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set: Running Phandelver