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r/DMAcademy•
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New DM ooking for help on how to fairly mediate a few curveballs my group threw at me in LMoP

This may be kind of long, but I'm a new DM and there were three things that cropped up in the redbrand hideout in our new campaign for Phandelver that I'm not sure how to mediate. I'm a fairly lenient DM so I let some stuff happen on the fly but I want to make sure it doesn't get out of control power wise.

First, my party entered through the secret tunnel to the hideout and encountered the Nothic. They happened to be carrying a goblin corpse already (a helpful goblin they liked who died in cragmaw hideout, they were going to try to save the corpse and resurrect him later). The nothic intimidated them quite a bit but smelled the fresh meat and offered to help in exchange for it. I didn't make them roll on getting on the nothics side since the manual said nothics are neutral evil and really just want food and magical items so it didn't care to betray them. Later on, with the nothic on their side, they started bringing enemies to it and using Weird Insight to get secrets from any enemy they want. This seems like it could get overpowered later so I'm not sure how to approach it in the future if they just have a friendly nothic. Do I just let them have him on their side forever as long as they bring food? I guess I could make him only eat humans so they have to make moral decisions about continuing to feed him.

Second, after the nothic they went straight north and with a high perception roll stumbled into the secret passage to the backside of Glasstaff's room. With detect magic they see him and his staff, and that he isnt armed at the moment, so they break in steal his staff and knock him unconscious with their surprise round before he even gets a turn. The wizard in the group decides he wants to impersonate glasstaff and dons his clothes and staff. I had already said earlier in the adventure that the redbrands have high turnover and low level thugs don't know much about Glasstaff as an excuse for them not being able to give much information when captured. This now has the effect that as drunk idiots who didn't know glasstaff I decided not to make my Wizard need to roll deception unless its higher rank people who know him specifically (Mosk the bugbear, or Black spider's couriers for example). So with this information my players dispatched the bugbears (who he failed deception against) and blamed the commotion on a betrayal by the black spider. They gathered all the redbrands and said the black spider is betraying them, and that we are going to steal the map for ourselves from cragmaw castle and overthrow him. I said there were about 20 redbrands so they rolled a D20 to see how many were inspired enough to stay, the rest left as they were too cowardly to attack an actual goblin stronghold. They rolled slightly above average so I don't know how to handle a situation of 12 redbrands attacking a castle of goblins. I was thinking maybe just not actually have the fight, but roll to see who wins and how many survivors? Then if the redbrands win they have the castle, and if the redbrands lose the castle has less goblins. This removes a lot of the dungeon crawling from cragmaw castle, but also rewards them for being clever. I just don't know if I made it too easy on them as far as convincing the redbrands to fight.

Third, since they dispatched Glasstaff before walking into his wizards lab, when they walked into the lab they saw his rat familiar. I didn't know if it should disappear or not so I said it was sitting there staring at them, not doing anything (in my mind it was similar to a mobile device that lost contact with its base station). They detected magic, the wizard identified it as a familiar, and two in the group wanted to kill it but the cleric convinced them to keep it. He picked it up, and when he spent a long rest with it later I had him attune to it like a magic item (I doubt this is normally allowed but I wanted to reward him for sticking up for it). Im trying to think of how to allow him to use it. My first idea was to let him use it as a familiar with all normal rules, but since he doesnt know the actual spell to summon it he cant dismiss and resummon it at will, and if it dies its gone forever. He can only use it for its telepathic link and help in combat/touch spells. Does this seem fair or too strong for a cleric?

If anyone actually reads all of this I'd love advice on how I could have done things differently or how to proceed from here. Thanks!

Posted Jun 5, 2017, 3:49 PM UTC · edited

245
RadioactiveCashewHead of Misused Alchemy•

There's some neat stuff here! I'm going to take a few minutes and break it down.

First, regarding the nothic, I like how this was handled. It makes sense to me that the Nothic would favour a deal like this over a fight with well-armed adventurers. That said, even if he never turns against them, I don't see any reason the Nothic would go with them. He'll probably just hang out in the fort 'til the food runs out, then run off somewhere. Maybe the party can find him later.

Even if the nothic sticks around and they have his help forever, that's not that useful. There's no telling what secret they'll get, and there's a good chance that baddie #2 will only know the same secrets that baddie #1 did.

Secondly, regarding the redbrand attack, I haven't played through LMoP myself so I don't know how strong the goblin stronghold is, but you could buff the goblin stronghold a bit or put in a few bigger threats that decimate the redbrand ranks. I think this plan your players have come up with ought to at least partly work, but it shouldn't completely nullify the goblin stronghold for the sake of having an interesting session. Running 12 redbrands in combat sounds like a nightmare too, so I'd probably just have them disperse in groups of 2 - 4 when they get inside the stronghold. When the players are exploring the stronghold, they can hear the sounds of bandits raiding other sections, and periodically run into a group of bandits that might need the PCs help.

Third, this sounds totally fine to me. I'd probably have had the familiar vanish when Glasstaff was knocked out, but you've made your ruling and it seems reasonable enough. The familiar will be a really nice perk until it gets hit, at which point it'll vanish forever.

9
zer05tar•

I think there is an owlbear locked up in the castle, OP could buff that up and make it under the control of some magical something or other. Lay waste to the redbrand Lol

3
KidCopper•

The castle has a LOT of baddies in it and things could go very sour if they mount a full frontal attack with a band of brigands. The dungeon is kind of designed for them to sneak in and go room by room, but if they bring all the Redbrands, I would play it more like a castle siege (which would be awesome).

Page 250 of the DMG discusses how to handle "mobs" of monsters in battle which could be helpful.

As for the Nothic, they can be negotiated with which the players did well, but they are also insane. Have the players bring him along or whatever if they want but I would soon have it try to eat one of the players or something in their sleep so they can kill it off and be done with it.

As for the familiar, what you have there seems like a cool idea. I might let him use it as a pet, but take away some of the more powerful features like dismissing and re-summoning like you mentioned. I may also take away the ability for him to look through it's eyes.

5
Quiteus•

In regards to the familiar, I would probably allow them to have it - until it is destroyed. Perhaps if the cleric is truly attached to the familiar they will take a level of wizard, OR the magic initiative feat and choose find familiar, in order to bring them back. If you're really intent on letting them keep it, make it a LONG ritual. With find familiar being a ritual spell most wizards wouldn't keep it memorized daily, so that would be a 10 minute cast for them. Make it a half day process for someone who has absolutely no idea how arcane magic works, or how to channel it. Keep in mind that they'd have no idea how this would be done either.

4
Corrific19•

The way the Nothic interacted with the party is pretty much exactly how things went down in my game. He is now a permanent ally living in the basement of the Manor. The group calls him Finchy. If you feel it's too overpowered to have a Nothic ally on call, then make him disappear (as a hook for another adventure). Perhaps he fell down a newly uncovered hole in the chasm, landing in the Underdark (Out of the Abyss). Maybe Nothics in your world have a tie to the Elder Elemental Eye, and he has gone to the Dessarin Valley in the dead of night (Princes of the Apocalypse).

1