Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk (Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Book)

Product Information

While the core quests remain the same, tweaks have been made all over. This includes rewritten flavor text, adjusted 5e encounters, and NPCs with swapped genders. 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. This existing relationship may come in particularly handy at some tables. Whether by unfortunate dice rolls or a party that neglects to invest in Wisdom (who needs Perception?), the players have ample opportunity to miss a goblin trail leading to the first real quest that sets the story in motion. Or perhaps other character motives see the party hasten to Phandalin instead of chasing this lead immediately. In either case, the plot thread may be handed directly to them by Elmina Barthen, owner of the town’s biggest trading post: Gundren is missing! Gold is a great motivator, but isn’t the real treasure the friends we rescued along the way? PaintPhandalin As Idyllic

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: 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

Play with Less Prep on Roll20

Lost Mine of Phandelver has a simple but strong hook, launching players into the action with immediate combat that then opens up a larger driving goal for the party. 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!)

The obelisk in 2016's Storm King's Thunder is only mentioned and not seen. Players visiting the village of Nightstone will learn that it got its name from a large obsidian megalith that stood in the center of the village square. This stone obelisk had been covered in strange magical glyphs, but by the time the players arrive during the DnD campaign, cloud giants have stolen it. 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. Alternatively, for someone who loved The Lost Mines of Phandelver and wants to own it in its most complete form, this is your book. It certainly has a "special edition" vibe about it in the same way you might get excited for the anniversary LP of an album you already own. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obeliskexpands a fan favorite adventure into a full-fledged campaign thatsuitsnew and longtime players and Dungeon Masters. Where Lost Mine of Phandelver took characters from 1st to 5th level, this new adventure book progressesall the way through12th level.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. 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. For tables that are interested in playing around more with these body horror elements, there are also rules as to how the energy might affect each of the player's characters adding a sense of urgency to get to the bottom of the issue.