Last week our RPG group played the third session on our DnD 5th edition campain. You can see the previous Game Report here.

Our first two sessions were an “introductory” adventure in a small hand-made dungeon. Now that the characters have survived their baptism by fire by undeads, we have decided to move on to the published adventures “Lost Mines of Phandelver” and “Hoard of the Dragon Queen”.

Since both modules start the characters from level one, I’ve decided to make some changes in order to be able to play them in sequence. Most of these ideas I took from reading the DnDNext subreddit and the “Hack & Slash” blog. I’ll post these changes as they show up in the game to avoid spoilers, but for now it is enough to say that Phandelin was moved south of Baldur’s gate, and much closer to Greenest.

The group was travelling down the trade route south of Baldurs Gate. They heard reports of many caravans being assaulted by goblins, and a few sightings of a strange new cult, and wanted to investigate first hand by themselves. They come across the remains of a recent attack – dead horses and humans in an ambush site just under a small hill.

This was the opening scene of LMoP. I have replaced the dwarf NPC (who has been kidnapped already for a few weeks in my game), with a PC who was joining the party that night. This PC happened to be a Human thief with Alertness and expertise in Perception, giving her a whooping 20 passive perception at first level! I’ll make sure to take note of that build when making NPCs in the future (Of course, a master human scout is still shut down by a dark room).

The group stormed through the Cragmaw hideout – clever use of darkness alongside with good perceptions and sneaking rolls meant that the goblins never saw what hit them. By the end of the adventure they handly defeated Klaargh the Bugbear and his cronies — but hadn’t found Sildar Hallwinter yet (who in this game was a mentor for the thief character).

I’m realling liking this 5th edition sessions – combat is streamlined and run as a breeze. I need to play my opponents a bit more intelligently — I completely forgot about Klaargs escape route in the heat of battle. But maybe it is a good idea to roleplay the goblins as dumb creatures, in order to make the contrast with human enemies more stark.

Next game: finishing cleaning up cragmaw hideout, and then doing the Pandelin Missions.