#redbrand

tfw you think you’re doing a great job and so you call your boss to update her and she screams at you first thing in the morning about how dumb you are and she sends a babysitter after you. hate it when that happens

So we played session three of the Lost Mine of Phandelver over the weekend and made it as far as the Redbrand Hideout - about halfway through. 

All things considered I can't seem to get the balance on encounters right. Granted all of the players except one are experienced tabletop RPG players, but between surprise effects and Barbarians with the Great Weapon Master feat, its a bad time to be a Redbrand Ruffian.

“If you want change, you have to invite chaos.”

My group finally finished the Redbrand Hideout today.  It felt good, although I nearly killed them.  They hadn’t dealt with the nothic, but had convinced the bugbears that there was an intruder, the bugbears set out.  The group then decided to attack the bugbears from behind.  This would have been OK... if the noble hadn’t stepped into the square where the nothic was hiding.

Nothic: Hello

Noble: Uh, hi.

Nothic launches itself from the wall and starts slashing at the noble.  The bugbears turnaround in surprise (admittedly not as surprised as the noble), at which point the rouge strikes.  I not only nearly killed the Noble with the nothic’s necrotic ray, but Mosk launched a javelin at the rogue which proved quite effective.

Eventually a bugbear was killed, the nothic broke contact and scurried into the crevasse, and the bugbears escaped. The party were not able to establish where Cragmaw Castle is, nor where the Mine is, as both these pieces of information were known only to the bugbears.

They do have Glasstaff alive, Droop and they’ve rescued the captives.  They have the Dwarven journal so they now know the why, and a bit of the who, but not the where.

So what now?  They’ll have to complete the additional challenges; Thundertree being the most pressing as this will give them the information they require.  The orcs as well.  With Mosk still alive, I’d suggest Cragmaw and the Black Spider would be alerted to Glasstaff’s failure.  Would they strike at Phandalin in reprisal?

There’s also the wolves.  Ripper and the three wolves from the Cragmaw hideout were “fed” goblin by the Cleric. But nothing more has been done with them.  I’m going to have Sildar mention that the town appears to have a wolf problem; wolves have been spotted around the town which is unusual, and hunters have been dispatched to kill them before there’s an incident.  This seems realistic to me, Ripper is a domesticated animal, and not being afraid of “people” would have likely followed the Cleric in search of more “food”.  I’ve going to attempt to write a skill challenge to find the wolves before the hunters and to tame them, or kill them.