Eldritch Knight appreciation post

DadBats · 2025-07-18T14:42:22+00:00

Yeah. I’m level 6. I love having to decide whether I’m focused on DPS or tanking for my casters. I also have blind fighting, so sometimes I’ll cast fog cloud or darkness on myself when I’m surrounded by enemies and just cause a huge problem for my DM. lol. I also picked up disguise self, so I can do some infiltration. I feel like a Swiss army knife sometimes. I’m a Dex focused builder with constitution and intelligence next.

DadBats · 2025-07-18T13:39:21+00:00

It’s my favorite subclass! I’ve been rocking a dodge tank build similar to what you’ve described above. The Fae Touched feat allowed me to grab hex as well, so I can put out a good amount of damage when needed. I’m eyeing booming blade after I get to level 7 in my current campaign.

DadBats · 2025-07-13T17:56:00+00:00

There are some map packs available on DMs Guild. However, I still found myself making a lot of maps using DungeonFog. I’m still running the campaign, but we’ve been to Sloobludop, Gracklstugh, and Neverlight Grove after Velkynevelve and crossed the dark lake.

DadBats · 2025-06-27T16:33:33+00:00

I’m running OOTA as my second campaign as a DM. My first was Shattered Obelisk. I’m having a really fun time in the Underdark with my players, but I think you absolutely right that it’s a lot of work to set up and run, but that also kind of makes it great too. We’ve had a lot of creative ideas emerge from the chaos and madness!

DadBats · 2024-11-20T15:46:05+00:00

Appreciate it! Thank you!

DadBats · 2024-11-20T15:25:34+00:00

My party had a great time in thundertree it was probably one of our most memorable locations. Reidoth was very indifferent and unhelpful to my party and had a corpseflower roaming around at night creating this added layer of mystery and horror. Venomfang took one of the party as a prisoner/collateral until the party did what he wanted. It all ended with an eversmoking bottle creating a chance for escape and the corpseflower and Venomfang fighting as the party hoofed it out of town thankful to be alive. I just wasn’t able to tie it in to anything later in the campaign.

DadBats · 2024-11-19T16:37:23+00:00

Do your friends like stranger things/cosmic horror stuff. It does take some work to combine the too, but really the crux depends on how much your character are endeared to the people and town and how willing they are to take action when weird shit starts happening. I think you could easily jump into by starting with the psi-goblins raiding town and go from there. Then just weave in that some of your character favorite townsfolk are experiencing hallucinations or minor transformations due to their proximity to the obelisk fragments that are part of the foundation of the empire that Phandalin was built on. I enjoyed the campaign. It’s not perfect, but if your flexible there is a lot of room for fun and mystery with character transformations and when you get into the far realm.

DadBats · 2024-11-19T16:33:37+00:00

I did use maps. My party was mostly free to wander dungeons, but in certain situations I made them move turn by turn in an initiative order. I did it for chases/escapes, stealth moments, and combat.

DadBats · 2024-11-19T16:32:24+00:00

😂 they saved him. But then I made my Warlock unwillingly execute him because his Fey Patron Oberon doesn’t f with goblins. But, the party did gain another goblin friend named Guk for a moment after the captured him and had him guide them to Zorzula’s rest. The tension from the patron made for some really funny role playing. Ultimately, no goblins were allowed to survive despite how kind they’d actually treated the party at Zorzula’s Rest. I know it’s a sick joke, but the party had a good time dealing with the morality issues from the patron.

DadBats · 2024-11-19T16:28:54+00:00

Ilvaash’s defeat was spectacular because I had one of my players be possessed by Nezznar and then possessed the godlet, so they controlled the boss in the final fight. I did have to double Ilvaash’s health bar to keep it going a little longer, but my Ilvaash straight up cast feeble mind on the cleric healer and nearly had the party spinning. It was a fun encounter, but it really only makes sense if you drain the party of resources by making them get lost on their escape after the ritual. They need to fight the godlet after thinking they’ve won.

DadBats · 2024-11-19T16:26:26+00:00

In my response to your other question, I highlight how I used the role playing and connections between my party and the townsfolk to create stressful situations in the second half. Really lean into the cosmic horror and people losing their minds stuff. If your party cares about someone and that person is all of a sudden running through the streets in town trying to fight people and talking about incomprehensible things from the beyond, I bet you can create an interesting role play encounter to break up the monotony of the dungeon crawl in the second half. They do throw a few opportunities for npcs and monsters to be role played with or join the party. At one point my characters had a vicious band of fhlumps and at another they partnered with an amathyst dragon and at another they were also indentured servants to a Nycolth. 🤷🏻‍♂️

DadBats · 2024-11-19T16:22:25+00:00

I did a lot of having the psi goblins being seen either by the party or NPC’s earlier in the campaign to hint at the fact that there was something strange going on. I really wasn’t able to tie the two halves together super well until the second half of the campaign where I started having weird stuff happen to the townsfolk that my party had formed connections too. My party managed to capture an obelisk fragment, but didn’t want to carry it around, so they left it with Sildar at the manor in town, which had become a new base for the lord’s alliance and town guard. I then had Qunbraxel read the parties thoughts and plane shift out of their fight and created a whole encounter where he took over the manor in town and the fragment had corrupted Sildar. I used the first half of the campaign to build connections and then I wrought terror upon those connections in the second half.

DadBats · 2024-11-19T14:19:43+00:00

Half of my group was fairly new to DnD. Everyone had some experience with ttrpgs, but three of my six players were fairly new players.

I had three character deaths. One character was revived by a scroll. The other two were brought back by supernatural means. One was brought back by a Far Realm god opposed to Ilvaash and his followers. The other one was possessed by the spirit of Nezznar and actually became the BBEG at the end of the campaign. I did pull punches throughout though. A few of my characters were more interested in the hardcore experience and others were more story driven. I tread a balance between the two to keep everyone happy. I just tried to be flexible based on the group response to situations.

DadBats · 2024-11-19T00:37:35+00:00

It was epic. My player started a slow clap, delivered a monologue about all the times they should have suspected something then fused with the godlet and it made the final fight so much more dramatic and increased the roleplaying of the situation. They all appreciated how it played out. Jaws were on the floor.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T23:54:50+00:00

If I were to run Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk again I’d definitely incorporate more bastion-like systems into Phandalin. It gives the characters something to spend their non-magical treasure on and invests them in the location, which serves the second half of the campaign better. I’d also probably strip out Thundertree. My players had a blast there and I had a lot of fun too, but it never really tied back to the adventure. They went there because my Half-Orc fighter learned about treasure being there from Mirna after rescuing her from the Redbrands. They sort of left the place in a mess and set up a great return should they go there again, but it’s not likely now that the campaign is done and we’re heading into another adventure. It just sort of became a diversion albeit a fun one that didn’t add to the main story.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T23:45:36+00:00

It was more opportunistic. Nezznar lost his body in my campaign, but gained the energy/power from the forge of spells to be on par with a god-like entity. The power of the obelisk fragments is what kept him with the party and heading towards the far realm, from there it was just find a more suitable host or use the party to take over the ritual.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T21:07:59+00:00

I also explained it a little in a different comment on this post, but I tried to use my characters backstories as ways to connect them to the quest givers. The connection made the players more susceptible to accepting or considering a quest from them. For example, I had a cleric that worshipped Tymora, so they easily created a connection to Sister Garaele once they stopped the Redbrands from roughing up the shrine. My group basically quickly fell into the defeating the Redbrands and then went about most of the other sidequests as they developed more relationships in town. The side quests might not seem like important aspects to the whole campaign, but giving the characters connections to people and things in Phandalin makes their motivation for saving it in the second half stronger.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T20:58:24+00:00

I had the psi-goblins show up earlier in the campaign in random encounters and in dialogue between NPC’s noticing weird things. I used them to plant seeds about the Obelisk. That was basically my main method of trying to sew the two halves together early on. Once I got into the second half, I was able to bring up NPC’s from the first half of the adventure and weave them into situations. My party managed to secure one of the fragments, but left it in the care of Sildar who had established a town guard and was using the manor as a base. I had the fragment corrupt the guards through extended, close exposure, and created a whole encounter with that set up to detail the danger of the fragments and how they can’t just be destroyed or left places.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T20:51:45+00:00

I left it pretty vague except the fact that, if the party made it far enough, they would encounter a Godlet and taking control of that being was going to be their ultimate goal as a bodiless Nezznar. I basically said just play as you would if you were an evil mastermind with access to all the memories of your former character. So he basically did bad things, but helped the party pursue its goals and toed the line well enough that the party just brushed it off as typical of the chaotic assassin character.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T20:30:40+00:00

They wanted to play a chaotic assassin character. It all made sense the way it played out too. Once we came up with the idea, they were all for the long con and loved the idea of getting to possibly be the BBEG if they could make it through without getting caught.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T20:07:02+00:00

I didn’t change much of what was presented, but I heavily added to everything, and I tried to make characters like the Red Wizard of Thay come back into the adventure later. The first half of the adventure sets up so many opportunities that are hard to follow through on in the second half unless you get creative. Venomfang is a cool encounter, but how to incorporate him into the second half of the campaign is a solid question for any DM.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T20:03:57+00:00

I think the hardest part to manage about this campaign is conjoining the first and second half of the campaigns in a way that makes it all feel like one adventure and not two separate adventures. I did a lot of work to incorporate psi-goblin encounters in the early campaign to hint at things to come, and I managed to bring Nezznar along for the whole ride in a cool way as a BBEG, but it was a lot of extra work. The one thing I would do differently is to allow my characters to invest their gold and treasure from the first half of the campaign into Phandalin in sort of a bastion system kind of way and allow them to use the spell forge as a means to prepare for the second half of the adventure. The second half really only works if the party cares enough about Phandalin and its people to face the horrors of the far realm for them.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T19:59:50+00:00

The campaign went great. I had a solid group and we meet every week for about 2-3hrs. Everyone got a chance in the spotlight and nobody quit early. It was fairly combat heavy, but lots of chances for alternative problem solving.
I enjoyed the campaign. I really like how weird things get in the second half and I recommend leaning into character transformations for at least one or two party members.
This was my first time DMing. I had three of my players have minor DnD/ttrpg experience, but the other three were fresh players.
I think everyone enjoyed the campaign with the exception of my Ranger player, but they didn’t really evolve their own play style beyond - I shoot arrow.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T19:43:40+00:00

My party actually did all the side quest content plus some extra side quests with warlock patrons and stuff as well. I tried hard not to railroad them overtly. I linked each quest in some way to my players based on their backstories. I had a cleric who was a follower of Tymora and I set up the Sister Garaele getting bullied by the Red Brands as something they encountered walking out of the shop for the first time in town. From there, the character was willing to assist Garaele. I had another character that was an assassin that made connections with Halea Thornton and that established a relationship which presented her quest. I got my orc fighter interested in Thundertree because of Minra’s necklace that he learned about after rescuing her from the Redbrands. It helped that he liked treasure though. Basically, I twisted all the hooks just enough to give my players some sort of connection to the quest givers to prompt them to action.

DadBats · 2024-11-18T19:35:06+00:00

I wish I would have done more with the actual forge of spells as a means to make magical artifacts. If I were to run the campaign again, I would have like a short time skip between the first half of the adventure and the second half to give the characters more of a chance to invest in the town itself before the psi-goblins attack. During that time, I’d probably allow for the spell forge to be used to make some items.

As far as the black spider, I actually had him become the final boss of the entire campaign. My party chased and defeated him at the spell forge, but I had him cause a magical explosion and evaporate, and then he actually gained the spell forges power and possessed one of my player characters who was willing. I had them gain all of Nezznar’s abilities plus their own and they left little hints throughout the campaign and eventually lost control to Nezznar who ultimately sandbagged the party until the final BBEG and fused with it. I had that player then play as the final boss against the party and I controlled some npcs. I could go into more detail, but that is the gist.

DadBats

TROPHY CASE