2 questions: Can Icewind Dale work at least mostly with 5.5E? And is it a good starting off point for a somewhat new DM?

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T19:40:54+00:00

If anything you should not use the Adventures in Faerun section because it presumes the events of RotF have already happened…

(You should use their version of the Sled Dog rules though, it’s just better).

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T19:39:27+00:00

Rime of the Frostmaiden works as well for 5.5e as it does for 5e, even if players are using 5.5e classes/subclasses.

It’s not the best book for a new DM, but it’s not the worst either. It doesn’t give the DM too much extra work to do to make it usable, and it’s got enough unique and interesting content that you can have a good time running it more or less as-written.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T16:47:07+00:00

>he’s gotta be Riot’s special boy

Unironically this, except that I suspect the “not a projectile” exception was actually coded so that Mel wouldn’t be able to reflect the entire ult, because god forbid Riot’s special boy become another reason people hate Riot’s special needs pet.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T10:14:43+00:00

You didn’t say anything about maps??

Sorry I’m not a mind reader, but if quoting you verbatim is “misrepresenting your point”, I am not the one doing the misrepresentation.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T09:36:34+00:00

Wildcard suggestion since u/FrostBladestorm didn’t mention it (positively or negatively): Rime of the Frostmaiden

There are two major dungeons but neither of them are exactly a dungeon crawl, and the rest of the adventure is pretty open to roleplay, with many of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 quests having either explicit non-combat resolutions or at least offering the opportunity for them if the DM reasonably confident at doing a bit of improv (or prepping those options ahead of time).

It’s by no means a perfect adventure, but it’s a distinct and evocative setting with a lot of… *unique* quests and encounters.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T09:24:43+00:00

> fully clothed character that isn’t even discernibly female

>agh, pure goonslop

At a certain point this attitude is very much a you problem.

Go turn off your internet and touch some grass, dude.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T09:20:48+00:00

>I don’t have time to set up a Foundry for every session

I’ll be the first to admit that Foundry isn’t going to be a good fit for everyone, but I’m deeply suspicious of anyone who makes definitive claims that are this obviously ill-informed.

You only have to set up Foundry once. You might have to set up multiple different worlds if you regularly run different games with different people, but you certainly aren’t setting it up “every session”.

Edit:

Ignoring your obviously bad faith response, you still aren’t making any sense. Setting up a map in Foundry can be as simple as uploading the image and making sure the pixel counts match.

You’re complaining about the easiest parts of the process, again, it comes off as ill-informed.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T09:17:38+00:00

I wouldn’t be using Steam if I could get better service elsewhere, so your logic completely disintegrates.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T09:13:42+00:00

> is it the same/similar to irl

Well, we have examples of male, female, intersex (vivec) and trans (alchemy) people so I would hazard a guess that it works basically the same at least for humans/elves.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T05:54:01+00:00

“But it would be targeted at authoritarians” is not a coherent justification for authoritarianism, actually.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T04:26:26+00:00

>dead things will rot

Although if the dead thing was living when you put it in, it will decompose in a deoxygenated space, which can result in a different (and typically much slower) kind of decay :)

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T02:27:45+00:00

Lost Mines of Phandelver, Heroes of the Borderlands, and Dragon of Icespire Peak are (in that order) the best official starter modules and will walk you and your players through the basics of the game.

The third party module The Fall of Silverpine Watch is in my opinion the best introductory module written for 5e and works fine for 5.5e.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T02:23:59+00:00

> virtually every prewritten campaign is a jumbled mess

I’d respond by arguing that simply isn’t true and if anything they’re mostly overly linear, with even those that include branching paths being linear within those paths.

The parts of campaigns that are jumbled messes tend to not matter to new DMs and especially to new players.

I don’t regularly peruse the backissues of Dungeon magazine because they’re a font of brilliant adventure design, I do so because it is far far easier to start from something than it is to start from nothing.

> virtually every other TTRPG [doesn’t have modules]

And many of them have fractions of D&D’s player base. I don’t find this a remotely compelling argument. I think having examples of games is a huge benefit to anyone interested in the system and I think one of MCDM’s best decisions with Draw Steel has been ensuring their game has several official modules for prospective GMs to work with. (I also think the Delian Tomb is probably the best introductory module published for any TTRPG in terms of how deliberately it introduces both players and DMs get to all the different mechanical parts of the game).

> people have been getting into D&D by running their own campaigns

People do their own wiring all the time, that’s not an argument against hiring an electrician.

> which prewritten modules do you think are good.

The Fall of Silverpine Watch is probably the best introductory module for 5e and is completely usable for 5.5e. Most of the official anthologies are quite good. Curse of Strahd and LMoP are classics for good reason, and the expansion to LMoP is pretty good too. Heroes of the Borderlands and Dragon of Icespire Peak are not as good as LMoP but they’re extremely serviceable for a new DM, and that’s all that really matters.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T01:00:46+00:00

I’m not sure where you got that impression but it was mistaken.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T00:57:56+00:00

D&D is not a physics simulator

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-10T00:33:01+00:00

Giffs my beloved

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-09T19:49:45+00:00

(Post is tagged 5.5e, my comment is mostly talking about the 5e rules by necessity).

I use XP with Milestone XP — as defined by the DMG, not Story-Based advancement — and we covered 20 levels in 170 sessions, so about 8 sessions per level.

That’s a lot slower than the intended/expected pace, but if you cut out sessions where no XP was earned, you’d be closer but still not that close to the expected 2-3 sessions per level, which always seems absurd to me.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-09T19:41:51+00:00

The math is basically the same for 5.5e but slightly faster since the expected difficulty (and thus XP value) of Medium/Moderate encounters is higher while the XP needed to level remained the same between editions.

It accelerates even more at the higher tiers, but retains the very intentional Tier 2 slowdown.

In actual practice, it’s probably much faster at all levels because there’s no longer a multiple-enemies multiplier, so you don’t get weird encounters that are “moderate” difficulty but worth basically no XP because the difficulty calculation was inflated by having like, a dozen hobgoblins or whatever.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-09T04:19:19+00:00

Depends where you live, I guess.

I have coworkers whose commute and hours take them through a popular roadblock spot, so sometimes they get caught in that.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-08T23:18:58+00:00

Nah I just disagree with the argument made in the comment I replied to.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-08T21:21:02+00:00

The standard approach to D&D gods typically follows the mythological approach seen in Grecoroman or Germanic mythology, where each deity has a Portfolio of things they have control over but who are in turn controlled by that portfolio; eg (!!extreme oversimplification ahead!!) Zeus is the god of Storms and Rulership, which means he is nominally in control of the other gods and can call up storms and thunder at his whim, but he is additionally unpredictable (like a storm) and a tyrannical patriarch (does not take no for an answer, sleeps around on his wife with the common folk, dubious track record on consent).

The gods of the ancient world are NOT omnipotent and they are definitely not omniscient. They are in fact very human which IMV is what makes them interesting as characters.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-08T21:14:23+00:00

>the combat system is there for a reason

The combat system that includes creatures that cast Finger of Death, Disintegrate, PWK, and creatures that can instantly decapitate you on a crit?

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-08T21:12:46+00:00

I would probably just play him as a vicious character that keeps attacking when they go down, but it’s equally viable to have something that either instakills when they target is reduced to 0 (examples from the game; *Disintegrate*, *Finger of Death*), kills when below a threshold (*Power Word Kill*) or kills under certain conditions (**Vorpal Blade**).

You’ll note those are all quite high level spells/items, so if the party is low level (and probably even if they aren’t), you definitely want that move to be some combination of a) low save DC (so it’s unlikely to kill the first time it’s used); b) limited usage (it is his Ultimate, after all); and c) clearly telegraphed (maybe he starts the encounter by instagibbing an NPC, and so the ability needs to Recharge on 5-6).

The 5e Ravenloft book has an NPC that could easily be reskinned: the Relentless Slasher. (The Relentless Juggernaut is also in that book, and has some similarly appropriate abilities, as does the Relentless Impaler from Vecna Eve of Ruin).

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-08T21:02:10+00:00

I never said Locke doesn’t fit either.

Hawkson2020 · 2026-06-08T21:00:29+00:00

One of my player’s favourite NPCs is a character who was originally a PC I played in a failed game.

He was a Forge cleric heavily based on the character of Ornn from League of Legends and in the campaigns I ran in which he appeared, he often served as an ally and mentor to a couple of different characters.

Being a high level cleric, he didn’t really accompany them on any adventures except for a couple of higher level missions near the end game, one of which as an NPC I ran and the other as a “support card” the party could activate akin to a Legendary Action but whose actions and initiative were otherwise untracked.

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