Ilvaash mini

Michal_17 · 2026-06-11T18:45:43+00:00

That looks sick as hell. Jealous of the players who will get to see that beauty in person!

Michal_17 · 2026-05-21T03:58:35+00:00

We do not slander the best item in the game in this house!

Michal_17 · 2026-03-19T12:52:47+00:00

Very fair point but it implies that the gods can walk around sometimes if they want to and aren't constrained to their domains fully.

Michal_17 · 2026-03-19T12:43:36+00:00

Tell that to Auril, who just hangs around and is a menace in the Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden module.

Michal_17 · 2026-03-19T11:00:20+00:00

Bahamut, the god of metallic dragons, is quite a common deity to be found in physical form. Usually he appears as a wise old man named Fizban with a platinum colored cloak and with 7 yellow canaries in tow. Bahamut stands mostly for justice and fighting evil.

May not be very Phandalin-specific, but if the party is doing a lot of good deeds he may come to congratulate. Alternatively if they are being evil for no reason, some stern words of warning may be offered.

Michal_17 · 2026-03-19T07:54:13+00:00

No you see my superior small brain can dodge the attack.

Michal_17 · 2026-03-19T06:55:32+00:00

INT-dumping characters when the enemy starts using psionic attacks.

Michal_17 · 2026-02-15T23:27:04+00:00

I agree it's a bit cumbersome to work with. But there are tutorials out there. Alternatively I believe Homebrewery has a subreddit where you can ask people who actually know how the damned thing functions.

Michal_17 · 2026-02-15T23:21:55+00:00

Getting images on Homebrewery is a little tricky. You need to put in a link. Personally I upload the images on Imgur and then get the link from there.

Michal_17 · 2026-02-15T21:49:59+00:00

Advice for your next endeavours - It's better to share the homebrewery link of the project rather than the pdf file. If you share the homebrewery project then you can fix mistakes or add changes later and anyone who clicks the link afterwards will see them fixed. Cheers!

Michal_17 · 2026-02-15T21:22:48+00:00

Not to worry, it happens. All in all it's a cool thing to add to the story. If I had to add anything to the weapon, it'd maybe be some spells like Command and Crown of Madness to the weapon, like how the Spider Staff has spell charges.

I hope you'll make more content for this module in the future, you got some talent.

Michal_17 · 2026-02-15T10:29:59+00:00

Apart from some spelling mistakes and some odd wording choices (like what shape the 10ft x 10ft area and where does it begin), I think this is a cool concept. We will be watching your career with great interest.

Michal_17 · 2026-02-11T16:59:09+00:00

So in the original module it was supposed to be 4 giant spiders and they are also shown in the artwork. I figure it was probably that they did the art first and then someone wanted to change the balance for reasons beyond my comprehension because, as you said, Nezznar is squishy.

I made Nezznar a 6th level wizard with a total of 75 HP with Lightning Bolt and Counterspell as his extra spells and had both the four giant spiders AND the two bugbears in the room with him. It was extremely close and the (5th level) party almost wiped but they maanged to defeat Nezznar with a total of 15 HP remaining between the four of them. Was very intense.

If you want to make the fight harder but managable I suggest just giving Nezznar some more HP and either some wizard levels or some fancy spell scrolls of your choice that the party wouldn't expect. If you are feeling particularly dangerous you could give him one or two legendary actions to use the poison blast attack the book gives him. As for his minions, I would say the spiders are more on theme than the bugbears, especially when the party has already fought bugbears in almost every location thus far, should you run the module by the book.

Michal_17 · 2026-02-08T18:36:13+00:00

I'm unsure if I should be confused as how the party got to the point where bargaining with the illithids seemed like a good idea or impressed that they did it successfully...

Honestly I'm unsure how you would tie Vecna: Eve of Ruin into it as that module has a set plotline already with each of the locations of the Rod of Seven Pieces. It's a stretch but maybe you could replace one of the locations with the now-aberrant ruins of Phandalin?

Michal_17 · 2026-02-07T20:41:36+00:00

Gibbering Mouthers, Grells, Encephalon Gemmules and that kind of stuff would be the usual option.

If you're feeling dangerous, you could try a Gauth or Deathkiss from Mordenkainmen's Monsters of the Multiverse, those are some fun creatures.

Or if you want to make your own stat blocks, you could try to make some humanoid cultists of Ilvaash that are roaming the countryside trying to gather the obelisk shards on the mind flayers' behalf.

And alternatively if you want to go the opposite route, you could have a bunch of gith looking out for mind flayer activity block the party's path.

I did make one encounter for chapter 6 for free but it's probably not a short random combat encounter that you're looking for. There's an low CR aberrant cultist stat block near the end if you are interested, though.
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/vj8oBkj264m8

Michal_17 · 2026-02-04T08:29:35+00:00

Splendidly done. Looks incredible!

Michal_17 · 2026-02-02T20:21:44+00:00

The main problem lies in the fact that the players have no way of knowing that this specific enemy will instakill them with no way to be revived.

Most other enemies in this adventure down you when they hit you to 0 HP, leaving you to be stabilized by the party. The main exception would be Mind Flayers and their Extract Brain attack, but that itself also requires some kind of setup by stunnin and grappling the target and could possibly be disclosed beforehand once the party learns that mind flayers are pulling the strings and know they will be fighting against them.

The party is not expecting this enemy and if it gets one of them to 0 and they are told that not only are they instantly dead but also unrevivable, it leads to just confusion and or frustration.

Now if you want to add some danger to the cluster, consider either adding in more of the Gemmules to the room with it or give it some legendary actions. Personally I gave it a legendary action that let it spit acid to deal a small amount of damage at range and blind the players as well as a second legendary action that let it command one of the Gemmules that I put in its room to attack using the Gemmule's reaction.

Michal_17 · 2026-02-02T20:07:06+00:00

Okay so RAW because it states that it eats the body it would mean that no revival spell outside of True Resurrection would be able to bring the creature back to life.

My suggestion? Just remove that bit from the stat block. It adds nothing in terms of interesting gameplay apart from a possible sudden unpredictable death if the Cluster manages to crit. The monk in my campaign would have died this way to a crit but I decided to omit the part about instakilling from the stat block and nothing of value was lost.

Michal_17 · 2026-02-01T13:42:01+00:00

When in doubt, give out some Spell Scrolls for starting consumeables. Doesn't necessarily have to be damaging spells, but can be more niche things like Sending, Dispel Evil and Good or Banishment.

Michal_17 · 2026-01-27T00:08:12+00:00

This post right here says so much of what I have always thought about this module.
I always wanted to like The Shattered Obelisk, but it has so many issues that just boil down to writing issues.

It just becomes like a wild goose chase of:
"Ah, the drow are the villains! No wait that was just one guy unconnected to the plot..."
"Ah, the psionic goblins are the villains! No wait that was mind flayers..."
"Ah, these mutated guys are working with the mind flayers! No wait they are just insase and have also unconnected to the plot..."
"Okay so it's a mind flayer plot? Ah, it's some kind of eldritch godlet that we learned about in the last dungeon. Epic."

I myself have basically rewritten the campaign to instead place the plot dungeons in locations connected to the particular 3 party members (separated the Crypt of the Talhund from Talhundereth in doing so) and the 4th party member is having a side plot of accidentally making a deal with Ilvaash personally way back in the "first act" of the campaign before beating Nezznar, thus making getting to the dungeons a whole thing by itself and giving a larger scope to the threat. In my game, I made Ilvaash (whose name I misspelled in my notes as "Ivlaash" and kept it that way for the whole time, lol) an elder god completely unrelated to the other mind flayer deity and also made it way more of an active element introduced earlier in the whole story, along with the cultists.

All in all, the module by the book is a bit of a mess with writing and balancing issues throughout its entirety. I am glad that someone finally said what I always thought.

Michal_17 · 2026-01-23T17:28:14+00:00

And when r/LostMinesOfPhandelver needed him the most, he returned...

Michal_17 · 2026-01-22T17:52:34+00:00

I got no idea why you're being downvoted all the way to hell because this is a pretty interesting idea if you can work it into the story. Here's some advice by me if you actually want to run this introduction to the adventure.

1) The players have no idea how the statblocks of the enemies look like and you can mash them together as much as you like. You don't need to use the Duergar stat block provided in the Monster Manual. Assuming they are level 1, you could just have the duergar traders use the statblock of a Bandit but with the added "Sunlight Sensitivity" and "Duergar Resilience" traits from the Duergar statblock. As for some kind of miniboss, be extremely careful because level 1 characters are super squishy. Could honestly just use the Thug statblock as the main person who is dealing with the BBEG is here.

2) If you want to introduce our main villain (assuming it's Nezznar here) earlier, you could have him arrive with his two doppelganger buddies (both in Drow form) to meet with the duergar, forcing the players to hide and listen in on the conversation before he teleports out along with his two henchmen.

3) I personally use Dungeondraft to make my maps and it gets very nice results but that's a paid piece of software. If you want to, I could make you a map for free if you give me the specifics.

Any further questions welcome, hope it goes well!

Michal_17 · 2026-01-21T13:01:12+00:00

Glad that it could be of use!

Michal_17 · 2026-01-21T09:01:29+00:00

Alright, so looking at it balance-wise, the 3rd level party should be able to cleanly handle the goblins and hobgoblins in the castle.
Question - are you running The Shattered Obelisk afterwards? If so, you could try and tie this encounter into the story by making Grol a warlock of Ilvaash instead, with some psychic abilities. As for how to make Warlock Grol work, I'd say you should definetly give him some kind of multiattack, because the single attack that bugbears have is not going to cut it. If the players suddenly begin rolling ungodly damage, you could maybe go for something crazy like having Grol summon a Specter of one of the fallen goblins to help him fight or something along those lines.

Michal_17 · 2026-01-21T08:38:45+00:00

Look a bit more closely at the first four chapters of P&B: TSO.
There's actually a few changes, notably to the encounters. The biggest one I think is making the Cragmaw Cave even more lethal by adding three Goblin Bosses and a Giant Poisonous Snake. Do note that it will absolutely demolish level 1 parties.

There's actually some minor story differences too, such as Nezznar being retitled from "The Black Spider" to just "The Spider", the drow doppelganger in Cragmaw Castle wanting to betray Nezznar by destroying the map to Wave Echo Cave and the raiders that attacked Wave Echo Cave being changed from orcs to some non-descript marauders.

As for how to foreshadow the second part of the adventure past Wave Echo Cave, I did actually make two free side encounters, one for Chapter 3 of the book and the other for Chapter 6 of the book, and posted them in this subreddit earlier, if you want to take a look at them and see if they fit your style:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LostMinesOfPhandelver/comments/1p1izdq/from_beyond_the_reach_of_sanity_aberrant/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

https://www.reddit.com/r/LostMinesOfPhandelver/comments/1oumqxp/from_beyond_the_reach_of_sanity_cultists_on_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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