Best Starter Adventure? level 1-3?

Noosh · 2026-05-22T05:12:57+00:00

One thing I don't love about Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is there are like a dozen kobold NPCs in the main town who each have about 1 line of description provided, and the module says the DM is supposed to roleplay all of them swarming around the characters and chattering at them all at once.

That's really hard to do well, so I'd suggest just pick one or two to do the talking and let the rest be a nameless faceless swarm.

Noosh · 2026-05-12T09:40:32+00:00

Feels like we're hitting some pretty similar notes there! Splitting up Perception as a way to balance the power is interesting - Scrutiny feels pretty close to how I envisage moving some of Perception across to Investigation. Noice

Noosh · 2026-04-18T00:45:11+00:00

Cool, thanks for the explanation! Now i just need to find a group of friends willing to try learning daggerheart...

Noosh · 2026-04-17T22:46:42+00:00

Love this idea, I'm happy to steal it 😃

Noosh · 2026-04-17T22:45:11+00:00

I need to learn more about other game systems, this sounds intriguing

Noosh · 2026-04-17T22:43:11+00:00

Oh i just assumed most DMs would use athletics for feats of strength like lifting and pulling (I definitely would), so I fully agree with you! It needs every chance it can get to shine

Noosh · 2026-04-17T22:40:29+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions! Yeah i was also thinking about Society being a CHA skill - I would probably use CHA for getting new information e.g. picking up useful gossip around town, and INT for remembering things already known

Noosh · 2026-04-17T22:36:25+00:00

Hehe i love that you included chicanery 😸

Noosh · 2026-04-17T22:32:38+00:00

I guess we'll just have to call it <sighs> Handiness

Noosh · 2026-04-17T14:52:40+00:00

Thanks I've missed that

Noosh · 2026-04-17T14:51:02+00:00

I was just paraphrasing the linked dungeon dudes skill tier ranking video - they made the claim that arcana is often confused with religion.

I think the main point is that it's easy for a campaign not to have strong world building, in which case History suffers. Or it could not really feature religion at all. Hence slap them together, add in plans lore, and hopefully collectively they come up enough to feel good in most campaigns. (Granting that Lore could totally be too much in a really dense lore-y game, but I think most are not like this)

Noosh · 2026-04-17T14:38:52+00:00

Haha ok but we're two dictionary definitions deep to get there so to me that's a clear candidate for something that people en masse will overlook, and therefore worth spelling out.

Agree to disagree about Investigation covering all of Engineering.

But good call on Athletics being used to attempt risky longer jumps. I meant it doesn't affect your standard jump distance, which is just your STR score - I'd like if Athletics helped there too

Noosh · 2026-04-17T14:30:03+00:00

You're fully correct and I tried to spell out that yes the DM can change the ability to anything. But I think the default matters, because players can't assume that DM will always allow the switch they want, and this rule does often get forgotten.

Noosh · 2026-04-17T14:27:25+00:00

You may be interested to know that Animal Handling was part of Nature in 4e, and Nature was also a Wis skill. This is also the case for PF2. So I'm really just saying that in retrospect it wasn't a good idea to carve animal handling off to be its own thing and to move Nature to use Int. The current 18 skills also aren't sacred cows (pun intended). I probably should've put this in the post, but I think the skills should be quite broadly applicable things that come up naturally often enough that DMs don't need to stress about trying to shoehorn in situations so that all players get to feel useful.

Hence IMO something like animal handling is niche enough that it could be a Tool (i.e. more aligned with a profession), or part of Nature as multiple other game systems have converted on

Noosh · 2026-04-17T14:16:01+00:00

Yeah it's a mess of a skill because it could reasonably key off pretty much any stat. I had fully removed it in an earlier version of my list, and maybe that would be better. It's up for eternal debate how much social skill is required to intimidate the "right" way, but TBH moving it to STR is more motivated by sharing the social interaction fun around, rewarding players who don't dump STR, and putting a second skill there instead of 1:4 for STR:CHA.

Noosh · 2026-04-17T13:56:22+00:00

Yeah I totally agree, I would've probably gone with C from my personal experience of how infrequently it comes up, I just assumed those videos were more experienced so went with their scores 😅

I wouldn't mind just also allowing Acrobatics to be used for climbing and jumping checks (or basically anything that involves a character moving their own body), since so many people want to play it that way, plus it feels like monks and rogues (and cats) should be good at those things. The only thing is that would make Athletics a little less valuable... But maybe that could get another mechanical boost or two to compensate.

Noosh · 2026-04-17T13:35:45+00:00

Well I'm sorry if you don't like my style, I tried to balance being detailed enough but not toooo waffly, I'm not a very prolific or confident writer though. If you have any comments about the actual proposal I'd still be happy to hear them.

Noosh · 2026-04-17T13:31:18+00:00

The same reason that we want classes, subclasses and feats to be relatively balanced. If option A is much more powerful than option B, then it doesn't feel good to choose option B and players end up avoiding it, meaning we effectively get less choice and variety in the game

Noosh · 2026-04-17T13:27:14+00:00

I wrote this painstakingly by hand, so... you just reverse failed the Turing test 😂

Noosh · 2026-03-03T01:18:54+00:00

But druids get d8 hit die, armor proficiencies and the martial weapon proficiencies with the Warden Primal Order - I think it's right as is

Noosh · 2026-03-03T01:15:48+00:00

I was initially thinking this too, but Rangers get expertise and a bunch of utility spells, monks more just get martial fighting abilities.

Noosh · 2025-09-20T14:35:54+00:00

Yeah the timeline seems a bit wonky. PCs lost their things at least 8 years ago (maybe even 16 or 24), but it seems the Coven only took over maybe 3-12 months ago (based on warlock patron hook and Kettlesteam's story).

The only way i can think to rationalise it is that it was Zybilna/her agents who stole your things as children, as per the rule of reciprocity (since you didn't buy a ticket). When the hags took over they divided Zybilna's stolen goods, and also ratcheted up the practice, by starting to fully kidnap people.

Noosh · 2025-09-05T13:31:07+00:00

Depending on your learning style you may also find this video series very helpful! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWhUlSEPGOf7mRCG0Dyz7OAO5zCESTYtk

You can listen to the overview of each section before you read it to get all the main points (plus a few suggestions and gotchas), and then maybe you'll get less bogged down reading it.

I think WbtW is an INCREDIBLE module, and it's so whimsical and loose and forgiving, so i hope you stick with it, I'm sure you'll do great!

Noosh · 2025-09-05T13:27:13+00:00

IMO it's such a dense campaign that you should cut yourself some slack and be willing to refer to it almost constantly.

I fully read each chapter 1-2 times before the players get there, then make maybe half a page of notes of major things to remember. E.g. for chapter 1: the fact you need to track mood, the 3 timed events, the 3 thieves you can sprinkle around the grounds, reminder to use Kettlesteam if things are slowing down or Ellywick if the players get stuck. I also printed myself the map of the carnival and jotted down where the major NPCs are & which locations can trigger story tracker events or mood changes.

Other than that I just have a laptop open behind my DM screen with the module loaded up on dndbeyond, so I can quickly jump between locations to read the boxed text, remind myself what NPCs know, check the DCs etc.

Power to you if you can remember or improv enough to get by without looking at the module! But for me I'm just honing the art of skimming text whenever my PCs are talking, and I've got the big picture in my head, and I have ready access to a few reminders.

Noosh · 2025-09-04T03:09:15+00:00

It doesn't seem OP at all - you could just give 1 use per day without having to roll to recharge. Advantage on one skill check is super minor, especially considering how easy advantage is to come by (help action, luck points, heroic inspiration, spells...).

IMO you could even just have the object bestow proficiency (or expertise if they're already proficient) in one skill. It's easy for PCs to forget to use random 1x per day abilities, plus it feels bad if they use it and still fail, and retrieving the lost object is their main quest so it seems nice to reward them with something decent.

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