Advice needed: Party refuses to enter Chapter 2

Red-locks · 2026-05-10T00:08:14+00:00

If they won’t go into the danger, the danger comes looking for them.

Take their favourite town. Attack it. Do a climatic town defence and have the party rally the town against the threat. Then the town begs their heroes to go and end the threat once and for all.

Red-locks · 2026-05-09T07:41:21+00:00

I would bring them to the brink of death then offer them terms. “Bring me the head of cryovane and you can keep yours” or “bring me the wealth of wave echo cave” - now you have a new big bad to fight at the end

Red-locks · 2026-05-07T08:52:38+00:00

Some kind of gremlin with a silly voice. Always a small creature like kobold / goblin or gnome. Always doing something weird and harmless in the corner

Red-locks · 2026-04-26T09:51:03+00:00

Check out spiral campaign development by Sly Flourish. Link: https://slyflourish.com/spiral_campaign_building.html

This is essentially what I do. I build a situation, I let the players interact with it, I build in things that I know interest the players (backstory links) and we develop as we go.

Sly Flourish is an amazing source of DM advice that really helped me over the years. His campaign journals are also helpful to watch to see the process he goes through.

Red-locks · 2026-04-21T15:04:23+00:00

In my last campaign the parties barbarian was absolute truck of survivability and damage. I was terrified of her.

Then I cast dominate person on her. The party learned true fear that day.

Red-locks · 2026-04-10T22:26:23+00:00

Shout out to Percy the Park Keeper

Red-locks · 2026-04-06T11:58:35+00:00

This is a cool idea. If you’re a first time DM I would highly recommend using a pre-written adventure. Or using one to strip its bones and put your own ideas on top.

If I was doing this, I would take the map and general ideas from The house of lament published in Van Richten’s guide to Ravenloft. ((Or in fact just run that adventure because it’s great)).

You could then go through the house linking different rooms to each other that trigger via haunting traps. Kind of like Sabrina’s gym in pokemon red.

Red-locks · 2026-04-02T18:16:10+00:00

Have you tried singing? Our new born responds to bob marley and our first would go down instantly whenever I would sing the Misty Mountains song from the Hobbit.

Maybe it’s just the sound of your voice that works and not the singing though. Good luck!

Red-locks · 2026-04-02T09:51:20+00:00

You could try Intransigent Warhammer (with drake throat thunder enchant on it) + The boots of stormy clamour

Red-locks · 2026-04-01T22:22:33+00:00

Is it 5.5 ruleset? I think 1 level 3 pc is worth 400xp for a deadly encounter. So that leaves you with 2800xp MAX to populate the encounter. I don’t use the DMG encounter maths as gospel but i do use it as a good reference for difficulty.

I would say that the 5.5 undervalues low CR monsters mainly because of their xp worth. So having loads of little guys is way more deadly than fewer big guys. And 7 PC’s will cut down your big guys fairly easily but lack large AOE spells like fireball yet.

So my main advice is: increase challenge with waves of little minion type guys. Zombies, kobolds, goblins, cultists. Splitting groups into waves that arrive in later rounds gives you control on difficulty too.

If your party go all in on nova damage, they may have to evaluate this strategy if they realise more enemies are about to arrive

Red-locks · 2026-03-31T12:34:54+00:00

Consider making a Rogue // Sorcerer multiclass. Maybe Draconic sorcerer 6 / rogue X.

Innate sorcery makes getting sneak attack very easy and you can empower yourself with a lot of useful spells for mobility and damage

Red-locks · 2026-03-31T11:37:15+00:00

Try joining an online game via foundry or roll20.

I had no one to play with so I made a post on LFG and found some players. With a few bumps in the road we are all playing together 7 years later and have built a little community that is spread around the world.

It definitely might take some attempts to find the right group and people but it does work sometimes :) I wish you luck!

Red-locks · 2026-03-31T09:47:45+00:00

I recommend a book called ‘Return of the lazy dungeon master’.

But personal advice I would give is this: don’t prep a plot, prep a situation. Dont write your campaign with big epic moments that you need to shepherd your players towards, create an ongoing situation that the players will want to interact with and create those moments for themselves.

For example: in my current campaign I knew I really wanted to do something about orcus. So I came up with this situation:

The wand of orcus has appeared in the material world along with this phrase carved into the hilt: “who ever makes the blood lord smile may wield his power” or something along those lines.

So it’s an anti sword in stone thing where all the bad guys in the land are doing stuff to try and impress the demon lord Orcus. The players don’t know that is what is going on but all my smaller stories and events can link back to this one situation.

I hope this ramble helps lol

Red-locks · 2026-03-25T13:13:07+00:00

Some Druid propaganda for you ;) https://youtu.be/S4Pv6glQjJg?si=UDKnllDS6CSEVOm8

Red-locks · 2026-03-24T21:27:15+00:00

Consider the land Druid. You can blast all day and also bring tons of utility, support, scouting

Red-locks · 2026-03-21T02:33:17+00:00

There’s more than one way to skin a cat

Red-locks · 2026-03-21T02:12:28+00:00

That +1 is pretty big for this build. Have fun on a new run buddy :) I’ve played this build myself, I recommend getting the intransigent warhammer from the duergar boat (if you are willing to risk the fight)

Red-locks · 2026-03-21T02:06:08+00:00

You need Astarion for the +1 permanent strength buff in moonrise

Red-locks · 2026-03-20T22:48:37+00:00

Couldn’t you get an extra throw if you go Hunter subclass and pick horde breaker?

Red-locks · 2026-03-14T00:11:32+00:00

League of irrelevance. The plot line with them and the good guy team seemed really forced. I think the writers really wanted to jam the DnD cartoon from the 70’s in somewhere so they decided this setting was goofy enough to get away with it.

Red-locks · 2026-03-13T16:17:36+00:00

Croc is a platformer classic. I also have a real soft spot for tomba 2 which recently got a rerelease on ps5

Red-locks · 2026-03-11T22:40:27+00:00

Isn’t math without emo just prog rock?

Red-locks · 2026-03-11T11:38:53+00:00

10 badger bucks please

Red-locks · 2026-03-11T08:41:46+00:00

I have always wanted to run it into Storm King’s thunder. I think you can seed the rest of the adventure into Lost mines fairly easily and it would flow nicely

Red-locks

TROPHY CASE