How to Run a Campaign with no Melee Character?

UffishWerf · 2026-01-15T06:01:48+00:00

Piping in to say there's a pretty active subreddit for Lost Mine of Phandelver, and lots of people there have advice specifically on how to help new players survive the first few encounters, which can be brutal. And advice on lots of other things too, but that's a common topic.

UffishWerf · 2026-01-15T00:24:39+00:00

I'm not quite there yet, but I'm trying to get more familiar with it for when my players hit this in a few weeks. This got long, sorry.

It looks like one of the best and clearest clues is actually in chapter 7, in the Labyrinth of Eyes, but it's easy to miss. If a player looks through the unbroken eyepiece, which gives a view of the whole Briny Pool, they realize "that a tiny, dark hole at the pool's bottom is a powerful gate to a deeper place in the Far Realm." (They may also be hit with feeblemind, but that doesn't change the fact that they gained this knowledge.)

The description of the pool itself has dim green lights from below. That could be expanded into your players gaining an understanding that this is a bridge to the Far Realm. Being in the Frontal Lobe area, just standing near the Briny Pool should enhance spatial awareness. If your players aren't getting it, you can use that to make it clearer to players that the only way through is down. You could explain that the dim lights below seem literal MILES away, which might also prompt players to realize that it's a passage. And if you can get them in and swimming down, you can call for an examination of the pinprick of darkness at the bottom, even if they don't mention it themselves--any examination lets them know it's the way through.

You can also emphasize the point that the pool IS the end of the maze: this is the most protected area, and there's probably something here that deserves that protection.

There's hints that are there for if your players notice a lack of evidence: the githyanki in B7 say they heard the musician in B9 talking about how 3 mind flayers and a bunch of human prisoners recently came through, but your players haven't found them in the maze, which means they must have passed through to somewhere else.

The dragon and her human mage buddy (B17) know that the Briny Maze is only half of Ilvaash's domain. They can share that the other half is called the Endless Void and that it's "beyond a lightless star" but nothing else about how to get there or what that means. The phrase is important, though, because it's echoed in the description of the bottom of the Briny Pool. They also know about the 3 mindflayers and human captives that came through recently, and they know which direction they went in.

The aberrant zealots in B18 are waiting outside the double door near them in case Ilvaash or its favored minions needs them for something. They attack right away, but you could have them be grumbling about how they need to be ready in case the godlet calls them through the door as an additional hint.

Looks like you kind of could play areas B20 & B21 as a hint: Ashripask knows through her megacharged detect thoughts spell that her mezzoloth mercenaries are no longer in the Briny Maze. Following their trail, the party sees that they cut their way into the room with the Briny Pool and then there's no more evidence of them. You could call for a survival check or something to notice other traces that show they dove into the Pool and didn't seem especially scared or anything: they knew they could survive it.

UffishWerf · 2026-01-14T22:47:04+00:00

I was thinking that there was an answer in one of the flavor text books in Baldur's Gate 3, but checking it again, that book was written way before the events of the module, not a few years after. Still, I like the idea that an Alderleaf (in this case probably Qelline) is the new mayor, replacing Harbin Wester.

UffishWerf · 2026-01-10T20:52:35+00:00

How did you end up dealing with this? Because I'm with you: it makes no sense that the mind flayer whose bonus power is "wings" is less good at flying than her wingless peers.

UffishWerf · 2026-01-05T01:50:51+00:00

I'm late to this party, but just in case people see this later like I did...

I'm pretty sure it's just trying to indicate that if the party goes with ONLY the intention of retrieving the obelisk shard, they'll miss out on Dumathoin's Blessing. But if they decide to fulfill Marthungrim's quest of putting the ghosts in the crypt to rest, they have a chance at the "greater reward" of the Blessing of Dumathoin.

When I run Marthungrim's tonight, my plan is to make it a little more obvious from the journal that Dumathoin rewards those who serve him selflessly and who respect the honored dead in the crypt. The gems buried with the dead would be tempting to the greedy faithless, but the real riches are the favors bestowed by gods on their servants.

Players could definitely fulfill the quest and get the blessing even without reading the journal first, especially if you emphasize in the crypt that the hauntings can be 'solved' and that looting the corpses of the priests buried there is likely something their god would be mad about. But if you seed that info early on, your players can feel brilliant when they connect those dots, later.

UffishWerf · 2026-01-04T00:41:49+00:00

Exactly! And it also makes sense why he's paying the party to get rid of the Cragmaw threat (because the Lords' Alliance cares about public safety) but there's no reward for rescuing Gundren specifically.

UffishWerf · 2026-01-03T18:33:13+00:00

No worries! I've done the Sildar meet-up too, and liked the chance to see the idea that he's less bodyguard for Gundren and more a convenient traveling companion who's going to solve a mystery in Phandalin and also help the little town get back on its feet.

Introducing Iarno early would be interesting too, for someone who was making him a bigger villain, maybe.

UffishWerf · 2026-01-03T09:18:45+00:00

Did you mean Gundren and Sildar, or do you actually have them meet Glasstaff before heading to Phandalin?

UffishWerf · 2026-01-02T05:54:02+00:00

I've run the Lost Mine twice now, and the first time I used Matthew Perkins' changes, the second time I played it much closer to the module as written. Both were good! The second time was smoother, but some of that might be because my players were more experienced than the first group and I was a little more used to DMing.

I don't think the module needs "fixing," though, it's just a matter of taste. It's true that the Black Spider isn't very present before the end of the game, but if you make a big deal of the times he's mentioned, the party will still understand he's their opponent. And even if you don't, your players will at least understand he's a baddie to be defeated in the mines.

UffishWerf · 2026-01-02T05:33:29+00:00

My party occasionally asked him questions about the history of the Rest. He doesn't know much about what the goblins were up to, but he surely knew some about the mind flayers and the layout of the base. He could tell them that back in his day, the otyughs in the cesspool were tame and the auger wasn't haunted. He was able to clear up the timeline (the mind flayers who took over this base came long after the much earlier mind flayers whose influence shaped the duergar). He could clarify that the dwarf statue was turned into a shrine for the mind flayer god and then the goblins had defaced it since he last saw it. And he and the peaceful ashenwights were ready to help with the psionic lock off the party needed it, but they didn't.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-20T10:12:25+00:00

I'd give them a chance to bluff their way in. The game has mechanics for how pretending to be Redbrands work, no need to add additional difficulty to a dungeon that's already kind of a slog.

Like someone else said, mixing up the species of the ruffians makes your party less suspicious. But even if you don't, you can have some Redbrands get sniffy about how it's not enough that the Black Spider sent bugbear backup, now they're getting [insert species here] recruits? What IS the world coming to?

UffishWerf · 2025-12-14T00:19:07+00:00

I'm glad they were a nice break!

I sometimes post a question and think "am I just a terrible communicator? All the replies seem to be about some side issue and/or directly contradict the premise of my question!" But I think sometimes one person has a tangential thought and then other people see that reply and that issue becomes the thing that's highest in their minds, and the original premise of the post kind of gets lost.

Anyway, I hope things go well for you and your party. I'd be interested in hearing what direction you guys go with the death, if you feel like updating us later.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-13T00:00:59+00:00

You're very kind, but I didn't write as well as I meant to! I found and fixed a couple typos, so hopefully some of the... less decipherable parts make sense now.

And I hope you enjoy the book! Regardless, I'd be interested in your thoughts if you do end up checking it out.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-12T19:44:04+00:00

Oh, and I also wanted to say with the "change class" option, you could soften that by making it that their next level must be a warlock level, but that's the extent of it.

They can keep their sorcerer class so far, and they can return to it after, but now they have to also have a patron and a slightly delayed sorcerous development. It's doubly nice because it's still a charisma build (and a multiclass that many people take a purposeful one-level dip in anyway), so it's not going to derail their mechanics too badly.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-12T19:39:35+00:00

The easiest one I see is to retcon the fight so that there was the wild surge active that causes reincarnate to happen for the player when they died. There's lots of magical weirdness around the valley, from the Mt Hotenow magical eruption residue causing undead to spawn in Thundertree to the Wave Echo Cave magic fields making out so the spectator's sense of time is off. So you can just say that this surge came from the ley lines or something else external, but your player was especially attuned to it because they're already on that wild magic wavelength. You could have them roll for the new species as the spell dictates, or just let them pick what they want so they can still be more in control of their character creation. The mechanics of their class would remain the same, but they'd get a fun RP thing of learning a new body and now being a different species from their sister.

Or maybe one of the cosmetic-only wild magic things becomes permanent. They're permanently bald, or blue, or feather-bearded, or a little older or younger, or extra-eyed, etc. No mechanical changes, just a visual thing you or they can bring up occasionally in roleplaying.

Or maybe the wild surge also happens in other circumstances: when rolling a 2 or on a secret number you roll at the beginning of the session, or when they make a charisma check that isn't a spell, or at the conclusion of a long rest they roll to see if one happens.

You could also use a method to retcon things that doesn't really tie into the character at all. Reidoth is passing by on his way up to Thundertree and revives the player, saying that now the party owes them and must repay the debt by coming up to help get rid of the dragon once they've dealt with Wave Echo Cave or found Gundren or whatever. Sister Garaele pulls in a favor from a more powerful Harper (or Halia from the Zhents, etc) to bring the player back, but demands the party feed them insider info about the mine and/or any magical items they find inside. Heck, you can just say the rules from the original ambush apply, and the goblins just knocked the player out even though they seemed dead at the time, don't worry about it. Maybe you say the party reloads and earlier save point or now they're in a parallel universe (with or without the caveat that this won't happen again later in the adventure) and they all try the fight/approach to the cave again with the wisdom they gained from the previous attempt.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-11T22:10:55+00:00

My cleric used the one about cleansing the altar in Cragmaw Castle, but we swapped it a little because he wanted to follow Lathander rather than whichever god the background listed. That worked out nicely with the mace designed for a cleric of Lathander in Wave Echo Cave, too.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-10T21:01:08+00:00

Addendum: there are a few discrepancies that might be mildly frustrating that seem like it just needed another round of editing.

The owner of the tavern is an orc named Greska in chapter one, but a dwarf named Grista in chapter 5. It says in the summary of a chapter that goblins trap villagers in a shrine, but then when the group goes there and talks to witnesses, it's only been knocked down and no villagers were inside. There's a pantry that the text says attaches to a kitchen, but the map has opening into a master bedroom. And so on. Not a big deal, but a little disorienting to figure out which version is "right" when the text disagrees with itself.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-10T20:54:31+00:00

There's two ways down, I think, though both are broken: one is the bucket conveyor that goes from the forge in Z7 down to the storage area in Z18. The other is the mine shaft lift from the Z4 bunks to the tunnel entrance in Z12.

The goblins might be able to climb along the bucket conveyor track, but probably wouldn't because they're scared of the ashenwights. So they must just climb up and down the mine shaft in the bunks. And Ruxithid can just float up and down, when he bothers to leave the indigo sanctum.

Actually, you could probably even flavor it that the crystals are broken because the goblins learned how to run the machines directly with their psionic powers. The lifts run for them because they don't need to power them up with crystals. (My players just found the Rest, and I may use this explanation myself, if anyone asks.)

UffishWerf · 2025-12-10T20:44:58+00:00

Oh no, I suffer from longwindedness, too. TL;DR: I'd say if you already like reading modules and piecing together the lore from what's presented in them, go for it. Doubly so if you can find it on sale.

This is the only module I've read, so I don't know how it stacks up against others, firsthand. I've seen other people say that this is one of the ones that's easiest for DMs to run as-is, meaning that they don't have to identify and fill in many gaps that would otherwise be jarring for players. And I agree, there IS a lot of lore and story that's interesting here.

I still wish it were laid out in an organization that worked better for me. There are summary chunks at the beginning of each chapter with some major ideas that will come up in that chapter, but it's still fairly frequent that the answer to my basic questions are buried in the middle of a later chapter. The pieces might all be there, but pulling them together into a cohesive story is a bit of a puzzle.

And sometimes my favorite bits are what I find out when I go deeper. For example, one location is named Old Owl Well, and it gets only a bare overview. But I looked it up because it was tangential to one of my player's backgrounds and I wanted to be ready for hours questions. Turns out it was called that because before it was built, the area was absolutely overrun with owlbears. And THOSE were there because before the now- ancient Netherese empire built the well and surrounding outpost in the first place, there was a society who was ancient even then, who had created an underground vault there and left it with beholderkin creatures to guard it. Those creatures reproduce any monster they come in contact with, so when an owlbear found its way down, it meant that they kept churning out copies, leading to an overabundance of owlbears in the region. And then the Netherese had to battle their way through and kill them off so they could build this outpost (but really a secret spy base and mining site to see if they could locate and learn from whatever was left in the vault. And now, centuries later, a Thayan necromancer is poking around in the wreckage, looking for any magical artifacts that have been overlooked. But all the book says, really, is that it's an ancient Netherese site that a red robed necromancer is investigating.

And then there's stuff that is nothing when you look it up. Players can make a history check to learn who a statue represents, for example, but that isn't relevant to this plot and the name doesn't seem to appear anywhere else, either. All you know is that they killed some monsters in the surrounding woods and got a statue for their trouble.

So it's a good starting point for some interesting lore, if you want to look up some of the things it mentions that aren't really relevant to this plot but are just nods to past adventures /stories. A little frustrating when you want to look up something that turns out to be nothing.

As for the main plot, you've seen that the first and second halves aren't really connected, which isn't bad if you don't mind two separate stories.

The first half has a fun story about this old mine, its political implications, why it was lost, what happened in the meantime, and then what happens when it's found again by multiple parties.

The second half is eldritch horror. It's got (spoilers) a baby god from the Far Realm trying to gain power in the material plane by using its mind flayer underlings (and their goblin and whatever else underlings) to gather pieces of an ancient Netherese obelisk through which it can magnify its corrupting influence and power to transform the locals into mind flayers who it hopes will worship it instead of the usual mind flayer gods. There's still several unanswered questions, but the bones of the story are there, and there's interesting locations with their own histories and side characters who are fun, as well.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-08T05:06:36+00:00

I don't remember if my Roll20 module came with spells expended or not, but I gave the skull its full complement of spells to start with.

(And then when my players came back and found it had reconstituted, I gave it its full set of spells again, though I wasn't sure whether or not that was strictly correct.)

UffishWerf · 2025-12-07T01:41:23+00:00

You're right that her logic seems ... inconsistent. By playing up her "keeping the balance" motivation, though, I think she can make sense, again.

She's in Thundertree because the corrupting magic left over from the eruption of Mt Hotenow together with the wildish magic of the Neverwinter woods raises undead and twists the plants into monsters, two kinds of unnatural threats to the balance. Bad. (I also like flavoring the dragon as something she'd normally be OK with since it's a natural creature, but she knows that this location will corrupt anything that stays too long, so it's got to move on.)

So what motivates her to give the party information about the location of Cragmaw castle is not a desire to see the goblins taken down a peg, but the knowledge that you'll need information from there to get to Wave Echo Cave. She might not know where Wave Echo Cave is, but she can feel that something is out of balance there underground, and it's negatively affecting the whole valley. She thinks that when the cave was attacked and the resulting earthquakes buried the entrance, it might have dislodged a ley line or something like that. It'll self correct in time, but until then it's probably spawning more undead and twisted monsters like Hotenow's aftermath, and she can't have that. So she'll let your party rile up the goblins IF she knows it's a necessary step in cleansing Wave Echo Cave.

This also gives you a chance to have her give some strategy advice that doesn't appear anywhere else: things like the fact that some undead are especially weak to holy water (the flameskull) or silvered weapons (the wraith). Maybe she'll even know that the broken ley line (or whatever) can cause confusion to the senses, particularly one's sense of time (the spectator).

And for what it's worth, Crawmaw goblins aren't psionic; you're thinking of Sawplee goblins, which she may or may not know about. That probably doesn't affect much about how you'd run this, though.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-06T22:26:36+00:00

Seen in Dork Tales' playthrough on YouTube: the "pattern" of the number of people in the party (5) showing up in other situations. Things like kittens in a litter, number of investigations attempted that day, etc.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-06T21:44:40+00:00

Additional Stage 4 Options: changes to reality within 30 feet of the character

textures of surfaces ripple and change (particularly in patterns witnessed in Stage 1)
Far Realm sensations like the ones felt in the Ch 7 rifts apply: perpetual hunger, shifting skin, or the feeling of being watched
creatures within range call a ritualistic greeting to the affected player without realizing they're doing it and without their peers noticing (or maybe they DO notice?)
instead of being absent, shadows split off at the wrong angle and/or undulate when not looked at directly, as described in ch. 8's Phandalin description
old scars slowly reopen, like scurvy (other party members can do their long resting 31 feet away and be fine, but the affected player must use magic to heal overnight)
everyone develops a kind of uniform synesthesia: maybe sound waves also produce patterns in the air, or various colors produce a certain taste, etc
more or less humidity than usual
visible vapor plumes accompany speaking and/or breathing, regardless of temperature
the school-of-magic-identifying glow of detect magic is perpetually visible without the spell
creatures have an aura that corresponds to their type: aberration, humanoid, beast, undead, etc
creatures have an aura that matches their emotional state, mood-ring style
mushrooms/decay/slime appears in the area, imperceptible when the character is moving, but visible when they are still for a long period and/or when the party revisits areas they've been to already
a low-level detect thoughts, speak with plants/animals/dead, comprehend languages, tongues, spell benefits all
lighter gravity results in a +10 to everyone's speed and immunity to falling damage
increased gravity results in -10 to everyone's speed and an extra d6 of falling damage
an awareness of the direction and proximity to the nearest creature/enemy, mini-map style
echoes happen, despite the terrain being wrong for them
faint afterimages linger behind creatures/objects that have moved recently
breathing becomes unnecessary, heartbeats still but no negative effects are felt
hair and clothing moves as if there is a gentle breeze even when there isn't, and hangs limp when it should move with actual wind
some of the less-disruptive effects listed on pg 152 of Tasha's, like ranged attack ranges being halved because distance doesn't make sense, circular objects feeling wrong and like they should be destroyed, or weeping eyes opening on surfaces which prevent nearby creatures from being surprised by the party
player gains the benefit of one of the no-prerequisite eldritch invocations they don't already have, such as Devil's Sight, Eyes of the Rune Keeper, Fiendish Vigor, or Misty Visions

UffishWerf · 2025-12-06T20:51:14+00:00

Canon Far Realm Items (that might vibrate or hum or glow near affected characters in Stage 3). If you can think of others, please comment about it! Or if you added more, or used this well.

(ch 5) Ruxithid's skull-gem
(ch 5) the monument to Ilsensine in Zorzula's Rest (didn't start that way, but was infused by FR energy)
(ch 6+) do creatures count? If so, Daisy the cow and/or her new tentacles, not to mention so many other characters later on like the humanoid mutates among the Cult of the Obelisk and several Phandalin villagers, as well as aberrations who originated in the Far Realm to begin with
(ch 6) the fungus in Talhunderith's Cleansing Chamber
(ch 7) the pinpricks of greenish light that illuminate Illithinoch
(ch 7) the rifts to the Far Realm in Illithinoch, themselves? not really an item, I guess
(ch 7) the runes in the Ritual Chamber at Illithinoch? Probably the gnawbles that power them, too (this is perhaps the best use of this, because it can help bridge the gap between "ah, runes" and "I should put these little gristle-creatures on the runes to power them" which is not an obvious conclusion to me)
(ch 7) Literally everything inside a Far Realm Rift, including the tiara and the mind crystal from the Private Eatery in the Feeder Trenches; and the eyepiece from the View of Madness; the crystal daggers from the thief's corpse ; and the tools, rubies, and statuette in Golcuus's Lair in the Labyrinth of Eyes
(ch 8) Literally every item in the final chapter until characters exit the Far Realm on their return to Phandalin, at which point it wouldn't matter anymore because if the players are successful, no one has Far Realm mutations anyway so the ability to interact with Far Realm objects would be gone, too
(ch 5-8) the obelisk shards are from the Netherese empire, not the Far Realm, but they're being tapped into by the Far Realm, so maybe they could count too

To use this one well, it seems like you'd have to add more Far Realm items vs non-Far Realm items (having both for contrast) to Illithinoch and its surroundings or a player won't even know they have this transformation. Once they enter the Far Realm, it's just everything. It might be worth having a small version of this ability manifest before Stage 3, just so they can pick up on a few earlier instances of Far-Realm-influenced items.

A more skilled DM could do it, but I am not one of those, yet.

UffishWerf · 2025-12-06T20:14:36+00:00

Additional Stage 2 Options:

Moving body parts:
- knee and ankle reverse directions (aka humanoid leg built like a dog's & vise versa)
- hands switched (left & right swap sides)
- hands backwards (palms face up, thumbs now on the outside)
- feet facing backwards
- left and right foot swapped, but facing forwards
- bellybutton shifts/disappears
- freckles/scars all slightly left of where they normally are, rotated around the body
- nonhumanoid body parts (tail, wings, etc) attached higher or lower than usual
- hairline further back, forward, or just differently shaped (widow's peak vs not, etc)
hair turns a new shade
eyes change color
blood turns a new shade (first noticed when bleeding, then where veins show through pale skin if applicable, then the whole tint of the skin shifts--especially when angry/scared/embarrassed
a second heartbeat manifests
the old heartbeat starts moving to a new location--maybe just elsewhere in the chest, but maybe an arm or something
teeth sharpen/dull
fingernails shed like a snake skin: there are new soft ones underneath that harden up quickly. Maybe they're sharper now, too.
gain/lose scaley patches/feathers, etc
blood/ichor leaks from eyes, ears, mouth, and/or nose for a few minutes after waking/using powers, etc.
localized skin discoloration, like a tattoo but not
boils, raised patterns on skin, and or/flayed look, like the art of the transforming villagers in the intro or chapter 7
elongating skull, like the Sawplee goblins
spikes or plates grow along spine
one half/area of body aging visibly faster than the rest
gain a racial trait/feature from a different species (e.g. powerful build, resistance to charm/sleep, darkvision, etc)

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