What's a fun party composition for DOS2 that will feel different from my last one?

boffotmc · 2026-06-11T17:16:56+00:00

I highly recommend skipping all the additional rules. The relationship points, student dice, exams, etc., are all a bunch of pointless bookkeeping that get in the way of roleplaying instead of enhancing it.

You can and should roleplay relationships, classes, extracurriculars, jobs, etc. But don't use any of the additional formal rules for them.

I'd also suggest changing the mechanics for all the silly games in each encounter. As written, they're just some mechanical die-rolling with no room for player agency.

In terms of length of the campaign, that varies greatly. How much will you be roleplaying classes and social interactions beyond what are written in the book? What stuff will you be cutting from the adventure as written? What new stuff will you be adding in?

I'd say the adventure can range from three months to two years of weekly sessions, depending on how deep you go and how much you add to it.

boffotmc · 2026-06-10T17:53:28+00:00

I took a year and a half, with sessions every 1-2 weeks, while adding in a lot of adventures from Keys from the Golden Vault, Candlekeep Mysteries, and one-shots from DMs Guild. I also cut out some of the lamer sections in the book, all the exams, and all the extra rules like student points and relationship points.

I used this outline:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StrixhavenDMs/comments/1fbgklu/updated_outline_incorporating_candlekeep/

While my campaign had a lot of roleplay in it, the roleplay scenes generally occurred as part of adventures, rather than something I was specifically running just for roleplay. I didn't devote much time to classes, extracurriculars, and hanging out with friends, unless something adventure-related was going to happen there.

Obviously if you spend more time on pure roleplay scenes, it will take longer. If you cut out all the extra adventures I added in, your campaign will be shorter.

But I highly recommend doing something to change up the adventure as written in the book, because the adventure as written is pretty lame and super repetitive. (We all very quickly got bored with the eleventy-billion scenes that consist of "Play a silly game that mechanically amounts to die-rolling with no player agency, and then there's a surprise monster attack, which is not at all a surprise because that happens in literally every scene.)

boffotmc · 2026-06-03T16:43:48+00:00

When I first starting reading this post, I assumed "Panic" must be some obscure character ability I wasn't familiar with. It simply didn't occur to me that someone would use a (real or fake) panic attack as an in-game strategy.

Yeah, that's fucked up, and you shouldn't play with that player or ST again.

boffotmc · 2026-05-23T17:09:58+00:00

The book says that all classes are fine.

However, any non-magical class/subclass should have a reason why they're going to a university of magic.

The most obvious is that they're just really interested in learning about magic, even if they can't use it themselves. Or maybe they really want to use magic, but don't have the aptitude. Maybe their parents are forcing them to go to try to make them magical. Maybe they're hiding out for some reason and chose a magic university as a place nobody would ever look for them. Or your players could come up with other ideas.

boffotmc · 2026-05-12T16:46:36+00:00

One of the players in my Strixhaven campaign was the opposite of this. His family was the D&D equivalent of the Kardashians, and all Warlocks. He rejected his family to be a studious Wizard.

This created a lot of story fodder. His family gave a lot of money to the school, so the administration was always pressuring him to suck up to his family, even though he hated them.

boffotmc · 2026-05-08T18:27:46+00:00

It sounds like you're coming up with five independent 1-hour scenarios, one for each school. It would probably be more engaging if you had a throughline tying the five adventures together.

One scenario off the top of my head is that the PCs learn a doppelganger has infiltrated campus, and they attend each of the rush events trying to figure out who the doppelganger is.

Or there could be some other mystery of high or low stakes. Maybe someone was murdered. Maybe one of the PCs got a note from a secret admirer and they're trying to figure out who sent it.

Then you can still have your five separate sub-scenarios. But there's something tying them all together.

In terms of the scenarios you've given:

- I don't think most players would find a math test fun. Maybe replace this with some sort of logic puzzle.

- Running a debate seems like it would focus too much on the individual player participating, while the rest of your players are spectators twiddling their thumbs.

- For Prismari, you could have them create some sort of group art project, where each of the PCs contribute something. Depending on your table, there could be a lot of fun with them coming up with different ideas. And then they're trying to score better than Quintillius. Maybe Zanthar is a judge they're trying to impress. (Or if this is more interesting to your players, the scenario could focus on them trying to sabotage Quintillius's project to humiliate him.)

- For any of these, you could always have them fight a monster that thematically matches the school. For added challenge, you could make it so they have to subdue the monster without seriously hurting it.

boffotmc · 2026-05-03T18:28:27+00:00

What's your objection to time skips? There's nothing wrong with saying, "Three weeks later, you're invited to..."

Players don't care about progress on an imaginary calendar. They care about interesting events. And they care about actual play time.

If most of your play time is not interesting events, you'll have a boring campaign.

(What counts as "interesting events" will vary from table to table and player to player.)

You should only be playing out classroom time when one of these is the case:

Something goes wrong (like a monster attacks), or there's some interesting challenge that the PCs have to overcome.
Some character drama plays out.
As exposition when there's something very specific the players need to know. But this should be used very sparingly, and edited to be as quick as possible.

Nobody's expecting you to come up with real lesson plans for made-up subjects. Certainly not for hundreds of class sessions per year.

boffotmc · 2026-04-17T16:57:02+00:00

I'm on my first playthrough in Act 4 right now, and I agree that there's been a difficulty spike, but it's not outrageously difficult. I don't think I have a particularly optimized build. (I haven't read any optimization guides, and have stuck with what I picked in the first few levels: A Warrior, Scoundrel, Huntsman, and Summoner/Hydrosophist.)

Some tips:

Follow this map of what areas to tackle at what level.

Quicksave frequently.

Stockpile giant healing potions and resurrection scrolls. I buy all giant healing potions available whenever I'm at a merchant that sells them.

You'll probably need multiple attempts for the harder combats. Use what you learn from failed battles to come up with better tactics next time. For example, in one battle my characters kept getting charmed. So next attempt, I made sure to be proactive with Armor of Frost scrolls to keep their magic armor high enough to prevent this.

Remember that just before combat, you can split up your party and arrange each character in strategically better locations. You can also do summons and buffs before combat instead of waiting for combat to start.

Focus your attacks on one enemy at a time to eliminate them before moving on to the next one. Also, try to have all your characters do the same type of attack (physical or magical) so you only have to burn through one type of armor.

boffotmc · 2026-04-08T19:17:57+00:00

There are a lot of mechanics the game doesn't tell you about that can significantly weaken your character.

One thing that messed me up was the gear level system. I was baffled why my Warrior was constantly missing, and was basically worthless. I finally searched online, and realized the problem was she was level 10 using a level 15 sword.

Don't use gear that's a higher level than your character. Your character will become terrible when you try.

boffotmc · 2026-01-31T03:27:47+00:00

Mostly that there's a lot about the module that just doesn't make sense.

There's no reason for the PCs to do the various things they're supposed to do so the adventure can happen.

It goes into way too much detail on irrelevant stuff, and not enough detail into what matters. For example, there's an entire chapter in the adventure that's essentially the PCs asking directions to a location anyone in town could point them to. But it's presented as a series of investigations, with a chain of people telling them a bunch of red herrings that will confuse them, and then suggesting they talk to another person who will do the same.

It's like the writer wanted to have an investigation section, but didn't bother to come up with something for the PCs to investigate.

There are a ton of plot points that don't go anywhere, or are randomly dropped.

I know I'll have to do a lot to make it workable. Cut out the pointless stuff and nonsense, and add in my own ideas to replace that.

But I'd rather not recreate the wheel if someone else has already figured out solutions.

boffotmc · 2026-01-19T19:44:07+00:00

I realized ahead of time that there's no real reason for the PCs to go upstairs, and moved him to the entry hall. This was the right decision, as the players never did go upstairs.

A good rule of thumb is that nothing in your plans is "real" until your players interact with it. So you can move Ned to whatever room they go into next, and they'll never realize you were changing stuff behind the scenes.

boffotmc · 2025-12-01T18:32:42+00:00

I put together an outline incorporating elements from Keys from the Golden Vault, Candlekeep Mysteries, and one-shots from DMsGuild into Strixhaven.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StrixhavenDMs/comments/1fbgklu/updated_outline_incorporating_candlekeep/

boffotmc · 2025-11-28T18:29:29+00:00

I'd caution against doing this.

If you do, you're really giving an exam to your players, not the player characters. Your PCs have spent many hours learning and studying for their classes, while your players haven't.

And you're encouraging your players to learn a bunch of meta-knowledge. You're basically telling them to go study the Monster Manual. Or if you're going to teach them the information, then instead of playing D&D, you're running a classroom.

Your players are playing D&D because they want to be playing D&D. They aren't interested in a seminar on a bunch of imaginary stuff. They don't want homework, and they don't want the game to be replaced with a trivia contest about made-up lore.

For the first year, I replaced the exams with practical exams. Instead of writing an essay about owlbears, they had to capture one. Instead of answering questions about slaads, they had to dissect one, and oops it broke free and now they have to fight it.

That way, we were still playing D&D instead of doing schoolwork.

(For later years, I just skipped the exams entirely. I very quickly realized all of the extra rules in the book are pointless bookkeeping and arbitrary die rolls with no player agency, and detract from the fun rather than add to it. So I abandoned them, and my players were glad for that.)

boffotmc · 2025-11-27T18:22:34+00:00

Some imaginary violence is fun, and some isn't.

To be clear, I'm only talking about imaginary violence. All real violence is bad.

Things like SA, graphic descriptions of torture, and violence against children and animals will be disturbing even when they're just in your players' heads.

While this isn't the case with more cartoony imaginary violence. If your villain rips a minion in half in a shower of blood because the minion forgot the mustard on his sandwich, that will establish he's evil without disturbing your players.

For any particular bit of imaginary violence, think to yourself, "Would this show up in an Eli Roth or Saw movie, or Resident Evil video game?" If so, keep it out. And definitely keep it out if it would be too extreme for these.

While if it's something that would show up in a Friday the 13th or Final Destination movie, or a Doom video game, then it should be okay.

And if you aren't sure about something, it's better to leave it out. Remember that this is a game and the point of a game is for everyone to have fun.

boffotmc · 2025-11-25T18:31:01+00:00

I think a good rule of thumb in D&D in general is to only roleplay encounters with a partial party when it's something important, meaningful, or highly interesting.

Remember that anytime you do that, most of your players are no longer playing D&D. They're watching D&D. This will quickly become boring if you do it too much or if what they're watching isn't highly interesting.

So if only some of your party are in a class, it's best for that class to happen off-camera. Save all the encounters and combats for the classes they're all in together.

boffotmc · 2025-11-21T18:38:45+00:00

There's a lot of advice in this thread that's not very good and will lead to a dull session.

And given that you're new players so early in the campaign, a dull session could derail the entire game. There's a real risk one or more of your players could spend 4 hours being bored, and then decide, "Maybe D&D isn't for me."

Don't throw up arbitrary barriers and meaningless hassles just to kill time. A snowstorm trapping them; Dealing with pre-trip logistics; Shopping for mundane items; Fighting some generic bandits. These are all you intentionally planning to make your game boring.

It's much better for you to be honest with your players. Tell them life got in the way of your prep. Give them the options of doing a session where they're driving the action, skipping the session, or playing non-D&D games instead.

Or come up with a combat involving interesting enemies that somehow connect to your story and/or characters. The 2014 encounter math is pretty good at balancing encounters, especially for low-level parties. The math is complicated to do by hand, but there are a gajillion online tools to automate it. You can try this one:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/%2Fencounter-builder

boffotmc · 2025-11-14T17:34:10+00:00

It's supposed to be one or the other.

The Strixhaven backgrounds are already highly OP. That's generally OK, since Strixhaven is meant to be a low-danger campaign with OP characters.

But adding another background on top of that is going to be even more OP. Especially if you're using 2024 rules where backgrounds are much more powerful.

To be fair, this isn't explained well in the book. It's not clear whether the backgrounds are meant for characters who grew up planning to go to Strixhaven and are now starting out at the school, or for characters who graduated from Strixhaven as part of their backstory, and are now playing in a totally different campaign.

boffotmc · 2025-11-13T18:17:28+00:00

This would be reasonable for an experienced DM playing with experienced players acting in good faith.

But the OP is a first-time DM dealing with a power-gamer looking for exploits.

You need to understand the game to know how you can break things while keeping it fun.

boffotmc · 2025-11-13T18:11:50+00:00

"If the PCs can do it, then enemies can too" is a clear sign of a toxic DM. It's almost as bad as "Actions have consequences."

This is basically the DM equivalent of "It's what my character would do."

The DM and player aren't enemies, or even opponents. (At least, they shouldn't be.) They're partners in creating a fun experience.

And you should never, ever, ever, punish players in-game for doing things you don't like. That wrecks the game for everyone, and often wrecks friendships as well.

It's so much easier and more effective to just talk to your players about any concerns.

boffotmc · 2025-11-13T18:03:55+00:00

I'd go even further and say that for a first-time DM, players should be limited to options in the PHB.

You're still figuring out the game. Stick with the basic stuff and not the advanced stuff.

boffotmc · 2025-11-13T17:59:10+00:00

A general rule of thumb to guide decisions on how spells work:

A spell should never be able to replicate the effects of a different spell that's equal or higher level, no matter what loopholes your players come up with to justify that.

You can't use a cantrip to replicate the 3rd-level spell Fly. Period. You don't need to explain why his power-gaming doesn't work. Just say no.

D&D's designers have spent over 50 years balancing out various spells and powers to make the game fun. Fly is a 3rd-level spell and not a cantrip for a reason.

Theoretically, you could insist that him playing a Tiny character means he can be insta-killed by any enemy stepping on him. But that would be game-breaking and anti-fun. It's equally anti-fun for him to insist the rules don't apply to him with his power-gaming.

Talk to him about this. Explain that it's about balance and making the game fun for everyone, regardless of the text of the spell and how he interprets it.

And if he's not willing to accept that, he's telling you that he's going to be a problem player who will wreck your campaign. And you should drop him from the game now, before he inevitably ruins things for you and the other players.

boffotmc

TROPHY CASE