First time DM - "into the Dragons Lair

[Dwarfi]

Hi everyone. Not exactly sure where to put this thread.

Soon I am going to start my first attempt as a DM. My friend picked a rather easy to do story as he said:
Forgotten Realms - Into the Dragons lair

As this is my first attempt I would just like to get some good advice or just ideas for this.

We already have characters that played through another campaign before, we just switch the DM.
Group: 5 members ~Lv9
Human Barbarian
Dwarf Fighter (pretty much a 2nd barbarian)
Human Cleric - Wardomain
Elven Mage - A lot of fire spells
human Ranger/Rougue - By far the weakest when it comes to combat

We are pretty much a heavy hitter/basher group.

I am starting to read through the pages but some part are kinda confusing.
How much do I need to tell the group? For example the story of the King AzounIV and Nalavara that led to the start of the adventure?

Start:
Our group came from underwater, where we cleared the undermountain, became heroes of the city and then went for adventure for a year before reuniting again.

Step 1: The land of Cormyr.
Because we are heroes we could be called there for help, or maybe the Lady Vaylan is an old friend of one of the players. We have never been to the Land of Cormyr before, so we dont know anything about the story of the king yet. How much should the Lady actually tell them or is it better to only tell them what they ask for?

Quest to meet with Gurrand in Eveninggstar.

1. encounter: Could be on the way to the lady, the city could still be attacked by Goblins or just the robbery of the wagon (right after the book)

2. The Tax collectors: Love it, what a great opportunity to get really annoying. ^^
3. Talos's test: A person hunted by a summoned creature could be saved on the street which leads to the burning farm and the cleric.
This is the first big encounter. Summoning, fire spells, creatures... A lot to check there.

Do I have to prepare spells like it was PC? Or can I just pick it at will? I havent played a caster before so there is a lot of new stuff.
Can the CE Cleric summon only monsters of the same alignment ?

Thats how far I read so far.

[Kasz]

Well when it comes to summoning it's simpler to explain for a cleric. A cleric can not cast spells opposing his alignment, a good cleric can not cast an [EVIL] spell and an evil cleric can not cast a [GOOD] spell.
Summon monster aligns the spell with the monster you summon... summoning a celestial monkey is a [GOOD] aligned spell therefore your chaotic evil cleric may not cast it... his deity just can't grant him the spell. However a fiendish ape is an [EVIL] spell therefore your Cleric can cast that. I believe monsters without the fiendish or celestial descriptor are fair game for anyone. Just as a neutral Cleric could cast both, however casting too many [Good] spells can make a neutral cleric good. Casting too many [Evil] spells can make a neutral cleric evil... neutral is about balance.

It gets a little more confusing for say... an evil sorcerer, an evil sorcerer can summon a celestial creature which is a [Good] act, but then he could use that creature to burn down an orphanage which probably balances out.

That being said... the whole alignment shift is something that takes a long time usually...if your DM realises you're neutral but casting only neutral or good spells...and doing only neutral or good things you might end up shifting up to Neutral Good from True Neutral.

Summary: Evil cleric can only summon neutral or fiendish beasties.

Do you have to prepare spells?
Yes. unless you want to fudge it.... but it's more fun with a list of spells, you know what the cleric has as an option available to him. Spells can reflect personality... a torturer cleric of pain will obviously prepare Power Word: Pain and Wrack and Hold person... a Cleric of war will have divine power.

If you need help selecting spells there are a few websites such as http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page - which is an NPC wiki. A quick 1 minute search brings up this cleric: http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/Cleric_of_Fortune_CR_5
As you can see someone else has prepared his spells, which can be helpful, especially for throwaway enemies or checking you've done it right, but with different spells etc.

Now, regarding your story based questions, how much to tell the group etc... They seem very bashy bashy so how much diplomacy do they use? How famous are they?

A party that treats an NPC with a little respect, coaxes out information or has a reputation for getting things done might get the whole story... whereas a party of hooligans might only get what they overhear.

A module should have large portions of text for you to read out to the players. Obviously all modules are different but the last one I ran had large italic sections meaning "read this to players" and then normal sections with info and tables with knowledge and skill checks for more info.

ie. The adventurers reach the sleeping giant inn, it's getting late yet it is eeriely quiet...like there's no one inside; conversely, the windows flicker with movement.

When the players look at the sign they may make a knowledge history check, or similar (lore / bardic knowledge) to discern
DC 15 The sleeping giant inn was the subject of a terrible series of murders
DC 20 The sleeping giant inn is haunted by the victims of the tragic events
DC 25 The sleeping giant inn is haunted by several spectres
DC 30 and the basement is full of ghouls spawned from travellers who sought refuge.

Obviously you only tell your players the italic bits, unless they make the knowledge check or cast a divination spell.

How much would the lady tell them?
Well... she's on friendly terms with one of the adventurers which is good...but it still comes down to 'how do you play her?' a lady might not want to tell the adventurers EVERYTHING due to distrust, paranoia or fear that if they find out how dangerous it is they might not even try.
Conversely she might be exceptionally honest, therefore she tells the adventurers everything she can think of...or everything they ask for...

A lot of DnD is in the hands of the DM, the main thing is being consistant...once you've got a system keep using it. If the players like the style great, if not, adjust.

[Dwarfi]

Iam slowly getting used to it. Though I still have to look up every spell beforehand so that I know what they actually do.
What makes it a little tricky is that the adventure was originally made for the 2nd edition and then was quickly rewritten do be useable in 3.0 They just forgot to translate some of the spells and items. ^^°

Some encounter:
A cleric burning down a farm. (He already knows about the group and isnt surprised)
Spells before the encounter begins: Entropic shield, Summon V, bulls str

My idea is that that he summoned a dire tiger, who waits in the fields and attacks the first character that approaches, while the cleric uses firespells, firewall, wall of blades and stuff like that from the distance. If he can, he casts another monster summon.

--------

In a later event the group can choose to either follow a guide through the mountains or go without him (out of mistrust) In which case I would like to make it a little more dangerous. Like rock slides or small goblin troups.

A Rock slide would have a Reflex save, im not so sure how high it should be and how much damage it may do. DC 15 maybe 4d6 maybe if they fail the save

If they decide for somewhat reason to go totally of the road the could meet a giant with a small goblin troup.

[Dwarfi]

My first encounter with a skilled cleric.
It was fun to do as the summoned dire tiger was able to withstand the first round of attacks and dealt a lot of damage himself.
The cleric was victim to bad rolls - his flame strike hit 3 people of which 2 mad the ref save.
His blindness spell against the mage was defeated by a miracle 20 roll.
And the last defense: a blade barrier failed the concentration check while defensively casted.

The next part of our journey doesnt have that strong encounters so I will see if I can spice it up a little to challenge them somehow.
Most of what lurks around has no realistic chance to overcome the AC, even the mage has 20AC because of his spells. Most enemys only have a +2 or +3 hit bonus.

The group is supposed to defeat them all, but I think it gets a little boring if they dont even have to be scared to get hit.
One encounter would be a group of undead knights. If the heroes manage the spot check I bet the undead all die to either a fireball or get rebuked by the cleric.
Not much to fight there. ^^° So I will raise the hp a little and the hit to maybe +6

Another thing I will modify are metamagic feats. I dont exactly know if the book is too old or why none of the enemys has one, but at least quicken spell should be a given, so that summon monster gets more use.

[Kasz]

Learn to target the group's weaknesses, The Cleric might have an AC of 20... but what's his touch AC? or his Flatfooted?

Two enemies attacking in tandem, a bard dropping grease and buffing a rogue, a rogue sneak attacking the flatfooted cleric as he's standing on grease. He'll be easier to hit and take bonus damage.

Keep the other party members busy elsewhere fighting weaklings who just split the party up and try to get in the way of tactics. If the party overcomes the challenge by fighting smart great, if not then they should take a ton of damage but not die, which will get them scared. someone tends to get knocked unconcious in my games every session, people are aware death happens it's just finding the sweet spot inbetween getting your players afraid of death...and a TPK.

[Dwarfi]

Thanks, actually there is an encounter with a rogue and a bard coming soon. So I will try that ^^ ( If they live that long XD)

Other things I like to add are little things that can make live a little more initeresting.
E.g. there is a battlefield full of corpses and if they decide to search for gold or gear, they can make some fort checks. It just cant be healthy to walk between hundreds of rotten corpses. Maybe one of them is an undead and suddenly attacks when searched.

Rock slides, thiefes or simply unfriendly people can make it more interesting too I guess.

One tricky thing is that our barbarian has a ring that can create an anti magig field. Though he doesnt use it that often its still a thing to keep in mind. I would love to somehow get rid of that thing, but I dont really want to take it from him, by something simple as stealing or loosing it.
The barbarian wants to revive a dead dragon welp...or whats left of it. Actually its just a dragon skin blanket.. ^^ But maybe I can work with that. Somebody that wants the ring as payment for the resurrection.

[Dwarfi]

Well today was a new surprise.
The group had to fight against 140 goblin soldiers. but thanks to a prayer for DR3 and a fire shield they werent able to do more than 1 point of damage.
the army was that little of a threat that the mage didnt even bother using his area spells. The group was prepared and had fun, thats the good part.

As the the later adventure leads to a goblin city, this has to be changed. Otherwise they walk just right in and kill the whole city, without fearing much. ^^°
what could be done: Instead of slings they use javelins with poison, the city is very dark, so vision might become another problem/ a bonus for the goblins like +2AC/ hit
And if it goes on, ogres or stuff like that might be thrown in as support

[Dwarfi]

Right now I am reading throug a DM handbook.
Trying to understand how to use move silently, hide, or bluff checks for monsters.

[Rejakor]

Easiest way to deal with hide move silently etc is to pre-roll it if monsters are going to be doing it, or ask the party to roll their scores until they stop hiding/get found and then later start hiding again.  Obv. if people keep 'rehiding' until they get the score they want, you use the first score they rolled.  That way when the rogue gets 21 on his hide and 27 on his move silently, you can just roll goblin spot/listen checks against those two numbers instead of needing a new roll each time.

As for monsters using them, periodically you ask the party for spot or listen or both checks.  Sometimes, there's nothing, so if they get all metagamey and spend time moving into defensive formations or whatever it's for nothing.  But sometimes you have a bunch of bugbears sneaking through the woods with prerolled move silently and hide checks and you're comparing the party's spot and listen to those numbers.  Keep in mind, a large force will NEVER stay hidden unless they have +20 on their bonuses compared to the spotter/listeners.

Bluff checks for monsters in some ways involve bluff checks as a DM.  What you do is you roll the checks, or pre-roll them, and then you say what the bugbear or whatever says.  And people go '*rolls sense motive* is he telling the truth?' and you look at their number and go 'yes/no'.  If they roll a 1, then they might know they failed and you going 'yes' is actually the opposite of the truth, but they won't act on that if they're good players.  You can also give them false information, like that the goblin is lying even if the goblin isn't if their roll is terribad.  It's even okay to just go 'you don't know if the goblin is telling the truth or not'.  Since only you, the GM, know if the goblin is telling the truth or not, as long as you aren't terrible at pokerface, it should be fine.

[Rejakor]

Well today was a new surprise.
The group had to fight against 140 goblin soldiers. but thanks to a prayer for DR3 and a fire shield they werent able to do more than 1 point of damage.
the army was that little of a threat that the mage didnt even bother using his area spells. The group was prepared and had fun, thats the good part.

As the the later adventure leads to a goblin city, this has to be changed. Otherwise they walk just right in and kill the whole city, without fearing much. ^^°
what could be done: Instead of slings they use javelins with poison, the city is very dark, so vision might become another problem/ a bonus for the goblins like +2AC/ hit
And if it goes on, ogres or stuff like that might be thrown in as support

Basic goblin inhabitants, unless it's an army camp, will be more likely to run than fight, even in a warrior culture only the males or whatever will fight (and most warrior cultures don't have cities, they live in small tribes).  I.e. civilians are not soldiers.

They live in a world with umber hulks.  Sure, an umber hulk might kill a tribe, but why would a city even EXIST if it has no way to defend itself against something with DR 3?

Basic MM goblins can use Nets to tie people down and coup de grace them, not to mention TRAPS.  Some goblin pulls a lever, and a thoroughfare becomes a killzone.  Bolas are like ranged nets.  Poison is just OBVIOUS if you live in the same world as dire bears.  Brigades of goblins trained in stealth (hide skill) and with a feat for poison-use, the 'Black Arrow Corps'.  That's just random city guardsmen.  Firing poison arrows from hiding, using traps, nets, bolas, wielding massive 2-handed weapons (who cares if the enemy is in a net?  Medium Greataxe is only -4 to hit, and crits for 3d12), riding boars that gore you, or wargs that bite you, etc.  This is all just the city guard.  Blazing torches do 1d3 energy damage, can deliver sneak attacks, and completely ignore DR.

In MINUTES you're dealing with goblin special forces with class levels(Goblin Ninja 3 'Greenhat' Commandos, Goblin Fighter 3 'Lord Gnoblar's Heavy Goblin Infantry' regimental troops, etc etc), as well as whatever goblin heroes are in the area (Mazul Mog Blackskull, LE Goblin Adept 5/Moil Witch 3, Rin Tin Tenfingers, Dark Goblin Rogue 5, Hoilas the Loud, City Guard Sergeant, Bugbear Fighter 4/Barbarian 2/Blood-Spiked Charger 3) not to mention random NPCs above level 1 (like Tebleer the Goblin Shaman, Adept 4, Alchemist, who the party corners in an alleyway so he lets loose with some Adept battlemagic instead of running away like the rest of the civilians), civilians are fleeing the area being attacked which is being locked down by goblin city guard/warriors/whatever.

If you fight through that, they're breaking out the heavy duty shit, so you'll likely start seeing full on troop deployment, siege weapons and dug in forcewarded goblin shaman artillery positions, ranks of heavy infantry using aid another, tanglefoot bags, alchemists fire, nets, harpoons, full cover tower shields and whatever else to attempt to take down PCs, fast-attack goblins mounted on winter wolves mass-firing breath weapons then fleeing behind smokesticks to break LoS, goblin aerial cavalry Knight 6's mounted on wyverns using Flyby Attack with +1 Ripping Poisoned Lances.

After that they're breaking out their superweapons, if they have any, so the demon in a jar they've had for ages gets broken at your feat, the vrocks in mama gkika's basement get conditional releases, the experimental illithid mutagen is injected into dozens of goblin officer corps cadet volunteers, desperate messages are sent to goblin gods/ascended goblin wizards, rituals are enacted to call elder horrors into the plane while the remnants of the military try to get as many civilian survivors the hell out of the city as possible, etc etc.  Although I don't think your PCs will get that far.

Having a slave race of ogres or something is a good choice too.

[Dwarfi]

I will surely spice it up with a couple of things you mentioned.
The goblin city is pretty big ( a couple of  thousands) and the pcs are supposed to go the cover way and be sneaky and political actice with the different fractions.
But who knows, if they really want to march right in they shouldnt expect mercy from me. ^^

In fact the goblins have a special weapon, a black cage, that sucks out the live of its imprisoners and shoots a powerful blast. ^^

[Rejakor]

Well that's certainly a magic item, but I don't know if it's a superweapon.  In DnD a superweapon typically has to be hard to resist (for example, your cage sounds like Wings of Cover would negate it's effect completely, not to mention hitpoint damage (Delay Death, Contingent Revivify) is one of the more commonly resisted damage forms) and/or affect a large area (just like in real life).  A bunker buster isn't a superweapon, and neither is a big pool of fuel.  A city of goblins wouldn't necessarily HAVE a superweapon, but if they did, it probably wouldn't be something replicable by a third level wizard spell.

[veekie]

What I'd do for any underground civ would be to arrange engineered cave-ins to divide enemy forces and close off the larger paths. Depending on how the city is laid out, you can even set it like so:
Inner city - Goblins only
Middle city - Goblins and slaves
Outer city - Others.

The inner city itself then fits inside 5-6 caverns connected through networks of goblin sized tunnels, with any given cavern linked only to three others. This is a defensive measure to slow down, confound and allow harrying of enemies in all directions. Defenses here would be based on higher level goblins, one-way secret passages and literal dead end passages.

Radially spreading out from the inner city tunnels would be large, open caverns excavated in large arcs, leveraging whatever exotic slaves and pets they have in battles of sheer numbers. Heavy use of terracing and carving out stalactites for firing positions makes this section the mook swarm area, allowing a maximum number of missile attackers to engage any enemy, while similarly making captured strongpoints relatively useless against attacks from the inner city. Additionally, this section can be rigged to be flooded by the city reservoir from controls in the inner city, so it can be retaken easily if lost. Outside of war this also works as a city-fire prevention mechanism when partially used(I figure it'd make a nifty canal water supply in normal times). Herds and critical farms are also here.

The outer city meanwhile, is laid out as a three dimensional bazaar for outsiders. The entire outer city is rigged to collapse in sections, and is on top of that a fire hazard. All the tunnels from the outer city to the middle city can be sealed or destroyed.

The idea being sacrificial defenses. Any serious invaders would be assumed to overrun the outer sections, or parts of them swiftly, while raiders would also wind up hitting the foreigners, no skin off goblin noses. Give ground in the outer city easily, and once they are holding ground, destroy said ground.
The middle city is if they continue to press the assault, having been pounded badly by their entrance, at low cost of goblin lives, they then have to break out of the tunnels to the middle city, which would be secured by slave heavies. With any serious breach here, the defenders pull back to the terraces and engage in retreat-cum-attrition, progressing up the terraces where any important goblins retreat.

THEN, while the invaders occupy the middle city sections to get to the inner city caverns, you flush them. From there, either the goblins stage a counteroffensive, or dedicate themselves to dying as expensively as possible, with anyone important escaping via tunnels.

[Dwarfi]

Thanks for the nice build up. This city is a little different from regular citys, as it is on an own plane. But there are connections to the sadow realm here and there.
The goblins have been "civilized" to some extend by an (now dead) elder wyrm, so there is more oganisation than in regular goblins communities.

I will see which of your ideas I can build in to make it more challenging.

[veekie]

Cool, that means you can have some of the city areas and tunnels go through Shadow to foil tunneling shenanigans as well as confound visitors.

[Rejakor]

Key thing is to remember that it's a living breathing world.  Lots of DMs (and writers/rpg designers, everything else) forget this.  City has to exist in world of monsters.  Honestly most of DnD is like a post apocalyptic setting, having personal weapons on hand isn't unusual at all and cities are very well defended.  Even the existence of powerful individuals (class leveled characters) means that militaries would be spun up to a far-beyond-medieval level, and monsters/breedable-trainable monsters makes this a lot more like futuristic in terms of destructive potential than modern day or historic.

[Dwarfi]

I had to spent a lot of time on the plannings and encounter workups, but now I have a pretty big pool of possible events.

The City of Grodd. Its in a gigantic cave, so there is no sunlight.
The city itself is placed in a demiplane, close to the plane of shadows. Its meant as a prison, so getting out of the plane will be pretty challenging as regular planar travel is impossible.
In the outer areas are old an often broken gates to different places and planes. The ones that funtion need a key, only those to the plane of shadows need no key.
The goblin of Grodd are the only ones who can actually travel back to the normal world without problems.

Situation: The city of grod is leaderless since the dragon was slain, and now a number of 6-8 generals fight for the leadership.

In the outer caves will hold a lot of shadow creatures, fungus and some low lv stuff. Goblins are rather rare there.
The city: Concists of 2 parts: The lower and the smaller upper part. The parts are divided by some kind of chanel which can be flooded in case of an attack. its not meant to really do damage to the pcs, but they never had to actually swim till now. ^^ And it will only be used if they openly attack the city.

There are different ways to move through the city, the normal way through houses and streets or the sewers. Just finding a way in might be a little tricky as there are only open wells and latrines, that are big enough to go down there. ;P A little fort save against illness now and then.
In the sewers are other creatures, slime, ooze, digester and some other adventurers, that found their way to the city.

Managing this campaign can be done in 3 ways:
1- Bashing through- There are roughly 1000 goblin soldiers divided under rivaling generals (all fighting for the power) so that should be challenging
The bigger troups use ogres, low level mages and sheer numbers.
2- Sneaky - Walking through sewers and sleepphases of the city to stay hidden
3- Charming - Revealing themself to one of the goblin warlords and trying to form an alliance.

Special encounters:
When walking the city, the group might come upon a troup of goblins or some kind of market where a female human is hold captive in a cage.
If rescued she tells them that she was kidnapped during a goblin raid on her hometown. (Which is believable in our world scenario)
but she isnt really a human, but a disguised night hag. If taken along, it might cause some interesting scenarios after a while.

As this plane is difficult to leave there are a lot of different creatures trapped here. For example a mindflayer and 2 grimlocks.

The demonic urn: In the great temples basement a urn is kept, inside of it is a etheral reaper. The group can encounter him in 2 ways:
1- The group finds the urn and opens or destroys it (for whatever reason)
2- The group fights the city, before entering the palace plaza the urn is put on a catapult and shot at the group.

The (un)holy items of the iron one.
The biggest legend of the city is the iron one. A goblin in a giant iron armor and a great leader.
In the old temple are 3 artifacts with great power.
If the PCs actually steal them a statue of the iron one will come alive and attack them (an iron golem just a little weaker) +if the group defiles any statue of the iron one they get a "bestow curse spell". When leaving the the temple with the artifacts, every goblin will immediately recognize them and the whole resources of the city will be used to regain them.

[Rejakor]

Sounds pretty sweet.

Remember the generals will be pretty untrusting of PCs so even with diplo checks they'll still have goblin rogues tailing them to make sure they complete their mission and don't take any detours.  Generals should be planning to use PCs as deniable strike force against their enemies and then dispose of them so they can't tell anyone that the general gave them the missions.

[Dwarfi]

Our last session was pretty interesting though chaotic.
A silence spell worked pretty well against the group, as did a high Fighter with impr trip and disarm against the barbarian.

The barb. has a ring of anti magic, which he can activate as a standart action. He somehow got it in an earlier adventure and is kinda wearing it since lv 4 or something like that.
Of course they got a lot of loot, which empored them even more. ^^°
Even Impr Trip is starting to get more and more useless as the barb. str. explodes.

My next encounter will inculde a lv9 bard, maybe I can do something with him.
A barbarian lv10 (maybe a bear warrior)
An evil cleric and a dragon in human shape.
I will try to make use of a symbol of pain, which the group has to pass to get the saves down a little.

[Rejakor]

There's lots of ways to detreasure groups.  My favourite is making some overpowered whatever thing be the fabled lost artifact of X that the group needs to quest to put into the shrine of Z so that the demon apocalypse will be averted.

Or getting them to sell their treasuregear for a good cause.

Or making the gear be the price for their lives in some desperate situation ('throw us up the ring and we'll let down a rope' 'never!' 'your loss' rest of the party 'give him the ring!  GIVE HIM THE RING').

Or their gear gets stripped off them by captors or something and getting it back is an adventure.

Or just make all the fights more hardcore.