LMoP DM Blog I: Wave Echo Cave Part I

Lost Mine of Phandelver: DM Blog

So I decided to start writing about my and my players experiences as a dungeon master. My group consists of 5 players and we meet once a week. We started with Lost Mines of Phandelver (LMoP), but added on the recently released "Dragon of Icespire Peak" (DoIP).

My players are as follows:

• "Garon Halforcen" - Halfling Rogue - Criminal
• "Aeras" - Air Genasi Druid - Sage
• "Brice" - Aasimar Paladin - Folk Hero
• "Pheonix Falconflight" - Human Fighter - Noble (he has the best name by far, first time player too!)
• "Kaalia" - Silver Dragonborn Sorcerer - Outlander

Today we will be starting at a strange point: In the final dungeon of LMoP, Wave Echo Cave.

I will use the numbered rooms in my writing below to help orient

The players had been gathered up with Gundren Rockseekers' cart of goods, along with Sildar as a DMNPC. The players were following a map to the mines that they didn't know wasn't genuine. Another temporary player (my previous DM) had in a previous session stolen the map and made multiple copies with the intent to get rich, so I made the players make some survival checks to find the actual entrance, but it didnt take long.

Once they arrived at the Wave Echo Cave entrance, I decided to embellish the dungeon quite a bit, particularly by adding adventurers who had met their deaths in various ways. With this technique, I could convey a few things:

1. The players are not the only ones here (hinting that there were more maps made). I also used some in-character comments from Gundren
2. Hint at some of the dangers of the dungeon!

So immediately at the entrance, they found a dead human who appeared complete stiff and was dumped from the entrance into the snow nearby. Upon closer inspection, they found laser-beam like holes in the poor adventurer. Both of these hint toward the Spectator monsters eye-stalk beams, who they will encounter later.

After the entrance, the players entered the dungeon proper (Room 1). This room contains the Rockseeker camp, as well as numerous supplies. I ran this room as completely looted; all of the supplies were slashed and stolen, and the dead Rockseeker brother has been stripped of his boots (Leaping and Striding!).

Gundren was very upset to find his dead brother, and urges the players to find his other brother who he hopes is still alive. He made a comment about his brothers missing boots and mentioned that he got them for him for Christmas. One of my quicker players immediately said in character "So dwarves have Christmas? Interesting!" and I rebutted with "Yeah, its a lot like your except we all get coal AND LOVE IT!" It was a funny moment started by a slip of the tongue.

I used this time to also make some mouth WHOOSH noises to describe how the cave gets its name. I described it as a water crashing sound that repeats and every once is a while the crash turns into a deep booming hum as the whole cave echos.

The druid turned into a Bear and decided to use that sweet sweet advantage on perception checks relying on smell. The bear sniffed the sleeping bag where Gundrens brother was, and followed the smell to the strongest location; to the north!

In room #2, things moved pretty quickly. They again sniffed, and followed the trail northwards into room #10. I made some funny sucking noises to imply they were being chased by the Ochre Jellies, but they move quick enough to avoid combat.

Once in room #10, the players were intrigued by the underground clams that live here. One player tried to skip one of the shells across the water, and I had them notice something sparkling in the water as the stone sank. The players found the wand in the bottom of the water, as well as some rings worth gold. 

This wand, though its just a "Wand of Magic Missles" in the adventure, is more important in my version of this dungeon. Its actually the "Wand of Phandelver" and is one of the keys to defeating the guardian of the spellforge.

Since they sat here for so long, I had one of the Ochre Jellies fall on the Druid and attack. The rogue caught on quickly that his Piercing attacks didnt cause the jelly to split, but there were some shenanigans with the DM-NPC Sildar attacking the jelly anyways ;)

Next, the players headed to room #11. Without any hint of stealth, they attempted to push open the door and failed. They tried again, with the druid-bear, Sildar and everyone else helping. They managed to beat the DC20 group strength check, and I had a few of the players spill into the room where they found a bunch of bugbear ready for them! Roll Initiative! The combat wasnt anything too interesting, and afterwards they again tried to follow the scent. The scent led to the north, towards room #19, but as soon as the players came into the hallway I had another surprise for them.

THE BLACK SPIDER!

The spider had a rockseeker brother captive with a knife to his throat. He suggested that the players and him work together, offering a temp HP buff and the freedom of their friend in return for helping clear out the dungeon.

The players decided to go along with this plan, as they saw no other way forward. They definitely had a choice, but maybe I was being a bit too heavy handed with my changes here; who knows.

The rest of the session involved an encounter with a Flameskull in the nearby room. The fight started with just zombies, and the druid used entangle to keep everything in place. The zombies lost a TON of strength saves to escape, and on the second round of combat, then flameskull entered!

I painted it myself!

I was super spooked about blasting all of my players with a 8d6 fireball as they were only level 5 and there was a possibility of being one hit. Regardless, it happened; the players all took something like 27 damage but luckily most of them made their DEX saves and one of the players taking damage had fire resistance!
I also made the fireball have a charge-up round where he opened his mouth and started chargin his laser. I thought this was a good way to warn the players, and even though they didnt react, I think they will next time they see something similar.

And thats it for part 1. This is my first blog post here, so its kind of messy, and I kind of just jump right into the end of the starter kit, but whatever! These are mostly for me, so if you're reading this, thanks for hangin in there pal.