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Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk (Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Book)

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Returning to a previous campaign setting with new characters and a magic item as powerful as an obelisk invites plenty of fun opportunities. You can access all of the monsters and magic items from Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk in and out of the game. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk manages to remind players why The Lost Mines of Phandelver is one of the best adventures for new players. With a healthy mix of combat, investigation, and getting lost in the small area Phandalin players get to experience a quintessential high fantasy adventure. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk is a DnD campaign designed for four to six players. Players begin a familiar dungeon-crawling adventure at level one, and they’ll face a crisis of unexpected scale (and weirdness)by the time they reach level 12. After 8 years of D&D 5e releasing a massive number of adventure and sourcebooks adding different creatures and races to 5th edition, it was a nice change to see a city so close to the hustle and bustle of the Sword Coast feel like a better representation of what is around it.

I think there was a strong desire from folks in the studio to preserve Lost Mines of Phandelver in a hardcover book – which was just a booklet in the starter set”, she says. “We wanted to preserve and update that adventure to have that longevity and staying power. My hope in doing that is creating an adventure that goes places people don’t expect.”Although Wizards of the Coast are keeping things a surprise for us, it's clear that something terrible is going on underground. This "something" involves corrupting magic coming from the depths, that seeps upwards. Because it's strongest at source, it's there that It not only mutates monsters, but also corrupts players thanks to an optional "corruption" mechanic that is featured in the book. This mechanic is largely flavour but it adds immersion, bringing the existential threat directly to the players directly in an unavoidable way. From here (or if prodded by Elmina in Phandalin), exploration begins! Encourage your players to consider what abilities might be useful in finding and following the nearby goblin trail. Then comes another surprise: traps! With two separate goblin-built traps placed at various points along the trail, there is ample room for both success and failure. This is another moment that simply captures a significant danger in adventuring, prompting your players once more to always be prepared. A major aspect of the original release that has been removed, is the beginner verbiage that was included in the Starter Kit adventure. New DMs won't find this version of The Lost Mines as helpful, explaining to the DM what rules they'd need to understand themselves or be able to explain to their players. A New Quest For The Shattered Obelisk If you're a DM who is looking to start with a new group that includes brand new players, and somehow no one has managed to play or read this adventure it's well worth this being your next adventure. Retains the beloved Lost Mine of Phandelver quests that unfold into a brand-new adventure with classic D&D themes and a tinge of horror

Triboar Trail? Try “Tutorial!” The earliest encounters offer a taste of everything, letting you and your players become comfortable with both the rules of D&D and the three pillars of adventure. You should DEFINITELYrun this - the first half is now a Classic 5e Experience and the second half is new, unexpected and thought provokingly different (some have been more negative/positive about that fact than others [delete as apporporiate]).From chapter five onwards, Phandelver and Below is a gradual decline into insanity. It plays upon the D&D community’s affection for Phandalin, dangling the idyllic setting and its wholesome inhabitants on a thread and leading you further into darkness. The writing is atmospheric, the encounters are varied, and the details that embellish every corner are excellent.

Enjoy a familiar adventure with updated art and four never-before-seen chapters in this beginner-friendly adventure designed for character levels 1-12 Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obeliskexpands a fan favorite adventure into a full-fledged campaign thatsuitsnew and longtime players and Dungeon Masters. Where Lost Mine of Phandelver took characters from 1st to 5th level, this new adventure book progressesall the way through12th level. Each story beat also leans heavily into what you might expect when you're a new player. You'll encounter bandits, and combat dragons, before delving deep into dungeons. Because these adventures are continuations in each chapter, it's better to take certain elements, ideas, and story beats and use them in your campaign. This means looking into some of the following: Behind The Scenes Action For many trying out Dungeons & Dragons for the first time with 5th edition, or coming from previous editions, chances are you started in the same place: Phandalin. The Lost Mines of Phandelver was for so long the 5e starting adventure, but now with our hands on Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obeliskwhat are our thoughts on this new adventure?Alternatively, for someone who loved The Lost Mines of Phandelver and wants to own it in its most complete form, this is your book. It certainly has a "special edition" vibe about it in the same way you might get excited for the anniversary LP of an album you already own. The Psionic Goblin Brawlers and Commanders are also a great treat to throw into any campaign if you feel like the regular Goblins just aren't doing enough to challenge your party. A goblin is suddenly no longer the butt of the joke when they're dealing 4d6 psychic damage on a 30-foot radius sphere. Who Is Phandelver and Below For? As well as mutations there are also a lot of new monsters, most of them with a tinge of creepy weirdness that fits the cosmic horror theme. Just as a yearning to help dear Gundren makes for powerful motivation at the adventure’s start, painting Phandalin as a town worth fighting for will cement your players’ desire to defend it—especially important in later chapters, when aberrant forces begin to warp the settlement. While the mining town and its inhabitants are greatly expounded on in the second chapter of the adventure, consider breathing life into the road to Phandalin, raising expectations for a vibrant, safe haven. No new races or subclasses to do with these threats is a strange omission, but it may also be as OneD&D is ramping up for 2024 there's less of a desire to add new options for character creation that are going to immediately be contradicted/invalidated. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk Review | Final Thoughts

While the core quests remain the same, tweaks have been made all over. This includes rewritten flavor text, adjusted 5e encounters, and NPCs with swapped genders.

An Adventure Revisited

Mutates are introduced, a class of enemies that are aberrations of previously known monsters that a player might have encountered in the past. Humanoid creatures mutated will obtain abilities to deal with psychic nightmare blasts and will have webbed wings sprouting from their bodies. The significant changes that someone familiar with the original release will notice are more artwork and battle maps, and some NPC have been altered to create a world filled with more than just humans. Plant tidbits of information early and often. If the players are invested in figuring out the connections they form, the rewards are all the sweeter!

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