A video guide for the quest "Toil and Trouble" in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. ------------ Follow Me On ------------ Twitch: / steelysam Twitter: / steelysam Discord: / discord
My party brought the cauldron back to Easthaven, then it was stolen by Targos--- on the way back they radio'd ahead (animal messenger) and Bryn Shander confiscated the cauldron, locked up the Zhent thugs (and the party!), then summoned the officials from Targos and Easthaven to come and help figure out how to handle this. Can't wait to see what Duvessa decides on this, and if it ends up staying in Bryn.
There is this great bit of lore about harpies being 'sadistic cowards' and avoiding direct combat when they can. As a first turn, the harpies can use Luring Song to try to charm a PC into moving towards them over dangerous terrain-- in this case the rocky cliffs. Add an acrobatics check to see if they traverse the rocks and 7 (2d6) bludgeoning damage if they fall! Also-- I would be lost without these videos, thank you so much for sharing!!
Have watched almost all your Frostmaiden videos. I found them to be super helpful! Would love to see Targos since my party will be headed that way next Saturday :)
The giant is very difficult if you don't have the two free rounds on it. It does insane amounts of damage and it's fast. Whenever the DM has this thing join the fight is when the party needs to flee. A level 1 party basically stands no chance against this thing. If you are going to run this quest as your level 1 quest, I would suggest cutting the Giant Skelly all together or making it only show up when you want the party to flee.
I ran this quest and I don't think it's as easy as it looks on paper. With the skeleton (50dmg a turn) and the hag (save or die), a bad roll can TPK a party pretty quickly. After harpies and water weird, they may not have a short rest opportunity and the hag/skeleton can be really dangerous. If they go to the hag first and then the skeleton shows up on round 3, it's really nasty! Level 3's can probably survive it, but be very careful about running this against a level 2 party.
The group I ran followed the fisherman tracks to the waterfall then turned right to fight the skeleton. The skeleton spent 2 turns trying to break out of ice while the party pummeled it. The hag was able to drop 1 party member before she was killed.
@@SteelySam Yeah, my party preferred to follow the ice and went to Maud first. The tracks technically end at U7 so there's nothing to lead then to U9 by default 😔
For the Sea Hag encounter we just skipped over the Hag transformation because our Goliath Barbarian shoved her into the cauldron for about three turns or so and also because of our Barbain doesn't like ghost so we skipped over the ghost white lady
That giant is a killer 2 +9 25 hit attacks or 1 gaze dc 13 35 dam attack .. I feel the gaze is more forgiving but deadly to level 3 .. the fear from maud was nothing compared to that... add in the wisp sucking souls from 0hp pcs ..
7:20 A character can hold their breath for a number of minutes equal to their con mod, plus a number of rounds equal to their con mod before dropping to zero HP. However, if a character is surprised, I would tule they don’t actively take a huge breath and hold it, only surviving a number of rounds equal to their con mod before dropping to zero HP. Surprise is nasty
Any idea on how to make it interesting to actually go to Easthaven? My party is now at Termalaine and they are about to turn in the "A Beautiful Mine" quest and they will be level 3 after that.
I need some help, Where in the book might the players learn of this magic cauldron? If they fight a hag, and there's a big cauldron how would I convince or inform the players, hey its a good idea to take this huge thing.
In area 6 there is a camp. You could have a journal there that tells of a dwarfs journey to find a magical cauldron to feed his starving camp. You could hint at the hag or just say some magical monster. After the party fights the hag the drawings on the side could be vague instructions on how to use it
@@SteelySam ohh ok, good thinking, I was thinking other than putting crazy runes on this giant Bowl I don't know why my party would want to take this thing, but that is a great idea thanks
I really don't know how people survive these encounters. I rolled a dice for the first town and luckily they started in Bremen and they quickly tried to talk to the thing so ok lvl 2 it was easy. But having just 3 players the chapter 1 quests are really hard. My players are an arcane trickster rogue, a fiend pact warlock and a grave domain cleric. They had a hard time beating Ravisin. My cleric dropped unconscious for 3 rounds during Ravisin and the warlock and rogue have no healing and the adventure gives no healing potions in chapter 1 I should have putted some somewhere as reward. I've read the combat with the hag the wisp and the giant ... I don't think they are going to survive... Any tips?
Haha.. Now I feel sad for her. Just minding her own buisness but people keep wandering inside... whats a poor hag to do... in my game I placed a few cultist ropes and symbols in the trash to hint at the cult but also mess with my players
I know all the other DM's swear by milestone leveling but after reading through chapter 1 I realized that not all the quests in chapter 1 are equal in difficulty. There's really like 4 I'd consider level 1, 4 that would be 2, and 4 that would be 3rd. I came up with an XP value for the quest based on the difficulty and included a bonus for turning it in, and basically you would have to do 2 quests for level 2, 2 more for level 3, and 3 more for level 4, so that's at least 8 quests instead of 5 like the book suggests. These quests look like a lot of fun and having read and prepped for them all, I want to run more of them than just 5, so either I'll do a milestone that requires more quests or just do my XP. If I make it just require more quests, I might take lower level quests away, say somebody else did them or just not tell them they were ever there if they don't know about them, and make the harder quests not available until later. Or, I might do XP and just make it a true sandbox and let things happen as they will. The level pacing is too fast for my liking. These are relatively new players and will need time to learn their current abilities before piling on new one. This will also give them a chance to enjoy this stage longer before things get more serious and intense. If they do all 12 quests, it's 26,100 XP, enough for a party of 4 to get level 5. I know they're not supposed to get level 5 until chapter 2, but there will be 6 characters in this party, so they will still only be level 4 and will probably get level 5 at the same time they would be expected to normally under the milestone system anyway.
