D&D 5E Wave Echo Cave Shenanigans

Greetings!

I'm a first-time DM (with a little D&D experience, mostly 3.5) that has been doing through the Starter Set Adventure: Lost Mine of Phandelver with a group of total RPG noobs. It's been a lot of fun, and we are all learning as we go.

Warning! Spoilers for the last section of the LMoP adventure!

I thought I would tell everyone about a few of the hilarious hijinks that the players got into last night, and then everyone can tell me how I approached everything the wrong way (it's the internet, right?).

I've added a few things to the adventure just to engage the players more, like a Bag of Holding. Upon reaching the cave entrance, our Dwarf Fighter put the bags of flour, casks of meat, and other provisions into the bag. The first cave area was full of Stirges. Our Wood Elf Cleric stealthed into the cave and Perceived of the Stirges without alerting them. She came back to relay that information to the party, who decided that since the ceiling looked about 30 feet tall, and our High Elf Wizard's flaming hand range was 15 feet, that the best way to deal with the issue would be to raise her arms straight up while being carried by the 5ft tall Dwarf and then scorching the group of Stirges. After a series of Strength, Acrobatics, and Stealth rolls (with disadvantage), the two went undetected into the cave and the wizard managed to take out most of the stirges in one spell! It was pretty great, although I'm sure I did something wrong.

The second truly inspired plan was when the party got to the fungi room. With a very high Nature roll from the cleric, it seemed that after a section of the mold was stepped on it would release poison gas, but not again after. So the Dwarf, having Dwarven Resilience to poison, tied the two bags of flower he had to his body so they would drag on the floor and had the rogue poke the bags so that some flower would leak out. He Dashed across the room, making it to the other side in one action, making his Constitution Saving Throw against the poison gas, leaving two white lines as boundaries to his path across the room. After the poison dissipated after 1 minute, the rest of the party easily followed, not triggering any additional poison. I awarded inspiration for the idea and execution of this plan.

I'm sure there were some instances where I went to easy on the party, but they have the most fun when they come up with unique solutions to problems and find ways to avoid combat. I know combat is an important part of the game, and they weren't able to trick or befriend the Spectator at the Forge of Spells (to the High Elf Wizard's dismay), but I really just want them to have fun and love that they think critically about situations instead of just running in with swords drawn for "another combat encounter".

Anyway, thanks for reading! I'd love to hear everyone's unique and creative solutions to problems/puzzles/encounters they've had in their games, and please (kindly, as I'm new to this) let me know if anything I did was far beyond the realm of possibility for D&D. Thanks!

You win when the table is having fun. Sounds like you’re doing a great job DMing, congrats!

I wouldn’t say you did anything wrong at all! Your players came up with some creative ideas and you figured out a way to rule if the ideas worked or not. And most importantly, everyone had fun!

It always surprises me how new players come up with really cool ideas!

Haha the flour plan is brilliant! I love it when players find interesting alternative solutions to challenge.

Sounds like a great session, and I think you were right on with awarding with good results for their creative thinking. Sometimes players will get the idea from something like this that if they just come up with a wordy elaborate plan, they'll auto-succeed, which is not a good policy, but when they truly come up with a plan that really could work, it's great to reward them with success or at least easier success.

alienux said:

Sounds like a great session, and I think you were right on with awarding with good results for their creative thinking. Sometimes players will get the idea from something like this that if they just come up with a wordy elaborate plan, they'll auto-succeed, which is not a good policy, but when they truly come up with a plan that really could work, it's great to reward them with success or at least easier success.

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Shouldn’t they, though? I mean, assuming the plan would logically be successful, as it was in this case, allowing it to be successful is only appropriate. You need the players to be able to trust that the game world functions in a logical and consistent way, which means if a plan logically would succeed, then it should. If you make them roll for actions that have no reasonable chance of failure, they get the idea that planning and tactics don’t matter, everything ultimately comes down to random dice rolls.

I think a lot of DMs could stand to be a lot more liberal with automatic success.

Charlaquin said:

Shouldn’t they, though? I mean, assuming the plan would logically be successful, as it was in this case, allowing it to be successful is only appropriate. You need the players to be able to trust that the game world functions in a logical and consistent way, which means if a plan logically would succeed, then it should. If you make them roll for actions that have no reasonable chance of failure, they get the idea that planning and tactics don’t matter, everything ultimately comes down to random dice rolls.

I think a lot of DMs could stand to be a lot more liberal with automatic success.

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I think you missed my point. Being overly wordy and elaborate does not equal plans logically succeeding every time. And I've seen characters use that to try to overcome things that need successful actions in addition to a good plan, expecting DMs to handwave every little thing they encounter. It's not a major problem I've run into, nor do I think it's a big problem with players in general, but I've seen it happen.

alienux said:

I think you missed my point. Being overly wordy and elaborate does not equal plans logically succeeding every time. And I've seen characters use that to try to overcome things that need successful actions in addition to a good plan, expecting DMs to handwave every little thing they encounter. It's not a major problem I've run into, nor do I think it's a big problem with players in general, but I've seen it happen.

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Ahh, yes, I did miss your point then. My mistake.

MaximusArael020 said:

I've added a few things to the adventure just to engage the players more, like a Bag of Holding. Upon reaching the cave entrance, our Dwarf Fighter put the bags of flour, casks of meat, and other provisions into the bag. The first cave area was full of Stirges. Our Wood Elf Cleric stealthed into the cave and Perceived of the Stirges without alerting them. She came back to relay that information to the party, who decided that since the ceiling looked about 30 feet tall, and our High Elf Wizard's flaming hand range was 15 feet, that the best way to deal with the issue would be to raise her arms straight up while being carried by the 5ft tall Dwarf and then scorching the group of Stirges. After a series of Strength, Acrobatics, and Stealth rolls (with disadvantage), the two went undetected into the cave and the wizard managed to take out most of the stirges in one spell! It was pretty great, although I'm sure I did something wrong.

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You accidentally 'lost' 5 feet of range between the Wizard and the Stirges on the ceiling. But your group had a really inventive idea (I wish I had thought of something like that !) and fun making it work out, so no worries.

If you ever run White Plume Mountain, keep an ear out for if anybody in your group comes up with a plan to drain the water out of the underground lake. (I'm puzzling over this one myself; the DM may not have enough information to be able to tell me if it CAN work.)

Ha! You and your players seem like you all had a blast. Nothing else matters as much as that. Nothing. Congrads. Awarding inspiration is something I miss out on too much as a DM because I just straight forget sometimes. Rewarding creative thinking is really good practice especially as you seem like the type who loves that style as well.