D&D 5E DMing "Out of the Abyss"

[CapnZapp]

As a side note, the book makes extensive reference to shield dwarves. AFAICT they are a Forgotten Realms regional dwarven race, presumably statted as Mountain Dwarves in 5e? Are they described anywhere in OOTA or in the core books?

NPCs in 5th edition are usually not given the full player character procedure; that is they are not statted using the rules for classes and levels. Instead they are given simplified stat blocks akin to monsters; these are found in Appendix B: Nonplayer Characters, page 342 of Monster Manual.

For example, Eldeth the Shield Dwarf is described as a Scout (in bold). This refers to the Scout entry on page 349. This means Eldeth is a 3 HD creature with 16 hit points and a Stealth check of +6, for example.

Do note that the line right under the headline "Scout" says "Medium humanoid (any race), any alignment" (my emphasis on any race). The fact the picture shows an elf ranger and that the Scout's highest ability score is Dexterity does not mean you can't use these statistics for a dwarf scout. In fact, 5th edition presumes that the differences between different humanoids (elves, dwarves, tieflings, half-orcs etc) are small enough to be negligible, even for semi-important NPCs like Eldeth.

If you feel this is not enough, you are (per the NPC creation guidelines that you find in the DMG by the way) welcome to stat up NPCs using the full player character creation rules. But Out of the Abyss does not do this even once. All OotA NPCs are simply given a stat block from this Appendix B, unless they are outright monsters, and I gather this is true of previous adventures as well(?).

So, yes, if you want to create a Shield Dwarf PC to use in Forgotten Realms scenarios (such as this one), you are correct in using the Mountain Dwarf PHB subrace.

But for purposes of NPCs in OotA, the only example where the adventure goes any length to customize its NPCs is for Drow (=adding drow racial traits to any Appendix B stat block as necessary*). This is not done consistently for dwarves or deep gnomes or goblins or humans etc.

Hope this clears things up!



*) Or more accurately, telling you to do it. The WotC adventures do not include NPC stat blocks, only MM references together with any tweaks.

 

[CapnZapp]

There are already a few threads related to OotA. The problem is they disappear. And a new one starts.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?469640-Out-of-the-Abyss-Thread-Collection

 

[The Hitcher]

Here's a question I haven't seen answered yet: how much food does a foraging PC turn up?

The text (p. 20) gives a difficulty for foraging - and references the PHB rules to determine how much food and water each person needs - but it doesn't give any indication of how much they should find. I realise I can either make this up on a case-by-case basis (potentially repetitive) or come up with a general rule (hard to judge up-front), but I'm wondering what other people are doing for this?

FYI: we're one session in, and at this stage it's looking like the PCs will escape with weapons and a bunch of allies, but no food or water.

 

[Motorskills]

What's a good Underdark insect for the Ilvara's Insect Plague? Locusts don't feel very underdarky to me.

Woodlice, cockroaches, maybe?

 

[fba827]

What's a good Underdark insect for the Ilvara's Insect Plague? Locusts don't feel very underdarky to me.

Woodlice, cockroaches, maybe?

Maggots, or spiders are even better. Though recognize that you take out the inherent 3rd dimension of the spells area by it not being a flying insect. But as long as the players won't be too pulled out by 'spiders in a 3 dimensional sphere' ( perhaps explained as quick webbing allowing them to cover the third dimension) or just let it be two dimensional which will still get the pcs as long as they aren't flying or levitating...

 

[CapnZapp]

Here's a question I haven't seen answered yet: how much food does a foraging PC turn up?

The text (p. 20) gives a difficulty for foraging - and references the PHB rules to determine how much food and water each person needs - but it doesn't give any indication of how much they should find. I realise I can either make this up on a case-by-case basis (potentially repetitive) or come up with a general rule (hard to judge up-front), but I'm wondering what other people are doing for this?

FYI: we're one session in, and at this stage it's looking like the PCs will escape with weapons and a bunch of allies, but no food or water.

The text references the PHB, which in turn references the DMG.

Page 111 of the DMG has the answers you seek.

Edit: Since this is not in the Basic Rules, a summary:

Success at the DC 15 (or 20) Wisdom (survival) check means you forage 1d6+Wis (your Wisdom modifier) units of food and 1d6+Wis units of water.

(The food unit is something called "pound" and the water unit is one out of several things called "gallon" which might be convenient for archaic imperialists, but merely strange for us living in the modern world: instead of counting 450 grams of food and 3.8 litres of liquid I prefer to use simply "units"... )

Regardless - each unit of food/water is enough to sustain a small or medium creature for one day. Large creatures require four times as much food and water (and horses probably don't eat the same things as you do).

As far as I can see, that is what is needed to complete the info on page 20 of Out of the Abyss.

Edit: For purposes of the Encumbrance rules of the game (default 15 x Strength pounds) each unit of food weighs "1 Encumbrance" and each unit of water weighs "8 Encumbrance".

A medium strength character thus can carry eighteen days worth of food and drink if carrying nothing else.

If you use variant encumbrance rules, a Strength 16 character in chainmail carrying 15 pounds of gear can additionally carry one day's worth of provisions without getting encumbered and ten days of provisions without getting heavily encumbered.

 

[CapnZapp]

What I can't find, however, is the benefit of travelling at a slow pace.

I would imagine you gain advantage on your foraging check, but can't find this expressly stated anywhere in the module or the DMG.

Furthermore, I can't find any rules at all for how much you forage if you don't travel at all, spending an entire day solely focussed on foraging.

(Starting a new thread on these last bits.)

 

[ddaley]

What I can't find, however, is the benefit of travelling at a slow pace.

I would imagine you gain advantage on your foraging check, but can't find this expressly stated anywhere in the module or the DMG.

Furthermore, I can't find any rules at all for how much you forage if you don't travel at all, spending an entire day solely focussed on foraging.

(Starting a new thread on these last bits.)

The module talks about pace on page 18. There is a table titled "Underdark Travel Pace." Basically, fast pace gives -5 penalty to passive perception checks and no foraging is possible. Slow either give improved foraging or you can use stealth while traveling. It says that at a slow pace, the characters can travel stealthily enough to surprise creatures or have the option to sneak past them. I am not seeing what "improved foraging" means. It just says "improves their chances of successful foraging..."

 

[CapnZapp]

The module talks about pace on page 18. There is a table titled "Underdark Travel Pace." Basically, fast pace gives -5 penalty to passive perception checks and no foraging is possible. Slow either give improved foraging or you can use stealth while traveling. It says that at a slow pace, the characters can travel stealthily enough to surprise creatures or have the option to sneak past them. I am not seeing what "improved foraging" means. It just says "improves their chances of successful foraging..."

Yes, I know this.

By the way, here is the thread on foraging:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?469736-Foraging-at-a-slow-pace

 

[The Hitcher]

The text references the PHB, which in turn references the DMG.

Page 111 of the DMG has the answers you seek.

Thanks! I'd missed the DMG reference. So much cross-referencing for a single situation! Would have been nice for the adventure to mention that some of the required rules were in there.