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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 6879965" data-attributes="member: 6801286">I normally play 3.5 with a group of seasoned role players. But last weekend I had the opportunity to join a 5th edition game with a first time DM, and some newb players. The module he ran for that evening, was Lost Mines of Phandelver.I decided to play a human barbarian called Logue, a character that I had played before in 3.5 campaigns. We all started as level 1 characters, but I figured that a barbarian was a good class to help carry the less experienced players. Barbarians deal lots of damage, have lots of hitpoints, have decent armor, and excel at lost of physical tasks, such as climbing and heavy lifting. The rest of our party consisted of a rogue, a bard and some spell casters. Unfortunately we didn't have a dedicated healer, which turned out to be a bit of an issue. We didn't start out with any healing potions, and our bard had only 2 healing spells per day. And since Lost Mines of Phandelver seems to be kind of combat heavy, we found ourselves having to rely a lot on short rests to recover hitpoints.My thoughts on our first time DMI think our DM did a pretty good job for a first time dungeon master. But he should have probably read the campaign more thoroughly before running it. He often had to reread a lot of stuff. But he did pretty well at giving us space to play our characters, and even encouraged us to do so. Pros:He did a good job with helping us make our characters.He encouraged us to describe and introduce our characters.He allowed plenty of room for role playing, and on rare occasion rewarded inspiration for it.He was not too harsh in his adjudication, and allowed his players to change their minds on actions.He helped some of the new players by explaining their options, such as explaining to our Rogue how his stealth could be used to take out two enemies.Cons:Should have read the campaign more before hand.The descriptions of locations would have probably been more clear, if not literally read as written.He had some difficulty with how spells work.He was sometimes unsure what skills to use to resolve a certain situation.My thoughts on 5th edition:It plays very similarly like 3.5, but I won't be switching to 5th edition any time soon. I like how quick it was to create characters, but I dislike the simplicity of the system as a whole. Some of the saves make sense (such as a strength save to resist a gust of wind), while others are complete nonsense (such as any charisma save), a clear case of feeling the need to arbitrarily assign a type of save to each ability. I like what I've read about how armor class and hitpoints now no longer have the massive power creep associated with them like they did in third edition. And I like the idea of legendary actions on monsters. But we didn't get to experience any of that as a level 1 party, in a very short session.My thoughts on the module itself:I enjoyed it, although we only got to play a small part of it, and were unable to finish the whole campaign. The campaign did feel very combat heavy. Upon reading the module myself, it seems that it is indeed pretty much a combat encounter at every location, which I'm not all that fond of. With a party that was missing a dedicated healer, this made us entirely reliant on short rests after each encounter. Is this intended? Or should we simply have brought a healer?Of the few opponents we got to fight, several could quickly reduce our weaker classes to 1 or 2 hitpoints. These were all level 1 characters after all. Now my barbarian could easily take quite a beating. But our wizard was instantly down to 1 hitpoint after 1 attack from a wolf. This seems a bit tough for beginners. One of the first questions that puzzled our DM, was one that I asked at the start of the campaign: "What sort of climate are we in? And what do our surroundings look like?"Upon reading the module myself, it seems they completely neglect to make any mention of that. It is as if the writers assume that everyone knows what the climate is around Neverwinter. Is this supposed to be common knowledge? And what does the Highroad south of Neverwinter look like? I would personally just make stuff up, but for a new DM these details are kind of important. Instead the module opens the story with names of characters and towns that are instantly forgotten by the players unless written down. I'm not very fond of writing campaign modules this way. And whenever the module does provide detailed descriptions, they are often so detailed that they add confusion rather than information. I personally always prefer that a DM provides their own description of a location, rather than reading the pre-written text out loud. This is because the pre-written descriptions in adventure modules almost always fail to clearly describe the entrances and exits out of a room. And Lost Mines of Phandelver was no different. Yes, it has very flavorful descriptions of each location inside the cave, and all of them are immediately followed by questions by players: "So wait, is there one or are there two tunnels out of this room?"However, it seemed our newb DM did have all the information he needed to  run the combat encounters. So that's a plus.I'm curious to hear what other people think. This is by no means a review of the entire module, because we only got to play a very small part of it.</blockquote>

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