The END of Icewind Dale | Ch 5-8 DM Guide
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- Chapters 5, 6, 7, and the Epilogue of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden are where your party finally faces Auril and reverses her everlasting winter over Ten Towns. Let's end this! ▶️ More below! ⏬
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What a time to discover your videos. Started Rime of the Frostmaiden 3 months ago and im still getting use out of the town breakdowns. Now with this as we are firmly in chapter 2 it will be a very easy going campaign to run. Much love king
I'm very happy to hear that your getting god use out of these guides! Enjoy!
Hi Bob! Thankyou very much for all theese videos!! They were really very helpful. I want to share our exprience with you. Our group has many players and they are all pacifists, so I wasn't very sure how the big ending was going to work out, since they didn't want to confront Auril at all. So they ended up puting the flying city of Ythryn on top of Auril's ice castle, to ensure an everlasting winter just on Auril's island. This way she can go to sleep, so summer can take over, and the castle will not melt down!
I felt very surprised with such a creative ending!
Have a nice day!
I was hoping for a wrap-up at the end where you discuss the adventure as a whole, what you liked, what you would have done differently, etc
welp throwing this in the back log to watch later. currently running around at level 4 trying to help EVERYONE in IWD and dont want spoilers. :)
Haha thanks for still adding it the back log!
Our group recently finished RotfM and got travelled back in time, while fun in the moment looking back it was a little anticlimactic and totally went against what we were trying to do.
As long as it was fun in the moment, I guess it worked out! haha
I'm preparing Icewind Dale campaign and your videos are a gold mine! Thank you Bob for the quality of your content and your kindness face to camera. I just saw that you opened a kickstarter for the "Delve" guide. Just backed it 🙂
Great video as always Bob!
But, I realized something about this module through you covering it. When I ran my group through this, the focus was actually on the plot of the Duergar, and the frostmaiden and Ythrin took a back seat. My party then just killed the frostmaiden on Grimskalle with their NPC allies and ended the adventure there.
Just goes to show how this module feels like it is made up of a bunch of different storylines that were all stuffed into the same book.
Can't agree more. Too many plots! All rather interesting, but this could've been two campaigns easily
@@BobWorldBuilder i disagree. I feel like progressing defeating one big bad should come at the cost of letting other big bads get closer to their goals. The world is full of evil all plotting at the same time, why would they wait for the heroes to defeat the other guy to start their evil plans.
also
chaos creates opportunity. While the Kingdoms of the Sword Coast are dealing with giants, the giants' enemies the dragons are planning to summon Tiamat, (I had Bahamut's child Palladior be in cahoots with Tiamat for the purpose of reconquering the world for dragons before giants caused too much of a mess, so metallic and chromatic were problems.) The Elemental Evils could conceivably be tied to Auruill, and Asmodeus would have fingers in the abyss leaking into the under-dark to weaken power structures while druegar gain a surface foothold and the gods are distracted by the land being torn up by dragons, giants, demigods, and primordials.
I ran all the modules multiple times and together in a west-marches style, but never was able to finish a "World War Faerun" situation, where the decisions the players made and powers they unbalanced led the sword coast to being to dangerous and the lords alliance being beset by Cormyr, Kara Tur and then Thay plus....
I agree they could have done a better job marketing the adventure as a three-part series of optional mini-campaigns. That’s really what it is. I love it for that, to be honest. But my favorite part of the adventure was the duergar plot, so mileage obviously varies.
A friend of mine who's a DM felt the same way.
In fact, when he invited me to the new campaign he's planning to run, he straight up told me that he's running this module(which I've played before) and plans to throw out/rewrite a grand majority of the campaign as written in order to make Auril a more involved threat during the events of the module
I don't plan on ever playing icewind dale, but I'm here for it anyway.
I really appreciate that!
I’ve actually been running Icewind Dale with my party at the moment and the videos have been super useful. I’d love to see a Curse of Strahd series like this as I plan to run that for them next.
Finally!!! I was not expecting this
Yeah it's wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy overdue haha
I intend to run this soon(ish). Many thanks for your brilliant guide.
My wizard passed the test of cruelty in a really fun way. She proclaimed herself an envoy of Auril and asked who was faithful. When she chief and the shaman both answered, she asked again, breaking a javelin and throwing the two halves between them. After the Shaman killed the chief, she came up behind him and coup de grâced him, throwing them both in the pot for the villagers the eat. She tried to justify it to herself by saying any good leader would have sacrificed themselves first before those they have a duty of care too, but it’s a really rough trolly problem.
She ended up passing all her tests in very round about ways, blasphemously twisting Auril’s teachings, before spitting at her feet when she manifested before them at the end
thats epic
My plan for the Caves of Hunger: Put the sealed door that requires reading the Rime at the END. Not the beginning.
Glad to see you capping off this series!
I ran Frostmaiden as my first ever campaign and ended up reworking it to end after Destruction’s Light.
Seeing how my campaign ended, you can totally work that ad a natural end to the campaign, but I’d love to run the full thing some day.
The dragon, already severely damaged by the party in the Forge and some damage from the militias along the way, was killed by a lot of moonbeams appearing as it flew over Lac Dinneshire from East Haven towards Caer Dineval (by far the most significant town in my campaign somehow).
Then out of portals (similar to the Wild Hunt in Witcher 3) Cate Frostfang (my amalgamation of Yselm Bloodfang and a few other characters) at the head of multiple yeti, wolves, Ravicin, and a Banshee.
The party was assisted by Sheriff Markham (whom I reworked into a Bard with mostly buff or debuff spells I could reflavor into him just being a massive force of will on the battlefield) and about 2 dozen militia.
The CR calculator I used put the encounter well into deadly, and the Paladin, Fighter, and Markham all went down at different points, along with all but maybe 2 militia dying in the fight.
The Paladin, who secretly worked with the Cult and later renounced Levistus, was approached by the cult- I fully intended to have a Caesar moment of him being jumped by like 12 cultists and the party having to react but the madlad talked about how “I want to show them how I walked away from Levistus, and they can too” then rolled like a 25 persuasion check.
Cue the cultists beating up the Fanatics and Kaddroth and throwing them into the jail in Bryn Shander, along with the rest of the cultists converting to the Paladin’s homebrew religion and supporting the rebuilding effort.
I’ve been waiting for this video!!
I Love this breakdown! I just finished chapter 6 with my group, and I will respectfully disagree about its relevance. I think it does a great job setting up the fallen city, especially with all the broken pieces of buildings, the golem head, and several other details. Although if your party is already growing tired of the module it would be a long diversion from the main plot which I agree with. I was geared up to run this for several weeks and my party made it all the way through in on session using the ice tunnels and some incredible stealth to sneak around the rehmorazz lair. I think they liked it, but im excited to jump in to chapter 7 with them tonight.
Thank you Bob, many sites have said that there are problems in the WOC books. But they never explain the problems or how to solve them. Thanks for the heads up to GM problems I will encounter and the go arounds you suggest. I hope you start a playlist for all the other books that WOC has written and not play tested. Keep up the good work.
By the second half of the campaign it becomes really tedious unless you buff the party's ability to travel. My characters never travelled alongside a wizard that could grant "super flight" which is a good idea. I instead made flying carpets part of the treasure found in Sunblight Fortress. I highly recommend it as it wasn't game breaking and actually gave the party more options with how to chase down the Chardalyn dragon and how to travel vast distances in the latter half of the campaign.
Thanks!
You're very welcome!
Heyyyy its back! Wish I'd seen this before a tpk occurred 😅
Well if you ever try a round two of this campaign, you'll have the full guide haha, personally I am done with this book for a long time! :P
Just in time for a party currently in the beginning of the caves of hunger. I really like some of your adjustments to the isle of solstice, however I can’t complain about the unadjusted version ended up with, considering one member ended up with her blessing, which contrasted with the paladin of lathander who converted during the campaign. Sun vs winter, warmth vs cruelty, a better thematic ending than i could’ve ever designed lol
Thank you so much for your guides! Been running Icewind Dale for 8 months now (bi-weekly) and your guides have been a life saver!! As much as I love the module, I'm a newer DM (player for 4ish years) and don't know how I would be doing this without. The party just defeated Sephek/Vurnis (after doing a bunch of towns quests) and met Vellynne, whose familiar had been spying on them, as a stinger for next session. I like the Arcane Brotherhood a lot, so I want to have them around more, insted of them being ex-machinas or cut.
Already can't wait for my players to reach the later levels tho I find chapter 1 and 2 to be the main campaign draw of IWD.
Really enjoyed this series Bob 👌
Nice! I realised about two months ago that the number of published campaigns for 5e (compared to earlier editions) means I'll probably never have the time to run (or maye even play) this one - at least, not this decade - so it's been interesting going through the videos and seeing someone's take on it while it's still relatively fresh and new.
[edited for spelling]
Yessss I have been waiting for this
WOW ive been waiting for this!!!!!!
I don't know what it is but I have no interested in running Rime of Frostmaiden, but I watched the whole video just to hear your point of view on it.
Time to listen to all other videos about this module now.
I imagine the city is built structurally around the Mythallar. Moving the base of the spire isn't going to cause the top of the spire to fall, for instance; it's going to cause the top of the spire to move. Causing the wheels of your care to roll forward doesn't leave the roof of your car behind.
How you get out of the glacier... I don't know! Weather... Control?
Actually the way the mythallar works in my opinion is that it controls the 500 feet with all the supports so that allows the rest of the city to be supported
Maybe the remainder of the city is so durable that it stays attached to the flying part.
Another great video and this series has been great as I'm preparing this campaign to start around Christmas time, currently reading through and picking out what to keep, change or discard. As I went through the book I also found chapter 6 to be oddly placed so am moving it around and tying it in a bit more logically as somewhere that must be visited in order to gain access to Aurils island. Agree that Aurils trials are set up a bit weirdly so I'm changing a few of them for something a bit grittier too as I love a moral dilemma or damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. I am keeping the Goliaths as I have tied them to my goliath PC's story, with ending the inter clan conflict being critical to redemption within their own tribe. Auril gets a bigger part too as I felt she was under used. Am toying with the idea of having her never ending winter be an attempt to stop the duergar from releasing another competing big bad who was trapped under the ice when Ythryn fell.
For the city, did you give your players the map? Did you give them ideas of where they could go like, "there is an infermery" or did you just have them find each location one by one?
When I did frostmaiden, we actually fought Auril, the roc, and her 2nd in command. The first fight was the roc with her 2nd in command riding it. (They died in 3 turns because they flew, and we could spellsnipe hold monster the rock and force them both to take 20d6 falling damage into a pack of.... I think it was bears? that all attacked the roc and crit it like 8 times leaving it on death's door before it could even go. Rest was just beating up a single support spellcaster which isn't hard with a party with this much damage output.)
We also beat phase 1 and 2 of Auril in the same day with frost mephit as support on the bridge, but boy were we running on fumes at that point. We probably would've beat her right then and there if we didn't fight the other 2 people before that. lol.
The only important thing we did in the cave of hunger is we used a combination of our conquest paladin and my druid summoning a sea hag on the gnoll vampire and using Death Glare successfully from the hag on him, killing him instantly.
The city wasn't all that impressive, the big impressive part came from when we got into the tower and fought the archlich himself. We convinced him to fight Auril with us, then after the pretender god wad dead, we would fight over the city then. Then my druid, in all her intelligence, triggered the anti magic spire inside the spire and drained everyone of magic. This was on the first round of the fight before Auril could go, and Auril was not happy since she was using it as a bluff to control irialarthis. Unfortunitally for her, my druid was the tank of the party and wildshape wasn't magic so we ended up just beating her to a pulp since she could only use cantrips. Then did the same to iraialarthis after stealing his staff and having a '1 day truce' so we could go at the fight at full power, letting him prepare whatever he wanted since Auril was... a letdown in difficulty.
Then my druid ended up attuning to the mythilar, took over the city, used the scroll of comet you find in the tower, and turned the city into a giant ooze. (My druid was a plasmoid) which flies through the world eating 'bad guys' and auril every year. It also abducts people she thinks are 'good' or 'great at magic' (basically wizards at candlekeep.) to help fix the city so it can make all sorts of cool magic things, like the one item that spawns infinite food. She isn't very smart, but a combination of her running the city, the city being a giant ooze now, and the fact she lets the wizards do whatever as long as they don't break anything or hurt anyone, and they really don't care. They can just leave and go back to candlekeep and shes so gullible they say they went on vacation and she doesn't care. lol (her gullibility caused a lot of problems with the arcane brotherhood xD.)
One of the other PCs took the anti magic spire and the scroll of summon tarrasque, dropped the spire in the middle of a main city of avernous, then dropped the tarrasque on it for good measure. Think it was in ring 8. Not even Asmodeous could do anything about it and had to reluctantly give him back his soul or lose the entire 8th layer of avernous and travel between layer 7 and 9.
Also for the time travel ending, all you need to do is convince Karsus to mantle any other god than Mystral, and the netherese empire doesn't fall, auril never becomes a god, and a lot, A LOT of things change. Heck there is no vecna in this timeline either.
I used angajeck to get to aurils abode. And it was pretty awesome
My parties and me ran out of steam after over 18 months of short midweek sessions.
The fight with Sunblight was epic and a great end of tier 1 boss fight. Before the multi city fight with the dragon which they loved, and had to make tough choices about pathing and sacrifices of towns.
After that, I wanted to end the campaign, so they got to do one chapter two location linked to a player back story. And then onto the island. Which I ran as a hexcrawl to take in more of the locations but not all of them.
Auril was done as a two stage fight after they failed the tests. She immediately appeared on the ice to punish the unworthy. First two forms and then the last form was waiting topside. The party appealed to divine help successfully and got a short test but that meant Auril got back her first two forms in a limited fashion (one round), and then showdown with her and the roc.
The 7th party got wrecked by her, even with the genie warlock pulling in his patron for help! And the conclusion was inter dimensional space trick with genie ring and bag of tricks to send Auril and a party member into the void.
I think when my party gets to this point I’m going to make a puzzle for making it to grimskalle
I have a player who wanted to be a Dhampir so I am keeping chapter 6 because I want the gnoll trapped there to be the cause of the characters plight. Plus one more thing of motivation since the player wants to have like a revenge thing going on with it however I have let them know that they know the gnoll is trapped in the glacier somewhere by auril which gives them a nice tie in to want to be apart of the party in hunting down the codicil and getting to ythrin.
The caves of hunger impacted our game a lot because the vampire gnoll got out and turned the surviving gnolls hunting us after we blew up the cackling chasm. The epilogue to the game was our retired PCs holding off a 30 Days of Night style assault on Bryn Shander until the party in Ythrin could turn the sun back on
It sounds like you weren't enamored with the suggested travel methods. 😆 The whale was a bit too cheesy for me, and I guess the overland travel can get samey-same and problematic at one story juncture.
I also skipped the Caves of Hunger. Non sequitur indeed.
My party were Shadovar/Netherese who had come to Icewind Dale pursuing rumors of a Netherese city and mythallar. (5E's surviving Shadovar are in an interesting cultural position, with the recent fall of their home and empire. It made for a fun party.) Ythryn was a lot of fun because of that. They were exploring a ruin of their own people, after a fashion, rather than an ancient ruin of a lost culture. They discussed longterm plans to revive Ythryn, but we concluded the campaign with the adventure.
I ran Icewind dale and my final thoughts are that they put WHATEVER they wanted in this campaing. **SPOILER ALERT**, "I have this great idea of aliens and laser guns", "PUT IT IN ICEWIND DALE". I really think that the campaign has a lot of replayability because the huge amount of sidequest and linear paths between them. My party avoid A LOT of the plot just because it doesn't make any sense to take quests that doesn't connect with the quests that they took earlier.
Sorry my grammar and english, isn't my native language.
We played the story as written. My DM, did small things to make sure our secrets meant something. It was the first time they jumped into that type of thing. It feels like you just did not want to take the time to deal with things. It may have been nice for you and your players to not have time pressure.
Oh man we ended up in a boss rush of the Arcanoloth, the Tomb Tapper, and Auril. I got to throw the Tomb Tapper’s hammer at her with Animate Objects though
Nice video
There are so many flaws here:
1) cruelty test: if you walk away , you leave the decision to the chieftain and you are being cruel to him. So nothing wrong there
2) how did your players know where the entrance to the caves of Hunger is located?
My players are going to fight Auril on her island tonight. I'm not too worried, but I don't know how I feel about ending the campaign here.
If the party would kill the bird I would make her ride a ancient white dragon next just for the lols
Wait wait wait? You're saying griffons are cooler than a FREAKIN' TALKING WHALE WHO GIVES THE PARTY A TOUR ON HIS BACK THROUGH STORM GIANT UNDERWATER KINGDOM? FWIW both my Frostmaiden parties really liked interacting and traveling with Angajuk the whale. :)
My Barbarian took advantage of the cursed spear and didn't get it reversed until the postmortem of the campaign.
Roc is not really very common bird to find.
Killing Auril will end the rime, but slowly at least that is how I am interpreting it. Myhalar does it faster.
mythalar will bring the whole city with it. The Idea is that base of the city is one entity and it is close enough to the mythalar.
@Bob I came across yoour videos recently. I was wondering if you heard about the Advanced D&D 5e Level Up System from EN Publishing. If you have, what are your thoughts about it. If not, can you look inro it and provide your thoughts since it is related to D&D?
It has encounters because its a whole island? I think you skip a lot of things.
why is world of warcraft the game tagged?
I disagree on the Caves of Hunger being non related. The psychic hauntings and the bits of pieces of Ythrin that fell off are a great lead-up to the horror that happened after and during the collapse down into the glacier.
It just has to be trimmed a bit, as most RotFM content sadly. Like you really don't want to spend too much time on the vampires or drows. Stick to the plan, use one or the other as narrative leads, that's all.
It's crazy to me that you can be this far into the game and still be mispronouncing Auril's name
Wait. This book has been out for 2 years and I am only learning now that it is premised on a pun on the words rime and rhyme? That's disappointing. The theme of this campaign has always sounded awesome to me, but I haven't heard great things from the people who have run it/played it.
It's the word "rime" and the other word "rime"