Let’s Make a Deal P1

We’ve been creating so much free, home-brewed DnD content to drop into one’s game that we’re returning to some good ol’ fashioned Dungeons and Dragons prewritten module prep. Let’s take a look at the latest encounter!

First, a quick summary for any first-time readers. We’re playing the free D&D Beyond Acquisition’s Incorporated 5e module but interspersing a ton of custom content, including a new Hovertrain campaign setting called “The Forgotten Rails.”

So, we’ve finally finished Episode 1: Right Place, Wrong Heroes and are now moving into Episode 2: Fun in Phandalin. The upcoming ribbon ceremony for The Forgotten Rails won’t have many rail routes initially, so Phandalin has plenty of traditional travel encounters in play. We’re going to start prepping for one called “Free-Market Lizardfolk.”

The encounter premise is a good one. There’s a lizardfolk alchemist named Thetsis. She has a potion of water breathing business arrangement with a human bandit named Rasqel. Alas, Rasqel doesn’t like the current agreement and is getting ready to drop some muscle on our poor alchemist.

The players took the Hovertrain towards Phandalin as far as they could and walked it the rest of the way when they stumbled upon these two in a heated argument.

We happen to have the absolute perfect 3D-printed miniature by Brite Minis for our Lizardfolk. This Alchemist is even holding a potion bottle! Like it was meant to be! This mini is from an older Patreon release (but included in their extensive download archive).

We asked resident painter Kimmy Utah to take a brush to this one, and she crushed it as usual. The skin is spot on and all the details are just right, including the oversized red cap, the purple potion bottle, and the fab cloak color. It’s perfect!

Poor Thetsis spots the players and locks eyes with the group to help her before she gets whooped by the unreasonable Bandit and his Bugbear bodyguards. In the module, players would typically only be at level two. However, with so much homebrewed content, our six-character adventure party is already at level five. Consequently, DM Ben has to increase the number of monsters to ensure the Challenge Rating is appropriate.

So, instead of two Bugbear bodyguards (named Jutt & Meff), DM Ben has scaled it (pun intended) to four (AC 16, HP 27, +4 att/2d8+2). Then, for the Bandit, he’ll use the Bugbear Chief (AC 17, HP 65, +5 att/2d8+3) stats instead of the Human Bandit stats. This comes out to Medium CR and is much more fitting for our group. DM Ben even prefers Rasqel escapes so he can come up later in the campaign.

We’re utilizing some of our Wizkids & Pathfinder Battles pre-painted miniatures for our Bugbear bodyguards. One of the cool things about being a longtime miniatures collector is that you really start to build up a nice variety of classic monsters like Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds, and of course, Bugbears. This is especially good for tracking initiative and combat on one’s gameboard.

Starting from left to right, we pulled a Bugbear Skulker (from Legendary Adventures), Bugbear 5e (from 50th Anniversary), Bugbear Hero (from Rise of the Runelords), and a Bugbear Strangler (from Demonweb).

Next time we’ll share the 3D-printed miniature we’ll be using for the Human Bandit Boss, Rasqel!