(from my blog, a little rant)

Inspired by common recommendations to use it as a GM's first 5e adventure, I have to say I disagree.

The problems start with the very first encounter, and what it says about the world.

Why are 4 goblins ambushing a well armed party of 4-6 larger and likely tougher looking travellers - the PCs?  Answer: To give PCs a starting encounter. From goblin perspective it makes no sense. They would let such go past & wait for easier prey.

Why do the goblins use such sub-optimal tactics, with 2 charging into melee to get slaughtered? Answer: So the PCs can win. Because if the goblins were to use sniping tactics from cover, combined with their racial ability to hide, disengage etc, they might well actually win.

This is a terrible first encounter which sends the message that the world exist for the benefit of the PCs. It would work much better to (for instance) have four drunken goblins lounging around the wagon Paizo-style, a wine butt spilling the last dregs onto the ground - ie the PCs got lucky. Then the goblins can even react in confused & suboptimal manner without straining plausibility.

But don't set up an ambush that is suicidal from the POV of the ambushers.

Quote from: S'mon;1046996Why do the goblins use such sub-optimal tactics, with 2 charging into melee to get slaughtered? Answer: So the PCs can win.

WotC writers metagaming a touch, I see.

Suboptimal goblin tactics are now the reason the whole of Mines of Phandelver sucks? K, fam.

The adventure is written for up to five PCs not six, it on page 2 first sentence of Running the Adventure. If you run it with six or more then their advice and setup indeed doesn't make sense and the PCs will handily win most encounters.

I have run Philanderer three times, each time the initial goblin ambush was challenge for the PC. Two reasons their high stealth resulted in a surprise round each time and they are armed with shortbows.

This blog post, a near party kill, is typical of how the first encounter goes for me.

As for in-game motivation, the adventure has the party driving a wagon full of supplies to Phandelver. Out of a five person party may be one or two will looked like a heavily armed warrior. The rest will be dressed in more ordinary clothes little different than what commoner wear. The party in my blog post only Vognur looked like a armed warrior. Sidwin had some gear and looked like he could handle himself in a fight. But Squirrel was dressed in ordinary clothes and Ara was dressed in robes that marked him as slightly more wealthy.

The goblins also have a wisdom of 8 which implies they would tend to take more chances than a more sensible group would. Combined with the overconfidence resulting from their use of missile weapons and stealth ability to me makes an ambush of a 4 to 5 person party involved escorting a supply wagon makes it a plausible encounter.

Is the setup and advice perfect? No but I still give a solid A as far as these goes. However also from experience running 5e, if you have less than four or more than five, then the encounter will likely go very different when run multiple times. I don't think the writer of the adventure realized how crucial that is.

Especially in hindsight when 5e first came out a lot of people wanted to try it. This often resulted in oversized parties. So if I were to write a intro adventure like Phandelver for the next hot edition, I would spend some paragraph on how to scale encounters up (or down) to account for the size of the party. I am not a fan of scaling but the point of Phandelver is an aide to the novice referee. They need to know what the effect of having a 8 person party swamp everything or what happens if there are only two players involved.

I played through Lost Mine of Phandelver, and for some reason, I didn't find it all that engaging. Maybe I'm just not suited to D&D.

It's an entry level adventure for newbie players; it's supposed to teach the mechanics. Did you ever play the Mentzer Red Box adventure? You pretty much are guaranteed to beat the first couple encounters by design.

I went to your blog in hopes your full review delved deeper

It didn't. This is the entire review

One would think, as we're D&D players, that we'd explore our dungeons a little deeper

You give goblins too many street smarts and too little confidence in their stealth abilities.

Plus there is that whole (very subtle) plot point about the goblins being on the look out for anyone with mining supplies and the bugbear back at the lair ready to kick their asses if they do not obey.

(SPOILER)

I think it is kind of assumed these are the same goblins that ambushed the dwarf earlier and confidence is high on the goblin side.

Plus, (and here is where I think you really miss the boat on Phandelver) not every first time D&D player is a tactical genius or looking to play D&D Risk. Some of them just want to pretend to be an Elf that goes Pew Pew every now and then. And WoTC wants them to feel welcome too. You as the experienced DM should be able to flavor to taste.

Phandelver isn't awful, but it isn't nearly as good as many 5E fans would have us believe. It presents a few mini-dungeons and a very basic, vanilla plot. The challenges ramp up. They take place in varied environments. It's hard to screw up the adventure.

On the minus side, it's generic Forgotten Realms pablum. When the PCs get to town, they're confronted with a gang of ruffians and one solution to the problem - hack them all dead. The villain does nothing villainous; he's the villain because he's the villain (and Glassstaff? Really? Even by the dire standards of FR, that's bad). A bunch of vanilla NPCs are introduced but they can be pretty much ignored. The town is and its inhabitants are far less interesting than Hommlet. The dungeons are generic complexes. It's all safe and boring and accessible and uninspired.

Really, it's a testament to how modest our expectations are for low-level published adventures that Phandelver gets so much praise.

Quote from: Haffrung;1047031Phandelver isn't awful, but it isn't nearly as good as many 5E fans would have us believe. It presents a few mini-dungeons and a very basic, vanilla plot. The challenges ramp up.

  That might explain why I found it underwhelming--we came in with 3rd and 4th level characters converted from BECMI, so we were overleveled for most of it.

LMoP is littered with problems, not least the opening skirmish.

Still a fantastic intro module.

All the monsters die in D&D though. All hobo serial killer games suck, in general.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1047039All the monsters die in D&D though. All hobo serial killer games suck, in general.

God I want to game with you. You're just so optimistic!

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1047039All the monsters die in D&D though. All hobo serial killer games suck, in general.

Have you ever actually played D&D before? Serious question.

Phandelver could have used a little more of the fantastical, and a little more varied situations.  However, it is constrained by being a teaching module.  There is even somewhat of a mini-railroad at the beginning so that the instructions in that section are used first.  The main problem thereafter is that that environment is sparse.