Would Epic Heroism be an acceptable rule variant for a small, first-time group playing the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure?

Question

I'm DMing a group with 4 players. For all of us, this is our first D&D experience. We'll be playing the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure from the Starter Set.

I'm concerned about the survivability, especially given how green the players are. At first level, they'll have 10 or 12 hit points, facing groups of goblins that can hit for 1d6+2. I'm adjusting the number of monsters in each encounter, but still worry.

Healing seems to be very rare. At first level, the spellcasters will have the ability to cast two spells in an entire dungeon.

The Epic Heroism resting variant (DMG, p. 267) seems like it could help, but might tip the balance too far the other way into easy mode:

This variant uses a short rest of 5 minutes and a long rest of 1 hour. This change makes combat more routine, since characters can easily recover from every battle. You might want to make combat encounters more difficult to compensate.

Spellcasters using this system can afford to burn through spell slots quickly, especially at higher levels. Consider allowing spellcasters to restore expended spell slots equal to only half their maximum spell slots (rounded down) at the end of a long rest, and to limit spell slots restored to 5th level or lower. Only a full 8-hour rest will allow a spellcaster to restore all spell slots and to regain spell slots of 6th level or higher.

Am I missing some element that would make the party more likely to survive the first dungeon, or would this rule variant be a good way to introduce the mechanics of the game?

Answer 1

It's possible, but casters will have a field day

Lost Mines of Phandelver has a lot, a lot of encounters that consist of mostly low HP enemies that will die to a single AoE spell, two tops. At first this might not seem like a big deal, but it is when you combine a lot of easily AoE'd squishy enemies with the ability to get your spell slots back very, very quickly.

LMoP ends before your players will get access to true powerhouse spells like Fireball which will instantly end encounters, but a lot of first level spells will easily end encounters if you can simply spam them.

Even with only a single spellslot, a warlock who can get their spells back in 5 minutes will have no reason not to blow up everything in sight, then rest 5 minutes and do it again in the next fight. This will make your non-spellcasters feel a lot less exciting, because those classes are generally better in longer drawn out days where you can't simply unload all your resources into a single problem.

Now this might not be a problem if your casters mostly use spells like Sleep, but if you have a caster who specializes in blowing things to kingdom come you'll see a lot of fights end before your rogue and fighter have even gotten to the fight, leading to frustration.

The only fight I can come up with where your players are likely not going to notice the difference is the dragon, in the rest of the fights, classes specialized in spending x-per-rest resources will feel far stronger than your rogues or fighters. Considering you have first-time players, this might make some people think this is how D&D is always going to be, and they'll be turned off from playing characters that work better in drawn-out days because they believe they are vastly inferior to casters with AoE spells. (A problem I've encountered DMing for new players even when not using epic heroism.)

Answer 2

Shorter rests really won't help with the initial fights, because they're spaced closely together in time. If you alter the goblins in the cave, you don't have 5 minutes for a short rest, much less an hour for a long rest.

The solution is a small supply of extra HP at 1st level.

The simplest/cleanest thing you can do to make the initial encounters of Lost Mines of Phandelver more survivable, while having reduced impact as the characters level up, is to give them some bonus HP at 1st level.

At 1st level, and second level, those extra HP are a significant increase to survivability, virtually eliminating the one-hit kill concern. At 5th level, it's not a huge difference. By the time you hit 10th level, you're not going to need or notice it.

I've run LMoP twice.

The first time, the goblin cave was effectively a complete party wipe, with the wizard (at 1 HP) dragging his unconscious/dead companions away from the cave as fast as he could. (It didn't help that the party alerted the goblins to their presence and the rogue, attempting to scout the bushes outside the cave got tagged by two natural 20s.)

The second time, I gave everyone half their CON in bonus HP at first level, rather than their CON modifier. (It amounts to 5 extra HP.) Those initial fights were still tough, and dangerous, due to the lack of available healing, but it didn't come close to a TPK.

Answer 3

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Use of Rest Variation.

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As the DM it is entirely appropriate for you to select if you use variant rules, such as Epic Heroism. There are a few things to think about though. Spell-casters can end up having a bit of an advantage over other classes with Epic Heroism. You may also want to consider whether you "change back" once the characters have levelled-up and are more powerful/capabable. You could also end up making more work for yourself if you continue to apply Epic Heroism and then need to keep adjusting encounters; unless you're writing your own adventures to take this into account. A different option that you may consider is to let the characters use the Healing Surge variant rule (DMG p266) until they gain some levels/experience.

Another few things to consider:

• As the DM you can give opponents a "handicap" for their attack and damages, or scale the numbers of opponents, to make things a bit easier until the characters are a bit more skilled or others join the party. (This is essentially a variant/mix of Ignoring the Dice (DMG p236) and the DM determining the consequences (Resolution and Consequences, DMG p242).

• You could send an NPC (or a couple) along with the group to assist, but remember not to "take over" the play. NPCs can be good "supporting actors" tagging along or departing as required. You can keep the NPCs' levels "balanced" to the characters as necessary; if they weren't part of the last adventure they were just off gaining experience somewhere else. I have used this technique with myself, as DM, controlling the NPC with some new players to good effect, and you can keep things moving along if the group gets stalled. There is information on options to do this under NPC Party Members (DMG p92)

• Depending on the experience of the players, you could could let them control more than one character. This can be tricky, particularly with newer players, and pairs of characters (of the same player) can sometimes get along together "to well". We used this technique a lot playing with small groups and it is good as long as the players treat the characters as separate entities, not a single entity with "two bodies". There is some advice on this under Small Groups in the DMG p236

As other players come into the game they can create characters of about the same level as those already playing, or you could let them take over a long-term NPC. The first option probably being better as then they have better ownership of the character, and you can keep the NPC for later use as required. There is advice on new players joining the team in the DMG p236 - Also remember that early on characters do level-up fairly quickly, and they'll be able to handle threats better.

Hope that's some help.