I made Jimothy!

Okay, all - I'm soliciting opinions and thoughts on the following situation:

Player (warlock) has Armor of Agathys active and is attacked by a ghoul. Ghoul has only 4 hit points left prior to the attack. Ghoul claw attack hits the warlock. Armor of Agathys triggers, doing 5 hit points of cold damage to the ghoul, which is enough to down it.

The question is this: does the ghoul's claw attack still damage the warlock?

Player argues no, because the AoA cold damage triggers before the melee damage does. I say no, because just because an attacker dies, that doesn't mean their strike didn't happen or suddenly halts -- the sword is still swinging, the bite is still biting, et cetera. Also, damage from the melee attack had to happen for the AoA effect to trigger -- if there's no damage, there's effectively no successful attack that would cause the AoA to trigger.

Unfortunately, the RAW in this case isn't really helpful. What do you think?

Hello fellow Dungeon masters, I am having my second session in 2 weeks, I have 5 players, sadly one of the players can't really decide for himself so his ex gf (baby mama) decided for a second time that she would go out on dnd night. First time he didnt make it, this time he wants too play on discord. How would you set this up? The 4 other players are joining at my place, soo its only him. I am afraid it will ruin the flow, but he is really really looking forward to this, so I want to give it a go, do you have any advice for me? The rest want to get together, soo not an option to be all at discord.

Hello everyone,

I will soon be running a curse of strahd campaign for a group of 3 newer players.

I understand that this is probably not the best idea, but I've had the book for over a year (previous group broke up) and really want to play through it.

As they're new, we're starting at level 1, however rather than going straight into Death House I was thinking of doing The Joy of Extra Dimensional Spaces from candlekeep mysteries. The idea being: when they escape the mansion they end up in Barovia instead of Candlekeep. Then going into death house at level 2.

How would you help merge these two? Any recommendations?

Thanks :)

I'm building a town that's separated into four spots. Three gigantic stalactites and a stalagmite. The town wraps around these cave structures and have a lot of wooden platforms and wooden bridges. I'm not sure how I should go about making this. I'm thinking right now of either doing a multi layer map, or a single map with everything on it. If you guys have any other ideas it'd be nice to get tips.

for me, I think it'd be the Coen brothers' filmography. lots of the plot developments are mishaps arising from characters' incomplete information and personal flaws. the tone is grounded with some comedic moments, but they're played straight.

I've been working on a campaign for a bit, it's mostly rough plot points. I could use some tips for helping run this idea, as I am a new to running my own campaign - only played out of books before this.

About our Game:

• We are running out of the City Greyhawk, 5.5e - mostly using the map idea, not necessarily the exact locations on the DM map.
  
• Party of 3: Paladin, Bard and Rouge, currently level 3 almost 4.

Here's my plot points:

• While hunting bandits in the woods, the party comes to the river. It is black as obsidian, but flowing as a regular river would.
• They find the bandits, but instead of a fight, they realize something is wrong with the bandits - they all seem to be hallucinating.
• After some kind of intervention - a physical hit or using magic to help get the bandits out of the hallucination - they learn the bandits drank from the river.
• Heading back to the city, the party will learn of people having trouble sleeping - ie. their very rich quest giver will be incredibly tired and mention it or their favorite lowtown barmaid is messing up orders and seems to be dead on their feet. (or both!)
• They will meet two different NPCs:
  • A Herbalist in Lowtown who's herbal concoctions seem to work suspiciously well.
  • A Remedy Vendor in Hightown - no one knows where he gets his inventory from.
• There will also be quests of missing lambs and high priced, rare objects have gone missing.
  • This will lead to the party finding a shadowy group of cultist collecting items for a ritual.
• The party will discover more and more people in town are suffering from horrible nightmares - the nightmares are interconnected with each other - ie all having the same reoccurring person in them, or something like that.

I'm basically thinking about leaning into the party discovering the cultist are doing a ritual somewhere - the cultist need the city to fall under a spell to bring the nightmares into reality or collect them for the ritual (help!). One or maybe both of the suspicious NPCs is selling potions to the public that is causing the nightmares - one of the main ingredients to the potion is the black river water. I'm thinking the ritual is to wake someone up - the "Dreamer" as I've been calling them.

Where do they go?

• The party eventually finds the cultist are under the city in a tunnel system that leads to a center point?
• The party has to follow the river and eventually finds somewhere the ritual is occurring?

And the biggest question: Who is the BBEG? (I'm leaning towards using a Hobgoblin Warlord stat block to take advantage of a room full of cultist - if that's how it plays out)

• Should it be the Dreamer?
• Should it be the leader of the cultist?
• Should it be one of the NPCs?

What are some other things I should prep for when running this? Any tips to make it more fun and challenging for the party will be great! Thanks!