[5e] Actual Play and Homebrew Magic Item: Lost Mine of Phandelver

I'm out of the DM chair for the time being while another player in our group takes the helm.

This was our second session of Lost Mine of Phandelver, the 5E Starter Set adventure. 

This will be a bit of AP, and then I'll get to the really cool magic item our DM cooked up.

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Actual Play: Session 2

After taking out three Redbrands and taking one prisoner at the end of last session, we decided to head to the secret entrance to the Redbrand HQ.

Our prisoner, "Brick," told us about a monster in the caves, not to lie to him, etc. So we rolled up in there and did the Fantasy Special Ops treatment on the assorted bandits and bugbears therein. We struck a deal with the nothic to bring it more bodies to eat, and we got busy making a big inventory of dead bodies.

As you can see in the picture above, our DM purchased the hi-res maps from the module's map illustrator Mike Schley, cut them up into bits, and sticky-tacked them down as we explored.

We absolutely blew through the place. 4 PCs and two NPCs (a 3HD bandit and Sildar, rescued in session 1, a 5HD Lord's Alliance guy with pretty terrible stats, decent as an hp sponge). I hung back to guard chokepoints and heal if needed. I ran around with detect magic cast as ritual, and I'm pretty confident we cleared the place out. Our archer went down once or twice, but nothing too serious. For the first two or three encounters, the other side didn't even get to make attack rolls. Picked up Droop the goblin henchman on the way too.

On our way out, we spotted a chest near the nothic, and, after a bit of failed negotiation, drove him into the underdark. Inside the chest was . . .

The Barbs of Tymora

In addition to the normal loot, our DM had crafted together with toothpicks and construction paper a little quiver with 20 arrows, half red fletching, half blue, representing a homebrew magic item, the barbs of Tymora.

It's a really good item, and the vets were surprised it was homebrew. I expect it'll be more interesting than any of the items in the module proper. Here's the writeup:

Barbs of Tymora

• unique magical quiver, its unique arrows always wet with blood
• gold filigree, lettered in magically shifting characters—don't recall the actual words
• +1 to attack and damage with its arrows
• when you attack, make a DC 10 Con save
• success: +d[proficiency bonus x 2] temp hp
• fail: -d[proficiency bonus x 2] hp
• when the quiver is empty of its unique arrows:
• (re)attuning to it will replenish its full 20-arrow capacity
• however, doing so will permanently reduce your maximum hp by d[proficiency bonus x 2]