Lost Mine of Phandelver

This is a playtest for Lost Mine of Phandelver. Current group of 4 players at the moment. Looking for 1 more. The party just reached Phandalin. Help me polish this adventure and your character may just be immortalized in some way.

Expectations:
- 4 or 5 players
- Starting at level 5, likely playing to level 10-11 (its normally designed for 1-5)
- Aiming for Monday Oct 26th, session zero sometime this week or so preferably
- 1 Free roll of stats, 4d6 drop the lowest, otherwise pointbuy (Please declare it in Roll20 chat)
- Vanilla Forgotten Realms Dnd (mostly using rules from 5.5e, 5e classes and the like are allowed)
- Open to a 5e rules playthrough, applications will determine.
- Focus on questing and combat (think Tactician level difficulty)
- Aiming for 20 sessions (with distant options to get into DoIP or ToA. Shattered Obelisk was considered but not my style)
- For character backstories you will be assigned secrets (as seen in the adventure IDRotFM) but I am flexible here.
- Downtime, IC conversations, shopping, etc will be encouraged over discord and less in game.
- Possible monster card game if I have time. (Defeat a monster, gain their card, cards can lvl up, play NPCs for keeps, etc.)

• No players under 18
• No homebrew or Unearthed Arcana.
• No primarily evil characters at the start (may revisit this as the campaign progresses)
• Most books are allowed (list in discord)

If you have a question about some popular combos (shepherd druid, coffeelock, conjure woodland beings, etc) I am flexible
If you have a question about some item combos (bag of beans, equipping a familiar, illusionist bracers, etc) feel free to ask
Write Gygax in your application so I can see you read this.

Some brief homebrew rules (not the full list):
- Level ups by milestones
- Flanking, but only for Rogues
- Anyone can grapple on an op attack, including enemies
- Rest casting ok, but incurs 1 lvl of special exhaustion that cant be mitigated till next longrest
- Cant benefit from a full rest in armor (unless Warforged or Autognome, etc)
- 2 of the 8hrs rest can be done awake, however, staying awake in camp requires Con check
- Starting gold may be rolled once in Roll20 chat.
- Inspiration has ways of being earned (see discord)
- Write the name 'Greenwood' in your application for free inspiration.
- You may sell unneeded items at half price but need to wait till in game to buy stuff, initially.
- Death saves are rolled in private (But, characters 5ft away can make a free medicine check [DC 12])
- Characters preforming help action requires proficiency for the respective ability check.
- We will try not to dogpile skill checks, but I may ask multiple characters for the same check
- Druids can equip metal
- Using surprised condition from 2024
- Orc NPCs are evil bc Grummsh said so, Halforcs can be any alignment (players can still play anything with any alignment)
- S, M component discrepancy mostly ignored if you have a spell focus. V components can be no quieter than a 'chant'

About me:
-Around 2000hrs experience, with limited one-shot GMing
-Completed LMoP, SO, ToA, OOtA, DoIP, WDH
-Heavily played in SKT, Planescape, IDRotFM, DragonLance, Scarlet Citadel, BG3 800hrs+