New DM advice for the Sunless Citadel

[Quelf]

A group of my friends want to play a campaign this summer and asked me to DM the game. This is my first time DMing and I am running the Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury and leading into the The Speaker in Dreams for them. I Just wanted to see if I could get some advice on running these as in are there any classes that I should restrict since they would break the campaign.

Or any interesting twists or ideas to use when crafting the campaigns.

Thank you.

[Yora]

Since it's all very low-level and pretty straightforward, there isn't really much anyone can do to completely mess things up. Maybe if a player completely wants to ruin everyones day and knows all the obstacles in advance, he could make a specializard character to do just that, but otherwise it doesn't matter.

For first time DMs, my recommendation would be to read through the whole thing and every time there is something where the players have to disrm a trap, balance on something, or would fall into a pit, look up the rules for these things and check if you understand them. Even if you forget them when you actually need them, you at least know where the rules are explaind and having understood them once usually means it comes back very quickly when you take just a short peek.

[nobodez]

A group of my friends want to play a campaign this summer and asked me to DM the game. This is my first time DMing and I am running the Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury and leading into the The Speaker in Dreams for them. I Just wanted to see if I could get some advice on running these as in are there any classes that I should restrict since they would break the campaign.

Or any interesting twists or ideas to use when crafting the campaigns.

Thank you.

Just remember, those were the early 3E modules, so not only will you likely have to adapt them for v.3.5 or PF, but any classes with abilities outside of the 3E core rules will likely break something.

If you are running v.3.5 or PF, you might need to adapt the monsters and whatnot to fit the rule and power level differences. Also, if you've got more than four players, you'll need to add some more enemies to the encounters so that the PCs will be just hitting 3rd by the end of the adventure to lead into Forge of Fury.

[Hendel]

Having run the whole series from Sunless Citadel to Bastion of Broken Souls, I don't think there is any class that would just break the modules completely.

That being said, if it is your first try at DMing a campaign, you may want to limit the classes to core or just limit what supplemental books are allowed.

Games can get out of hand if you have a bunch of Half-Ogre, Half-Dragon, Half-Constructs running around. Especially if you are new behind the screen. There is nothing wrong with folks trying out different builds but the less you allow at first is the less you have to worry about adjudicating later.

It would be nice if the group had a balance between casters, fighters, and such, but it is not essential.

[Quelf]

Thank you very much for your responses! They will help me to be more confident and create an awesome experience for my friends I appreciate it.

[Yora]

For a group of beginner players and especially with a beginner DM, I would very highly recommend to have a cleric
A group without a divine caster with healing spells can be done, but I'd say that requires some deeper understanding on how the game works out, and you have to adjust the amount of fights the characters get into and how many healing items they can get. Which in a prewritten adventure doesn't really work well.

[supermonkeyjoe]

I found when running it, if the PCs go in gung ho and try to kill absolutely everything in the dungeon they're going to have a hard time, there are a lot of kobolds that will wreck any low level party that just goes charging in guns blazing. The obvious intention is for the PCs to negotiate with them and gain safe passage through the kobold areas, but when my players encountered the first kobold the first reaction was "move silently, sneak attack". After a couple of Kobold patrols were dead I had the leader call a truce which the PCs thankfully agreed on, otherwise they would have had about 20 kobolds backed by a 3rd level kobold sorcerer swarming them.

[Hendel]

I found when running it, if the PCs go in gung ho and try to kill absolutely everything in the dungeon they're going to have a hard time, there are a lot of kobolds that will wreck any low level party that just goes charging in guns blazing. The obvious intention is for the PCs to negotiate with them and gain safe passage through the kobold areas, but when my players encountered the first kobold the first reaction was "move silently, sneak attack". After a couple of Kobold patrols were dead I had the leader call a truce which the PCs thankfully agreed on, otherwise they would have had about 20 kobolds backed by a 3rd level kobold sorcerer swarming them.
I agree 100% with this. Specifically to Sunless Citadel I found some of the encounters to be difficult if the characters were still first level. If they go towards the dragonpriest early on (about a 50/50 chance), then it is going to be a tough fight. The kobolds were tough unless you work with them as SuperMonkeyJoe said. Heck even the mephit was no push over at 1st level.

Once they have a level or so behind them, the encounters obviously become easier. However, it is not just like fighting some standard 1st level encounters of goblins (there are goblins in there just a little past the start) or a stirge or something.

[A Tad Insane]

It is meant for 1st level characters. Me and my group ran it with lvl 2.5s and we literally kiled the entire kobold military in one encounter. It was kind of funny going from "we're all going to die" to "stand on the mound of bodies for an intimation bonus", but still