My friends want to learn D&D

[questionmark693]

Exactly what the title says-some of my friends and I were talking, and one of them mentioned that they thought it would be fun to learn to play D&D. I only play 3.5 personally, so I'm going to use that, with minimal houseruling so that they can learn the rules as they are before things get all changed on them (with possible exceptions like not worrying about rations and coinage weight because I hate those things). I talked to them about it, and they said they wanted to start at level 1 ( a decision I supported, so they could learn from the ground up), and I intend to run them through a module called 'Scourge of the Howling Horde' by Gwendolyn F.M. Kestrel.

Basically what I'm asking the playground for is an opinion on whether or not this is an ok module to learn on, and what advice you have for me, a teacher of new players.

[Subaru Kujo]

Don't know much about the module, but I do know some things that might make it easier for them.

Notes with a glossary of what each person needs for their character. So if you ask someone their AC they can respond quickly with the info. Casters with blinding spells have notes on what Blindness does, melee characters should have their attack roll modifiers already laid out, and so on. Also, templates for AoE spells should you get that far.

Players might also want to have character traits on hand as well. I find it helps me out to remind me that my character will react a bit differently instead of just doing what I'd personally do.

Also, I'm not sure if the module rewards good thinking or not (that is, bypassing encounters without violence), but I always loved giving my players a reward if they could figure out the motivations of a monster and playing hard to them. Try to figure out ways to do that so they know fighting through a problem isn't the only way to go about it.

More things to come later on maybe.

[only1doug]

my first advice would be that L1 characters are too much like rocket tag, give all the PCs a bonus 5 or 10 hp (heroic bonus, not available to average npc's but some bosses may have similar or greater bonuses).

Edit: how are you planning on doing character generation?
will you pregenerate characters or let the new players make their own?
if they are making their own characters I would suggest cheat sheets for each of the classes and then let them make a lot of the decisions.
offer the players a choice of arrays for their stats, rather than having them do point buy or stat rolls.

[PurpleSocks]

My main problem with level one is how fragile PC's are, for that reason I'm a big fan on changing death from -10hp to -con score as it really helps boost survivability at low levels.

And using action points will also help your players not die.

I'd also enforce a good alignment to start with to reduce your chances on ending up with a murder hobo.

I'm afraid I know nothing about that module :(

[Khedrac]

If it's the one I am thinking of it's a fun module for 1st level characters.
It's a few years since I played it though, but it was with a group of six characters, and it's a fairly important point... Although the xp tables are set for four characters, and it can be a better number of players, character survivability goes up markedly with 5 or better 6 characters.

So, depending on your group size you may need to lower monster numbers or make them fight dumb.

[ngilop]

Scourge is one of the best into advenutres for 3rd ed. Its not every day whne learning D&D you get to do just that.. explore a dungeon and kill a dragon.


if they are learning feel free to fudge some dice rolls. They are not going to know the rules or what to do in most situations so they will undoubtedly do some pretty crazy stuff that if they were in that sitaution would say 'are you nuts?"

[Vhaidara]

1. Be willing to fudge dice rolls.

2. Don't let monsters crit.

3. Level 1 is probably the scariest place in DnD. You have very few hit points, /day characters like most casters (especially arcane) have like 3 casts, your bonuses are small, etc. Acknowledge this.

4. Do not let anyone play a monk or a paladin. At least not as written. They are cripplingly weak classes that have a certain draw to them from the RP element. If one of your layers wants to use one, I recommend this paladin (http://charliebrew.wikispaces.com/Paladin) (it's actually very simple) and look for a monk fix. Don't treat them like homebrew, they are replacements for classes that are just plain bad but cool as hell with a lot of RP opportunity.