[3.5e] First time DM/Player

[Aisper]

Hello everyone! First time D&D player here, and I'm hoping to find a bit of advice about gaming.

After reading OOTS for several years, I've been talking to my friends a lot about D&D and they recently approached me saying they wanted to try it out. The only problem is, neither myself nor any of them have ever played before. I've read through the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide and I like to think that I have a pretty decent knowledge of the game for someone who's never actually played. Because I know more than any of my friends, it essentially guarantees that I will be DMing which looks to be a huge challenge. I've read through the 'new to DMing' thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322962) but the OP there has still played D&D extensively. My questions are:

1. Are there any good resources beyond the core rulebooks for beginning players/DMs? Specifically, something that deals with the practical side of playing D&D rather than just understanding rules. Between the rulebooks and the SRD I feel I at least have a good grasp on spells, skills, classes, etc and can refer back to those documents if I need to. What I know less about is setting up an actual game, map grids, setting up encounters, and so on.

2. One of my friends was considering picking up the Pathfinder rulebooks. Would Pathfinder simplify the rules and make it easier for a group of beginners or would it probably just complicate things for me as a beginner DM? What I've heard about the class changes in Pathfinder sounds very interesting.

3. I want to give my players the opportunity to pick whichever classes they want since above all, this is supposed to be fun for us. However, counting myself there will only be 4 of us and I can easily envision a scenario where they don't pick a healer. In that case, would it be preferable to just try to lower the difficulty of encounters or to roll a 4th character myself and play a healbot cleric who sticks to the background?

On top of that, there's a few things I want to mention right off the bat to head off some potentials questions. Namely, that I know it will be incredibly difficult to run a game with 3 players and a DM who have never played D&D before but that we want to try. As well, a couple of my friends would be uncomfortable playing with strangers, so I can't try to find an experienced outside player to DM and help us out. Thirdly, as the only player with any knowledge of D&D, my experience is entirely with 3.5e and pretty much rules out playing any other edition, possibly excepting Pathfinder which is a revision of 3.5e as I understand it. Finally, I want to apologize if a similar thread to this one already exists - I did a brief search but couldn't find anything relevant to complete beginners. Thanks for any help you can offer!

[Maginomicon]

Pretty-much all of Spoony's Counter Monkey videos (http://www.youtube.com/user/countermonkeybard/videos) will help you, especially in your case the one titled "Dungeon Mastering A Great Game" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrU0_A-PFk).

I also have built up an extensive collection of RAI-centric house rules that might be of use to you. If you want to see them, PM me and I'll send you the link.

There are a number of variants in the SRD that may be of use to you, particularly in your case the Reserve Points variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/reservePoints.htm).

[MonochromeTiger]

Hello everyone! First time D&D player here, and I'm hoping to find a bit of advice about gaming.

first off congratulations on getting your friends into a group for a first game. I hope you have fun.



After reading OOTS for several years, I've been talking to my friends a lot about D&D and they recently approached me saying they wanted to try it out. The only problem is, neither myself nor any of them have ever played before. I've read through the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide and I like to think that I have a pretty decent knowledge of the game for someone who's never actually played. Because I know more than any of my friends, it essentially guarantees that I will be DMing which looks to be a huge challenge. I've read through the 'new to DMing' thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322962) but the OP there has still played D&D extensively. My questions are:
he may have more experience with the game but the advice there is still relatively sound for a new DM. some of it, like accurately scaling a fight by eye, is a bit more complicated than I'd put in front of someone on their first time but otherwise the advice is fairly universal.



1. Are there any good resources beyond the core rulebooks for beginning players/DMs? Specifically, something that deals with the practical side of playing D&D rather than just understanding rules. Between the rulebooks and the SRD I feel I at least have a good grasp on spells, skills, classes, etc and can refer back to those documents if I need to. What I know less about is setting up an actual game, map grids, setting up encounters, and so on.
DMG (DM guide), any open source approved online material (like d20pfsrd for pathfinder), and also forums like this. if you really intend to play pathfinder the paizo forums tend to be fairly active with experienced players and staff so you should probably be able to find something practical with a bit of searching there.



2. One of my friends was considering picking up the Pathfinder rulebooks. Would Pathfinder simplify the rules and make it easier for a group of beginners or would it probably just complicate things for me as a beginner DM? What I've heard about the class changes in Pathfinder sounds very interesting.
I can't speak for everyone else but I personally find pathfinder to be enjoyable and relatively easy to understand. in terms of things for beginners.. that's entirely up to the person starting.



3. I want to give my players the opportunity to pick whichever classes they want since above all, this is supposed to be fun for us. However, counting myself there will only be 4 of us and I can easily envision a scenario where they don't pick a healer. In that case, would it be preferable to just try to lower the difficulty of encounters or to roll a 4th character myself and play a healbot cleric who sticks to the background?
this one would depend on a few things. first off is the difficulty of the campaign you're playing, if you're doing something custom it's entirely up to you to determine difficulty and by extent what's needed. second, are you wanting to go through some of it as a player and if so are you willing to avoid metagaming your own campaign when you have the chance?

while I applaud the open choice policy for classes I'm fairly sure someone is going to say something involving tiers and optimizing any minute now. just giving fair warning now



On top of that, there's a few things I want to mention right off the bat to head off some potentials questions. Namely, that I know it will be incredibly difficult to run a game with 3 players and a DM who have never played D&D before but that we want to try. As well, a couple of my friends would be uncomfortable playing with strangers, so I can't try to find an experienced outside player to DM and help us out. Thirdly, as the only player with any knowledge of D&D, my experience is entirely with 3.5e and pretty much rules out playing any other edition, possibly excepting Pathfinder which is a revision of 3.5e as I understand it. Finally, I want to apologize if a similar thread to this one already exists - I did a brief search but couldn't find anything relevant to complete beginners. Thanks for any help you can offer!
4 friends trying out a game is practically a rite of passage for pen and paper RPGs so nothing worth shouting about there. on the thread itself, similarity is inevitable.

[Stux]

1. Are there any good resources beyond the core rulebooks for beginning players/DMs? Specifically, something that deals with the practical side of playing D&D rather than just understanding rules. Between the rulebooks and the SRD I feel I at least have a good grasp on spells, skills, classes, etc and can refer back to those documents if I need to. What I know less about is setting up an actual game, map grids, setting up encounters, and so on.

First off definitely start at level 1.

I would recommend doing a one-shot game of some kind first (meaning a one-session adventure) rather than trying to set up a whole game because it is a lot simpler to set up and if you do make mistakes how the characters are put together and such then no biggie, because they were just for one day anyway. Find a low-level dungeon and just play that.

Once you are comfortable with the basics get yourself a pre-made adventure of some kind. There are loads out there and some will take you right from level 1 all the way to 20 if the game goes that far.


2. One of my friends was considering picking up the Pathfinder rulebooks. Would Pathfinder simplify the rules and make it easier for a group of beginners or would it probably just complicate things for me as a beginner DM? What I've heard about the class changes in Pathfinder sounds very interesting.

Personally I like Pathfinder, and play it now myself. Others prefer D&D 3.5. One is not really any simpler than the other, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Main differences in my opinion are:

Pathfinder
- still being made/new material being released
- in some ways more streamlined in that there are fewer source books and some of the most broken things (though by no means all) have been removed
- all source books are open source and legally available for free on the web, which has the added advantage of meaning there is a website (d20pfsrd.com) which compiles all of it in to one place.
- there is an emphasis on characters being single classed, rather than a mixture of class, but in having lots of options for customising your class from the beginning (archetypes).

D&D 3.5
- no new material being released, but then it is easy to add in Pathfinder stuff if you want
- a huge back catalogue of additional books you can add, which gives a lot more possible character options, but this also leads to a lot of subsystems with different rules for how they work. I wouldn't worry about that too much mind, as for a first campaign you will likely be sticking mostly to core books anyway.
- it can be incredibly difficult to find the content of some of the books legally, even if you are willing to pay.
- there is an emphasis in characters built out of multiple classes and often aiming for prestige classes, which are classes you can only enter at higher levels. This can make builds more complicated, but on the other hand leads to much finer customisation.

Most of the very basics of the game rules are very similar if not the same, and I have found migrating from 3.5 to Pathfinder to be fairly painless, so I wouldn't stress too much about making the wrong choice. Just go with what you feel like, and you can always change in a future campaign!


3. I want to give my players the opportunity to pick whichever classes they want since above all, this is supposed to be fun for us. However, counting myself there will only be 4 of us and I can easily envision a scenario where they don't pick a healer. In that case, would it be preferable to just try to lower the difficulty of encounters or to roll a 4th character myself and play a healbot cleric who sticks to the background?

Healers are not as important as you might think. It is almost never worth casting a healing spell in battle when you could instead be focusing on dealing with the monster that caused the damage in the first place! That isn't to say healing isn't useful, but a liberal smattering of potions here and there will largely compensate for not having a dedicated healer.

As for allowing all classes, for a first game for simplicity's sake I would recommend only allowing races and classes from the Player's Handbook. This is mostly for your benefit as you won't be expected to trawl through additional books making sure you understand how everyone's classes work when you are still trying to get your head around the core rules!


On top of that, there's a few things I want to mention right off the bat to head off some potentials questions. Namely, that I know it will be incredibly difficult to run a game with 3 players and a DM who have never played D&D before but that we want to try. As well, a couple of my friends would be uncomfortable playing with strangers, so I can't try to find an experienced outside player to DM and help us out. Thirdly, as the only player with any knowledge of D&D, my experience is entirely with 3.5e and pretty much rules out playing any other edition, possibly excepting Pathfinder which is a revision of 3.5e as I understand it. Finally, I want to apologize if a similar thread to this one already exists - I did a brief search but couldn't find anything relevant to complete beginners. Thanks for any help you can offer!

People here are generally pretty friendly to anyone polite, so don't worry about asking questions :smallsmile:

Trial and error will be the best way to learn, and that is why I encourage you to start off with some one-shot simple dungeons. I'll see if I can dig some links out to help you find that sort of thing, though I'm sure others here will have something closer to hand so to speak.

[Invader]

I'll second starting at level 1. I'd also suggest using a pre-made module that has everything set up for you as well as only using classes/items/rules/etc. from the 3 core rule books.

[Vargouille]

1. Paizo has a Pathfinder GameMastery Guide available to buy, although I've never used it so I wouldn't be able to tell you how good it is. The GM screen for Pathfinder (and I imagine 3.5 as well) has some handy tables and such on it, but again I've never used it. And you can obviously also read through this forum and others for additional help. Counter Monkey is a great series that was brought up earlier, and you might want to watch a video of a group playing to see how they do it.

2. Pathfinder is roughly as easy to understand as 3.0 and 3.5, but it's still in print and they're still adding to it, so that's what I'd recommend. It also means you'll only need two books (Core Rulebook and Bestiary) as opposed to the three required by D&D (Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual). One good thing about D&D though, is that the players only need to pick up one slightly cheaper book, so it may end up being less expensive for them. Oh, and Pathfinder have the Beginner Box, which might help you starting out. I personally didn't bother with it.

3. I suggest that you have a separate session for character creation before the game starts proper. Tell your players that it's fine if they don't want be a Bard, Cleric or Druid, and if none of them end up as healers then just ask if they'd like you to play a healer.

Additionally, the players having the books or reading the SRD here:http://paizo.com/prd/ would be very useful for playing the game, and will speed it up a bit.

[Brookshw]

If I were to have a "do over" token I'd go PF, they've fixed a number of broken things. Congrats on starting the hobby! Biggest pieces of advise I can offer, talk to each other about what type of game you want to play, communication is key, and don't be afraid to change things if they would be more fun otherwise. Enjoy the game first and foremost.

[Zweisteine]

Whatever you do do not use the sample adventure from the DMG! Unless the entire party is elves, they will end up paralyzed and eaten by ghouls!

Unless you're using a pre-made adventure, don't plan ahead much. I suggest throwing together a basic dungeon crawl or short trip.* Don't plan ahead.

This guide (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=9479.0) has some solid advice for new players.


*Standard adventures:

Kobolds or Goblins are terrorizing the towns; go to their base (conveniently located on a path or in a known location) and kill them. Make a simple cave with separated rooms (put long halls in between) for a lair, roll random encounters on the way, put a couple minions in each room. If you use goblins, make the boss a hobgoblin; if you use kobolds, a lizardfolk should do (either way, probably I've the boss a level of fighter and at least two minions to fight alongside).

An important person's daughter (or son) has been kidnapped: go rescue her (or him). Same thing, but there's a person to bring back at the end.

Caravan guards: protect a trading caravan/wagon going somewhere. This one is simple; just roll random encounters for whatever environment the road is in (probably forest). Make sure the players aren't kleptomaniacs firsts.

Simplest adventure of all:
Travel somewhere a few days away, preferably through a forest. Roll for random encounters as they go (every hour, even at night), have them search for food or use rations, they'll need a watch schedule at night. Nothing too complicated should happens, unless you roll 100 a few times in a row. Then you get to brag that your 1st level party got to fight something too strong to beat off of a random encounter table.

[Aisper]

Thanks for all the replies guys! I haven't had a chance to go through all the links yet, but I look forward to doing so when I can.

From what everyone has said, I will start off with level one characters taken from the base classes/races and work off of a pre-made adventure that can be completed quickly.

I'll give Pathfinder a shot as well, since one of my friends is interested in it, and if there are free resources online then I can email info about character creation to them beforehand and let them read up on it. Then I can also get some input about whether they'd prefer intrigue or combat as a focus for the gameplay. I'll refrain from creating a character at the start as well, since my hands will probably be full, and it sounds like in-battle healing isn't as important as I'd thought. If none of them roll a class with any heals, I might institute that Reserve Point system that looks great.

It looks like I'll be pretty busy over the next few days catching up on my reading, but I'm sure I will have more questions when I do. I wasn't expecting such a flood of replies, so thank you all for your input! :smallbiggrin: