Party Setup

[Ethernil]

I am about to start running the adventure expedition to undermountain with a group of 4 semi experienced players and a first timer.

We created their characters base and they chose to play the following: the older players chose 1)Rogue, 2)Paladin, 3)Cleric, 4)Wizard and the new player wanted to play a ranger but i advised him to change to a barbarian as i considered it an easier entry class so he did. They rolled for stats and everyone except the rogue and wizard got very good rolls(i offered 32 point buy and they preferred to roll, the barbarian happens to have the best rolls with 2x17s 1x16 2x15s and 1x11).

I am running a preset module for the first time and have found some of the encounters in said adventure pretty challenging even for experienced parties. You think they will have issues? they are 5 and got most if not all bases covered by their classes but they trully suck at optimizing. Should i try to sway some of them to another class or help them with character building or will that make their characters not feel their own? If they prove to steamroll the encounters i might have to make them a bit harder i suppose.

[AnimeTheCat]

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. If you tailor the party and such that they dont run the risk of failing, there will never be any true "near death" stories for them. I would just let them build what they like and leave it at that.

Characters die, it's the risk of a life of adventure. No paladin should leave his temple without the resolve to lay down his life for his deity. No wizard her tower expecting not to get scraped and bruised. No rogue their back alley without running greater risk for a reward more pleasing than common pocket change. The best stories are made from the struggle to survive and overcome and denying a group that chance is essentially denying them their chance to write their own epic tale.

[MeimuHakurei]

Why not make some small standard group to test run a few of the early encounters, possibly even taking the player sheets? That way you can at least find encounters that are too difficult or too easy.

Also, ranger is fine as a beginner class because it has several directions to go (so even an unoptimized one can handle somewhat well) and the moving parts don't come into play until Level 2/4, at which point the player might have just enough experience to handle an animal companion and a minimal amount of spells.

Finally, you can post a (spoilered) example of an encounter that you think is tough and see what the forum here thinks.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I don't think I agree with you pointing a newb away from ranger but otherwise they should do fine unless the cleric and wizard are just plain inept.

The classic 4 are such for a reason; they compliment each other beautifully if they're working together; and you've got one for each slot plus a paladin.

[Ethernil]

I don't think I agree with you pointing a newb away from ranger but otherwise they should do fine unless the cleric and wizard are just plain inept.

Expect the priest to have no idea about divine feats and use turn undead just for turning, also he likes buffing the party and melee combat with a shield, the wizard plays almost as a full blaster. As for the ranger i was a bit biased as my first 3.5 character was one, i rolled rather poorly for stats and didnt know better than to play melee dualwielding, after dying like 3 times by level 5 i grew to not like the class for a while, at least until i learned about char op.

[MeimuHakurei]

Expect the priest to have no idea about divine feats and use turn undead just for turning, also he likes buffing the party and melee combat with a shield, the wizard plays almost as a full blaster. As for the ranger i was a bit biased as my first 3.5 character was one, i rolled rather poorly for stats and didnt know better than to play melee dualwielding, after dying like 3 times by level 5 i grew to not like the class for a while, at least until i learned about char op.

Turning Undead for its intended purpose is fine and will serve well in encounters where the undead are numerous. Good idea of him to focus on buffs and combat over healing, he should leave that for when combat's over most of the time. There's some good feats and spells a Wizard can take to become better at blasting (Conjuration or Evocation spec will both work, drop Enchantment and Illusion for that) so you can subtly introduce the more useful blasting options by manipulating the loot drops to contain scrolls of them.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Expect the priest to have no idea about divine feats and use turn undead just for turning,

That's not great but it's not the end of the world either. Maybe point him at the domain spontaneity feat so he's got something useful to do with it when there are no undead around.


also he likes buffing the party and melee combat with a shield,

That's great. That's exactly what the cleric is best suited to doing. Might point out to him how very helpful the rogue finds a flanking buddy.


the wizard plays almost as a full blaster.

That's unfortunate. While it's not the best use of resources it is, at least, pretty consistent in what it does. BFC and utility spells would be a -lot- better though. If he insists on sticking with blasting, sprinkle some metamagic rods in the treasure for him. Tome & Blood has a nice selection that I don't think were ever updated. Utility effect items for the whole party can also help.


As for the ranger i was a bit biased as my first 3.5 character was one, i rolled rather poorly for stats and didnt know better than to play melee dualwielding, after dying like 3 times by level 5 i grew to not like the class for a while, at least until i learned about char op.

I like a ranger for newbs because they do a little of everything; melee, skills, spells, and a minion. Just gotta make sure they know it's important to use every part of the class to not die. When it inevitably does die, as does every character in a decently challenging game, they'll have a good idea how -everything- works and can pick something to specialize in if they like.

[Fizban]

The problem with barbarian is that it isn't really a noob-friendly class either: you have only one resource, one main class feature, which encourages you to abandon your defenses and forgo ranged attacks. A perfect storm for getting hit constantly (which upsets most people), not being able to hit things a lot of the time (which upsets most people), and worrying about whether or not you should be raging (you get the idea).

Expedition to Undermountain: yeah, this one has the same problem as almost every other "1st" level module I've read (just went over some recently since I thought I might start a game). And that problem is not being a 1st level adventure.

People deride 1st level adventurers as nothing but pest control killing rats and spiders and maybe kobolds, but the thing is, that's not wrong. If you want to have fights with more than a single foe at a time at 1st level, you need fractional CR foes (and not those lying orc warriors which are *not* CR 1/2), and there are very, very few things with CR that low, pretty much just rats and kobolds with stock gear (*not* optimized gear). But apparently even most module writers got bored of that, so when you look up a 1st level adventure, it's full of classed NPCs of varying optimization at levels 1-3, groups of CR 1 monsters, individual monsters as high as CR 4, and just generally not encounters a normal 1st level party can fight without luck and and an immediate nap.

Expedition to Undermountain is if anything worse than most, and will absolutely slaughter a level 1 party that tries to give it a straight fight. Just look at the EL of the encounters and wonder at how some idiot wrote 1 on the cover. The Caryatid Column might be pretty obvious as something to run from, but the giant ambush with the Metalmaster clearly assumes the party will just run for the lift instead of fighting without actually telling the DM they need to do that, and since every encounter is massively overleveled the PCs will most likely be limping back to base on empty while still at 1st level when it happens.

Let's take a look:, you start by either walking into a defended goblin position or walking into an AMF with an invincible construct, then walk past a mimic after being baited into thinking the mirrors are harmless, before finally reaching one almost level appropriate darkmantle fight. They then proceed through more only slightly overleveled fights against things they can barely hurt (a swarm which by rights should be immune to weapons but fails to list that property, and a living spell with DR 10/magic so I hope you prepped magic weapon) before reaching the boss, a flameskull- that's a flying enemy with DR/bludgeoning, fast healing, a fireball, and of some laser spam, and minions with magic missiles, oh and every fight with the undead happens to take place in an Unhallow so if the party happens to be Good then ACs just go right up. Expecting the treasure to help? There's one wand of burning hands which won't work on the boss, and three +1 arrows. And if at any point the party decides to bug out, or merely thinks that because the dungeon is under an inn they should rest in the inn rather than the dungeon, then they get ambushed twice: once by the boss if they made it it past the darkmantles, and again by the goblins and metalmaster.
It's actually a pretty well made dungeon. . . for 3rd-4th level parties.