Advice for a New DM's First Campaign

[ZamielVanWeber]

Time for another one of these, with a twist! I am not the DM but the player. I am trying to teach the DM but I want input from a greater supply of people to get any tips/tricks.

We have two players, both level 7.

My friend is an Athasian Human Bard 3/Drow Fighter 2/Prestige Paladin of Freedom 2. I am a Greensnake Naga Golarian ACF Cleric 4/Prestige Paladin 3. My friend intends to stay in prestige paladin while I will be heading into Knight of the Raven and taking all 10 levels.

While I am essentially a CoDzilla with a paladin twist (I can DMM persist 2 spells and am currently persisting Divine Favor and Righteous Fury. Divine Favor will be swapped for Recitation at 9th) so I have a lot of staying power, so any tips on how to just throw in the occasional obstacles for me would be good. I don't intend to do any nightstick stacking of the sort (although I do admittedly have one nightstick now).

My friend is very much a burstier sort. He traded his mount for charging smite, has a gauntlet of heartfelt blows, snowflake wardance, Rhino's Rush and offensive prescience. The big problem is he has hiccuped his casting badly and will continue to do so so he ends up being a bit of a 15 minute adventuring day kind of guy. I told the DM he needs to try to assign strict time limits to try to incentivize us to get moving on tasks to avoid waiting but are there any other suggestions?

Also yes, there is going to develop a profound disparity between my character and my friend's but we knew that ahead of time and his burst potential is high enough that vs anything that's not a massive HP sponge he will stay relevant, especially since I want to focus on buff spells.

[Tvtyrant]

He's a new DM and you decided to play tweaked characters, one with severe 15 minuteworkdayitis? Why? Did you start at levels 1-3 and work up or did you start at level 7? Because if the latter you jumped over the easy to DM part straight into the hard part without training.

[ZamielVanWeber]

To clarify he is not brand new. He has run a new of the old adventure books that he made some personal changes to and successfully completed Age of Worms. This is his first all custom game. He has shown surprising innovation already.

We started at lower levels for Expedition to Underdark and Age of Worms and he decided he wanted to start a bit higher and go for level 6 here. We both have la +1 races because he wanted to soften the blow of having 2 fewer players plus it gives room to make more interesting characters. Let me update the title at least to be clearer.

Edit: fixed. Before when we exceeded the power level of what the writer's expected he had a framework to modify. Increase HP's. Built in time limits. Here he has to generate a lot of the starting work himself which if why I am asking for advice. I think I am doing a good job but sometimes one cannot see the forest or the trees.