Well the party composition is done and I have a bad feeling about this

[Trandir]

Well after the session 0 the party went off to further elaborate on their character concepts and this is what we ended up with:

A half elf barbarian 3
A dwarf wizard 3
A dwarf warlock 3
A changeling binder 3

Why do I have the feeling that they might die rather easly against my first dungeons? I have never mastered and I feel like they intend to do the "I pick what's cooler" optimisation, which is fine but I fear that they will be slaughtered rather easly.

[Angrith]

What level is your group starting at? I take it your're worried about healing?

[Trandir]

What level is your group starting at? I take it your're worried about healing?

I edited it adding what's concerning me and the levels

[Blackhawk748]

Well after the session 0 the party went off to further elaborate on their character concepts and this is what we ended up with:

A half elf barbarian 3
A dwarf wizard 3
A dwarf warlock 3
A changeling binder 3

Why do I have the feeling that they might die rather easly against my first dungeons? I have never mastered and I feel like they intend to do the "I pick what's cooler" optimization, which is fine but I fear that they will be slaughtered rather easly.

Ok, so you got a Martial with decent HP (yes Half-Elf is bad, but Barbarian is fine). Your Wizard and Warlock will have decent HP for their class being Dwarves (though I hope the Warlock is being either a Blast or Glaive lock as their saves will suffer) and a Binder.

You should be fine.

Warlock is a blaster, Barbarian is an all-around beatstick, Wizard is solid BFC support and the Binder can fill the Martial/Skill roll. Now, your healing is pretty crap and the only one who can use a Lesser Vigor Wand is the Binder until the Warlock can take over that role, but this can be mitigated by giving them a Healing Belt or two as loot.

So, the class balance is fine, but for all I know that Barbarian is dual-wielding daggers and the Wizard thinks Magic Missile is the best spell ever. So I need some more info.

[Palanan]

If you're using a module, which I strongly recommend, then not to worry--modules are generally calibrated for less optimized groups.

If you're wildcatting your own encounter design, then listen to that bad feeling, and start them off with a couple basic encounters (small wolfpack, paranoid dwarven prospectors, etc.) just to get a feel for how they work in combat.

[Fizban]

You should have a copy of all their character sheets, and you should know what's in your dungeon. Therefore, you can compare their characters to your encounters and see how likely they are to deal with them. Your primary worry should not be about their optimization vs coolness choices: it should be about their ability to play the game. That is, their "take useful action" vs "do stupid thing" choices. If you can pilot their characters through the dungeon easily, great. If you have to play hard to make it happen, they will fail, because they are four different heads trying to steer one body.

Your second worry should be that you're missing 2/4 of the standard party. They have no trapfinder, which means if you're using traps, they're just going to eat that damage straight to the face. And if you're using a published module, like 95%+ of them have traps, as well as often hiding the treasure behind high Search DCs for no reason.

More importantly, they have no Cleric. The Cleric is the game's safety, the backstop, the thing that makes standard monsters and modules with a huge variety of special attacks and hazards and obstacles actually okay to use as-is: because you can run away, and the Cleric will pray for the answer tomorrow. Not because of restoring hp damage, but because of status removal, resistance/immunity buffs, and dungeon problem-solving. These things are not a serious problem at 3rd level, but they will become a problem later (unless you've fallen into the other DM trap of using lots of PC-classed NPCs).


As for party evaluation, I predict such failures as:

The Barbarian will immediately charge at anything they see, leaving the rest of the party unguarded, becoming surrounded, taking a ton of damage, and then wondering what they're supposed to do when they run out of hit points.
The Wizard will either use no spells, waste them all on the first encounter, prepare spells that won't actually help in the fights you have prepared, or catch their own party members in their AoEs so that even if the enemy is disabled, so are you.
The Warlock will either spend all their time trying to Spiderwalk into some perfect position, waste all their shots shooting through soft cover/into melee/against dodgy targets, or will have taken Darkness and Devil's Sight, forcing the rest of the party to roll 20% miss chance on all of their attacks.
The Binder will quickly find that they suck, because Binders suck. They will feel inferior to the Warlock, who can use invocations every round, and to the Barbarian, who has full BAB and rage, and the Wizard, who can prepare more than one thing at a time. Eventually they will find out that Malphas's raven is cool, but it won't matter because no one wants to sit around while they scout- and the rest of the party, if they hear that Buer can heal, will expect them to be even more of a one-trick healbot than any Cleric would ever be. By the time they can bind two vestiges the Warlock will have 5 invocations, two of which are Lesser, the Wizard will have a fistful of 4th level spells, and the Barbarian will still be a Barbarian.


If you want help on a more detailed evaluation of their characters vs your dungeon, we'll need their full characters and what's in your dungeon. Race and class mean almost nothing: stats, feats, equipment, spells, invocations, and any idea of what the wizard and binder intend to use on day 1.

[Trandir]

You should have a copy of all their character sheets, and you should know what's in your dungeon....

Zip...


If you want help on a more detailed evaluation of their characters vs your dungeon, we'll need their full characters and what's in your dungeon. Race and class mean almost nothing: stats, feats, equipment, spells, invocations, and any idea of what the wizard and binder intend to use on day 1.

Well they finished the character concepts and backgrounds and now I'm waiting for the actual character sheet.

As far as stats go I gave them a 32 point buy, but the rest is still for them to decide.

So for now I just got to wait and prepare to adjust the first encounters if they screw up during character creation.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Depending on which Vestige your binder binds, they could cover the healing for the entire party. I also disagree that they suck. Sure, they have fewer tricks than a warlock, but they can swap said tricks out and eventually can build multiple vestiges.

[Falontani]

If the binder takes able learner then they are probably thinking about entering chameleon from races of Destiny. If they are then they are planning a fairly effective character. Binder isn't the best to begin with, but it can do well with a lot of other classes.
If no one is healing then I suggest adopting 5e resting rules. It is much more fantasy than I usually like my 3.5 games, but it allows mundanes to help themselves by taking a ten Minute break, and the party is one that looks like it can go for a while with that system.

[daremetoidareyo]

Give them cool expendable gear.

A couple healing potions, a few partially charged wands of 1st level spells, and a couple one time use teleport stones that teleport them to a "save spot" that they designate with a ritual or homebrew vestige bind or something.

Breaking a little WBL solves the dungeon hardship stress that you feel. They have more than the necessary tools to succeed, so the rest is up to them.

[NigelWalmsley]

Healing potions might not be a great idea. Consumables in general can lead to unhealthy dynamics where they're hoarded against future need that never comes. I think you're better off giving them passive healing, perhaps by buffing the downtime healing rules (the big issue will be condition-removing, as no one is getting Restoration or Raise Dead natively, unless there's something I forget about Binder).

[liquidformat]

Why do I have the feeling that they might die rather easly against my first dungeons? I have never mastered and I feel like they intend to do the "I pick what's cooler" optimisation, which is fine but I fear that they will be slaughtered rather easly.

Because they have a half elf and a binder in the party of course!

If you have traps at all I would think about giving the Barbarian Trapkiller for free, that will at least balance out the party a little bit. I am guessing with a half-elf barbarian he is going for a fear build? That might be ok, but no clue what to do about the binder...

[Max Caysey]

Well after the session 0 the party went off to further elaborate on their character concepts and this is what we ended up with:

A half elf barbarian 3
A dwarf wizard 3
A dwarf warlock 3
A changeling binder 3

Why do I have the feeling that they might die rather easly against my first dungeons? I have never mastered and I feel like they intend to do the "I pick what's cooler" optimisation, which is fine but I fear that they will be slaughtered rather easly.

I don't understand this at all... Do you not, as the DM, fit your challenges to fit the party level of power? Dude, you're the DM! If they utterly fail, and its not because they do something completely moronic, then its your fault, because you failed to adequately adapt the challenge to the party...

So what I'm hearing is: "I think I'm going to kill the party... because reasons..." :smallconfused:

[RNightstalker]

Sometimes you roll good and the party dies. Adults should be able to handle that.
Sometimes the party is stupid and the party dies. Adults should be able to handle that.
Sometimes you just make mistakes and you need a learning curve as a DM. Adults should be able to handle that.

[Fizban]

Depending on what type of game the group has agreed to play, it may indeed be the players fault- if the DM said they were going to run a status quo game where the dungeons were written up and the party just has to deal with it, and the players agreed, then that's okay (and they'll probably die, and that would be okay). However, it is very common for groups to not discuss this properly, or to think they did and find that they were not in fact all on the same page. Players who want rule of cool do not do well with hardcore status quo games.

One of the reasons I'm not interested in writing adventures, aside from the need to make everything up myself, is that even if I did I would inevitably have to change things if I were to actually run it- so why not just not do that, and wait until I've got a group with a party built before writing up detailed encounters. An outline, even encounter ideas, but nothing that requires work until you know what you're working with.


If you want to frontload consumables for safety: expected consumable budget for 1st-2nd is 100gp per character. You can frontload the party a wand of Cure Light, which is worth about double that, and tell them it's their job to conserve it until they can afford another one (possibly including that this will not be until after 2nd level, or even the number of fights they should expect). Then you give them the remaining 900gp per person in treasure rewards, and halfway from 2nd to 3rd they'll have paid off the wand of cure light from their consumable budget. After that you can go back to whatever treasure generation method.

Not that they have anyone to UMD it. The question quickly approaches of how many base mechanics you want to change for this party- do you want them to crash and burn and learn how to build characters and parties for general 3.5 use? Or do you want to reshape the game so these characters can succeed despite lacking critical system components, with the understanding that said changes should not apply outside of this particular party? The latter is perfectly fine, but most people want their games to have consistent rules between them, and thus doing things like adding daily hp pools for short rests, letting anyone use wands, and so on, brings a whole bunch of easy-mode baggage and altered expectations.

Or option three, attempt to Perfect Encounter Building your way through the problem. Which will probably involve using lots of plain low HD basic attack mobs, scaling into things like higher level humanoid warriors, eventually having encounters under EL (and hoping no one looks up the under CR'd monsters), or foes that clearly don't match actual monsters at their official CR. Point is, something's gotta bend somewhere.


I would also point out that I've barely seen any 1st level modules that are actually 1st level- because no one wants to actually write/play through 13.3 encounters of safe EL 1 or lower fights. You're literally left with rats, spiders, and kobolds or goblins wielding sticks and stones. Don't know what you have planned, but if there's Orcs, or anything wielding a two-handed weapon, or in groups of more than two, or with more than 2 hit dice, those could randomly kill even a normal party.

It should probably also be acknowledged that the Warlock is the real wild-card here: if they take Summon Swarm, it's gg no re for anything level appropriate with the automatic d6 per round AoE with potential loss of turn and continuous bleeding (bat swarm). They could spin their wheels, or solo everything based on that one invocation choice, at 1st level anyway.

[Quertus]

@Fizban has the right of it. *If* the party is truly underwhelming (which there's some questions on that ground), you have options. You can try to warn them. You can try to help them (build characters / with tactics). You can baby them with items, or nerf the encounters, or customize the encounters to the party's strengths. You can change the rules of reality to accommodate the party. Heck, you can even cheat, and go all, "you have how many HP left?".

Or you can play it honest, and let the dice fall where they may. That (with perhaps a warning) is the option I personally go with. Players tend to learn more, faster, when you don't handicap their learning process, and the game is more "real", more fair that way.

Or that's what I tell myself, at any rate.

You do you - but know that you have options.

[Trandir]

I don't understand this at all... Do you not, as the DM, fit your challenges to fit the party level of power? Dude, you're the DM! If they utterly fail, and it's not because they do something completely moronic, then its your fault, because you failed to adequately adapt the challenge to the party...

So what I'm hearing is: "I think I'm going to kill the party... because reasons..." :smallconfused:

Well, that's almost what I'm saying. What I am saying is "this party is playing with a first time DM and without optimizing. And for this I fear that my dungeons will kill them"

[Falontani]

Npc hirelings! A 1st level adept costs 5 sp/day, and 10 gp/cure light wounds. Which is 5 gp cheaper than a single charge of cure light wounds. It also grants the heal skill which can help with many other status problems at lower levels.
If they are lacking in the combat department hire a mercenary. A hired sword is no adventurer, they don't care about saving the village, they would milk the village for the protection money. But if hired to help guard you, and you go into the dungeon, they will usually begrudgingly agree to help. Just lay out what the plan is before hiring them. Depending on how powerful a mercenary you need and is available you might get a fairly decent warrior to help!

[Max Caysey]

Well, that's almost what I'm saying. What I am saying is "this party is playing with a first time DM and without optimizing. And for this I fear that my dungeons will kill them"

Well since you yourself determine whether or not the dungeon kills them, then why this question? I mean, you are in full control, but act like its out of your hands... Its litterally not. You just change what ever enemies are there to paraplegic gnomes whithout combat gear...

My point is, just change dungeon!

[Gnaeus]

If you are really that worried, but don’t want the headache of running NPCs, give them each another level. Maybe give the barbarian a level of ranger, the warlock a level of favored soul (his patron), the binder a level of rogue, and the wizard something vaguely in keeping with his theme (also ranger? Bard? Earth cleric?).

Now one party member has cures, 2-3 can use wands, and one is a trap finder. If you scared they will all die at 3, 4 shouldn’t break the game. And it’s easier to add another monster if they do than to take stuff away.

[ericgrau]

I agree they'll probably be fine. Make sure they have at least a little healing and/or toss them a few potions. Even as part of WBL they can afford plenty without even noticing the cost.

[Telonius]

Maybe it would be a better thing to ask what types of challenges you're planning on throwing at them. Is this for a premade module, or something of your own? Look at what you have planned out so far. What battles specifically do you think the players are going to have a hard time with?

If you're dealing with a module, it might be a bit more work to tone down the difficulty. But if you're making it on your own, just pick different (or fewer) monsters to throw at them.

[Fizban]

Just realized I said they have no one to UMD a wand, in a party with a Warlock :smallsigh: And I wrote a bunch of stuff about 1st level when it clearly says they're starting at 3rd, which part of me even internalized as a reason to skip past the usual "eh just basic attack rolls will get you past 1st," and then promptly forgot. :smallsigh::smallsigh: It's been a while.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
Maybe give the barbarian a level of ranger, the warlock a level of favored soul (his patron), the binder a level of rogue, and the wizard something vaguely in keeping with his theme (also ranger? Bard? Earth cleric?).

This has the potential to be tremendously confusing for players and DM alike, since this is the OP's first time as DM, and it sounds like his players are fairly new as well. Given that, complicated class combos at low levels will probably do more harm than good to the learning process.


Originally Posted by Trandir
What I am saying is "this party is playing with a first time DM and without optimizing. And for this I fear that my dungeons will kill them"

Because of this, I would strongly recommend starting with a module, or at the very least encounters drawn from a module. It's fairly easy to pull out encounters from something like Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury and drop them into your campaign environment.

That will give your players some practice with level-appropriate encounters, and it will let you get a sense of which PCs can handle that, which ones are vulnerable, and which ones can take a little more than expected. Run them through a few encounters from a module, and then begin tailoring your encounters depending on how they do.

Above all, if you're worried your current plans will kill the party, you should probably listen to that little voice and tone things down until you have a better feel for what they can and can't handle.

.

[Gnaeus]

This has the potential to be tremendously confusing for players and DM alike, since this is the OP's first time as DM, and it sounds like his players are fairly new as well. Given that, complicated class combos at low levels will probably do more harm than good to the learning process.



Because of this, I would strongly recommend starting with a module, or at the very least encounters drawn from a module. It's fairly easy to pull out encounters from something like Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury and drop them into your campaign environment.

That will give your players some practice with level-appropriate encounters, and it will let you get a sense of which PCs can handle that, which ones are vulnerable, and which ones can take a little more than expected. Run them through a few encounters from a module, and then begin tailoring your encounters depending on how they do.

Above all, if you're worried your current plans will kill the party, you should probably listen to that little voice and tone things down until you have a better feel for what they can and can't handle.

.

How is giving the barbarian a level of ranger or the binder a level of rogue a “complicated class combo”? You have 6 more skill points and can use the healing stick, you have 8 more and can find traps.

Anyway, people were suggesting throwing in NPCs. Adding a level to each character is a billion miles less complicated than making the DM run extra bodies in every combat + the myriad DMPC pitfalls.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
How is giving the barbarian a level of ranger or the binder a level of rogue a “complicated class combo”?

It wouldn’t be for someone like yourself, or for most people who are longtime regulars around here, who have so many years of game experience that knowledge of the classes and their features becomes instinctive.

Players who are still new to the system don’t yet know it on the cellular level, and for someone who’s just starting out, the system can seem tremendously complex. I’ve seen new players struggle with knowing what numbers to add when and in what situations, and the more to keep track of the more confusing it can become.

As for NPCs, rather than adding NPCs to help the party take on stronger opponents, it would be simpler to reduce the number and strength of those opponents, which is why I’m urging the OP to start out with a few encounters from published modules.

[Falontani]

How is giving the barbarian a level of ranger or the binder a level of rogue a “complicated class combo”? You have 6 more skill points and can use the healing stick, you have 8 more and can find traps.

Anyway, people were suggesting throwing in NPCs. Adding a level to each character is a billion miles less complicated than making the DM run extra bodies in every combat + the myriad DMPC pitfalls.

Running npcs is a dm's job, and I find that running extra bodies is much simpler than trying to educate new players on multiclassing.

Dmpcs are always problematic, if the dm cares about the npc. My suggestion would to not write too much about any given mercenary. He has a name, and the least of a personality possible. He does his job until no more money, he doesn't think he'll live through it, or he dies. The moment that a dm cares more about an npc than a monster is the moment that the npc starts to evolve into a dmpc.

Dmpcs tend to gain arbitrary power, gain unrealistic luck, or be thrown into the spotlight, which is not their job. It takes a more experienced dm to run a dmpc without falling into those pitfalls, and even an experienced dm can fail.

As a long time dm, I'd prefer to give over control of a long running important npc to an experienced player than letting them become a dmpc.

[Gnaeus]

As a long time dm, I'd prefer to give over control of a long running important npc to an experienced player than letting them become a dmpc.

Fully agreed, but if we had experienced players there wouldn’t be a problem.

[Fizban]

Because of this, I would strongly recommend starting with a module, or at the very least encounters drawn from a module. It's fairly easy to pull out encounters from something like Sunless Citadel or Forge of Fury and drop them into your campaign environment.

That will give your players some practice with level-appropriate encounters,
Presuming that these encounters are actually level appropriate- which they are often not. Sunless Citadel opens with rat gank squad, tells you a walkway is safe then force a balance check if you fight on it, uses skeletons (both skeletons and zombies were massively buffed in 3.5), has a Quasit (CR 2, nigh unkillable without the right tactics) as a sort of optional fight (but a DM reading rooms in order might not realize this), and zombie troll (similar problems), and oh yeah is full of groups of kobolds- which in 3.5 would have 1d3-1 slings, but in Sunless Citadel have 3.0 light crossbows for 1d8 ranged damage at the CR they're expected to deal 1-2. All of this is fine for a level 3 party, but that's because they'd be two levels higher than advertised and thus much more able to soak badly written encounters.

Heck it, let's take a look at Forge of Fury. Starts with orcs, massively under-CR'd as usual, but the actual thread should be fine for 3rds (despite the NPC classed NPC written CR of 1/2, orcs are at least as threatening as other CR 1 creatures, so two orcs is really EL 2, and four are really EL 4 [encounter math for low CRs is weird], and they should give xp and loot accordingly). And. . . that's like the entire first section, orcs, then orcs with more ranged weapons, then some boss fights where there's an orc with more levels, and one fight with an Ogre and two Wolves (note that Ogres were also buffed by the 3.5 change to weapon sizes). Okay, I'm pleasantly surprised, that's not actually terrible. Boring, but appropriate foes without gotchas at least. Some Stirges, they're fragile but good for teaching about con damage. Then it's on to trogs, lizards, and a brown bear (watch out for the Brown Bear, they're ridiculous), and there's the Yellow Mold trap, that's a killer, and it's not even listed as Search detection. Gricks are a good intro to DR, and a great spot for the Warlock to shine if they don't have magic weapons yet. Of course there's also the infamous Roper further down, but everything up till then is fine.

And of course there's the next Balance gotcha: step into area, fail check, fall down waterfall, and if unconscious get schlorped into an underground river and die- all without involving, ya know, swim checks, and at a speed that if the other characters are actually obeying movement and action costs, means 1d4+4 rounds is likely not enough. I think the lesson is: early 3.x modules will kill you for not having Balance maxed. Admittedly, falling down loose and/or slippery stuff is a major danger in real life wilds, but doing so in-game with arbitrary mechanics is not fun.

Then we've got duregar, duregar, and more duregar, animated objects, a Wight, an Allip (that one's always been borked, low CR incorporeal with full Ability Drain that nearly REQUIRES the Cleric to get a lucky Turn Undead roll, don't use one of these on that party, period), a random arbitrary Succubus (which isn't even programmed to attack), and then finally a dragon. Note that the dragon's listed tactics include an illegal action (you can't partial charge after moving) and and implied Pounce attack (which dragons don't have), and being a Black dragon with a lake, it has maximum terrain advantage, which the PCs can't match even if they're level 5. This party would have to spend most of their wizard slots on Energy Resistance to even show up. But the hoard is on land and the dragon runs if it's about to die, so the party can force it to fight and doesn't necessarily have to hunt it down.

So Forge of Fury actually is an appropriate 3rd level adventure- but note that all the classed humanoids mean that a party starting there will have almost no experience with actual monsters, leaving them rather unprepared for the boss or indeed most of the Monster Manuals.


Regardless and once again, the best way to get help with encounter design is with the PC's sheets and an idea of what you want them to fight.