I’m taking a first stab at DMing since middle school on Sunday, and since I don’t know my players (well, I don’t know them AS players, anyhow), I’m thinking it’d be a good idea to have as much vetted material as possible going in. We’re going to be playing D&D 3.5, as the most familiar to the most people.
I’m thinking a decent dungeon-crawl would be a good starting-point, or at least some sort of fairly tightly-controlled setting - we’ve been talking about starting a gaming group for a while, but setting an actual date is short notice (two days!), so I don’t want to try and do anything overly complicated.
Also, I figure there’ll be a fair amount of time spent just hashing out characters and such, not to mention getting to know each other’s playstyles, so something relatively short would probably be good. Also, since I’m just kinda testing the waters and all, I’d much prefer a free, online kind of thing to actually going to the game store and whatnot (ordering something by Sunday is right out). Plus, I don’t even know if they’d have 3.5 stuff still around. Any suggestions?
You planning on starting them off at first level, or something higher?
Back in the day, there was Dungeon magazine, a monthly publication that contained several modules of varied levels. I don’t know if they still publish it, but if you could get your hands on a few of those, you’d have some excellent resources, but might need to adapt things a bit to compensate for rules changes between version.
For classic modules, Keep on the Borderlands is a good starting point, as is The Temple of Elemental Evil. Temple is actually a mini-campaign, think you can start it at first level, and likely have players reach 8th level or so by the time they finish…which is the perfect range to start the G-D-Q series of higher level adventures against giants, Drow, and eventually the Demon Spider Queen herself, on her home plane.
If nothing else, let them roll up characters, and wing something as a short intro adventure…maybe they’re in a caravan and have to fight off some orcs or bandits on the way to some destination for next week’s adventure which can be vaguely described…a meeting with a king/patron/mysterious npc, etc. gives you more time to cook up something for them.
To make it interesting, vary the weather, climate & terrain a little. Running a Winter campaign can completely change the mood of a module, especially if you are a good describer. Throw in a small pack of winter-straved wolves as a suprise that can really challenge a party. If high level, use a large pack.
Or, try a riverine campaign, in which a vast river basin (Amazon/Nile/Mississippi sized), largely unexplored, is the setting. Hostile tribes, river monsters, & boats instead of horses.
The best DM I ever had used to roll up some random encounters ahead of the game, listing all the critters or people in them and the treasures. For instance, he’d have an index card which listed the possible range of critters (depending on how many players showed up for that day’s game), approximate party level, and how many hit points each critter had. If appropriate, he also put in circumstances (you come across a party of adventurers who are puzzling over a map). This sped up the game, a LOT.
He also had some adventure hooks in a few of the random encounters. If he wanted us to go on a specific adventure, of course, he’d manage to get the hook in front of us, but these were fun little Easter eggs. He also had world background info that he revealed by way of some of these random encounters. This is probably more time consuming than you’re willing to do right now, though.
Otherwise, yeah, see if you can’t find some old Dungeon magazines. Or go online and take a look around for a lot of source material. Don’t be afraid to change the monsters and other stuff around to suit your own needs. You can change the difficulty very easily by slashing the number of monsters (but be sure to slash the treasure, too) or by substituting easier monsters. My goal was always to make the players think that they very well might die, and to keep the death rate among PCs high enough that this fear was realistic, but not to be so brutal that it wasn’t fun for the players.
If you decide to check out 4th Edition, the Quick Start rules and first adventure are a free download.
I’m liking 4E as a DM, in part because of the tools that Wizards has provided via the Insider subscription. I don’t need to buy the books, although having the core ones (PH, DMG, PH2) is useful for reference at the table.
WotC still has a raft of free adventures for download.
This page links to them. A Dark and Stormy Knight actually gives the characters a good reason to adventure together - the thrown-together-by circumstance hook.
I’d start them at second level. The characters are a lot more resilient than first level. A single Orc can kill any first level PC with one blow on a critical hit (except maybe a raging barbarian) whereas the only second level characters art risk of immediate death shouldn’t be toe-to-toe with a monster anyway.
Don’t waste valuable play time rolling up characters; do this yourself beforehand. And I concur with starting characters at level 2, though I’d make them level 1 in each of two complementary classes like Ftr 1 / Rog 1 or Ftr 1 / Mk 1 or Wiz 1 / Sor 1.
Actually, as long as we’re doing this, I’d like to hear opinions on how to balance the 3.5 character classes a little better; I’ve heard that well-played clerics and druids, for instance, are game-breakingly powerful at higher levels.
It’s unlikely that dropping max hp by 2 will kill the character; they’d have to be at -8 or -9 for that. The greater the drop when the Con boost wears off, the bigger the chance of instant death.
I’d definitely counsel against rolling up the characters yourself. Players will be far more attached to characters they grew from a blank sheet of paper. I also disagree with the multiclassing suggestion for first characters, particularly mixing wizard and sorcerer, since the class abilities do not stack in any meaningful way.
If you start the characters at first level, I advise against rolling for the first level’s hit points, just start the characters at max HP plus whatever bonuses they’d get. I had a character once with 1 hit point at first level, 2 HP at second, etc. While Fletcher was a challenge to play, and I had a lot of fun with having him (a centaur fighter-mage) trying to run and hide during a battle, I was very comfortable with the DM and the other players when I rolled him up.
Centaurs were a regular player race in that game world, by the way, this wasn’t a case of me whining to play a monster race.
Ordinarily I’d agree, but for the first session of a new group, it’s better to get straight on with the fun. Make it a one-off adventure with one-off characters. Then, if everyone’s had fun, you can get and start a campaign with new characters the next session.
The point about being Level 1/1 rather than level 2 is so that players have more options. For instance a Wiz 1 / Sor 1 has much more spellcasting ability than a Wiz 2 or Sor 2 and so will be much more fun to play. Similarly, a Ftr 1 / Rog 1 has the choice of going for a frontal attack or a rear one. A Ftr 2 or Rog 2 doesn’t have that choice.
Further, in the longer term, there isn’t really a problem as long as the GM remembers that an adventure listed as being ‘for Xth level characters’ really means ‘for characters with spellcasters casting spells of level X/2’. So an adventure ‘for 5th level characters’ means ‘for characters with spellcasters castiing 3rd level spells’.
And in respect of Wizard and Sorcerer, you should look at the Ultimate Magus Prestige Class.
Actually, the rules in 3/3.5 state that at first level you get Max HP for your class.
True, but while Fighter/Rogue works, Monk/Fighter really doesn’t. In the long term it’s a bad thing (barring qualifying for Prestige Classes, which I’ll adress in a bit.)
Besides, Barbarians stack with Rogues much better than fighter (especially if you go for a spring-attacking Barbarian/Rogue), unless you’re going for a two-weapon fighting Rogue, in which case you better have a cleric handy because it is pretty much a suicidal build.
Not true. It means for characters of Xth level, regardless of the spells they have.
Don’t know anything about it. But I know that unless you have a generous GM, a lot of the spellcasting PrC’s that involve multiple classes to get are weak at mid to high levels. I knew a guy who played a Mystic Theurge in Living Greyhawk who vowed he would never again. The only reason his character was remotely good was that his character was run through a multi-module Metaregional story arc in VTF where metamagic rods were fell like rain. And he bought a lot of them. (Later they came out with the Arcane Heirophant class, that I think was made so MT’s could get a PrC that actually had some power.)
Personally, a lot of PrC’s suck. And Wizard and Sorcerer don’t stack normally, so I’d have to see if the PrC really justified making a weak base character.
True on the latter, false on the former.
The 3.0 Cleric was arguably the strongest class out there. Great saves, decent hit points, decent attack bonus, heavy armor, OK weapon selection, a great mix of both offense, defense, utility, and divination spells, as well as access to non-clerical spells through domains. Honestly, you could build a kickass party out of nothing but Clerics since they were a better jack-of-all-trades then the Bard was.
But then 3.5 came along. The Druid got a boost (not that it needed it). The Bard got a definitely needed boost. The Fighter was unchanged (it needed a boost, but not nearly to the point the Bard did). The rogue got changed with a minor reduction overall relative to the rest of the changes in the system (though, the rogue really was the perfectly balanced class in 3.0, I don’t know why they didn’t keep it that way). The Monk got a bit better (it didn’t really need much of a boost either). The Paladin I think was a wash. The Barbarian got a small improvement. The wizard remained overpowered at mid-range to high-range. The sorcerer remained the red-headed step-child of the arcanists. The ranger got a slight boost.
But the cleric got nerfed. One of the theories as to why they made the 3.0 cleric as strong as he was, was that the 2.0 and before clerics were little more than glorified first aid kits. So they wanted to make the 3.0 cleric something that people would use for more than just healing. However, they made an overpowered class. One that at 20th level could wipe the floor with a Wizard at 20th if it got initiative. So they decided to reduce the overpowering by nerfing or eliminating most of the clerical spells that weren’t healing based. Gone were the massive damage dealers. Gone was darkness as it was known. (It kept the name, but became a 20% light spell instead, WTF?) Gone was the instant death spells. Gone was everything that made the cleric a dream for people that wanted to play a class to full, non-multiclassing progression.
Did the cleric need tweaking? Of course. Did he need to be completely nerfed back to nothing more than a glorified healer? Nope.
My point is that pregenerated characters reduce the likelihood of that second session happening.
For a first adventure, get the PCs to roll second level characters using only PHB material. The DM should not allow anything else, unless he knows the material and what it does. Once players have gotten into their characters, start introducing elaborations.
The multiclass character has more, weaker spells. A friend commented once (on another board) “The only reason to multiclass Wizard and Sorcerer is for a specialist wizard to be able to use wands and staffs of spells in his prohibited schools without investing in Use Magic Device.”
If the DM is happy admitting Complete Mage, but that is a long step down the road. Get to know the core material first before investing in expansion books.
Hoopy, the Ultimaet Magus can produce a character who’s spellcasting capability is only two levels down on a single-classed member of the same primary spellcasting class, while the caster level will catch up to and eventually pass the character’s HD. At the same time the character gets a second spellcasting class which slowly falls behind, but can burn spells lots to fuel metamagic tricks by the primary class, as well as provide a useful repetoire of utility spells.
Well, complicated class decisions aside - this is really just supposed to be a one- or two- off game, not a long-term campaign - I poked through some of the WoTC free modules, and Wreck Ashore looks promising. It has pirates taking over a lighthouse, then using a beacon to lure ships onto a reef - the PCs are supposed to find out in town that some ships haven’t arrived, but they sort of mention offhand that you could also have the PCs in one of the wrecked ships, which I think has promise - it’d be a way to throw some first-level character together besides ‘you meet in a bar’, and it’s first-level, which I like. I’d consider starting people at higher levels, but there’s at least one new player coming, and I’d rather avoid doing too much prep-work, and the higher-level the characters, the longer they’ll take.
As for pre-rolling characters, I dunno about everyone else, but half the fun of role-playing for me is creating a character, so I’d rather leave that to my players. I am considering letting everyone level up once before the adventure (which would mean more pirates!) and then they can choose if they want to multiclass or whatever.
Nope. Adventures for 3.xE are supposed to be designed for a party of 1 each of the canonical 4 classes. This means that it expects that in a 5th level adventure there will be 2 5th level spellcasters capable of casting 3rd level spells.
See my comment above. Run appropriate adventures, increase the mooks. And don’t let one spellcaster get too far ahead of the others.
With the latter, I disagree; one word: Nwm. Those who read ENWorld’s Story Hour forum will know of whom I speak.
For those who don’t, try here. Be sure to have a whole afternoon to spare.
If I ever knew that, I’d forgotten about it, sorry. I mostly played 1 and 2, or a mix of the original D&D (the old version) with some v2 (classes and monsters, mostly) added.
Hoopy, are you sure you’re thinking of the transition from 3.0 to 3.5 re clerics, not, say, Pathfinder or something? Because the class itself didn’t change from 3.0 to 3.5, and the spells got even killier in the transition. In 3.0, for instance, Holy Word and its equivalents would only ever kill mooks, while in 3.5, they scale with your caster level, so if you can get, say, +4 to caster level (not too hard, especially for divine spellcasters), then you could kill everything of your level with no save.
And monks desperately needed a boost, and still do. They’re hard to kill, but being hard to kill doesn’t win fights. They just can’t do anything.