1) Yes. At worst you may want to remove 1 monster from larger encounters.
2) Generally, no. This is up to your play style, but preferably you would want to tell players only what their character should already know based on observation or backstory. Drip feed info as they fight "the fire didn't even leave a mark" conveys damage immunity, while "the trolls burns aren't healing like its other wounds did" conveys that fire prevents regeneration, etc.
3) Splitting up is both risky (in character) and boring (out of character), but not forbidden. Some players may lose interest if their character isn't able to interact with the scene, and you WILL have problems if an individual or small group wanders into an encounter meant for the whole party. If they do split up, try to bounce between characters often (imagine 10 minutes in game as a "turn") and foreshadow encounters and that they need the whole party so they regroup.
I have the starter set with the Lost Mines... scenario.
1) Will it work with 3 players plus DM?
2) Are players allowed to see monster stats before combat?
3) Is the group allowed to split up or should they always work as a group?
Thanks in advance.
Paul
1 - It will work, it'll just be challenging for the players. Published adventures are generally designed for 4-6 players, and as the party gets smaller, each individual player matters more, so you can see it will be a bigger challenge.
If you're a new DM, an easier way to adjust difficulty is, rather than alter the number of monsters (which can be impossible for single monster encounters, and would require you modifying the statblock itself to adjust the difficulty), is to make a sidekick.
If you don't have access to those rules, you could even create a full character that just acts as a support. Pick one of the pregenerated ones if you just have the Starter Set, and have the players run the character (either one of them, or by consensus). They wouldn't be roleplayed per se, but they can provide additional attacks and abilities for the party to use.
Those would help boost the party power levels so you don't have to keep adjusting encounters to an appropriate difficulty. There are more elegant ways like increasing the party level, giving feats and so forth, but it's an art and so you may want some experience for it.
2 - It's up to you. However, for immersion's sake and to avoid metagaming, most people don't allow it. I don't. It starts bringing it out of storytelling supported by mechanics and starts making it an exercise in mathematics.
3 - There is no rule against splitting the party. I've been in a party twice, once it was ok the other time was terrible.
The problem is that the fun of the game essentially comes from your character making choices and progressing, and by splitting your party, each character is losing half the opportunities too do so, so everyone is only having half as much fun. I'll describe my negative experience to illustrate.
We entered a circus. We had three choices, go to a Freak Show, an Arcade or the main circus event. I don't like gambling, so I quickly opted for the Freak Show. The Paladin also opted to go with me, and my wife who played the Fighter doesn't like gambling either and so went with us. The Rogue decided to go to the Arcade. My group came across the elements that advanced the story and presented puzzles to solve. The Rogue played games. Our bit was fine...but we'd play for a few minutes so the Rogue could play. We'd just be sat there twiddling our thumbs while the Rogue did skill check after skill check. It was boring, to be honest.
While admittedly part of the problem was the nature of what the Rogue was doing (not advancing the story, which might have gotten my interest at least a bit), the problem was we (Rogue included) weren't playing. For the two hours we were split, were were only playing D&D for an hour. The other hour, we were watching a kid play arcade games in a TTRPG, which wasn't fun at all.
Splitting the party for brief periods can be ok. If handled well and if the stars align, it can even work well even for extended periods. It's just very difficult to make it as fun as keeping the party together. Imagine you're reading LoTR, and you're only really interested in Frodo. Do you think you'd be more interested in Fellowship or Two Towers? Why?
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Hi. I am very much a beginner with DnD.
I have the starter set with the Lost Mines... scenario.
1) Will it work with 3 players plus DM?
2) Are players allowed to see monster stats before combat?
3) Is the group allowed to split up or should they always work as a group?
Thanks in advance.
Paul
1) Yes. At worst you may want to remove 1 monster from larger encounters.
2) Generally, no. This is up to your play style, but preferably you would want to tell players only what their character should already know based on observation or backstory. Drip feed info as they fight "the fire didn't even leave a mark" conveys damage immunity, while "the trolls burns aren't healing like its other wounds did" conveys that fire prevents regeneration, etc.
3) Splitting up is both risky (in character) and boring (out of character), but not forbidden. Some players may lose interest if their character isn't able to interact with the scene, and you WILL have problems if an individual or small group wanders into an encounter meant for the whole party. If they do split up, try to bounce between characters often (imagine 10 minutes in game as a "turn") and foreshadow encounters and that they need the whole party so they regroup.
Fantastic. Thanks for you reply!
1 - It will work, it'll just be challenging for the players. Published adventures are generally designed for 4-6 players, and as the party gets smaller, each individual player matters more, so you can see it will be a bigger challenge.
If you're a new DM, an easier way to adjust difficulty is, rather than alter the number of monsters (which can be impossible for single monster encounters, and would require you modifying the statblock itself to adjust the difficulty), is to make a sidekick.
If you don't have access to those rules, you could even create a full character that just acts as a support. Pick one of the pregenerated ones if you just have the Starter Set, and have the players run the character (either one of them, or by consensus). They wouldn't be roleplayed per se, but they can provide additional attacks and abilities for the party to use.
Those would help boost the party power levels so you don't have to keep adjusting encounters to an appropriate difficulty. There are more elegant ways like increasing the party level, giving feats and so forth, but it's an art and so you may want some experience for it.
2 - It's up to you. However, for immersion's sake and to avoid metagaming, most people don't allow it. I don't. It starts bringing it out of storytelling supported by mechanics and starts making it an exercise in mathematics.
3 - There is no rule against splitting the party. I've been in a party twice, once it was ok the other time was terrible.
The problem is that the fun of the game essentially comes from your character making choices and progressing, and by splitting your party, each character is losing half the opportunities too do so, so everyone is only having half as much fun. I'll describe my negative experience to illustrate.
We entered a circus. We had three choices, go to a Freak Show, an Arcade or the main circus event. I don't like gambling, so I quickly opted for the Freak Show. The Paladin also opted to go with me, and my wife who played the Fighter doesn't like gambling either and so went with us. The Rogue decided to go to the Arcade. My group came across the elements that advanced the story and presented puzzles to solve. The Rogue played games. Our bit was fine...but we'd play for a few minutes so the Rogue could play. We'd just be sat there twiddling our thumbs while the Rogue did skill check after skill check. It was boring, to be honest.
While admittedly part of the problem was the nature of what the Rogue was doing (not advancing the story, which might have gotten my interest at least a bit), the problem was we (Rogue included) weren't playing. For the two hours we were split, were were only playing D&D for an hour. The other hour, we were watching a kid play arcade games in a TTRPG, which wasn't fun at all.
Splitting the party for brief periods can be ok. If handled well and if the stars align, it can even work well even for extended periods. It's just very difficult to make it as fun as keeping the party together. Imagine you're reading LoTR, and you're only really interested in Frodo. Do you think you'd be more interested in Fellowship or Two Towers? Why?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.