I've just finished going through the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle adventure with my daughter as the DM. Going through it, she had her character, and another premade while I was controlling 2 other premade characters. This was more than a little bit of a pain, especially because that was the first time I've actually played D&D much less ran a game as a DM.
I've also picked up the essential set with the Dragon of Icespire Peak and I'm really not wanting to play this with any DMPC's. In the rules it talks about running with a single player and having a helper so I'm thinking I'm going to have my daughter run her character, then use either a helper or just use a whole other character for the second character has a help.
My question though, is how do I adjust the encounters to be for only 2 PC's? My understanding is that the challenge rating for any given creature is based around a group of 4 characters at that level. So something with a group of 4 at level 4 could theoretically take on 4 CR 1 creatures. I'm sure I'm going to hit a point though where simply reducing the number of creatures won't be enough to make the encounter beatable, so what do I do instead to make sure the fights are challenging but not something that will completely overpower her.
Also, I loved how DoSI had a built in mechanic to make sure there was no true party wipe. Since my daughter is 9, is there a similar mechanic I can use if she does lose so I'm not telling her that she died? Or am I relegated to something along the lines of "You wake up in a camp nearby, there appears to be a (Insert Random Adventurer) nearby who see's you wake up." Then go on to explain he happened to be nearby and how lucky she was that he was in the area to get her out before something really bad happened?
Unfortunately you've opened a whole can of worms here as the challenge rating is one of the least consistent mechanics in the game and two monsters with the same CR can have wildly different impacts on a combat, even with the "ideal" 4 person party.
With a one person and a sidekick game your best bet is to look at the damage and hit points your daughter and the monster has relative to each other rather than the challenge rating. Aim for a two or three round combat (or however long you want it to last for her to find it fun) and basically think to your self "she does X points of damage per round so I need a monster with X*3 rounds of hit points. She was Y hit points so I need monsters that do Y/3 damage". There's nothing that says you need to use the monster stat blocks as they are so you can change them if you need to and can even adjust them mid-combat if you need to. The key thing is obviously that your daughter has fun.
As for avoiding killing her if it all goes wrong you can just use something similar to DoSI and have someone rescue her. The Forgotten Realms setting has various factions as part of it's lore so choose one like The Harpers or The Emerald Enclave and have some of their agents just happen by. Another option rather than use factions or have her trying to run a side kick is give her a pet, a monster stat block is easier to run than a full character sheet and I'm sure she'd love a pet Owlbear or similar that follows her around and helps her in combat
Unfortunately you've opened a whole can of worms here as the challenge rating is one of the least consistent mechanics in the game and two monsters with the same CR can have wildly different impacts on a combat, even with the "ideal" 4 person party.
I had a feeling this was going to factor in. Like I said, not a whole lot of experience so I don't know just how bad it can be but I've heard it in whispers. Still, thank for the tip on damage, we'll have to go through with making her character before I have any idea where to start with the HP, but it's a good place to start.
I need to finish reading the module for Dragon of Icespire Peak, but yeah, Harpers sounds like a good mcguffin to keep her from dying.
So, here's the rule of thumb I play by if I am homebrewing a monster.
Make it capable of one intimidating thing, one really cool thing, and make it weak to something that is possible to discover.
The purpose of an enemy after all is not to kill the player characters (though that may be a side effect). It's to give a challenge or a narrative moment. An example of this is a Dragon. When a party are fighting a dragon it would feel a little less cool to down the dragon quickly and without a fight. I should get it's breath weapon attack off at least once, it should make the party feel an amount of jepordy for their characters, but ultimately should be defeatable if you're doing encounter design right. To that end, once a party have faced down the jepordy, seen the breath weapon, and discovered the vulnerability the Dragon has more or less served its purpose. At that point you can either have it die, fly away and escape, or just surrender.
How do we ensure the dragon dies then? Well, by this point we can't alter AC because the party have likely already discovered the AC. So what we do is that we mess with it's HP. HP in the D&D design is part of the sliders we as DMs get to play with when building encounters. When you see the brackets next to the HP number that gives you the range of HP that enemy could possibly have. In the case of a Young White Dragon it's 14d10+56 or a range of between 70 and 196 hp. So one lesser used methods is to write down the HP range and instead of counting down enemy HP, keep track of damage taken during the fight. If the Dragon hasn't got its breath weapon off yet, but the parety have managed to deal 70 damage..cool, you decide in that moment that the Dragon has got just enough left in the tank to get off it's breath weapon. Once it has gotten off it's breath weapon, or the fight has felt narratively interesting enough, you take the next successful hit as being the killing blow. As long as your party hit that minimum number of 70 they win.
At this point, there will be any number of DMs who will crawl out of hidey-holes in horror at what I've just said. They'll claim it's unfair to the players, that it is some form of cheating. Well, it's not. And here's the main reason. My encounters all have the purpose of providing cool narrative moments for the players. I'm not setting out to kill the players. My goal is to ensure that the fight feels worth fighting. So, if the party have walked the fight too quickly to match the purported strength of the enemy, and thus not provided a moment that was narratively satisfying I'll keep them around a little longer.
With all of that said...the important takeaway here is that all encounters should have a purpose. Decide what that purpose is and use it to decide how best to serve that purpose.
Don't just throw a Mind Flayer at the party because it's the best CR. Instead, thing about what you want to achieve. Want to signpost that the enemy might be immune to fire damage, but have a party who are constantly using fire damage? Bring in a Helmed Horror and make it immune to three specific fire spells. This will mean the party suddenly have to rearrange their spells and rework their strategies. It serves the purpose of being a less strong enemy against which the party can practice their non-fire based damage. After that session or encounter, perhaps drop a little note to your players...'consider what this fight might be telling you as players/characters' you can even throw in an insight check to learn this if you really want to.
Similarly, enemies should and can be played smart. If the enemy has an intelligence over 5, I usually decide if they are going to fight to the death, run as soon as they take damage, of if they're going to start begging for the fight to stop. I'll decide at the same time at what point (50% of minimum HP, after two successful hits) they'll act on this behaviour.
Of course I've touched on just two of the 'settings' that encounters have here - HP and Behaviour. You could also consider having armour that breaks and lowers AC. You can also play about by up/downgrading immunities and resistances, or even adding vulnerabilities. I've seen a lot of players get excited when their character finds out the damage type vulnerability.
Unfortunately you've opened a whole can of worms here as the challenge rating is one of the least consistent mechanics in the game and two monsters with the same CR can have wildly different impacts on a combat, even with the "ideal" 4 person party.
I had a feeling this was going to factor in. Like I said, not a whole lot of experience so I don't know just how bad it can be but I've heard it in whispers. Still, thank for the tip on damage, we'll have to go through with making her character before I have any idea where to start with the HP, but it's a good place to start.
I need to finish reading the module for Dragon of Icespire Peak, but yeah, Harpers sounds like a good mcguffin to keep her from dying.
Just a really quick thought - characters are far less squishy after 1st / 2nd Lvl - so maybe continuing playing with her character from DoSI (or start a new character a2nd Lvl or summink). Having 3rd parties save the day is a route but can get tiring for players. Consider getting captured and meeting some other cool captured NPCs to plot an escape (instead of dying).
I've just finished going through the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle adventure with my daughter as the DM. Going through it, she had her character, and another premade while I was controlling 2 other premade characters. This was more than a little bit of a pain, especially because that was the first time I've actually played D&D much less ran a game as a DM.
I've also picked up the essential set with the Dragon of Icespire Peak and I'm really not wanting to play this with any DMPC's. In the rules it talks about running with a single player and having a helper so I'm thinking I'm going to have my daughter run her character, then use either a helper or just use a whole other character for the second character has a help.
My question though, is how do I adjust the encounters to be for only 2 PC's? My understanding is that the challenge rating for any given creature is based around a group of 4 characters at that level. So something with a group of 4 at level 4 could theoretically take on 4 CR 1 creatures. I'm sure I'm going to hit a point though where simply reducing the number of creatures won't be enough to make the encounter beatable, so what do I do instead to make sure the fights are challenging but not something that will completely overpower her.
Also, I loved how DoSI had a built in mechanic to make sure there was no true party wipe. Since my daughter is 9, is there a similar mechanic I can use if she does lose so I'm not telling her that she died? Or am I relegated to something along the lines of "You wake up in a camp nearby, there appears to be a (Insert Random Adventurer) nearby who see's you wake up." Then go on to explain he happened to be nearby and how lucky she was that he was in the area to get her out before something really bad happened?
Use your My Encounters. You can see how deadly an encounter is in regard to the party. Then simply choose different monsters.
playing since 1986
Unfortunately you've opened a whole can of worms here as the challenge rating is one of the least consistent mechanics in the game and two monsters with the same CR can have wildly different impacts on a combat, even with the "ideal" 4 person party.
With a one person and a sidekick game your best bet is to look at the damage and hit points your daughter and the monster has relative to each other rather than the challenge rating. Aim for a two or three round combat (or however long you want it to last for her to find it fun) and basically think to your self "she does X points of damage per round so I need a monster with X*3 rounds of hit points. She was Y hit points so I need monsters that do Y/3 damage". There's nothing that says you need to use the monster stat blocks as they are so you can change them if you need to and can even adjust them mid-combat if you need to. The key thing is obviously that your daughter has fun.
As for avoiding killing her if it all goes wrong you can just use something similar to DoSI and have someone rescue her. The Forgotten Realms setting has various factions as part of it's lore so choose one like The Harpers or The Emerald Enclave and have some of their agents just happen by. Another option rather than use factions or have her trying to run a side kick is give her a pet, a monster stat block is easier to run than a full character sheet and I'm sure she'd love a pet Owlbear or similar that follows her around and helps her in combat
I had a feeling this was going to factor in. Like I said, not a whole lot of experience so I don't know just how bad it can be but I've heard it in whispers. Still, thank for the tip on damage, we'll have to go through with making her character before I have any idea where to start with the HP, but it's a good place to start.
I need to finish reading the module for Dragon of Icespire Peak, but yeah, Harpers sounds like a good mcguffin to keep her from dying.
Is this something on the DND beyond site or found in the GM's guide? When I say I'm new, I mean I've only bought the starter and essentials sets.
Yep, that's on the site. Click on Collections in the menu.
playing since 1986
So, here's the rule of thumb I play by if I am homebrewing a monster.
Make it capable of one intimidating thing, one really cool thing, and make it weak to something that is possible to discover.
The purpose of an enemy after all is not to kill the player characters (though that may be a side effect). It's to give a challenge or a narrative moment. An example of this is a Dragon. When a party are fighting a dragon it would feel a little less cool to down the dragon quickly and without a fight. I should get it's breath weapon attack off at least once, it should make the party feel an amount of jepordy for their characters, but ultimately should be defeatable if you're doing encounter design right. To that end, once a party have faced down the jepordy, seen the breath weapon, and discovered the vulnerability the Dragon has more or less served its purpose. At that point you can either have it die, fly away and escape, or just surrender.
How do we ensure the dragon dies then? Well, by this point we can't alter AC because the party have likely already discovered the AC. So what we do is that we mess with it's HP. HP in the D&D design is part of the sliders we as DMs get to play with when building encounters. When you see the brackets next to the HP number that gives you the range of HP that enemy could possibly have. In the case of a Young White Dragon it's 14d10+56 or a range of between 70 and 196 hp. So one lesser used methods is to write down the HP range and instead of counting down enemy HP, keep track of damage taken during the fight. If the Dragon hasn't got its breath weapon off yet, but the parety have managed to deal 70 damage..cool, you decide in that moment that the Dragon has got just enough left in the tank to get off it's breath weapon. Once it has gotten off it's breath weapon, or the fight has felt narratively interesting enough, you take the next successful hit as being the killing blow. As long as your party hit that minimum number of 70 they win.
At this point, there will be any number of DMs who will crawl out of hidey-holes in horror at what I've just said. They'll claim it's unfair to the players, that it is some form of cheating. Well, it's not. And here's the main reason. My encounters all have the purpose of providing cool narrative moments for the players. I'm not setting out to kill the players. My goal is to ensure that the fight feels worth fighting. So, if the party have walked the fight too quickly to match the purported strength of the enemy, and thus not provided a moment that was narratively satisfying I'll keep them around a little longer.
With all of that said...the important takeaway here is that all encounters should have a purpose. Decide what that purpose is and use it to decide how best to serve that purpose.
Don't just throw a Mind Flayer at the party because it's the best CR. Instead, thing about what you want to achieve. Want to signpost that the enemy might be immune to fire damage, but have a party who are constantly using fire damage? Bring in a Helmed Horror and make it immune to three specific fire spells. This will mean the party suddenly have to rearrange their spells and rework their strategies. It serves the purpose of being a less strong enemy against which the party can practice their non-fire based damage. After that session or encounter, perhaps drop a little note to your players...'consider what this fight might be telling you as players/characters' you can even throw in an insight check to learn this if you really want to.
Similarly, enemies should and can be played smart. If the enemy has an intelligence over 5, I usually decide if they are going to fight to the death, run as soon as they take damage, of if they're going to start begging for the fight to stop. I'll decide at the same time at what point (50% of minimum HP, after two successful hits) they'll act on this behaviour.
Of course I've touched on just two of the 'settings' that encounters have here - HP and Behaviour. You could also consider having armour that breaks and lowers AC. You can also play about by up/downgrading immunities and resistances, or even adding vulnerabilities. I've seen a lot of players get excited when their character finds out the damage type vulnerability.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Just a really quick thought - characters are far less squishy after 1st / 2nd Lvl - so maybe continuing playing with her character from DoSI (or start a new character a2nd Lvl or summink). Having 3rd parties save the day is a route but can get tiring for players. Consider getting captured and meeting some other cool captured NPCs to plot an escape (instead of dying).
RPGs from '83 - 03. A fair bit of LRP. A big gap. And now DMing again. Froth.