I'm going to be the DM for the next campaign of my group (we are rotating and this is my first time as DM, this will our 2nd campaign as a group and we all are quite new to the game, being our 2nd campaign ever). In the last campaign, we ran into two main problems: Variant Human race and weak PC's at early levels (1 to 4).
We started with standard array for stats but the players were way too weak and easily killed in early encounters, often missing all attacks until we reached about lvl 4 or 5. We changed to point buy and that encouraged mix maxing, but still wasn't good enough to put up a fight in most combats. We as a party started choosing our abilities and feats all oriented to combat to counter this, but due to mix maxing and this approach to the game our performance in RP also deteriorated. When someone had to create a new character due to this problem they started choosing (myself included) Variant Human, and of course, everyone loved the idea of starting with a feat and the party practically became all Variant Humans, except for a Eladrin that felt he was behind in power due to this, and almost other races were neglected. It felt like that extra feat helped a lot the builds the players wanted to play up to lvl 10 and their versatility! Our campaign ended at lvl 11.
Additionally, I've seen Critical role's player character sheets and was blown away by the stats they had. What system did they use for stats, just rolling? Do you recommend me to do it this way if I want the campaign to be more RP oriented? Maybe dungeons dudes standard array?
What tips or systems for character creation and stats do you recommend me? I want them to feel powerful enough (not entirely broken) so the early levels won't be as frustrating as the last campaign, and also with them being able to build the character they want without having to reach really high levels.
Additionally, how do I balance out Variant Human while retaining the versatility of the PC's and give them the option to build the character the way they want and without feeling underpowered especially at early levels? I want them to have the freedom of choosing their spells based on flavor, RP, or combat and not just combat optimized.
Thank everyone!
Ps: English is not my native language, hope you understand my post without too much problems!
I am an Adventure League DM most of the time. AL uses standard array. But the combats are ALSO tested against a group of 4 or 5 of adventure level. Since you are learning, buy a few of the levels 1 to 4 adventures from Season 1 or 2. A learning curve exists for new players and new dms. DMs forget to adjust things when the dice rolls go bad.
oUCH OUCH OUCH. I just pulled up the stats from Critical Role. An 18 at level 2 and 20 at level 5. That is a high powered game. It can work but I would have trouble adjusting a canned fight to make it a challenge.
New players may not be super aware of how dangerous low levels are, especially level 1. I played a game with a brand new player who thought 7 hit points meant he could get hit 7 times, etc. You could even recommend some tactics, especially if one of the characters has an appropriate background (e.g. soldier): "As an ex-soldier you know that ranged combatants, such as these bandit archers, tend to be weak against melee combat and it might be good to close in (or find cover, etc.)
Variant Human is solid, but it's not the end-all-be-all. Assuming for the moment that most of the characters have a 16 for their attack/casting stat, if they're missing with ALL of their attacks(or enough that it feels like all), maybe the encounters weren't balanced properly. What sort of creatures were they going up against at the low levels?
I don't know what method Critical Role used for the initial stat rolling of the first campaign, since they only switched to 5th edition between Levels 8 and 9. I do know that by the end at least a couple of them were able to get one of their stats to 22 by reading the appropriate Tome/Manual(found in the standard Magic Items list in the DMG), and of course Grog's vestige the Titanstone Knuckles put his Strength score in the mid-20's by the time the Knuckles became Exalted. But for Campaign 2 they rolled the standard set of six "4d6, drop the lowest", and if the total was below a certain value(somewhere in the 70-72 range, I think), they got to re-roll.
I don't have much experience as a DM, but here are my ideas:
1. Adjust rolls from time to time if you feel like your party is having bad rolls themselves (but not so much that it would feel like you're doing it). 2. Tell them they can't take the same race they took last time. I don't really like this approach as I prefer people to do this by themselves, but it's doable. 3. Have a big encounter at a rather low level (2 or 3) that is only RP and social interaction. That way a group of V. Human fighters might have a hard time. Do tell them that something like that might happen so that they will intentionally not have said group of V. human fighters. 4. Tell them you do not allow V. human at all. It's kinda like 2 but then that one elf you had wouldn't be able to pick it. Again, not the best approach, but doable. 5. Create your battle encounters so that every time some races would be better than others. How? A battle in the dark will give those with Darkvision an advantage. A battle in a small cave will give small races an advantage. A battle against a party of revised rangers who picked humans as their favourite foe will make the fight harder for humans, etc.
Usually, combining 3 and 5 are the best ways to do this, but sometimes you might use 1, 2 and 4 if you feel like you must.
If characters are dropping dead all over the place it usually means there's a mismatch between what the players expect and what the DM expects. If you've got characters dying all over the shop your encounters are either way too difficult for the skill level of your players or you're getting something wrong. As people new to the game start small and easy and build up slowly from there. It's a lot easier moving to harder encounters after the players have got their heads around easier ones rather than killing all their characters and then having to throttle back for the next game.
As for variant humans being overpowered.... they're not. If you've got someone playing a class that's not suited to their race then that might be a problem (but see the upcoming Tasha's guide for alternatives) but in general there's not a lot of difference. Also if variant human is proving to be a problem for whatever reason in your game then as DM you can always say no to it, it's an optional rule which you don't have to include.
It's not like, characters are dropping dead all over the place, but most of the time even if we as a group prepare, try to avoid fights we know are way too dangerous or try to come out with an alternative, bad rolls usually ruins all of this. During levels 1-5 two of our characters died, and we were close to a TPK a couple of times. We usually missed many of our attacks even when we prioritized our main stats for each class, so those levels were not only boring but also frustrating for all the party.
The problem with Variant Human for us is simple, it starts with a feat. And do not get me wrong, we love feats. But usually we took Score Improvements over feats because our accuracy was way too low (or at least that's what we as a group perceived at early levels). I even changed my oath from Vengeance to Devotion with my paladin PC because most of the time I was concentrating on bless instead of other offensive spells! Because of this, new characters were all VHumans in addition to the ones that already were VHumans, because of the free feat and the versatility of choosing initial score improvements to any stat.
We are pretty new players, so I understand that our understanding of the game it's not the best by any means, but I'm really wondering, what did we did wrong or its the game just that way that early?
CoS (other than Death House) is designed to start at level 3, and is structured without much in the way of barriers that prevent people from walking into stuff that's way over their power level.
We generally start any campaign at level 3 these days. I like to do the first 2 levels in a sort of opening montage where I narrate a couple early adventures, laying out the main challenges, and each party member describes how their character handles the situation. No combat, no rolling, just RP to get everyone settled in their characters and to get a feel of how each member operates. For us it eliminates some of the frustration/tedium of the earliest levels while still allowing for some character establishment and even growth before we start playing "for real."
But yeah if you were putting level 1 players through a module built for level 3, it's no wonder they were having a rough time.
I'm playing in a group with two new comers, my wife who is playing more for the social aspect of the get together and to support me, and myself as the players. This is the first chance that I've had to be able to actually play instead of DM. Our DM is experienced. Our characters were created either with standard array or point buy. We have a variant human grave cleric (he chose War Caster), a Kalashtar Undying Warlock, a Wood Elf Scout Rogue (my wife's character, I decided to keep it simpler and ranged for her) and my Half-orc Path of the Zealot Barbarian. We're running through LMoP and the only time that we've really felt challenged was during our first encounter with the redbrands that was out in the open and we had a close call with the young adult green dragon in Thundertree (the only time that anyone has gone down). Otherwise, I stand in doorways or in front of as many enemies as possible and everyone else tends to stay back and fire from safety. The cleric may have cast an in combat heal outside of the dragon encounter, but I don't remember exactly. I only raged once during all of Cragmaw Castle!
I understand that the encounter is supposed to be a simpler one and may not be as deadly as others, but having a character that can act as a tank (barbarian, fighter, or paladin typically, especially for beginners) and a fair number of ranged characters who all focus down whatever escapes from the tank is a good strategy. If characters have the ability to use some crowd control, that can also be a strong damage mitigation technique.
You said you are all relative new. My suggestion would be following:
Stay with point buy, this prevents single characters vastly outshining others
standard modules are balanced for point buy/standard so sticking with it means less adjusting of the encounters for the DM
allow everyone to start with 1 uncommon magic item. This makes low lvl encounters easier while not impacting as much on higher lvls
as DM, use small mobs that arrive in weaves instead of 1 big guy. A bugbear can easily kill a lvl 1 with one attack, while 2+2 Goblins are easier to avoid TPK witH
I don’t know if it was informed before, but what’s the average CON of the group? It’s not uncommon for new players to represent charming and smart characters having like DEX 16, INT 14, WIS 14, CHA 16 and a poor CON score.
Advise your players to have at least 14 in CON, regardless race and class. If there are melee frontliners (Barbarian, Fighters, even Rangers and Rogues), I strongly recommend 16 CON, only exception should be Paladins which should prioritize CHA first.
If you have casters like Wizards, Clerics, Warlocks and etc, I also suggest to assign an odd 15 CON score and get Resilient CON later as well.
I hope this can improve the survivability of the party without jeopardizing characterization, it’s just some “best practices” and learning from the past.
Additional info: The campaign we were playing was CoS.
And here endeth the discussion - CoS is designed for 3rd level characters. You're going to be shat on mightily by just about any encounter in it if you're first level. By the time you get to 3rd level you'll be a pile of smoking boots shouting "medic!"
Well, there's only our Eladrin Sorcerer that started with 11 CON (his decision). There's my devotion paladin that started with 14 CON (had to prioritize CHA and STR first), a Land of the Forest Druid with 15 CON, a Hexblade with 16 CON, and a Ranger with 17 CON. Our fighter that died had 18 CON and our wizard that was killed had 16 CON.
One of our hardest decision was improving our accuracy at lvl 8 by going 20 in main stat in our respective class or choosing feats because even at 16 or 18 we were missing waayy too much and our enemies dealt around 25%-50% of our HP in damage per attack. I don't know if these numbers are usual because like I said, is was our first campaign.
Well, there's only our Eladrin Sorcerer that started with 11 CON (his decision). There's my devotion paladin that started with 14 CON (had to prioritize CHA and STR first), a Land of the Forest Druid with 15 CON, a Hexblade with 16 CON, and a Ranger with 17 CON. Our fighter that died had 18 CON and our wizard that was killed had 16 CON.
Oh, well... so honestly I think could be tactics and positioning.
Hi everyone!
I'm going to be the DM for the next campaign of my group (we are rotating and this is my first time as DM, this will our 2nd campaign as a group and we all are quite new to the game, being our 2nd campaign ever). In the last campaign, we ran into two main problems: Variant Human race and weak PC's at early levels (1 to 4).
We started with standard array for stats but the players were way too weak and easily killed in early encounters, often missing all attacks until we reached about lvl 4 or 5. We changed to point buy and that encouraged mix maxing, but still wasn't good enough to put up a fight in most combats. We as a party started choosing our abilities and feats all oriented to combat to counter this, but due to mix maxing and this approach to the game our performance in RP also deteriorated. When someone had to create a new character due to this problem they started choosing (myself included) Variant Human, and of course, everyone loved the idea of starting with a feat and the party practically became all Variant Humans, except for a Eladrin that felt he was behind in power due to this, and almost other races were neglected. It felt like that extra feat helped a lot the builds the players wanted to play up to lvl 10 and their versatility! Our campaign ended at lvl 11.
Additionally, I've seen Critical role's player character sheets and was blown away by the stats they had. What system did they use for stats, just rolling? Do you recommend me to do it this way if I want the campaign to be more RP oriented? Maybe dungeons dudes standard array?
What tips or systems for character creation and stats do you recommend me? I want them to feel powerful enough (not entirely broken) so the early levels won't be as frustrating as the last campaign, and also with them being able to build the character they want without having to reach really high levels.
Additionally, how do I balance out Variant Human while retaining the versatility of the PC's and give them the option to build the character the way they want and without feeling underpowered especially at early levels? I want them to have the freedom of choosing their spells based on flavor, RP, or combat and not just combat optimized.
Thank everyone!
Ps: English is not my native language, hope you understand my post without too much problems!
I am an Adventure League DM most of the time. AL uses standard array. But the combats are ALSO tested against a group of 4 or 5 of adventure level. Since you are learning, buy a few of the levels 1 to 4 adventures from Season 1 or 2. A learning curve exists for new players and new dms. DMs forget to adjust things when the dice rolls go bad.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
oUCH OUCH OUCH. I just pulled up the stats from Critical Role. An 18 at level 2 and 20 at level 5. That is a high powered game. It can work but I would have trouble adjusting a canned fight to make it a challenge.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
New players may not be super aware of how dangerous low levels are, especially level 1. I played a game with a brand new player who thought 7 hit points meant he could get hit 7 times, etc. You could even recommend some tactics, especially if one of the characters has an appropriate background (e.g. soldier): "As an ex-soldier you know that ranged combatants, such as these bandit archers, tend to be weak against melee combat and it might be good to close in (or find cover, etc.)
Variant Human is solid, but it's not the end-all-be-all. Assuming for the moment that most of the characters have a 16 for their attack/casting stat, if they're missing with ALL of their attacks(or enough that it feels like all), maybe the encounters weren't balanced properly. What sort of creatures were they going up against at the low levels?
I don't know what method Critical Role used for the initial stat rolling of the first campaign, since they only switched to 5th edition between Levels 8 and 9. I do know that by the end at least a couple of them were able to get one of their stats to 22 by reading the appropriate Tome/Manual(found in the standard Magic Items list in the DMG), and of course Grog's vestige the Titanstone Knuckles put his Strength score in the mid-20's by the time the Knuckles became Exalted. But for Campaign 2 they rolled the standard set of six "4d6, drop the lowest", and if the total was below a certain value(somewhere in the 70-72 range, I think), they got to re-roll.
I don't have much experience as a DM, but here are my ideas:
1. Adjust rolls from time to time if you feel like your party is having bad rolls themselves (but not so much that it would feel like you're doing it).
2. Tell them they can't take the same race they took last time. I don't really like this approach as I prefer people to do this by themselves, but it's doable.
3. Have a big encounter at a rather low level (2 or 3) that is only RP and social interaction. That way a group of V. Human fighters might have a hard time. Do tell them that something like that might happen so that they will intentionally not have said group of V. human fighters.
4. Tell them you do not allow V. human at all. It's kinda like 2 but then that one elf you had wouldn't be able to pick it. Again, not the best approach, but doable.
5. Create your battle encounters so that every time some races would be better than others. How? A battle in the dark will give those with Darkvision an advantage. A battle in a small cave will give small races an advantage. A battle against a party of revised rangers who picked humans as their favourite foe will make the fight harder for humans, etc.
Usually, combining 3 and 5 are the best ways to do this, but sometimes you might use 1, 2 and 4 if you feel like you must.
Varielky
If characters are dropping dead all over the place it usually means there's a mismatch between what the players expect and what the DM expects. If you've got characters dying all over the shop your encounters are either way too difficult for the skill level of your players or you're getting something wrong. As people new to the game start small and easy and build up slowly from there. It's a lot easier moving to harder encounters after the players have got their heads around easier ones rather than killing all their characters and then having to throttle back for the next game.
As for variant humans being overpowered.... they're not. If you've got someone playing a class that's not suited to their race then that might be a problem (but see the upcoming Tasha's guide for alternatives) but in general there's not a lot of difference. Also if variant human is proving to be a problem for whatever reason in your game then as DM you can always say no to it, it's an optional rule which you don't have to include.
Thank you for all the replies!
It's not like, characters are dropping dead all over the place, but most of the time even if we as a group prepare, try to avoid fights we know are way too dangerous or try to come out with an alternative, bad rolls usually ruins all of this. During levels 1-5 two of our characters died, and we were close to a TPK a couple of times. We usually missed many of our attacks even when we prioritized our main stats for each class, so those levels were not only boring but also frustrating for all the party.
The problem with Variant Human for us is simple, it starts with a feat. And do not get me wrong, we love feats. But usually we took Score Improvements over feats because our accuracy was way too low (or at least that's what we as a group perceived at early levels). I even changed my oath from Vengeance to Devotion with my paladin PC because most of the time I was concentrating on bless instead of other offensive spells! Because of this, new characters were all VHumans in addition to the ones that already were VHumans, because of the free feat and the versatility of choosing initial score improvements to any stat.
We are pretty new players, so I understand that our understanding of the game it's not the best by any means, but I'm really wondering, what did we did wrong or its the game just that way that early?
Additional info: The campaign we were playing was CoS.
CoS (other than Death House) is designed to start at level 3, and is structured without much in the way of barriers that prevent people from walking into stuff that's way over their power level.
We generally start any campaign at level 3 these days. I like to do the first 2 levels in a sort of opening montage where I narrate a couple early adventures, laying out the main challenges, and each party member describes how their character handles the situation. No combat, no rolling, just RP to get everyone settled in their characters and to get a feel of how each member operates. For us it eliminates some of the frustration/tedium of the earliest levels while still allowing for some character establishment and even growth before we start playing "for real."
But yeah if you were putting level 1 players through a module built for level 3, it's no wonder they were having a rough time.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I'm playing in a group with two new comers, my wife who is playing more for the social aspect of the get together and to support me, and myself as the players. This is the first chance that I've had to be able to actually play instead of DM. Our DM is experienced. Our characters were created either with standard array or point buy. We have a variant human grave cleric (he chose War Caster), a Kalashtar Undying Warlock, a Wood Elf Scout Rogue (my wife's character, I decided to keep it simpler and ranged for her) and my Half-orc Path of the Zealot Barbarian. We're running through LMoP and the only time that we've really felt challenged was during our first encounter with the redbrands that was out in the open and we had a close call with the young adult green dragon in Thundertree (the only time that anyone has gone down). Otherwise, I stand in doorways or in front of as many enemies as possible and everyone else tends to stay back and fire from safety. The cleric may have cast an in combat heal outside of the dragon encounter, but I don't remember exactly. I only raged once during all of Cragmaw Castle!
I understand that the encounter is supposed to be a simpler one and may not be as deadly as others, but having a character that can act as a tank (barbarian, fighter, or paladin typically, especially for beginners) and a fair number of ranged characters who all focus down whatever escapes from the tank is a good strategy. If characters have the ability to use some crowd control, that can also be a strong damage mitigation technique.
You said you are all relative new. My suggestion would be following:
Attack: [roll]3d20dl2+6[/roll] Damage: [roll](if([roll:-1:critical], =0, 1d8, 2{1d8}.expand()))+4[/roll] Sneakattack: [roll](if([roll:-2:critical], =0, 2d6, 2{2d6}.expand()))[/roll]I don’t know if it was informed before, but what’s the average CON of the group? It’s not uncommon for new players to represent charming and smart characters having like DEX 16, INT 14, WIS 14, CHA 16 and a poor CON score.
Advise your players to have at least 14 in CON, regardless race and class. If there are melee frontliners (Barbarian, Fighters, even Rangers and Rogues), I strongly recommend 16 CON, only exception should be Paladins which should prioritize CHA first.
If you have casters like Wizards, Clerics, Warlocks and etc, I also suggest to assign an odd 15 CON score and get Resilient CON later as well.
I hope this can improve the survivability of the party without jeopardizing characterization, it’s just some “best practices” and learning from the past.
Great Constitution and I can't stress enough for wizards and sorcerers to be able to cast Shield.
Also, for wizards, if at 1st level they start their day by casting Mage Armour on themselves and then using Arcane Recovery that can be very useful.
Chilling kinda vibe.
And here endeth the discussion - CoS is designed for 3rd level characters. You're going to be shat on mightily by just about any encounter in it if you're first level. By the time you get to 3rd level you'll be a pile of smoking boots shouting "medic!"
Just to clarify we started with death house and leveled up to lvl 3 by the end of it.
Well, there's only our Eladrin Sorcerer that started with 11 CON (his decision). There's my devotion paladin that started with 14 CON (had to prioritize CHA and STR first), a Land of the Forest Druid with 15 CON, a Hexblade with 16 CON, and a Ranger with 17 CON. Our fighter that died had 18 CON and our wizard that was killed had 16 CON.
One of our hardest decision was improving our accuracy at lvl 8 by going 20 in main stat in our respective class or choosing feats because even at 16 or 18 we were missing waayy too much and our enemies dealt around 25%-50% of our HP in damage per attack. I don't know if these numbers are usual because like I said, is was our first campaign.
Oh, well... so honestly I think could be tactics and positioning.