[Holy Deg]

Hi, I'm new to the boards here. They look great and very helpful.

I started playing D&D last spring; played 3 sessions before beginning my own campaign. Everthing's been running pretty good. I've had fun creating my world (complete with my own God), and all my players (all noobies too) have enjoyed adventuring in it. I do have one problem that concerns me though.

The characters are currently set about trying to restore Holy Deg's eye sight (it's been absent for aprox. 1000 years), and the leader of the group is supposed to be the His cleric. The cleric has been playing really well, but the really charismatic player is playing the elf wizard. This has resulted in the rest of the group (all humans) mindlessly following the wizard.

I've tried reminding the group occasionally that the cleric is supposed to be the group leader, but it doesn't seem to be helping. I've currently got some traps setup that the wizard will most likely fall for (he's kind of brash), but that if someone else in the group were leading they might get through. Any ideas?

[Axel]

Let it happen. After the first trap the wizard will learn to pay attention to his surroundings and think before leaping. Other than that, don't ever tell them what to do, or they'll do the opposite just to spite you. (You have no idea how many times my players have remarked "You made the DM cry!")

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Like Axel said, just leave everything as you think it should be and leave it to the PCs to survive. Remember that a hero is only as great as the challenges he faces. Personally, set up the adventure or encounters at least, as I see they should logically occur. No one is going to create an impassable trap adn put it at the only entrance and exit to their stronghold or they'll never be able to leave themselves. But if they are sealing something away for eternity, that's a different story. And if the PCs can't get past it now, they may have to go one some other adventures to obtain teh means to bypass it. If they dive headfirst into it, they deserve to die. But as a DM, I think you should just set up the plot and potential encounters. Leave it up to the characters to find their way through them all.

[RedSlayer]

I think that for the leader buisness, thats really up to the group, and you should stay away from DM intervention in this instance.

As for the traps and what not, there are two ways to handle this, and it depends on your style of DMing.

There are generally two schools of thought.

One: You design your adventures, and its up to the PC's to come through it. No rogue? Too Bad. Come up with a new way to get through this trap filled dungeon. I made it consistant with the world, and your characters are supposed to navigate through it.

Two: You design your adventures that are based around the PC's abilities/strengths/weaknesses. For example, if your players all are playing arcanists, you dont throw Ogres at them at level 3. (except if there are other ways around other than brute force). This has the disadvantage of bending some versimilitude.

I mostly lean towards two, but its really about what kind of feel you want for your campaign.

[Holy Deg]

Thanks for the tips.

My reason for thinking that the elf wizard shouldn't be leading is that it seems that everyone isn't playing true to their characters when he leads. He started the campaign out alienating himself from the other characters, and so for him to lead doesn't seem natural.

I appreciate the comments on the traps. I did actually design the traps around the dungeon and it's history, so hopefully they work out. Thankfully I've got a pretty well balanced group. 2 warriors, 1 cleric, 1 wizard, 1 rogue and 1 ranger. My biggest challenge with creating the dungeons has been finding what kind of encounters the party can handle without being to easy for them. I think that is something that I'll learn with time.

Once again, thanks all.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

I don't know what level you are starting at, but I've found that if a 1st level party expends half its resources killing a black bear, it is right about on the mark for a 1st level party. With 6 people in your group, you may find that they can handle an EL 1.5 encounter as if it were an EL 1 for a normal group. Better worded, with 50% more players, they **should** be able to handle 50% more difficult encounters. That is something else I screwed up on during one adventure. I forgot to scale the EL for the party and their XP for the adventure got all out of whack.

[Dthclaw]

From my experience, you should generally increase the EL of any encounter by +0.5 per player over four to keep it scaled to what an encounter should be for a party of four. I base this on a combination of (simple) math and practical experience, but as I do not have access at the moment to a jen-you-wine DMG I cannot provide the mathematical proof for this.

With numerous parties, my suggestion would be not to make individual creature more powerful for this case, but to instead increase the number of creatures. The key is to keep roughly the same ratio of available actions between NPC's and PC's. With a party of 8, for example, it doesn't matter if you can tack on a few more levels of spellcaster - not when the spellcaster is getting one action to the party's eight. On the other hand, if you instead add a few more creatures, suddenly the ratio goes closer to a 1:1, which is generally ideal for scaled, challenging encounters. When the PC side of the ratio goes too high, things get too easy for them. When the NPC side of the ratio goes too high, things get too difficult (generally) or, worse, bogged down or even stopped.

So just remember: +0.5 EL per player over four, and aim to keep a 1:1 ratio on turns.

[Holy Deg]

Those look like really good tips. Thanks!

[Holy Deg]

Well, we had a session over the weekend, and I'm pleased to say that the players have started playing more in character now, and without further prompting from me. So it looks like things are improving.

The traps went well. The party fell for some and not for others, and all in all everybody learned something.

Once again, Thanks for the tips.