Basic game [Archive] - Wizards Community - Pages Merged by Solauren

Basic game [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
ithrowthings
11-06-07, 02:25 AM I just bought the basic game and sat down with some friends and played it. Picked it up because I wanted a kind of DnD lite to get our feet wet and see if we like it. It seemed to bring up more questions than answer them really. Here are a couple questions I have.

What do you do when someone dies? If like 2 guys in the party die and the other 2 survive, do you just kinda keep goin and the 2 dead guys twiddle their thumbs? The rules in the basic game didn't really say. We've had the entire party die and I just decided we should re-do that encounter again. The instructions always assumed that the monsters were defeated and continued along and never really explained what to do when you die. Can the cleric heal you from negative health to positive and you come back to life or something? Also, it says for the spells "once per adventure" does this mean like, the WHOLE thing or just until they go back to town and rest?

Also, we finally make it to the blue dragon at the end and he has a fire breath attack that does 15 damage in a straight line. you have to roll a 15 or higher to take the damage in half. My problem is, half the players don't HAVE 15 hp. If I use the attack, 75% chance they aren't gonna make it. Also, on the back of the wizard's character sheet it says he starts at lvl 1 with 11 hp. Then in the advanced rules for leveling him up it says "You had 7 hit points at 1st level. Roll d4 and add the result to 9. This total is your new hit point total." My wizard rolled a 2... meaning when he leveled up his hp stayed the same because of i'm assuming a typo. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and added 4 because the jump was d4+2 which gave him 15 hit points. Still not enough to survive one dragon breath hit assuming he is fully healed.

Is the basic game just a really freakin impossible starting campaign or am I messing something up here?
Mock26
11-06-07, 02:38 AM I just bought the basic game and sat down with some friends and played it. Picked it up because I wanted a kind of DnD lite to get our feet wet and see if we like it. It seemed to bring up more questions than answer them really. Here are a couple questions I have.

What do you do when someone dies? If like 2 guys in the party die and the other 2 survive, do you just kinda keep goin and the 2 dead guys twiddle their thumbs? The rules in the basic game didn't really say. We've had the entire party die and I just decided we should re-do that encounter again. The instructions always assumed that the monsters were defeated and continued along and never really explained what to do when you die. Can the cleric heal you from negative health to positive and you come back to life or something? Also, it says for the spells "once per adventure" does this mean like, the WHOLE thing or just until they go back to town and rest?

Also, we finally make it to the blue dragon at the end and he has a fire breath attack that does 15 damage in a straight line. you have to roll a 15 or higher to take the damage in half. My problem is, half the players don't HAVE 15 hp. If I use the attack, 75% chance they aren't gonna make it. Also, on the back of the wizard's character sheet it says he starts at lvl 1 with 11 hp. Then in the advanced rules for leveling him up it says "You had 7 hit points at 1st level. Roll d4 and add the result to 9. This total is your new hit point total." My wizard rolled a 2... meaning when he leveled up his hp stayed the same because of i'm assuming a typo. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and added 4 because the jump was d4+2 which gave him 15 hit points. Still not enough to survive one dragon breath hit assuming he is fully healed.

Is the basic game just a really freakin impossible starting campaign or am I messing something up here?

As for the dead characters, you can do pretty much whatever you want. I would suggest, though, that if you just starting out and seeing if you like the game and if someone dies in the next room just put a potion or raise dead. All you have to do is pour it in their mouth and they come back from the dead. As the DM you are allowed to make things up on the spot, and sometimes you just have to. If you stick with the game and keep playing I wouldn't recommend that you toss in potions that bring people back from the dead. In that situation I'd keep handy a few extra pre-made characters and you can slip one into the adventure a little later so the player has something to do. Having this pre-made character a prisoner can be an effective way to introduce him. Then, afterwards, the group can decide what to do with the corpse. Either bury it and have the player roll up a new character or seek to get the character brought back to life (and if they can't afford it the priest could still do it and require the group to perform some sort of quest, or they could get a loan from a money lender and then have to pay him back with interest, or whatever your imagination comes up with).

As for the dragon, the characters have to just remember to not get hit! :D Seriously, though, I think that you are doing it right. In my mind dragons are supposed to be very tough creatures and you should expect characters to die when fighting it. This just means that the group has to be creative and use their heads. But, since this is a learning experience for you and your friends, either have the dragon miss or reduce the amount of damage that it does. If his breath weapon would kill the player, instead drop him down to 1 or 2 hit points. You want to ket the players have a good time playing the game, and to me that means earning the kills. So, by making the encounter tough (or really tough) yet still beatable you should win them over to the game. As I said up above, as the DM you can do this. But, I would caution against doing it too much if you get really involved in the game. In the "real" game of D&D I would only ever do this is I, as the DM, made some mistake (such as accidentally making a monster too powerful or miscalculating its CR or something else) that would result in the death of a character. If it was simply bad dice rolling for the player or really good dice rolling for the DM or if the players made some stupid decision then I'd let them die, for the most part. I would have to take into consideration the experience of the players. If they were new players I'd be more likely to fudge a little bit so as to not discourage them. If, however, they had been playing for a while, I'd have no qualms about seeing their characters die.

Take care and have a great day....

ciao,
john.

PS And welcome to the world of D&D!
Ariakus
11-06-07, 07:59 AM I'm not sure about the "basic" set you're talking about, as the only Basic set I know of came around in like 1977 or 78. But my advice on player deaths is either the surviving members take the dead back to town and have them resurrected...the party at 1st level wont be able to afford this, but the priest can make them quest as payment...or they can roll up new characters and you can place them in the adventure somewhere close by, like Mock26 said...you are the DM and can make stuff up on the spot...just don't make it too unbelievable., but have them cocooned in a spiderweb around the corner groaning and guarded by a large spider or something.

And as for spells...the wizard/sorcerer need only rest to regain their spells...the spells can be cast as many times per day as suggested by their class rules in the PHB, then you simply rest (most of the time not so simple depending on where you rest) to regain the spells. You don't have to go all the way back to town to rest unless the "dungeon" is quite busy and you have nowhere to rest safely.

And the dragon...blue dragons breathe electricity in a line...a slight lightning bolt for the smaller, 1st level dragons...everyone should learn very fast in this encounter: when engaging a dragon who breathes lightning...never stand in a line...the lightning will get all of you:) And when facing a fire breather like a Red or Gold...spread out quickly! Also...remember that your characters at 1st level wont have 15 hp's (unless they have good Constitution scores), but they don't die until they reach -10...so if they have 10 hp's, and they fail their Reflex Save and take the full 15 hp's...they simply fall unconscious at -5 hp's and lose 1 hp per round until they either stabilize (a rare 5% chance per round) or they continue to bleed out for another 5 rounds until they reach death at the end of the the 5th round at -10 hp's.

But all of this is based on regular D&D rules and you stated you have a "basic game", so I am unsure of the "basic rules". I hope this helps, and welcome to the game, I think the more you play it and learn the rules, the more you will like it.
knightwriter
11-06-07, 11:39 AM As far as the dead pc's. I would either have the other two pc's carry them back to town and have them raised, or roll up new pc's.

Remember, that you can make things up as you go along as a DM, although this is the best advice for someone just learning. However, say that the dragon's breath does 15 points of damage. You could change the dragon to a younger one and state that it only does 10 points or even 5 points of damage.

It 's all up to you and what you want to do.
Khan2000
11-06-07, 12:02 PM As far as your questions.....
1. The Cleric can heal a person with negative hp and bring them up to positive hp.

2. If it were me, I'd say till they get back to town and rest.

3. You're new, and it's expected you'll make mistakes. I really suggest finding a group where you could learn more about the rules and whatnot. Often playing with experienced players helps with getting a feel for the game and how the mechanics work. THEN try DMing yourself when you think you got the rules and mechanics down.
Aaror
11-06-07, 12:23 PM First, for those of us unfamiliar with it, Hasbro is selling a "basic game," boxed set in Toys R us and similar stores. I have not purchased it, but it mentions a "DM booklet," so it is clearly not the full rules.

That said, many of your problems can be solved by using the complete rules, e.g. if someone goes below 0 hp, they don't die until -10. While at negative hp, you lose one hp per round until someone uses the heal skill or a spell to heal you. you also have a 10% chance per round to stabilize and no longer lose hp. In my game we house rule that any healing while at negative acts like you started at 0, so a cure light would give you 1-8+1 hp. This would be more fun I think for your group.

If someone goes to -10, then they really do die, but even that is not perminant. raise dead is a spell, have a town cleric use it and expect payment of the party. Or use a potion/scroll of raise dead.

spells per adventure are just per day, so resting restores them.

As for the dragon, several options. you can reduce the damage as mentioned below (either to 10, or to whatever leaves your characters all above 0), you can give them warning (the party discovers a dead body of a thief who writes about the party being in a straight line and meeting the dragon, and most died. "If only we had spread out" he laments in his journal). You could even put out a potion of electricity resistance that will shield each drinker for 5 electric damage and has four doses.

The reason I re-post ideas mentioned below, is I want to show you the pattern. Now here is rule 0, which will also help you:

The DM makes the rules.

don't go hog wild with this, but your job as DM is to help your friends have fun. Tell the story, and if the rules cramp you too much, adjust them, or give your players options. You should stick to the rules as much as you can, both to help your players learn and to keep the needed dramatic tension. But that is the escape hatch of DM's, fudge the die roll (if you roll it), change the monster hp or damage, add a secret door or a ranger following the party.

Now, how do you do it? The reason I gave the three solutions to the dragon was to show you how to use in game in your favor, so you save rule bending for emergencies. If you are worried about your party not knowing what to do, give them a journal, hint, augury from the temple, wise retired adventurer story, etc. If you are worried about a mechanic, introduce an in game mechanic to blunt it. your whole party drinks the potion of protection from electricity, and the damage is survivable.

Now you only have to reduce the breath weapon if the party stumbles into the dragon by mistake. This makes your world more real (consistant rules) and avoids the "invincible hero," syndrome where your players sense you will never kill them, so they lose the dramatic tension which is part of the fun. It also keeps the next guy who wants to run a game from going "wait a minute, that dragon does 15 damage, not 10, you goofed." But if that happens, just smile, agree that you must have made a mistake, and let him learn rule 0 himself.
Tukka
11-06-07, 01:18 PM The Basic Game plays with a somewhat loose, highly simplified version of the rules that just give you an idea of how the game plays. As mentioned, the core rulebooks will contain detailed information on most of your questions (also the online SRD has a lot of this info as well).

Keep in mind that the blue dragon encounter is meant to be the "ultimate challenge" at the very end of the adventure, and the Basic Game is more of a "sampler" one-off mini-adventure rather than being a part of a larger campaign in a real D&D game.

It's sort of expected, I think, that most people will want to create characters of their own when they get their player's handbooks, so the fact that the ready-made NPCs in the basic adventure may have died is of no real consequence -- and it teaches the players a valuable lesson about being prepared and what can happen if you're not, or just unlucky, or fight with something that's a bit too much for you.
ithrowthings
11-06-07, 11:55 PM thanks guys, that really helped. There are a couple people I met that know more about the game that are helping me out now. Most of us are new and we're just running through this basic game to get our feet wet before we start the real thing.

I must say though, I would definately not recommend this "basic game" set to people just starting out. All my friends would rather make their own characters and when a person walked by that played DnD before saw that the fighter had no feats I honestly thought he was gonna vomit in his own mouth. The book doesn't really give good definitions at all. Doesn't tell the DM what's actually going on. I got confused the first few times when my friend's are like "can I check the corpse for stuff?" and I'm like ya, I think so let me just check what the book says about that kind of thing... oh it says nothing, nothing at all. Not very descriptive and quite a high level of difficulty to put the word basic in the title.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
ithrowthings 11-06-07, 02:25 AM	I just bought the basic game and sat down with some friends and played it. Picked it up because I wanted a kind of DnD lite to get our feet wet and see if we like it. It seemed to bring up more questions than answer them really. Here are a couple questions I have. What do you do when someone dies? If like 2 guys in the party die and the other 2 survive, do you just kinda keep goin and the 2 dead guys twiddle their thumbs? The rules in the basic game didn't really say. We've had the entire party die and I just decided we should re-do that encounter again. The instructions always assumed that the monsters were defeated and continued along and never really explained what to do when you die. Can the cleric heal you from negative health to positive and you come back to life or something? Also, it says for the spells "once per adventure" does this mean like, the WHOLE thing or just until they go back to town and rest? Also, we finally make it to the blue dragon at the end and he has a fire breath attack that does 15 damage in a straight line. you have to roll a 15 or higher to take the damage in half. My problem is, half the players don't HAVE 15 hp. If I use the attack, 75% chance they aren't gonna make it. Also, on the back of the wizard's character sheet it says he starts at lvl 1 with 11 hp. Then in the advanced rules for leveling him up it says "You had 7 hit points at 1st level. Roll d4 and add the result to 9. This total is your new hit point total." My wizard rolled a 2... meaning when he leveled up his hp stayed the same because of i'm assuming a typo. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and added 4 because the jump was d4+2 which gave him 15 hit points. Still not enough to survive one dragon breath hit assuming he is fully healed. Is the basic game just a really freakin impossible starting campaign or am I messing something up here?
Mock26 11-06-07, 02:38 AM	I just bought the basic game and sat down with some friends and played it. Picked it up because I wanted a kind of DnD lite to get our feet wet and see if we like it. It seemed to bring up more questions than answer them really. Here are a couple questions I have. What do you do when someone dies? If like 2 guys in the party die and the other 2 survive, do you just kinda keep goin and the 2 dead guys twiddle their thumbs? The rules in the basic game didn't really say. We've had the entire party die and I just decided we should re-do that encounter again. The instructions always assumed that the monsters were defeated and continued along and never really explained what to do when you die. Can the cleric heal you from negative health to positive and you come back to life or something? Also, it says for the spells "once per adventure" does this mean like, the WHOLE thing or just until they go back to town and rest? Also, we finally make it to the blue dragon at the end and he has a fire breath attack that does 15 damage in a straight line. you have to roll a 15 or higher to take the damage in half. My problem is, half the players don't HAVE 15 hp. If I use the attack, 75% chance they aren't gonna make it. Also, on the back of the wizard's character sheet it says he starts at lvl 1 with 11 hp. Then in the advanced rules for leveling him up it says "You had 7 hit points at 1st level. Roll d4 and add the result to 9. This total is your new hit point total." My wizard rolled a 2... meaning when he leveled up his hp stayed the same because of i'm assuming a typo. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and added 4 because the jump was d4+2 which gave him 15 hit points. Still not enough to survive one dragon breath hit assuming he is fully healed. Is the basic game just a really freakin impossible starting campaign or am I messing something up here? As for the dead characters, you can do pretty much whatever you want. I would suggest, though, that if you just starting out and seeing if you like the game and if someone dies in the next room just put a potion or raise dead. All you have to do is pour it in their mouth and they come back from the dead. As the DM you are allowed to make things up on the spot, and sometimes you just have to. If you stick with the game and keep playing I wouldn't recommend that you toss in potions that bring people back from the dead. In that situation I'd keep handy a few extra pre-made characters and you can slip one into the adventure a little later so the player has something to do. Having this pre-made character a prisoner can be an effective way to introduce him. Then, afterwards, the group can decide what to do with the corpse. Either bury it and have the player roll up a new character or seek to get the character brought back to life (and if they can't afford it the priest could still do it and require the group to perform some sort of quest, or they could get a loan from a money lender and then have to pay him back with interest, or whatever your imagination comes up with). As for the dragon, the characters have to just remember to not get hit! :D Seriously, though, I think that you are doing it right. In my mind dragons are supposed to be very tough creatures and you should expect characters to die when fighting it. This just means that the group has to be creative and use their heads. But, since this is a learning experience for you and your friends, either have the dragon miss or reduce the amount of damage that it does. If his breath weapon would kill the player, instead drop him down to 1 or 2 hit points. You want to ket the players have a good time playing the game, and to me that means earning the kills. So, by making the encounter tough (or really tough) yet still beatable you should win them over to the game. As I said up above, as the DM you can do this. But, I would caution against doing it too much if you get really involved in the game. In the "real" game of D&D I would only ever do this is I, as the DM, made some mistake (such as accidentally making a monster too powerful or miscalculating its CR or something else) that would result in the death of a character. If it was simply bad dice rolling for the player or really good dice rolling for the DM or if the players made some stupid decision then I'd let them die, for the most part. I would have to take into consideration the experience of the players. If they were new players I'd be more likely to fudge a little bit so as to not discourage them. If, however, they had been playing for a while, I'd have no qualms about seeing their characters die. Take care and have a great day.... ciao, john. PS And welcome to the world of D&D!
Ariakus 11-06-07, 07:59 AM	I'm not sure about the "basic" set you're talking about, as the only Basic set I know of came around in like 1977 or 78. But my advice on player deaths is either the surviving members take the dead back to town and have them resurrected...the party at 1st level wont be able to afford this, but the priest can make them quest as payment...or they can roll up new characters and you can place them in the adventure somewhere close by, like Mock26 said...you are the DM and can make stuff up on the spot...just don't make it too unbelievable., but have them cocooned in a spiderweb around the corner groaning and guarded by a large spider or something. And as for spells...the wizard/sorcerer need only rest to regain their spells...the spells can be cast as many times per day as suggested by their class rules in the PHB, then you simply rest (most of the time not so simple depending on where you rest) to regain the spells. You don't have to go all the way back to town to rest unless the "dungeon" is quite busy and you have nowhere to rest safely. And the dragon...blue dragons breathe electricity in a line...a slight lightning bolt for the smaller, 1st level dragons...everyone should learn very fast in this encounter: when engaging a dragon who breathes lightning...never stand in a line...the lightning will get all of you:) And when facing a fire breather like a Red or Gold...spread out quickly! Also...remember that your characters at 1st level wont have 15 hp's (unless they have good Constitution scores), but they don't die until they reach -10...so if they have 10 hp's, and they fail their Reflex Save and take the full 15 hp's...they simply fall unconscious at -5 hp's and lose 1 hp per round until they either stabilize (a rare 5% chance per round) or they continue to bleed out for another 5 rounds until they reach death at the end of the the 5th round at -10 hp's. But all of this is based on regular D&D rules and you stated you have a "basic game", so I am unsure of the "basic rules". I hope this helps, and welcome to the game, I think the more you play it and learn the rules, the more you will like it.
knightwriter 11-06-07, 11:39 AM	As far as the dead pc's. I would either have the other two pc's carry them back to town and have them raised, or roll up new pc's. Remember, that you can make things up as you go along as a DM, although this is the best advice for someone just learning. However, say that the dragon's breath does 15 points of damage. You could change the dragon to a younger one and state that it only does 10 points or even 5 points of damage. It 's all up to you and what you want to do.
Khan2000 11-06-07, 12:02 PM	As far as your questions..... 1. The Cleric can heal a person with negative hp and bring them up to positive hp. 2. If it were me, I'd say till they get back to town and rest. 3. You're new, and it's expected you'll make mistakes. I really suggest finding a group where you could learn more about the rules and whatnot. Often playing with experienced players helps with getting a feel for the game and how the mechanics work. THEN try DMing yourself when you think you got the rules and mechanics down.
Aaror 11-06-07, 12:23 PM	First, for those of us unfamiliar with it, Hasbro is selling a "basic game," boxed set in Toys R us and similar stores. I have not purchased it, but it mentions a "DM booklet," so it is clearly not the full rules. That said, many of your problems can be solved by using the complete rules, e.g. if someone goes below 0 hp, they don't die until -10. While at negative hp, you lose one hp per round until someone uses the heal skill or a spell to heal you. you also have a 10% chance per round to stabilize and no longer lose hp. In my game we house rule that any healing while at negative acts like you started at 0, so a cure light would give you 1-8+1 hp. This would be more fun I think for your group. If someone goes to -10, then they really do die, but even that is not perminant. raise dead is a spell, have a town cleric use it and expect payment of the party. Or use a potion/scroll of raise dead. spells per adventure are just per day, so resting restores them. As for the dragon, several options. you can reduce the damage as mentioned below (either to 10, or to whatever leaves your characters all above 0), you can give them warning (the party discovers a dead body of a thief who writes about the party being in a straight line and meeting the dragon, and most died. "If only we had spread out" he laments in his journal). You could even put out a potion of electricity resistance that will shield each drinker for 5 electric damage and has four doses. The reason I re-post ideas mentioned below, is I want to show you the pattern. Now here is rule 0, which will also help you: The DM makes the rules. don't go hog wild with this, but your job as DM is to help your friends have fun. Tell the story, and if the rules cramp you too much, adjust them, or give your players options. You should stick to the rules as much as you can, both to help your players learn and to keep the needed dramatic tension. But that is the escape hatch of DM's, fudge the die roll (if you roll it), change the monster hp or damage, add a secret door or a ranger following the party. Now, how do you do it? The reason I gave the three solutions to the dragon was to show you how to use in game in your favor, so you save rule bending for emergencies. If you are worried about your party not knowing what to do, give them a journal, hint, augury from the temple, wise retired adventurer story, etc. If you are worried about a mechanic, introduce an in game mechanic to blunt it. your whole party drinks the potion of protection from electricity, and the damage is survivable. Now you only have to reduce the breath weapon if the party stumbles into the dragon by mistake. This makes your world more real (consistant rules) and avoids the "invincible hero," syndrome where your players sense you will never kill them, so they lose the dramatic tension which is part of the fun. It also keeps the next guy who wants to run a game from going "wait a minute, that dragon does 15 damage, not 10, you goofed." But if that happens, just smile, agree that you must have made a mistake, and let him learn rule 0 himself.
Tukka 11-06-07, 01:18 PM	The Basic Game plays with a somewhat loose, highly simplified version of the rules that just give you an idea of how the game plays. As mentioned, the core rulebooks will contain detailed information on most of your questions (also the online SRD has a lot of this info as well). Keep in mind that the blue dragon encounter is meant to be the "ultimate challenge" at the very end of the adventure, and the Basic Game is more of a "sampler" one-off mini-adventure rather than being a part of a larger campaign in a real D&D game. It's sort of expected, I think, that most people will want to create characters of their own when they get their player's handbooks, so the fact that the ready-made NPCs in the basic adventure may have died is of no real consequence -- and it teaches the players a valuable lesson about being prepared and what can happen if you're not, or just unlucky, or fight with something that's a bit too much for you.
ithrowthings 11-06-07, 11:55 PM	thanks guys, that really helped. There are a couple people I met that know more about the game that are helping me out now. Most of us are new and we're just running through this basic game to get our feet wet before we start the real thing. I must say though, I would definately not recommend this "basic game" set to people just starting out. All my friends would rather make their own characters and when a person walked by that played DnD before saw that the fighter had no feats I honestly thought he was gonna vomit in his own mouth. The book doesn't really give good definitions at all. Doesn't tell the DM what's actually going on. I got confused the first few times when my friend's are like "can I check the corpse for stuff?" and I'm like ya, I think so let me just check what the book says about that kind of thing... oh it says nothing, nothing at all. Not very descriptive and quite a high level of difficulty to put the word basic in the title.