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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stevelabny" data-source="post: 1417210" data-attributes="member: 9298">Ok, so I'm DMing 3.x for the first time. The players are all relatively inexperienced (havent played in years, or have only played one other game) and seem to fall into the odd characterization of HACK AND SLASH COWARDS. They seem to prerfer combat over stealth/ magic/ diplomacy BUT are afraid of EVERYTHNG. All this has already led to one character death and I suspect more will follow.  Details below, with MANY spoilers for the Forge of Fury. (looong post)After sucessfully getting through the Sunless Citadel, the party is given a map leading to ancient dwarven forge. They do NO further questioning about what they can expect to find there, or any other information. They head STRAIGHT to the Stone Tooth. The party consists of an Elven Monk3, an Elven Druid3 (with wolf4), a Human Cleric3, and a Human Barbarian3. They have VERY good stats and a decent amount of stuff thanks to the Sunless Citadel.Even though the description of the mountain implies a chimney of some sort, the party did no searching of the area for any of the "back doors". They marched straight up the path. Upon seeing the two orc guards "paying no attention", they have the options of magic, stealth attack, waiting and observing the orc schedule, creating a diversion, or countless more.Instead, the barbarian, who speaks Orc, approaches and asks for permission to go past. When the orcs refuse, HE SAYS "PLEASE?". the orcs threaten violence, the PCs attack, and the orcs immediately yell out "Intruders, close the door"  The PCs don't bother to run along to try to get through this door, avoid the arrow-fire from above, or even break off and regroup. Instead they just casually dispatch the two orc guards while under arrow-fire and then get straight against the wall and openly discuss what theyre going to do next as the cleric heals them.The PCs manage to get through the door relatively quickly into the first room with the 30 foot rope bridge over the 200ft deep chasm. The two PCs with low-light vision see two more orcs on the other side. With the monk and barbarian getting across the bridge quickly, these two orcs are dispatched before they can cut the bridge. The druid is standing next to the secret door leading to the orcs at the arrow slits and notices it.  The cleric randomly wanders through the secret door EXPECTING one or two orc archers, even though the barbarian and monk are on the other side of the rope bridge, but is SHOCKED to find FOUR more orcs. She leads them back to the front room. The party is dismayed by the fact that all these orcs have great axes and STR bonuses. I've explained numerous times to those who ahvent played in years that in 3e, EVERYONE got a power upgrade, not just the PCs. Apparently they didnt previously believe me.Anywho, they dispatch these 4 and are left with a choice of 1> the door on the other side of the rop bridge or 2> the door on the other side of the barracks through the secret doors. They hear orcs behind BOTH doors.The party seems ready to go through the barracks door, but I'm making a comment about how they found the secret doors and are going through the rooms "backwards" so I have to carefully check the module descriptions to make sure I don't miss anything. This gets meta-gamed into "uh oh, we're gonna fight the hard thing first, lets go the other way" , rather than the more logical "they wont expect us to come from THIS way" or "at least this way if we have to RUN, we wont have to cross the rope bridge". I even warned them to NOT meta-game based on my off-hand comment and just continue what they were going to do.Instead, they crossed the bridge and opened that door. Faced with 3 more orcs and Old Yarrack (Orc War3) It seemed like they were gonna hold their ground at the door to fight only 2 orcs at a time, but when the orcs called out their location, the party got antsy and edged forward to start fighting. When the battle started turning sour and ULFE (the ogre) squeezed his way onto the scene (he doesnt fit in 3.5 and I forgot to make the map bigger) the barbarian called for a retreat. The cleric immediately tried to stumble her way across the bridge and almost fell, but used her Luck domain ability to re-roll. The druid (and his wolf) stayed another round to fight. The monk left on his turn and when the barbarian's turn came up again,  he decided not to wait longer for the druid and leave. By this point, Yarrack has run up to the bridge to try to cut it down while the party crosses. The Druid moves to the bridge and to avoid any AOOs has to wait another round before crossing with the now much higher balance DC. He fails both his balance and reflex saves and plummets into the abyss. The wolf slips, and follows his master into the abyss when the bidge is fully cut. The other PCs retreat. Thats where we ended the session.At first glance, and again at second glance, this groups planning is abysmal. (or non-existent) Their combat tactics arent much better. Combine these factors with a lack of a true rogue and an arcane caster and they can easily be in for a world of hurt. To make it worse, it looks like the druid's player is rolling up a Half-Orc Ftr2/Rog1 and trying to make him a str-based combatant.We're using the modules to re-teach me how to DM and them how to play before moving on to a homebrew campaign. So I'm trying to let the dice fall where they may. I'm worried that I'm being too critical of their play, but when I present the case to them of "what I think youve done wrong" they all agreed with me.  So...is learning from their mistakes the best way to teach them? When the druid actually died, the all did a double take like they couldnt believe I let it happen. I tend to be AGAINST fudging of DM rolls and miraculous last-minute rescues when a player fails all his checks/saves, but I don't want to have them rolling up new characters every session (especially once we start a real campaign that I've done a lot of work on) The ogre will pose some problems if they just storm back in next session, but on further levels they will have even bigger problems. The roper looks particularly ugly. And the dragon is going to be deadly if I run it right.Did anyone else run a mostly inexperienced group through this adventure? How many character deaths? How did they avoid a TPK?  Is there something else I can be doing to encourage survival that isnt leading them around by the hand?</blockquote>

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