Maybe I'm playing it wrong...

[cavalier973]

I'm playing through the Red Box adventure with my kids, and the fights are quite tough. We've had one TPK already (we just did the "it was all a bad dream" gambit and played the encounter through a second time), and each battle sees at least one of the characters, and usually two of them, go down. Of course, they are "mostly dead" and not "all dead", so they can get a miracle pill and be back in action in an hour. The only reason we won the final encounter with the wizard is that I misread the "tactics" section, and therefore didn't have the wizard join in the fight until all the other monsters were down.

The system is supposed to be adjustable in difficulty by adding or subtracting monsters. If you want to build a level 1 encounter for four level 1 characters, then you throw four 100XP monsters at them. Or throw one monster of 400XP at them. If you want to up the challenge, add more monsters, etc.

 

[cavalier973]

A well-built first-level PC should be attacking at somewhere between +4 (for a spellcaster with an 18 in their primary stat)...

If the first level, 18 INT spellcaster has the "Staff Expertise" feat, and is wielding a staff, then wouldn't he get a to-hit bonus of 5?

 

[samursus]

15 rounds seems excessively long. Like any version of D&D you have to adjust for your players. 4e puts emphasis on teamwork, something that was an issue when I first introduced my old group of 3.5 players to 4th. They were used of being able to all split up and fight their own private battles all over the encounter area (I wasn't involved in their games, so I don't know if this is common to 3.5). They were kind of shocked that when the Fighter went off charging into the fray way ahead of everyone else, he died. Good times!

Point being, every group is different. They want different things from the game. Feel free to give your son the game he wants.

 

[jbear]

I've played one session of D&D with my son and his friends. We got through 3 encounters.

I made the adventure up myself, designing it towards what I knew they'd be hooked into.

I also allowed the 3 kids to have SUPER stats. I got rid of Daily powers and each character has an awesome Encounter power somewhere around Daily Power strength. I gave each of them 3 At Will powers/stances and a Racial Power (including the Humans).
I flagged skills as such, skill rolls just based on Strength etc. and the Target DC being a standard 10 for anything they want to try. Each does have a Skill Power relevant to their class which they can use as an encounter power that lets them pull off something they imagine related to that skill.

It went really well, and they are all enthused to play again this weekend coming up. They are 5, 5 and 7 years old respectively.

As Zombies are the rage at school at the moment I made a zombie based adventure. Like you yourself suggested, I made the first encounter with a horde of minions. When they began they discovered their class mates sleeping at their desks were zombies. So was the teacher, the only non-minion in the encounter. So that was something like 16 minions and one normal zombie. The good thing about zombies is their low initiative. So That is 6 players (each parent playing a companion character with their child) having a go at them before they can react. Nearly all of them have some kind of Blast, Burst or multi attack power so by the time the zombies got to go there were 2 miions left and the teacher. But there were 3 windows through which another 9 zombies burst through, overturning the class science experiments. One of the tables set a large area of the class on fire and the other set off a magical immobilising web, leaving only a narrow corridor of free movement in the centre of the class. By the end of the next round all the minions were dead and they finished off the teacher as they let loose their encounter powers in the third round.

And then they had to deal with the class being on fire! The book glowing on the teacher's desk was read by the Mage using her Arcana power. It was marvellous to see her stand up at the table and wave her arms about with an abracadabra, which of course was more than enough to trigger the safety spell on that page, putting out all the magical effects in the area.

The leapt into the next encounter as they went into the corridor and heard some nasty growling behind the door to the vet's lab. They threw that door open no questions asked, itching for another fight. 3 zombie dogs (minions) and a zombie bear, a zombie gorilla and a zombie tiger which were reskinned higher level zombies from the monster builder. They were quite nasty and actually managed to drop the Paladin but they had the hang of their encounter powers by now and they mowed through them in 4 rounds. Focus fire was pretty natural here as they were stuck at the door way, only one of the big zombie animals could reach them at a time.

The third was kind of a skill challenge as they tried to reach the school 'Safe Tower' following the instructions left on the blackboard by their teacher. they had to go through the gym which meant going over an obstacle course. However a tower of Anti-Magic meant no magic could be used inside the gym. 4 Guardian Golems protected anyone trying to scale the tower in order to hit the button that would turn off the anti-magical effect. They also protected the equipment room where each had a magical object kept under lock and key that they would be given when the passed their final exam and graduated from Adventurer's School.

They could take on the obstacle course with their skills or face the golems and attempt to turn off they tower. The magical objects were the deciding factor and they took on the golems. They resolved the no magic inside the gym by using magic from outside the gym. The Druid turned into a hawk and flew to the top of the tower and hit the button. Magic came back on. We were 3 rounds into the fight and the pizzas for dinner had arrived, so I had the Druid roll a Wisdom Check (perception). He succeeded and spotted a second button that hadn't existed until the pizzas arrived which when pressed turned off all of the golems. Once the magical Items were retrieved from the equipment room the Wizard teleported up to the entrance of the Safety tower, the Drangoling, Tinkerbell and the Hawk-form Druid flew up their, hauling Scooby Doo (the Thief) with them. The paladin leapt through the obstacle course with his exceptinal strength and reached the bell tower which when rang called a giant bat, upon whose back he flew up to the entrance as well.

Minions were great. A mix of minons and a few tougher creatures works really well. Also having ways to end combat with other actions is a really good mechanism as well. I guess 12 is another ballgame. With 5 year olds i think it has to be super-action all the time. There is no room for reality there. Maybe designing your own dramatic adventure and getting some friends on board (and mum as well?) will make for a more exciting experience. I'd suggest house ruling HP, either allowing a higher point buy so that PCs can have a high CON score (which will increase HSurges as well) or give them a background similar to how 'Born under a Bad Sign' works, whereby HPs aer based off the PCs highest stat score.

Expertise is probably the first Feat to take. Missing sucks.

Finding a stash of magical weapons, or being awarded it, further increasing chance to hit is probably a good element to work into the story as early on as possible.

Anyway, don't give up! D&D is an awesome game in its many forms. Play it as you want it to work, that makes it as fun for you and your son as possible. Good luck!

 

[Jhaelen]

The introductory adventure for Dark Sun features a 1st encounter with multiple (level 1) creatures that have a 4d6+4 damage attack, usable three times each in the encounter.

Yup, I noticed these, too. To be honest I'm unsure if these are really supposed to do this damage. In the Dark Sun Monster Compendium, Brutes 10 levels higher deal the same amount of damage, so something's fishy here.

You may also have noticed, that some of the monsters in the intro adventure use the old damage progression and some use the new damage progression. If I was playing the adventure, I'd adjust all damage expressions to resemble the guidelines (level+8; +25% for brutes).

 

[Rune]

It's been said before, but it's worth repeating. 4e adventures are designed for parties of five adventurers--and that fifth adventurer can make a huge difference in a combat.

That said, if you don't want to run four characters as NPCs (and I don't blame you if you don't) try this quick fix. Downgrade every enemy across the board. -1 to hit, -1 to all defenses, -1 damage per hit, -5 to 10 hit points (your choice, depending on role). Double these effects for elites and quadruple them for solos. Basically, a generic deleveling--similar to by-the-book, but without having to look up hit points-by-role. Then, when you divvy up XP for the encounter, divide by five instead of four to account for the changes.

 

[TerraDave]

As noted, you were probably a player short.

That, plus the tendency for fights in 4E to go long, like 8 rounds long, plus the fact that there is a learning curve to using each charecter and for those charecters to work together.

Plus, many of us feel that WotCs published adventures have too many combats.

I might go with a party of say 3 pcs, cut a couple of monsters from each encounter and cut some encounters, and dial down the damage a little bit (about 2 points per attack). EDIT: and or do what Rune suggest.

As always with a new player of any age, be very generous with the death and dying rules.

 

[Rune]

Also, if a fight is turning against the PC/NPCs, do not hesitate to provide and encourage an escape. There is no shame in retreating to regroup and try again when a party is better prepared.

 

[Uller]

It sounds like it's multiple things...yes, we were playing with only 4 PCs...I'm away from home right now but I could have sworn I read somewhere in the adventure set up that it was designed for 4 1st level PCs...maybe not...

Even with 5 PCs something still seems a bit off with the fights. Maybe not....one extra PC might have made the difference in scoring a quick kill in the first round or two of the fights and that would have made a difference...

Someone said earlier that the PCs should be doing enough damage to kill or nearly kill the baddies in a single hit. I don't see it...the fighter was attacking with a +9 attack, 1d12+7 damage. That's an average of 13.5 per round with a hit on a 6. The rogue could do +9 attack, 2d6+5 (avg 12) on a backstab but that wasn't always possible. The cleric was doing +5, 1d8+4 and the wizard with his magic missile spell was doing +4 vs Reflex, 2d4+4...At first we held back on using daily powers because I was anticipating 2 or 3 fights before a rest...So best average damage for any of these characters was less than half the HP of a single enemy. We did seem to make a lot of bad roles...

Yes, the adventure seems "combat heavy" I don't have a problem with that...the point is to introduce the rules and the rules mostly apply to combat. My son does seem to get the role-play aspect of the game. The first time he played the downloadable adventure he declared himself done after about 10 minutes...I was incredulous and asked him how he is done so quickly...he said he decided his character is not the sort to help out Sareth and she seemed tough enough to handle things herself so he left her in the woods to fend for herself...I thought this was funny coming from a 12 year old...

So I guess the long and the short of it is I'll go back and refactor the PCs to make sure they are a bit more "optimal" and dial down the encounters for 4 PCs (and probably replace some monsters with 2 minions...). We have enough to juggle with learning the rules and there are only the two of us for now. I don't want us trying to navigate an another PC. Maybe we'll "resurrect" Sareth from the downloadable adventure just to have an extra NPC to absorb some damage...

Thanks for all the replies...as it was when I was active on these boards in the past, this is the most helpful/friendly community on the 'net...

 

[DEFCON 1]

One other thing, Uller, that you may want to keep an eye on for yourself the next time you play... is how exactly you, yourself do when you play the other two PCs.

Having to try and run two PCs plus DM all the other monsters means your focus gets pulled this way and that. How much time/thought are you putting into what your PCs do? Are you giving them the time needed to make the best tactical choices for what they can do? You're playing the cleric and the wizard... the two "harder" classes of Fallen Lands... are you able to give both those PCs the thought needed to really be effective with them? Are you learning what the classes do at the same time your son is, and is that taking up quite a bit of time as well?

Obviously this is only something you can answer... but I can say that when I DM I have a hard enough time trying to run just the monsters and all the stuff they can do, let alone then try and change gears and play two PCs too. Maybe you have a good handle on it. Or maybe you are actually slowing the game down a bit too much as you try to work both sides of the game? Take a good look next time you play and see how long you actually end up spending working both the monsters and the PCs... and adjust your time spent as necessary. Because if you find you're only giving the cleric and wizard a cursory glance before taking their turns for them and then moving back to the monsters... you really end up only having two full PCs, plus two 'half-PCs' in your group.

One final piece of advice. Get your son to invite his best friend over to play too, then hand the new kid the cleric and the wizard. If you can concentrate just on DMing, you'll be more apt to be able to adjust on the fly to keep battles moving.

Best of luck!