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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Moonstone Spider" data-source="post: 3259957" data-attributes="member: 40079">I'm going to second letting the players play what they want.  A short time ago I introduced two of my nephews to DnD.  Having thoughts similar to the ones in this thread, I suggested a Barbarian to the first, like Conan.Nephew:  "Huh?  I thought we were playing Dragons.  Why do I have to be Conan?  I could play Conan on my Xbox.  I want to be the dragon.  Why's the game even called Dungeons and Dragons if it's really Conan?"Me: "Er. . ."Nephew: (Leafing through monstrous manual) "Hey!  I want to be this scorpion guy instead!"Me: . . .Second Nephew: "Can I be a mermaid?  But a guy mermaid?  And a Ninja?"In the end I threw my planned level 1 crawl in the trash and they played a Scorpionfolk Pirate (fighter) and a Nixie Ninja in an adventure on the high seas.  I practically had to burn the rulebook to make such concepts work together.  It was totally awesome and they loved it.Bottom line:  Ask them what they want to be and resign yourself to a certain amount of extra work helping them keep track of their abilities.  Remember that just because the player is new to the game doesn't mean his character is going to be, if his Wizard has the perfect spell for the situation and he doesn't realize it, a gentle reminder may be in order.</blockquote>