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I did it! I DM'd my first session.

I hope the players liked the mission. I tried to give the enemies lots of personality and character. I let them do a little investigating/problem-solving early on where it was all about piecing things together and figuring out what happened, and I let them do lots of talking during the battle to win Alice over to their side.

They decided to take the bandits prisoner rather than kill them in battle. I'm proud of them; my players got the best ending possible. I gave them rewards a-plenty and decided that Alice's father gifted them a half-price caster's tower (ie the "Alice School of Illusion and Enchantment")

And so here is the party for my first ever D&D campaign. XD I'm sorrrt of Co-DMing with the guy mentoring me as we need to make a campaign last for 4 years. xD So, we'll be building off previously established stuff.

I made a prologue dungeon for us all to kind of establish how our characters met and give some exposition. Afterwards, we're going through a module and then having our own little story.

Our party (from Oldest to youngest)

Gilvan(Age 45), the Dwarven Cleric
Empress(Age 20), the Human Ranger
Geezus (Age 15), the Half-Orc Human

Geezus is honestly the biggest tank and out automatic packmule--he's able to carry up to 350 Lbs as of level 1. XD

you'd think when you're playing with people who are all high school graduates

one wouldn't storm off into his room after throwing a huge fit about getting 7 gold instead of 12, and then later demand that he have 20 gold as reimbursement for emotional stress, when we didn't calculate that much from the loot nor even get to a town to sell it

especially when this is the one who is a nazi about keeping things focused and moving forward

Well look on the bright side, there are worse players.

Rocks fall on him?

starfe can i just play with you

Every DM goes through this at some point. I'm on my phone but I have a good deal to day about this stuff. When I am home ill respond properly.

So, I asked the DM of my campaign if I could help him fill in some gaps as he worked on the next part of the story, once we get through the first module. One of the things I came up with was a very tough quest inspired by the Lao Shan Lung quest of MH.

We're all going to be about level 6 and the story is that the town we are staying at has a mine full of sapphires protected by a fortress. This fortress is put to the test when a Young Adult Blue Dragon (CR 10-11) attacks it. Our goal is to either lower its health enough to make it flee or kill it before it reaches the mine behind a fortified gate.

We have a few custom items to facilitate the fight to make it a little more fair for us, because there is no way we can keep up with a dragon moving 40 feet per turn. We're mostly fighting it from an elevated area with mini-ballistas and cannons, but the worry I have is that we won't even get there in time. The map is made so that each area will last at least three turns, before it arrives at a wall and spends time to break it down, giving us time to heal up and wait for it in the next area. Each of the 4 areas has a different terrain layout and may force us to be on the same elevation as the Dragon. xD

Our Base Camp is a little like MH in that you cannot bleed out, but you simply are out for a turn and come back at full health. The only buff we may reciieve is a slight boost to speed and we get free potions every 3 turns. In the Ammo Box, we have our Ballista ammo and cannon balls. I'm thinking that there will be four shots of each weapon that will stun the dragon for a turn and do a small fixed amount of damage.

How screwed do you think the DM and I are making us? The reason I'm also involved is because I said that there is no surprises in this quest. It's a very straight-forward objective with no traps or anything.

No Dragonator equivalent yet, but the penalties for failing this quest should be very obvious. XD

What system are you guys playing? 3.5 or 4? Either way, the CR system is there for a reason, but it has its flaws. A lot of people misunderstand the CR system, which I can't blame them for. The CR of a monster (in this case apparently 10 or 11. Though the 3.5 CR for an adult Blue Dragon is 14, young adult is 11, so maybe you're playing 4th edition?) is meant to represent what the average party level should be to provide a moderate challenge. So CR 10 means that a 4 person party with 4 level 10 players will have a moderately difficult time against a CR 10 foe. The problem is that CR assumes too much. It assumes, first of all, a standard player type distribution, which is 4 players, 1 tank, 1 support, 1 striker, 1 controller (Or tank, healer, striker, caster, in older D&D editions), the classic D&D example being Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard. This isn't always how parties are laid out. The CR system also assumes that the standard array or standard point buy were used to get player stats, so an encounter can be more or less challenging depending on how poorly players have rolled and distributed their stats, if the 4d6 method was used.

CR provides a good measuring stick, but it is far from perfect. The worst thing about it is that it totally neglects the actual dice rolling portion of combat. If your players get in there, and everyone starts throwing natural 20's, and the DM rolls poorly for the dragon, they'll lay waste to the encounter. Of course what if the dragon crits one of the players early on, and they either die, or are forced to play conservatively? Then combat becomes much harder. For this reason its REALLY IMPORTANT to stay at least close to your party level with the CR, that way if things go sour it doesn't become a fucking landslide against the party. Yeah, if they do roll well, and the kill this thing thats far beyond their ability, they'll be incredibly pleased with themselves, and they'll love the encounter, but if it doesn't go well all of them might die. You have to weigh those options when you bump the CR so far beyond the party level.

An example. In 3.5 Orcs are CR 1/2. That means that a level 1 party of average means can handle 2 orcs with moderate difficulty. 3 orcs would be high difficulty, and 4 orcs would be a deadly scenario. I would never go to 4 because it represents combat of 1 orc per player, which means that either orcs double up on someone, or your low HP players (Wizards) die almost right away, and then all the others fall in succession. 3 orcs would be a challenge that could be feasibly won by the players, and could be believably faked by dice fudging if things came down to the wire.

In my opinion, pitting a 6th level party against a CR 10 or 11 (especially in 4th edition, where solo encounters are specifically made to be tough) is too much. Even if the challenge for the party has been really well balanced (or totally removed) by way of the ballistas and things you were talking about, I would recommend reducing the age of the dragon or leaving this encounter for a higher level party. Also, you run the risk of loading the party with TOO MUCH aid, in the way of free potions, heavy artillery, and such. This encounter could potentially be made too easy, and the campaign moves towards being railroaded, or appearing staged.

It's 3.5 and it's a Young Adult. I mentioned that in the last post. As for our characters, yeah, we'll be CR 6. Basically, this mission is supposed to be impossible. XD The aim of the mission is not to kill the dragon. It's impossible at the levels we'd be at. We're pretty much going to lower it's health enough to make it flee. We have one Half-Orc Barbarian but we doubt he'd be able to do much beyond packmuling the ammunition.

As for your suggestions, I actually might agree with you on that. However, we're trying to incorporate this into some greater storyline that will encompass a campaign covering our 4 years at college. So, I might discuss with the DM what would allow either outcome--saving the mine or failing to--impact some greater story. XP

I dunno, I'm still a noob at all this stuff. I suppose I could do something that leads up to this all, which could give us a few levels...