Hello its been awhile since I posted, but now that I am DMing a group again and I need a little advice. I am getting to run a group of four players through the Dragon's Demand module. I do have a concern though largely due to the inexperience of the party and the lack of a... standard party, I guess you would say. The group consists of:
Ifrit Bloodrager - Inexperienced player, has only played two campaigns in which he died.
Human Slayer - Moderately experienced but has a tendency to become far to nutty and wrecks things. Kinda the "I do what I want attitude." (Carrion Crown AP leaps upon the coffin of the doctor guy at the start causing it to smash into the ground exposing the corpse.)
Gnome Alchemist - Moderately experienced but is used to playing Clerics and Paladins. Gets side lined a lot because others look down on her in real life, but tends to have the soundest plans in game.
Human Wizard - His first game ever.
As you can see I am worried mostly about the healing situation as well as other things. I was thinking maybe passing out some Cure Light Wound potions to help ease the first few levels until the alchemist can get Infusion and start kinda healing people. How many potions would you give? Or do you have another idea that would help the group?
Alchemists can use wands. Problem solved. ;)
On a more serious note: I'm running DD for a group of 5 currently and we are nearing the end. We got one veteran player, the rest has moderate experience. I maxed the HP of all enemies to make fights last longer against the top damage dealers (dwarf fighter and bomber alchemist).
I found the difficulty of the module to be quite erratic. Sometimes they had an easy time during a whole dungeon before getting into serious trouble in a seemingly easy battle.
That being said, the party composition is fine. You can make up for the lack of experience by pulling your punches a bit (don't use power attack, don't hit characters that are uncouncious, don't use special abilities/spells to their fullest effect).
However, there's not much you can do if players "become nutty and wreck things". Your job as GM is to challenge the party without making things too hard. If they make obviously stupid choices, I say let them suffer (preferably one the player(s) making those stupid choices).
My biggest problem is the last part which gives them limited time to wrap up the adventure. Makes it hard to bring in new characters should someone die. We had a TPK but I want to play the module till the end so I had to retcon a bit. Brought the party back to life with a thinly veiled deus ex machina, but it worked out fine and the party is back up.