You never forget your first TPK (Total Party Kill) and my kids almost experienced one. They had to clear a lodge full of bandits. They tried to sneak in the main door in disguise, but a lack of a concrete plan and some very bad roles in disguise they ended up fighting the entire lodge. Then they fell into the common trap of the rogue gets to go first, then runs out in the middle of the room and gets surrounded by enemies and smacked around. Only with some careful use of spells by their Illusionist brother an expending every single healing resource at their disposal was the party able to win against dozen foes they fought! As further icing on the cake, they get to level for the first time after the fight!
It was an interesting session. Life got in the way, so we hadn't played in a while and they were begging me to play again. I made sure to schedule a time to play. We played twice as long as we normally do and it was basically all combat. I was worried they would not enjoy the continual combat, but they seemed to have fun. They still don't understand the all the complexity of Pathfinder combat, but I am happy to help them with the details. My eldest, playing the rogue, had the worst luck, including literally rolling four 1s in a row at one time. She started getting upset at the thought that her character might die, but I was able to use some well-timed NPC spells to rescue here. I haven't been pulling any punches or changing any rolls, but I do play the supporting NPCs very intelligently.
Character death is an interesting concern with kids under 10. I haven't decided how I want to handle that, but I'm leaning toward not letting them ever be permanently dead. Still lots of thinking needed on how to deal with that problem.
The next session should be more roleplaying as they deal finish exploring the lodge. (We had to end right after the fight) One of my daughter's, who plays a greatsword wielding warpriest, likes to deal subdual damage. As fate would have it, which the exception of two skeletons, all the human bandits survived the fight. I'm curious to see what they'll do with all the prisoners.
We'll have to try and not wait as long until our next session, after all we have a lodge to explore and people to rescue.
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