5e Game - Part 3

A new player joined the party for this weekend's game. We took a break last week for Mother's Day, the game is important but not so important we can't take a break from it. Anyway, the new player joined us and he chose to roll up a PC of a class we already had (druid, which is only important for one reason, as you'll see shortly). Why did I allow it? I felt the party was already fairly strong, but I'd have allowed it if I felt it wasn't - it's not my job to guarantee the PCs an easy go of it, they either create a balanced party that covers every aspect/skill/combat situation, they learn to cover the areas they are lacking in, or they fail. If they want to make the mono-race/class/whatever party, I'd let them, it's about the fun they find at the table not if they complete the adventure or not that is important.

Just like party balance, it's the players' responsibility to integrate the new character into the party, though I help as I can ("you guys are going into the dungeon after the drow? I got this map from an escaped slave two nights ago, and I can't take them all on just by myself"). Still wished for a little more talking amongst the PCs before they welcomed this complete stranger into the group, but they found it adequate, so I don't dwell on it. As I keep reminding myself, this is a campaign with the training wheels still firmly attached, a training ground both for players new to the game and for a DM that is rusty at running an adventure arc. If a PC or two were to die, maybe the introduction of the new PC to the party will have more role playing.

At the end of the session, the party's original druid decided that he had been a ranger the whole time. I let him rewrite his character from a druid into a ranger due to the whole party being only 3rd level and the addition of the new druid into the mix. Without both of those, I would have required the PC or the party go on a quest to, I don't know, acquire the Three Items of Power (The Tome of Knowledge, The Diadem of Change, and The Thingy of Whatchamacallit) to change the druid into a ranger. But it wasn't that big of a change from one to the other, the characters are very low level, and to be honest, I really wasn't prepared for the PCs to abandon their current dungeon and story-line to go haring off on a quest that I frankly didn't have ready. Sometimes to preserve the illusion of sandbox, you have to keep the players firmly on the train tracks. Or maybe I'm just a big softie.