[Help Request] D&D with Kids: Aquatic Campaign

First off, lets tag in umbralwalker aka Rich Howard himself, if for no other reason to let him bask in the appreciation!
Secondly, I still love that this is even a thing, and love even more that you are continually trying to make it better.
Third, Aquatic time! I think that something for healers would be to look at the symbiotic relationships that exist in the ocean. You could focus on the cleaner aspect that happens with some shrimp and mutualism symbiosis. You could focus on the undercurrent idea for the rogue class and potentially have certain movement things happen for the rogue. Fighters are interesting because of how varied they can be, but I love the idea of focusing on crab like ideas for tank style fighters. Hopefully some of this helps, but who knows!

Aquatic gaming for kids?! My job is done.

I really like the way you simplified the system, especially the spells. I want to hear more about this and jump in on the conversation. Can't at the moment though; recovering from a rough weekend.

That fighter looks cool the way you laid it out, catcharlie.

So my wife reminded me that on Thursday they would be doing the character building and campaign into session, which made me realize I hadn't finished coming up with the finished list of Races and Classes for the kids to use. So I've just finished putting the final details on everything and I thought I would share to see if anyone had any idea that could be made for last minute changes.

First off, lets tag umbralwalker.

Second off, This is what I've managed to sort so far:


Races

Race: Atlantian
Description: A simple description of Atlantians would be that they are underwater Humans, while they share very a similar body type they are more than just Humans that can breath underwater.
Bonus Stat: Health
Bonus Skill: Perception
Racial Ability: [unknown] (This is something that my wife want to have discovered during story)

Race: Merfolk
Description: The top half is that of a human/Atlantian, the bottom half is a powerful fish like tail, while they have no legs, their tails allow them to swim through the water at tremendous speeds.
Bonus Stat: Personality
Bonus Skill: Speech
Racial Ability: Streamline Swimming – Due to the Merfolk’s powerful tail add 2 to your classes speed

Race: Cecaelias
Description: Much like the Merfolk, the top half of the Cecaelias look the same as a Humans, though the bottom half of their body is a writhing knot of eight large tentacles. These tentacles allow the Cecaelias to grip and hold things very tightly
Bonus Stat: Body
Bonus Skill: Physical
Racial Ability: Tentacle Grapple – You can grab one enemy that you are fighting giving anyone who is attacking it a +2 to attack. The enemy can use it’s attack action to break free of your tentacles, but it cannot move away if you have it in a grapple

Race: Selkie
Description: The Selkies are a beautiful race of underwater humanoids, they look much like the elves of the above water world though they are a rare sight as they usually swim around in the form of a Seal.
Bonus Stat: Personality
Bonus Skill: Magic
Racial Ability: Seal Form – You can transform into a seal at will, while in this form you can’t use weapons or magical spells you can use your seal form to swim through smaller spaces and attract less attention than you would in your humanoid form.

Race: Locathan
Description: Locathan’s are often referred to as ‘Fish-men’ as they look like what you would expect a fish to look like if it evolved into a humanoid creature. The Locathan generally have fins running down their arms and legs, and quite often with have larger than normal black eyes.
Bonus Stat: Mental
Bonus Skill: Knowledge
Racial Ability: Know My Enemy – Locathans know a lot of information on nearly all the creatures of the Seas, giving them a +2 on knowledge checks regarding creatures.

Race: Koalinth
Description: Koalinth’s are dark of skin and muscular of body, the race spent a long time being the slave workforce and military for other creatures, now they are free, they are going to do everything in their power to keep it that way.
Bonus Stat: Body
Bonus Skill: Physical
Racial Ability: Military Advantage – The mandatory military service has instilled battle knowledge and Techniques into you that allow you to be more effective in battle, you gain +2 to damage rolls.

Classes

Class: Harpooner
Similar Class: Ranger
Description: The Harpooner is a light weight scout style fighter that used a Harpoon (or similar Spear style weapon) in battle. The move quickly dragging the enemy towards them, before moving to a more advantageous point on the battle field.
Damage: 1d10
Range: 1-5 Squares
Armour: 5
Speed: 6
Skill Bonus: Perception
Class Bonus: Harpooned: On a successful hit the Harpooner can drag the enemy 1 square closer to them. You have to be more than one square away from your target to use this ability

Class: Leviathan Hunter
Similar Class: Stealth
Description: Leviathan Hunter have spent many years training themselves to bring down the biggest creatures of the seas. While you may be much smaller than some of the creatures you fight you know just how to deal with them for you to come out on top.
Damage: 2d4
Range: 1 Square
Armour: 5
Speed: 5
Skill Bonus: Knowledge
Class Bonus: The Bigger they are: Your training focused heavily on bringing down the biggest of foes, you get a bonus +2 to hit enemies that are larger than you.


Class: Sea Sorcerer
Similar Class: Witch/Wizard
Description: Drawing powerful magic from the depths of the sea, the Sea Sorcerer can control the magical energies to aid in battle
Damage: 1d6
Range: Spell Dependent
Armour: 4
Speed: 5
Skill Bonus: Magic
Class Bonus: Spells
Spells:
Boiling water – Additional on going 1 point of damage [Range 6 squares]
Freezing water – Enemy can only move 2 squares (1d6 damage) [Range 6 squares]
Octopus Ink – - 2 to enemies attack rolls (no damage) [Range 2 Squares]
Control Current – Move an enemy or object up to 5 squares in one direction (no damage unless moving enemy in to solid wall) [Range 6 squares]
Whirlpool – - 2 to enemies Armour (no damage) [Range 6 squares]
Touch of the Eel – Deals +2 bonus damage [Range 1 square]

Class: Shell Solider
Similar Class: Fighter
Description: The Shell Soliders are a group of fighters who use techniques learnt from studying large crabs. The shell Soliders wear the shells of these crabs to protect them use the claws as weapons, while this does slow down the Shell Soliders once they get you in the claws grip you can’t run away.
Damage: 2d6
Range: 1 Square
Armour: 6
Speed: 4
Skill Bonus: Physical
Class Bonus: Claw Grip – On a successful hit the Shell solider can grip the enemy in its large claw, stopping the enemy from moving away, also while the enemy is caught in the claw the Shell Solider does and addition 1 point of (Crushing) damage

Class: Deep Druid
Similar Class: Healer
Description: The Deep Druids use ancient recipes, rituals, and magic to make sure that their team mates are as healthy as they can be during adventures and battles. While they are not very usefully at dealing damage during fights, they are essential in any group that will be exploring the unknown or dangerous waters.
Damage: 1d4
Range: 1 Square
Armour: 4
Speed: 6
Skill Bonus: Heal
Class Bonus: Healing – Heals 2d6+2 damage



While I'm not 100% happy with it, I don't have any ideas on how I could improve it, and I doubt the kids would have any less fun if I changed things or not. I'm positive I have managed to make it more than just a re-skin of the previous Classes/Races.


My Wife said that the kids very much enjoyed the 'Dungeon crawl' bit that we did last time she had them so I'm going to try it incorporate some more of that in the sessions.

The basic premise is:
A group of sailors have had their ship attacked and sunk by a large sea creature, the same sea creature that has recently been attacking the City of Atlantis. The King/Queen of Atlantis has called upon the group to investigate the attack, kill the monster and bring back the treasure from the ship, as the sailors have promised half of their recovered treasure as payment for killing the monster and retrieving the treasure.

If anything interesting come up in the session I'll post it here.

Do you suppose these could go well with the MonsterSlayers adventure WOTC built for kids? Or at the very least, easy to transfer over?

So this morning I sent my wife off to work with a memory pen with a bunch of images for the races (and tokens), race/class descriptions, Character sheets and episode 19 and 37 to listen to. She should have the characters sorted when she gets home and the start of the story told to the kids. I'm sure there will be something amusing to post here when she gets back.


Also, trying to convert the WOTC D&D stuff over to my system atm, as it will be easier than the other way around.

Okies, so I We've got 6 people currently (and 2 more who couldn't make it this week), The current characters are:

Oliva the Selkie Leviathan Hunter
Watery the Merfolk Deep Druid
Sir Jeffunderpantington the Koalinth Shell Soldier
Sky the Selkie Leviathan Hunter
Gary the Selkie Deep Druid
and Theo the Selkie Sea Sorcerer

Character sheets behind the spoiler tag



As you can see (if you looked at the character sheets) a couple of the players are already hardened D&D adventurers knowing the first rule of DM'ing "If you PCs have family, kidnap them, kill them and use them to the fullest" lol.
I'm quite glad that there are a couple of Leviathan Hunters and a couple of Deep Druids as I want to try and get them to fight a few larger creatures and make them a little more dangerous than they were fighting last time (healers were OP and the only way to put the PCs in and real danger was to split the party during battles and get the healer to run around lots)

I'm not surprised that a few of them choose Selkies, Selkies might be my new favourite race, and considering most of the kids choose to have pets in the last campaign turning into seals sounds right up their ally. My Wife (Ok, I'm going to refer to her as Karina from now as it feels kinda strange keep on calling her 'my wife' lol), was hoping that there was going to be a Cecaelias so she might play a NPC Cecaelias, partly to keep the party on track.

while this was mainly character building (Karina didn't say if she had given them the story info dump yet), she dis say that there was a little bit of in character banter including this gem:

PC1: I'm going to needs to give you a nick name
Gary: How come?
PC1: Your name is too long. How about Gay Gay!
Gary: No that's offensive.
PC1: Just like your face!

hopefully next week the other two players will make it and they'll be able to start on the adventure, I want to see if I can get them to do a few rolls to find out any additional information about what is out and around in the seas and where they need to go.

The only thing that I can think of when I hear that name is the Vault in Fallout 3 with all the the Gary clones. "Gaaaaarrryyyyy" "Gary"

I'm glad, Karina really liked the 'Personally traits', 'I Believe', 'Who I'm connected to', and 'Flaws' sections from 5e so we added them in, they really help focus the children on how their character would act.