That's awesome, BT.

Mattias' party is still level 3 (we finally played last weekend after not being able to for awhile). Like you with Ryan, I let Mattias roll all the dice for his party. They raided a necromancer's tower to recover a magic gem to get Rex's (his barbarian character) buddy from his criminal days out of trouble with the local Thieves' Guild. They fought a bunch of skeletons in the courtyard, made their way through a bunch of animated armor in the main corridor and Rex got his hand's on a magical greatsword that one of them was wielding. They then rescued a Faerie Dragon the necromancer had imprisoned, who told him about the knight he'd seen the necromancer's zombies drag into the dungeon a few days previously. After fighting some zombies and an ogre zombie, they rescued the knight, a paladin named Sir Gawain (he's descended from one of my long-time player's paladins, Roland. Every time he plays a paladin of this family, he names them after a famous knight or paladin, so Gawain was fitting.) Sir Gawain wanted to bring the necromancer Grenwald in to face the king's justice, but acknowledged Rex's argument that he was unlikely to surrender.

Entering Grenwald's sanctum, they discover him talking the image of a hooded figure in a mirror on the wall, whom he refers to as "Master". Grenwald's master declines to offer him any aid, telling him he has no need for servants unable to protect their own strongholds and vanishes from the mirror. Sir Gawain orders Grenwald to surrender, at which the necomancer simply laughed, calling forth skeletons from the grave dirt of his sanctum floor.

The fight is on, and I have to say that wizards can still hang in there, even with the lesser spell slots. Grenwald, through a combination of mage armor, mirror image, and shield was able to ward off most of the party's attacks, though Sir Gawain managed to hit him with a critical smite for a massive amount of damage. Grenwald then returned the favor by hitting Sir Gawain with a critcal hit Vampire Touch, dropping the paladin and restoring a good chunk of his own health. Grenwald managed to maintain his concentration on the spell despite a couple hits from Rex, and struck him with a normal hit from the spell before the party finally took him down.

Amerielle, the cleric (also of Nature) gets Sir Gawain back on his feet, and they return to town with the gem and the necromancer's remains. As thanks for their rescue, Sir Gawain offers to put the party up at an Inn, The Knight's Rest, for a few days and informs them that his commander may want to speak with them once he tells her all that has happened.

Which is where I left it as I need to come up with a new mission for Rex and company. Mattias also wants to play a character with an animal companion, but wants to keep playing Rex, so we're in discussion of who his new Ranger would replace in the party, as I really don't want to deal with more than four party members with only one player.

That's an excellent adventure. Ryan's party has six characters; I think you've taken a sensible option limiting it to four.

Like you with Ryan, I let Mattias roll all the dice for his party.

As it should be. Because rolling handfuls of dice is awesome, and kids understand this.

Mattias gets disappointed when I have the spellcasters use anything that forces a save because he feels cheated out of making the attack roll.

For actually playing or running D&D I actually prefer the dynamic of a 6 person party. Four seems to work better for playing with my son, though. It let's me plan more involved encounters without it being overwhelming.

I like a four-person party no matter what age I'm playing with. Five is do-able but six feels like too many. I feel like turns take too long.

BSG (Helo)

That is a handy OPG and this may well be the best time to use it.

My issue with 4 is it puts a limit on player options (though 5E might be better with this). Someone wants to play a bard and it throws the whole party dynamic out of whack as suddenly you've got one of the four cornerstones uncovered. Whereas if you've got a group of 5 or 6 you can still make sure the baselines are handled.

The Pathfinder game I'm playing in has a party consisting of two paladins, an archer cleric, an inquisitor, an (archeologist) bard and a fey-blooded sorcerer. Having two paladins (of different deities with very different outlooks in regards to evil) makes for some fun RP moments and we had nice moment of awesome a couple sessions ago of the two of us marching down the middle of a rain-darkened street, my sword blazing and the other paladin (an Aasimar) manifesting her halo, calling out a challenge to a group of demonic cultists while the rest of the party snuck into position.

With more RP-heavy systems like World of Darkness, I prefer 3-4 players, though.

BSG

I have orders from Hoshi. He uses his OPG, Pokemon-style! (No, I don't know what it means either.) He cashes in his miracle token to activate three undamaged locations. So not the Airlock then.

Location 1: Pegasus CIC at Sector 1. Play Strategic Planning 4. Ah well, if it backfires it's only Baltar at risk.

Die roll: 4 + 2 = 6. 1 hit! Disabled hangar! On to the second move.

Location 2: Weapons Control at Sector 1. Everyone passes on interrupts.

Die roll: 4. Miss. That's one point off a hit. I'll pause in case anyone wants to play a Calcs to bump it up to 5.

BSG

Hoshi plays a Calculations 3. Gosh, how heroic. The miss becomes a hit! And it does... Structural Damage. That gives an extra +2 on further attacks against this basestar, which is too good a chance for Hoshi to pass up. He goes all Dutiful on it; he discards a Launch Scout 2 to activate Weapons Control again.

Die roll: 3 + 2 = 5. Hit! Basestar destroyed!

Hoshi still has one activation on his OPG.

Location 3: Activate Command, launch 2 RSVs into Sector 5.

You know, I would've thought you'd all have learned by now. You blow up my basestars, there will be retribution. Hoshi's crisis card is:

Raiding Party
Cylon Attack

Oh yeah. There are no raiders on the board, so the raider activation sees two of them launch from the remaining basestar in Sector 2. Then we add a bunch of ships. Finally, the jump track regresses to the Start.

That concludes Hoshi's turn. I Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Helo's cards are going out. Helo, when you're ready, please post your move and action.

BSG

End-of-turn summary:

Round 4.1 - Hoshi

Locations and Hands
Hoshi: Command; 6 cards, miracle tokens, 1 mutiny card
Helo: Research Lab; 7 cards, 1 miracle token, 1 mutiny card
Apollo: Quorum Chamber; 10 cards, 1 miracle token, 0 mutiny cards
Baltar: Pegasus CIC; 6 cards, 1 miracle token, 0 mutiny cards

Main Board Sectors
Sector 1: Empty
Sector 2: 1 Basestar, 2 Raiders
Sector 3: 1 Basestar, 3 Raiders
Sector 4: 2 Raiders, 2 Heavy Raiders, Civilian A
Sector 5: 2 RSVs, Civilians B D
Sector 6: 3 RSVs, Civilians C E F

Resources
Fuel: 6
Food: 6
Morale: 8
Population: 12

Viper Reserves: 2
Damaged Vipers: 1
Raptors: 4
Assault Raptors: 1
Boarding Party: 0

Other
Nukes: 2
Jump Track: 0 (Red)
Distance Travelled: 4
Galactica Damage: Airlock