I teach grade 5 and had to come up with an interesting way to teach probability. So I decided to run a scaled-down version of Dungeons and Dragons/Pathfinder combat! Each student got to create a fighter card and a weapon card. They drew from a bag of pre-done numbers (to ensure a good variety) to gain their Defence and hit points, and a set damage for their weapon. They had to calculate the chance of hitting each opponent and their overall success rate.
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive!
Your positive comments were so lovely and overwhelming, so I thought I’d give a bit of an update.
The students loved the game so much they started playing in free time. I introduced spells and then weapons with a dice roll for damage. We had a big whole-class tournament.
This still wasn’t enough for some of the most enthusiastic, who wanted to know more about the game I’d based it off. So I brought the Pathfinder core rule book to school and had them roll up their own characters and I’m currently running the mini dungeon campaign from the beginner box. They are loving it! Here they are after defeating their very first goblins.
One of their mum’s contacted me to know where she could get the equipment for her son for Christmas.
Next year I’m planning on running a full investigation unit on the best characters and weapons based upon statistics and probability.
Nava 