ZEITGEIST Pathfinder point-buy for Zeitgeist

My group will be running Zeitgeist soon using the Pathfinder rules. For those experienced with this campaign, what level of point-buy do you recommend for players in this campaign?


Would you perhaps consider this similar to high fantasy (20 points) or standard fantasy (15 points)? Basically, what is most appropriate so the PCs can meet the challenges of the campaign?

How many players do you have? That's the far more important determinant on how difficult the game will be.

The text mentions several times that the campaign was written assuming a party of 5. Many of the timed events become extremely difficult with fewer party members. It's also worth noting that most combats in Zeitgeist have many opponents (this campaign doesn't really do the "lone BBEG" thing that we are accustomed to in Pathfinder and Paizo modules).

Play reports on the forum suggest that most GMs are finding that the game is "a little on the easy side", so I would recommend no more than 15 pointbuy if you have a full compliment of five PCs. I'd even suggest 10 pointbuy if you had 6 PCs. If you have fewer than 5 PCs, consider scaling it up.

But we probably made the Cauldron Hill encounter too hard, at least if the PCs didn't requisition magic items.

We will likely have 4 players. So you recommend 15 point-buy for 5 players, but perhaps a little more for 4 players?

To continue to dodge your question , just ask the PCs what level of difficulty they would like.

For my group, I gave them all the facts, and they said they wanted it to be challenging. This is the same group that I took through Rappan Athuk, so they know what they're doing, and how to optimize their builds. So we have only 3 PCs, and are doing 15 point-buy. And, as expected, it's hard.

If you want to preserve the "on the easy side" difficulty the campaign was built to, go with 18 point buy with 4 PCs. If you want to bring it up to "normal difficulty", go with 15 point buy on 4 PCs. It's whatever difficulty setting you and your PCs want to play at. Just always bear in mind that it's always easier to lowball PC power at the outset, and adjust upward if needed, rather than the other way around.

Also bear in mind that there are some outliers, as RangerWickett mentioned above. Cauldron Hill uses incorporeals (perhaps it shouldn't), and dazes PCs (translation from 4e error: should be "staggers").