Keep on Shadowfell - 3 players

[nerdcore]

Hellos ENies,

I am currently running the KoSf adventure with a group of 3 players consisting of:

- Dragonborn Warlord (healing)
- Dwarf fighter (defender)
- Halfelf Warlock (striker)

I am affraid the group will face some hard battles because they are sort handed by 2 people. So far i scalled down some combats and gave them a level up before the irontooh fight.

Is there any more tips on how to handle the adventure?

 

[Journeymanmage]

Scaling the encounters back is good (best place to start)
adding levels to the players also good

but the issue now becomes: you only have so many bodies and have to few actions.

(From a similar experience, we have 5 players but on a particular night may only have 2 or 3 players.)

We are testing out "companion characters".

"Companion characters" are 2ndary characters that are 1 level lower than the group of "Main characters". Any time we have only 2 or 3 players, people break out their companion character and now the party has 4 to 6 members for the task at hand. It gives you enough bodies and enough >actions< to handle an encounter.

The generic encounters work out fine. The "Big" encounters may need to be scaled down a little as half your party is a lower level.

Companion characters are treated the same as your main characters, race/stats/classes, but they are lower level than the Main characters and they don't get treasure "aimed their way" ... they get "hand-me-downs" from the main characters or a similar arrangement (can't have the companions fall too far behind on the power curve). Don't worry about xp for the Companion characters, they level up when the Main characters level up.

Your Main characters are the "Stars of the show". The Companion characters are not the focus of the adventures, they are "Supporting Cast". They add "meat" to the party, they take up positions on the battle field to support the main characters. They take some of the heat of the main characters, they lend their actions to the fight, but as less skilled and less geared than the main characters, they may have less of an impact.

Modify idea as needed

 

[Armadillo]

I'll second the use of companion characters. In the past, I've had success using such characters to round out a party (i.e. adding a cleric for healing). It can also give the GM a voice within the party for exposition or other information. The key is keeping them in the background.

We've been going through KotS with the following group:

- Dragonborn Warlord
- Human Paladin
- Halfling Rogue
- Tiefling Warlock
- Elven Ranger

In several combats, we've been really short on healing and crowd control. Consequently, several characters have multiclassed to address these weaknesses.

 

[nerdcore]

I like the idea.

This thing of secondary characters are a good, because you can also create pool of replenishing characters for the party. This concept was used in later products of Dark Sun on AD&D era. If someone dies he/she can jump in back on one of the back up's.

This thing about actions was crucial on the DnD minis game, sometimes it was better to have some cheaper creeps just to have more activtions. As a DM it is fun to see the minions give the party some pain in the @$$, just because they dont have "spare" actions the get rid of them.

 

[Zsig]

I once ran KotS with 3 PCs, and it went quite well.

I had also a group quite similar to the one you have there (in terms of roles and playstyle):

Eladrin Fighter (Spear + Shield)
Eladrin Warlord (Tactical)
Eladrin Ranger (Archer)

It is worth noting though that I ran Kobold Hall prior to KotS.

Both modules went smoothly without any adjustments.

Oh, and Irontooth went down in a single round. (By the time they got there they're already lvl3).

 

[Gruns]

KotS with 3 PCs

Like yourself and Zsig, I DM'd a group of 3 through KotS with a group makeup of Defender(Dragonborn Paladin), Striker(Halfling Rogue) and Leader(Eladrin Taclord). I also ran the group through Kobold Hall first, which gave them a few extra XPs. The thing is, for KotS, I didn't change the encounter levels at all! Pretty much ran it straight through, as is, making only a few flavor adjustments to the story.

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The group had no trouble with any of the regular encounters, as expected. The surprising part was the ease at which Irontooth went down. I had heard many a tale of TPK from this encounter with full parties of 5, so I expected my group to be forced to retreat or something, but they simply owned Irontooth in two rounds. I remember the rogue critted with an encounter power, and all three players dumped their Action points to take him down quick. Irontooth hit the defender with just 1 attack before going down. The hardest part of the encounter was the wyrmpriest that kept running around and not missing.
Also, the group had a tough time with Kalarel, again mostly do to the fact that their NADs were targetted more than AC. (Huh-huh) Due to their smaller group size, I give my PCs special "Once in a Lifetime" Powers to give them a slight advantage. These are like uber-Daily powers that can be used, you guessed it, once in a lifetime. They used two of these powers during this fight, but probably could have gotten away with not using them.
All in all, it'd probably be best to alter most encounters by scaling down the opposing units, or making some of them minions or something, but I simply didn't have time to take care of the bookkeeping.
Later!
Gruns

 

[nerdcore]

In my group, the irontooth battle went fine, as soon he reached bloodied the Warlock intimidated him to surrender.

I will create a skill chalenge to interrogate the goblin, so they can possibily put 2 and 2 together, and start the main dungeon part.

 

[nerdcore]

Also i had to change my d20 during the session, we like the DM to roll openly the dice; i was rolling straight 20's, so to avoid a TPK i changed the dice to even the odds for the party.

 

[Foxman]

Throw in an animal companion. This gives extra "actions" and an extra flanker to the party...

Use the rules from MP from the ranger to make the creature.