Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 6127152" data-attributes="member: 78958">I DM'ed the campaign until about a year ago, here's some pointers:My group consisted of a party of three, like yours, so I knew I had to compensate for low numbers. I started everybody at 6th level (actually, I started at 5th, and ran a short homebrew adventure to get the characters invested in Elsir Vale, taking them up to 6th in the process). I also made sure everybody had more or less optimized builds to go with:1) Half-Orc Lion Totem & Wolf Totem Barbarian/Fighter/Ranger, going into Bear Warrior, then Warshaper (übercharger with tripping options and animal devotion);2) Aasimar (LA bought off pre-campaign) Cleric going into Ordained Champion (melee-focused, with some divine and devotion feats);3) Human Focused Conjurer going into Paragnostic Apostle (summoning-focused know-it-all with some reserve feats).So they had a lot of muscle for a party of three, and the summoner usually added a lot more when he wasn't too busy limiting the enemies' options via battlefield control. I also made sure to allow the conjurer a more-or-less free hand with Lesser Planar Binding later on. The Cleric took Leadership at the earliest opportunity. She actually recruited Jorr Natherson as her first cohort, whom I restatted as a rather effective swift hunter. He died later on, though, and was replaced with a Wildshape Ranger/Master of Many Forms, adding not only muscle, but also versatility.You see, with a little bit of setup, the relatively small number of PCs can be much inflated. I heartily recommend doing this, if only to give your players more to do: steering your cohort or summonlings is much more fun than just waiting for your turn to come around again while the DM rolls a million Hobgoblins' attacks.Furthermore, optimized PCs built for power AND versatility can just mop the floor with a lot of the encounters. The Half-Orc basically killed whatever he was able to charge. He took out the green dragon at Skull Gorge single-handedly by jumping on its back during one of its strafing runs, then wrestling it to death. Buffed up beyond all recognition, he also managed to lift a town gate on his own at one point. Two of the cooler stunts I saw PCs perform...The Aasimar was never out of options, and even just "go there, whack that" was usually a very good one for her. Once her Channeling plus Smiting plus Power Attack plus Divine Power routine was up (around 8th/9th level), she could easily dole out enough damage, and hit reliably enough, to take on every monster in the campaign with a good chance of success. And since she was a Cleric, she usually packed a lot of problem-solving capacity, as well (Water Walking the whole party in Rhest comes to mind, as do some well-placed Divine Insight spells). She died once (Behirs do that), but was resurrected with the Staff of Life found early on.The Conjurer, however, was the party's real utility asset. He never lacked in surprising and effective options, either via his own spells or by making creative use of his summonlings. It only got worse when he got a constant scout in the Summon Elemental reserve feat, and doubled up on scouting by binding a Xill, who snooped around ethereally all the time. And let's not get started on the teleportation thing.All in all, the players didn't think the campaign very hard, even though I pulled no punches, involved them in a lot of convoluted sub- and sidequesting to add time pressure, and buffed up some key opponents (with the ultra-weak Hravek Kharn from the module ending up as a Ruby Knight Vindicator doomsday machine, the bland Skather as a deadly Swordsage, pointless Miha as a much better caster and spy [also with a much increased role], and run-off-the-mill Abithriax making heavy use of nasty metabreath feats).Where am I going with this? I guess how hard the campaign is mostly depends on your PC setup. Optimized PCs with built-in versatility will surprise you and render whole encounters moot.Your setup of Fighter, Ranger, Mystic Theurge sounds like they will struggle badly. Make very, very sure to drop some nice goodies in their lap, they need all the help they can get. Expect them to do well in simple set-piece battles, but struggle hardcore in the following: Hydra, Skull Gorge, basically all of Rhest, the optional Barghest encounters, Behir, all the incorporeal stuff with the Ghostlord, Ulwai, Abithriax & subsequent fire-fighting, and all of Act 5. Everything with flying stuff, and everything with casters in it will be doubly nasty. I can just see one failed will save cutting the party's DPR in half.Note that if the PCs manage to make something harder on themselves (like not destroying the hatchery in Rhest, or not breaking the Ghostlord alliance), Act 4 might become unsurvivable - Streets of Blood gets much, much harder in this case. If any of the dragons escape, meeting them again at the Fane's entrance will spell disaster - consider just having the dragons drop out of the campaign after being defeated once, or coming at the PCs singly later on.Note that some very simple things, like not having a good Search skill in the party, means some excellent (and much-needed) loot will likely be missed in Vraath Keep, the very important Staff of Life among it. Note that the true sanctum in the Fane can also only be found if the party has good Search, or some form of magical detection going.Some utility magic becomes very important in Rhest, to deal with the unusual terrain. The opposition here have ranged attacks, and the local Wyrmlord rides a friggin' dragon. If the party is not mobile on or beneath the water, or can fly, it's a sitting duck and will simply be stuck full of arrows until it's GG. Terrible way to go.Concluding thoughts:If your players are dead-set on playing two of the more limited classes in the game (Fighter and/or Ranger), they'll need help. I can see this help coming from several sides:a) sending along DMPCs (not a good option, since that may steal the PCs' thunder);b) over-levelling the PCs (doesn't compensate for the inherent versatility problem, but makes standard encounters boringly easy);c) giving each player two characters to play (misses the point of a roleplaying game IMO, but can be great fun for more casual play);d) having both players pick Leadership (careful not to overshadow the actual PC with his cohort...);e) dropping useful and versatile magic items like candy (can feel like the items are doing the heroes' job for them);f) having NPCs step in and help a lot of the time in various ways (give helpful advice, offer specific magical services, assist in specific battles or problematic cases... but this is just another case where it's hard to make the PCs feel like the heroes)g) maybe a minor thing, but I've always felt Rangers ought to have full Animal Companion progression (make sure the Fighter's player is OK with that)h) and, of course, you'll probably need to rebuild a lot of the module's encounters to fit what your PCs can and can't do (this is a looooot of work...)etc.None of these solutions is really great. I'd say different class choices and optimizing the heck out of them would make a world of difference, but maybe your players won't like that? The optimal solution would be to find one or two more players, of course, but it seems that's not an option either? Anyway, I think you'll have to run with several of the options above at the same time, and work hard to make it all fit together: slightly over-levelled PCs with good, flexible gear, helped along by whichever (fittingly restatted) NPCs are in the area, with one or more options to increase party size, and everything on the opposing side carefully reevaluated by a scrutinizing DM.Could work. But "work" is probably the operative word here.</blockquote>

Verification