Which 4 character classes have the best chance to finish this AP?


Rise of the Runelords


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Feedback appreciated. I am about to GM a new ROTRL campaign and I have read all 6 parts of the this lovely AP. I am very curious to hear others chime in and possibly even the Paizo staff as well.....using the Core Rules and the new base classes from the Advanced Players Guide....which combination of 4 classes stand the best chance of being able to move from the beginning to the ultimate end here?

I am eagerly awaiting input


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

To add to the above post...is there ANY class that if omitted from the AP...would make it extremely difficult to finish or succeed in?


As long as you have a reasonably well-balanced party, I think just about any combination would work without making any substantial changes.

It might get trickier if you don't have a balanced party, but that's not a showstopper.

As the GM, it's your responsibility to make the game fun, so if the party is light on something, design around it. For example, say no one wants to play a cleric or druid. That means that you'll need to provide more healing opportunities. If you have a paladin, ranger, or bard in the party, drop a wand of cure light wounds, or make sure that many of the bad guys have a potion of cure moderate wounds that they just don't get to quaff before the party takes them down.

If you have a dearth of toe-to-toe combatants, you can re-tool a few encounters to make them more amenable to sneaking around, avoiding combat. If that's the party's forte, I'd award full experience for using stealth to bypass combat encounters.

IIRC, there was someone on these boards a few months back who said they had an all-arcane-spellcaster party that was working out surprisingly well: two wizards, a sorcerer, and a bard. The PCs all tooled their spell selections well, so that they always had their bases covered. I think at least one of them took the Leadership feat later and got a fighter as a cohort. Alternatively, you could have Shalelu or a Sandpoint guardsman effectively join the party as a semi-permanent NPC to give such a party some combat help.

In short, with creativity on the PCs part, and your willingness to make the game work with the characters your players want to play, you can make ROTRL work with just about any PC combination.

Liberty's Edge

I don't know how well it will work out, but I'm going to GM a group consisting of a Cleric, Ranger, Sorcerer, and Summoner. It may not be the strongest party on the planet, but I don't think they'll be pushovers. Hopefully the ranger takes an animal companion so there will be six targets for X and the other bad guys to contend with.

Personally, while party composition may certainly play a part to survivability (as well as a certain level of min-maxing), I think the group's ability to make smart in-character choices is a stronger indication of survivability: tactics, strategy, and realizing that you can fight a battle in ways other than just charging straight ahead. Admittedly, I was guilty with this last part with my last character, though as time wore on, she had learned there were better ways to attack than just charge.

Liberty's Edge

My core picks would be: Melee-capable Cleric, Wizard, Archer/Switch Hitter Ranger for skills/scouting (Undead then Giants then Humans? Urban then Underground then Mountains), Fighter or Paladin with high AC for blocking and finishing - probably Fighter because there's a lot of Neutrals in the 4th book.

I think a sorcerer misses the benefit of the oodles of spellbooks in the latter half, I think a rogue isn't a great choice because of the many very high HP baddies in the middle stanzas that hit (and especially crit) really, really hard.


4 players, 15 point buy? I'd say Witch (get healing hex and evil eye early), Cleric, Fighter (High AC without giving up mobility) and Switch Hitter Ranger (same reason as Greycloak).

I'd be happy with that lineup (as a player or GM). I went Witch instead of Wizard for the Hex's. In a 4 man group the extra staying power offered by hex's seems worth while.

Liberty's Edge

Greycloak of Bowness wrote:


I think a sorcerer misses the benefit of the oodles of spellbooks in the latter half...

Personally, I agree, though at one point the sorcerer player was thinking of doing something else - monk, maybe - and I got really worried I'm making all this investment just to end up with a TPK.


ooh, tough call. There's a lot of chances for different classes to shine in this AP but if I had to choose 4 that could get the most out of these opportunities... I'd probably go with Greycloak's suggestions. I'll go into a bit more depth here and suggest some alternatives as well.

I agree with Dexion on the fighter. Given the abundance of huge, scary, hard-hitting giants at the end of the AP, I'd definately want a high AC. A fighter can invest his feats in a one-handed weapon (such as a warhammer) and don a magic shield as he reaches a higher level. Mobility is all well and good, but a dwarf fighter would find himself even more untouchable. (and enjoy his hatred bonus in the first adventure...)

The second man? While Dexion makes some great arguments for the witch (and the two are fairly interchangable), the wizard will get the most out of his knowledge skills, the scrolls and spellbooks, and can fight Karzoug with some of his own weapons: scrying, divination and legend lore spells being put to great effect. What's more, they're going to fit in great thematically.

The other two are going to want to be able to sit on the frontline in (relative) safety. I definately agree on a giant-slaying ranger. There's a reason Harsk is on the front of AP#6. :) I had a former black-arrow in my game and he stole the show, making mincemeat of goblins left and right. He definately has the stealth skills to get by, and don't doubt that he can take down a giant...

However, I wouldn't discount the rogue so quickly. While there aren't many traps in the adventures, to my knowledge, those that are there are bloody nasty. The trap-spotter trick is a boon to every party, and a rogue who doesn't skimp on his defensive stats isn't so far behind the ranger in terms of survivability (especially, again, a dwarf or gnome, who will love Defensive Training every step of the way), and a greedy thief will have plenty of motivation throughout the latter half of the AP.

For the fourth man it's hard to top a cleric, and they'll have a much easier time surviving Skinsaw murders (especially an elf or half-elf, who are immune to a ghouls paralysis) and can don armor and swing a hammer like the best of them and a cleric of Desna has great thematic ties. A druid is a very adequate substitute, and gets to milk his woodland stride ability in the early encounters (and perhaps later in HMM as well), but it wouldn't be as effective of a choice here as, say, kingmaker. My group often runs without a divine caster, and a bard would also make an excellent fourth man, inspire courage being a huge boon to the other two frontliners.


Yea, the 'Four man band' of fighter-cleric-rogue-wizard should be stressed more by DMs. Having the extras be types like bards or witches can help round things out. Think of the fighter and Clerics as the anchors since they can both tanka nd deal damage if need be.

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