So I have decided that I am going to run Rise of the Runelords for my first go at GMing for Pathfinder. I am reading through the foreword, and I see the adventure is written for 4 player characters. Currently, I only have 3 play characters and don't know if we'll get any more before play starts.
Is the adventure forgiving enough that it could be done with 3 player characters?
Is it forgiving enough that it could be done with 3 casters? I've got a cleric, a witch, and a sorceror.
If I do need to make adjustments to the adventure, is it as simple as adjusting monsters and traps per the tables in the core rulebook to the adjusted average class level of -1 due to the smaller party? Will loot become a problem? XP will need to be adjusted as well, I imagine, so as to not skew the progression.
Any advice you can offer to help me adapt the setting to a smaller number of players would be awesome. Thanks in advance.
Well, It's certainly possible, if a little tricky with your current setup.
The main problem is that the Cleric is your closest thing to a front-liner, and both sorcerers and witches tend to be very squishy unless you go for certain variant builds (a Transmuter, or Dragon Disciple Sorcerer for instance).
I would recommend either one or more of your casters focus on summoning, to get some meat-shields out on the board. On the other hand if either the Witch or Sorcerer wanted to switch to a class that was a mix of melee and magic that might work.
As to the problem of only having three players, I don't see that as a huge deal. Things may be a bit tougher in the beginning, but once they start earning xp split 3 ways instead of 4 they'll pull ahead in levels, which should balance things out.
Honestly if they're built with the idea that they are only three, it should be fine. If the cleric has some kind of melee capability and a decent CON score that's probably good enough. All three characters are capable of casting summon monster which they should do. The cleric can even take sacred summons. At later levels it will be much less of an issue once they start getting access to mass crowd control spells, it might be you who has the problem keeping up with them.
Witch's slumber hex will probably help them survive the early levels (and will be seriously annoying for you). Spells like grease and color spray from the sorcerer will also provide survivability, and at this level a cleric's channel energy is actually pretty relevant. Later on not so much but by then your trio of full casters will be powerhouses anyways.
If you're worried about survival, I don't remember off the top of my head but one adjustment I'd make is swapping out anything an enemy has with an X4 crit modifier for something less brutal.
In short, I don't think you really need to adjust anything for them, so long as they're careful early on.
If you are worried you can always throw in a DMpc to round out the party. When I ran the game I did this when only three players where able to show up.
We've been running this with only 3 for a while...
Dwarven fighter, gestalt thief alchemist, and summoner...
It works out pretty well because we're dividing the xp 3 ways instead of 4 which means we're typically one level higher than the campaign suggests we should be at any given point.
True, but that seems a bit more balanced group. 2 full arcane casters can have a hard time if they are surprised without time to get their defenses up and summon cannon fodder. It is definitely not impossible, but hard.
Also, I think the group may have some trouble where mobility and skills are involved. It´s been a long time since I´ve personally played RotRL though. There were some unpleasant fights when we did, but it could have been just our luck - the end fight in Ch.2 was rather hard, I think, and a few others were a pain.
Thanks for all the pointers, everyone. I did manage to find a fourth man who may or may not play with us long term, so if he doesn't stick around I at least have the comfort of knowing it shouldn't be too rough after the first few levels.