I would go with 20, some of the adventure paths can be challenging and it doesn't sound like you have a group of hardcore optimizers to worry about. If you feel like the characters are plowing through you can always make it more challenging later but I doubt that will be the case with the newbs.
i would also use a 20 point buy, the difference between 15 and 20 is nearly negligible
You have two new players. Either go with 20-point builds, or go 15 and use Hero Points. You could offer the more experienced players with a free Feat if they go with 15-point builds.
Don't allow the Leadership feat.
Creative Director
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For new players, it's best to give higher point buy. Point buy is essentially the first and core "difficulty setting" for the game. Giving new players a 20 or even a 25 point buy helps them survive longer.
Conversely, giving experienced players a 10 point buy helps to give them a challenge. The difference between 5 points of point buy for an experienced player really CAN make a significant difference. I've seen a lot of threads here where GMs give experienced players more points to play with only to be surprised at how easy the encounters are.
Player experience is a HUGE factor, in other words.
But yeah... with new players? 20 point buy is a good plan.
Hero points are a good idea- a very limited resource, but they can save a character's butt if luck is poor. I was happy to have used them in my Kingmaker game.
Hero Points can also be a good stand in for Mythic, if you want to run Wrath of the Righteous - but reject the Mythic rule system.
Just remember to choose Iron Gods. All will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Mummy's Mask
Reign of Winter
Iron Gods (really technology is just another form of magic items, not an extra rule set)
Carrion Crown
Council of Thieves
none of those have lots of extra stuff or rules that can't be found on the PRD
Shattered Star is a sequel of sorts for Rise of the Runelords, so keep that in mind:)
honestly i would put those three in my top five APs group
so you can't go wrong with any of them:)
the easiest i've found for beginners is honestly Mummy's Mask:)
and since you didn't ask for it, here are my top five APs as of right now (subject to change)
1. Skull & Shackles
2. Reign of Winter
3. Shattered Star
4. Mummy's Mask and Rise of the Runelords (tie)
5. Iron Gods (only because i don't have the whole path, but based on first two books its in a tie with Shattered Star)
Shattered Star is a sequel of sorts for Rise of the Runelords, so keep that in mind:)
honestly i would put those three in my top five APs group
so you can't go wrong with any of them:)
the easiest i've found for beginners is honestly Mummy's Mask:)and since you didn't ask for it, here are my top five APs as of right now (subject to change)
1. Skull & Shackles
2. Reign of Winter
3. Shattered Star
4. Mummy's Mask and Rise of the Runelords (tie)
5. Iron Gods (only because i don't have the whole path, but based on first two books its in a tie with Shattered Star)
Skull & Shackles?
Were not the ship to ship combat rules a problem?
nope:)
however i've been waiting a long long time for piratical adventure fun, so that went a long way, besides as the code says "those were mostly guidelines" :-)
a little clunky mayhaps I just double damage and they mostly use them to close in and fight
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I have to warn you, Reign of Winter can be lethal for low level characters. You have two new players. As such I'd suggest Mummy's Mask or perhaps Wrath of the Righteous without the Mythic rules (outside of Book 2, most of the books are underpowered even for non-Mythic players - and if you ignore the Mythic abilities of any Mythic foe, you'll likely not have any problems. Though I'd still recommend giving the players plenty of Hero Points just in case).
um, Mummy's Mask is deadlier then RoW
at least for us, i tried to run first adventure twice! TPK both times.... within the first get-to-know-the-party dungeon.
and i take it easy on my party:-)
but yes RoW can be brutally hard at times
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I wonder if the balance problems everybody reports for Wrath of the Righteous (where the monsters don't scale well with the abilities of characters) might be mitigated if there are only two PCs. Could be very deadly in early books, but later books might actually balance well to a two-PC party.
(I haven't done any math nor do I have any experience with this; I'm just speculating.)
i think at this point, anything to make WotR more playable is worth a try:-)
personally with all the NPCs and moving parts i wouldn't recommend Wrath of the Righteous of a beginner party.
first level parties are so squishy!
especially if they're a bunch of rogues and archaeologists that never look for traps and no one has a weapon that does more then 1D6 damage with the highest str score topping out at 12, hindsight 20/20 and all:)
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Reign of Winter nearly killed my 3rd to 5th level party in a couple of places. Albeit, the characters who almost died were the 3rd level ones, and I had adjusted the game up to compensate for the characters being higher level to start out... but even so.
I love RoW. It is the second AP I got into (with Runelords being the first). But for new players, environmental rules and having to worry about freezing to death would be like putting Frostfall on Skyrim along with a mod increasing the lethality of combat, and then putting a new player behind the controls without warning her.
Thus my warning.
And yes, most of the APs are deadly for low-level characters in places. But given the nature of the game... it continues to be lethal at higher levels. It ain't 1st edition AD&D by any stretch of the imagination. ;)
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And yes, most of the APs are deadly for low-level characters in places. But given the nature of the game... it continues to be lethal at higher levels. It ain't 1st edition AD&D by any stretch of the imagination. ;)
One of my players still gets a frightened twitch at the mere mention of a crocodile, after very nearly ending his adventuring career in CotCT in the very first session by one of 'em. Good for him we were playing with hero points.
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despite my daughter's robust doll collections my party hates them:) also Quicklings and snowmen:)
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My players now hate elk. And fairies, but elk. Yeah, once they found out they spilled EVERYTHING to a faerie riding an elk? Well, the rogue (played by a new roleplayer) went out of her way to gut and debone the elk afterward. No doubt if I'd not cut the "warm zone" encounter out of the game (we meet maybe 8 times a year for four hours a time, some things had to go) she'd have gone after the giant elk in there. ;)
It didn't help that I jokingly call Row my Skyrim campaign (with Rise of the Runelords my Skype campaign). So when they faced the talking snowman and the talking elk? The Skyrim players just assumed that they could trust these things.
I have since ensured they are not as trusting anymore. Heh heh heh.
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As for the environmental rules... there is a simple solution. Have the snow have already fallen. It won't be snowing currently, so they just have to deal with the cold.
And the difficult terrain issues from deep snow.
My players now hate elk
funny you should mention animals:-)
my parties plan for the hut Baba Yaga's Dancing Animal Sanctuary and NightClub (we have a Gnome Witch, hence the nightclub part:) but yeah they're building up quite the Collection of Familiars and other animals, they also spilled the beans to the Elk, people trust talking animals, thank Disney :-D
And the difficult terrain issues from deep snow.
give everyone a pair of Boots of the North maybe, otherwise ignore that too, i actually started to forget about that part after a while, as long as everyone bundles up they should be good:)
Give everyone one Mythic Tier. Let a player with Endure Elements know they WILL be taking Mythic Spellcasting and Mythic Endure Elements. Problem solved. And plenty of other problems opened! ;)
Really the best way to handle it is to only use environmental rules when dealing with fights that is a CR rating equal to the party level. If it's a tough fight, don't use those rules - say the snow is compacted hard enough to allow free movement, or that the wind blew the snow mostly away. Or have those fights in places like indoors in the lodge. (Mind you, the Lodge is lethal to 1st level characters...)
20 point builds are best builds
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My players now hate elk.
Ha. One of my favorite things about the first adventures in Serpent's Skull is the surprising apex predator the PCs discover - goats! a seemingly innocuous entry in the random encounter table has turned out to give a lot of trouble to most parties, mine included. In low level, the stats that those animals have actually make them into serious threat, especially when the party already wastes some of it's resources on surviving the harsh terrain, like in those two adventures.
yeah i loved the jungle goats, it stared out with one, just staring at them huddled up from the mid-day rain (i believe) then a couple, then a few. at that point one guy snapped and kicked one, the goats ran, then in the middle of the night it was a half dozen, and they came for revenge!
the one guy i still hang out with still jokes about having Goat Terrors instead of nightmares:-D
I know the thread had moved past this part of the topic, but for new players, I'd have them roll their first characters. Aside from introducing them to a historical aspect of character generation, it removes the complex choices involved in buying stats from scratch. They'll still have to choose where to put the rolls, but that's easier, I find, than starting with a totally blank slate.
Alternatively, give them all a common array.
we roll, always will, but we also dont cast spells that boost stats or a lot of stat boosting items so it balances out, in fact this way they feel bad ass and live thru the lower levels
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I've been working on reworking Curse of the Crimson Throne from 3.5 to Pathfinder then to a 6 person party with a 20 point buy. I ended up adding a level to the named NPCs, additional hit dice or the advanced template to solo monsters, or added 50% of the Mook monsters. I also increased the hit points for everything from the average to 75%.
We haven't begun the campaign yet and I'm wondering if this would be sufficient.
Here is a small hint.
You can give players a higher stat build and compensate it with the monsters having higher stats in turn.
For instance, a 25 point build differs from a 15 point build by +1 to every single stat (the "tradition" being 15/14/13/12/10/8 - you'll find by going +1 to each stat, it's a 25 point build).
A 37 point build (often the result of the 4d6, drop the lowest d6 method) is +2 to each stat.
A (approximately) 52 point build (lucky rolls) is +3 to each stat.
Don't forget. The monsters are designed with 15-point builds in mind. So if you just compensate the player stats with bonus stats for monsters, you balance out things. For instance, you'll find many monsters have odd stats. So +1 to a stat could easily bring a monster to a boosted strength bonus or a higher dexterity bonus or the like.
looks good, it could get clogged up in the shattered star dungeons, they might stomp a lot of stuff with the druid (plus cat) ranger and paladin.
i'm glad my party hates paladins, a bunch of tricksy nature worshipping godless heathens we are:)