ROTRL with a 2 player gestalt party.

[Soilent]

I've started a campaign for ROTRL with my girlfriend, as a two person party, with her leading and me running an NPC as support.

I'm using a modified gestalt rule, but I wonder if I should modify difficulties or action economy to better suit a two player game.

Does anyone have advice on how to do this?

[Peter Stewart]

My suggestion has been for a while to play around with mythic, which can balance the action economy in their favor more. Change mythic saves to be roll twice against non-mythic threats (effectively everything).

In small parties there are two major threats - a couple bad saves killing the entire party and drowning under action economy. This solves both.

[Soilent]

I'd rather avoid mythic, I've never used it before, and I want to avoid undue stress.

[Mighty Squash]

If one of you is a paladin/battle oracle you will probably be fine.

I ran RotRL with a gestalt party of three. One of the players was mostly for show, the Paladin/Oracle and the Barb/Ninja managed pretty much everything without needing the double caster to be involved. And I kept them below the intended levels for the last 2/3s of the campaign.

[kestral287]

I started a game this way (though we picked up a third). Even without any particular optimization they're doing fine.

[Atarlost]

I'd let her run both characters. There's not really room in a two person party for someone who doesn't take initiative and GMPCs with initiative risk getting metagame knowledge and Gandalf Syndrome.

[LazarX]

Soilent wrote:

I'd rather avoid mythic, I've never used it before, and I want to avoid undue stress.

Have each player play two characters... It's a better solution every way you look at it.

It comes down to action economy. In a two player group, one player getting incapacitated, has a far greater chance of winding up being a TPK.

Mythic however is a bad solution no mater how you implement it.

[Charon's Little Helper]

Frankly - as much as I like Pathfinder - for a solo player like this I'd likely go with an entirely different system.

[Renegadeshepherd]

Gestalt should be able to handle it if you choose your combos well. The most important thing in my opinion for that campaign is having really good saves.