Five? P and shaw. We had a party of nine by the end. You'll be fine.
I did 20 point buy with 6 players and it's been working fine. Around chapter 2 I ended up maxing the enemy hit points because they were dying too fast, but my group was down to 5 for the most recent chapter and I didn't need to make any adjustments.
But then I read something that made it look like the adventure was based on the characters being 15pts.
I've never heard about that. I think you'll be fine with a 20pt-buy. The average point buy cost of 4d6, drop lowest (the standard way to roll for ability scores) is certainly higher than 15 points.
Setting the points budget to lower than 15 seriously cripples a lot of classes. Even 15 is rough for, say, a Monk. So, 20 is definitely fine, even with five players.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
5 players is my adventure path wheel house. My players are fairly tactical, but I wouldn't describe them as top tier optimizers. Here is how I roll below.
- Pan's Pro tips:
1. 20pt buy
2. Max all HP of enemies.
3. Ditch XP and use the advancement track. Once players reach about 5th-6th level, keep them a level behind the advancement track.
Cheers.
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In my experience, 4-5 players is most enjoyable for a long-term campaign. That's enough to cover all necessary jobs without too much competition for the same spotlight.
Too few PCs and the players tend to become too laser-focused on the plot instead of having in-party RP/subplots/banter; too many and you don't get anything done.
20 points is a lot more fun to build characters with than 15 points, because you can be competent in your class without super-dumping all nonessential things.
So if you begin by determining how strong your party will be, the next step is increasing (or decreasing) the difficulty of the adventure to make it just challenging enough to be really enjoyable. There are some dials you can turn to do this:
- Add a few more mooks to most fights. This should be your #1 tactic because it balances the number of players' actions against the number of enemy actions.
- Increase enemy HP, if combats are ending too fast.
- If it seems like enemies are just too individually weak to do something to the PCs, give them the Advanced template. That's a significant power increase to many monsters, and tends to go even faster on enemies with class levels.
- Don't use solo bosses, no matter how iconic the idea. 5 players will either overwhelm the boss with sheer number of actions, or you've made your boss so strong that he's one-shotting PCs left and right.
It's much better to give him 1-2 assistants whose prime job is diverting some of the players from all ganging up on the boss at once. They can do that by just standing in the way (shielding a BBEG wizard) or threatening the back line of the players (rogues sneaking around to threaten the wizard PCs).
- Understand focus-firing and counter it.
Pathfinder combat really rewards focus-firing on a single enemy. If you kill one enemy out of four you've weakened the enemy team. If you have all enemies at 75% of HP they're all hitting just as hard. This is what your players will be trying to do to enemies if they're savvy.
So what you need to do to challenge a large party, is provide a counter-threat. If all the players move in to focus-fire on a single NPC, have all the other NPCs take advantage of the PCs leaving formation to focus their fire on a single PC. You need to teach the players that they need to divert a few of their members to "holding the line" against the other enemies, or bad things will happen.
In summary: give the players fun characters, then adapt the difficulty to match. Don't try to adapt the players to the difficulty of the pre-written material.
If things are too easy, make them harder next time.
In my experience, 4-5 players is most enjoyable for a long-term campaign. That's enough to cover all necessary jobs without too much competition for the same spotlight.
Too few PCs and the players tend to become too laser-focused on the plot instead of having in-party RP/subplots/banter; too many and you don't get anything done.
20 points is a lot more fun to build characters with than 15 points, because you can be competent in your class without super-dumping all nonessential things.
So if you begin by determining how strong your party will be, the next step is increasing (or decreasing) the difficulty of the adventure to make it just challenging enough to be really enjoyable. There are some dials you can turn to do this:
...
- Add a few more mooks to most fights. This should be your #1 tactic because it balances the number of players' actions against the number of enemy actions.
- Increase enemy HP, if combats are ending too fast.
- If it seems like enemies are just too individually weak to do something to the PCs, give them the Advanced template. That's a significant power increase to many monsters, and tends to go even faster on enemies with class levels.
- Don't use solo bosses, no matter how iconic the idea. 5 players will either overwhelm the boss with sheer number of actions, or you've made your boss so strong that he's one-shotting PCs left and right.
It's much better to give him 1-2 assistants whose prime job is diverting some of the players from all ganging up on the boss at once. They can do that by just standing in the way (shielding a BBEG wizard) or threatening the back line of the players (rogues sneaking around to threaten the wizard PCs).
- Understand focus-firing and counter it.
Pathfinder combat really rewards focus-firing on a single enemy. If you kill one enemy out of four you've weakened the enemy team. If you have all enemies at 75% of HP they're all hitting just as hard. This is what your players will be trying to do to enemies if
agreed on all accounts, I currently run a group of 6 players through RotRL and that's basically my modus operandi.
However, a little addendum on the 'don't use solo bosses' point: sometimes the AP makes it incredibly hard to find a reason for additional mooks and henchmonsters being there in the same room, storywise. And while, for action economy reasons, adding mooks might make more sense mathematcally, narrativly it seemingly doesn't. In that case: go for the 'he/she has pets that he/she keeps with him/her all the time' excuse and add some yeth hounds or hounds of tinadloos.Also: the rooms in the AP ar ridiculosly small sometimes, especially for some encounters that really would need additional enemies.There are some maps where you might want to change the size of one or to rooms just to fit the enemies in there
We did RotR with 6 and had a great time (and this was back when it was still an adventure for 3.5, and we were using all WotC books... including Complete Champion *shudders*).
You'll have no trouble with 5, and if you're all newer, you can probably even run things as-written. 20 point buy won't be a problem (we were much, much stronger than that, using an array of 18,16,14,12,10,8 - it was 3.5, be gentle :P) and we still had a couple character deaths.
If things feel too easy, the best and easiest thing to do is just sprinkle an extra baddy here and there - supposed to be a fight with 6 goblins? Make it 7. 3 ogres? Make it 4 instead - and so on (again, only if it seems like things are way too easy.)
Feel free to post back with requests for altering specific encounters, and have fun!
You also might want to look what has been done in this thread
I've only ever been in campaigns with 15-point buys (all of which have had parties of 5+), but you shouldn't have too much difference between that and a 20-point buy. What's the party comp? If it's mostly martials, then they'll balanced just by virtue of the fact that they're having to share gold and loot more thinly.
However, a little addendum on the 'don't use solo bosses' point: sometimes the AP makes it incredibly hard to find a reason for additional mooks and henchmonsters being there in the same room, storywise. And while, for action economy reasons, adding mooks might make more sense mathematcally, narrativly it seemingly doesn't. In that case: go for the 'he/she has pets that he/she keeps with him/her all the time' excuse and add some yeth hounds or hounds of tinadloos.Don't use solo bosses, no matter how iconic the idea. 5 players will either overwhelm the boss with sheer number of actions, or you've made your boss so strong that he's one-shotting PCs left and right. It's much better to give him 1-2 assistants whose prime job is diverting some of the players from all ganging up on the boss at once. They can do that by just standing in the way (shielding a BBEG wizard) or threatening the back line of the players (rogues sneaking around to threaten the wizard PCs).
Understand focus-firing and counter it. Pathfinder combat really rewards focus-firing on a single enemy. If you kill one enemy out of four you've weakened the enemy team. If you have all enemies at 75% of HP they're all hitting just as hard. This is what your players will be[/list]
For big important solo fights, my favorite quick fix is to just apply the Agile Mythic Simple Template (but don't overuse it).
The Agile template practically ensures your big bad acts before the heroes with a juicy +20 initiative, and its dual initiative feature allows your baddy to act twice per round, helping to even up the action economy. With a mild AC boost and a few extra hit points to boot, you have an instant and effective solo-worthy upgrade.
if you go off of XP, someone missing a game means that they are behind, and I don't think it's fair to punish someone for having a life.
depends how you as a GM handles it. I made it very clear to my group, that even though someone cannot attend a specific session, XP will be treated as if he/she can and the character still gets the XP. So, no one gets punished and everyone in on board with that, because even though there are players who might sit out more gaming sessions than others, everyone knows that real life issues might prevent them too from attending someday and then it's good to know, that there characters will not be behind the others.
(btw, that's also why I insisted on having 6 players in the group. one or two might have to miss a certain session, but then I still have four players left. whereas if I had a group of 4 to begin with and two are sick or have work or other issues, I'd have to cancel the whole session)
For big important solo fights, my favorite quick fix is to just apply the Agile Mythic Simple Template (but don't overuse it).The Agile template practically ensures your big bad acts before the heroes with a juicy +20 initiative, and its dual initiative feature allows your baddy to act twice per round, helping to even up the action economy. With a mild AC boost and a few extra hit points to boot, you have an instant and effective solo-worthy upgrade.
Interesting. I'm not a big fan of mythic rules, but that might be handy once the group has finished the Runeforge and moves on to book 6. I'll look into it
Our GM likes to give BBEGs Hero Points (or more accurately Villain Points) which is similar to legendary actions, but can be used by all creatures and is actually part of the game.
How many points you give the opponents should depend on how easily the PCs are breezing through. You might even decide to put some options off-limits for your BBEG, in case you find them too powerful. If you warn your players beforehand that the villain might have these Hero Points, it really heightens the tension.
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5th ed made some similar changes for important solo bosses, basically granting them extra actions. It wasn't as flexible as straight out getting another turn, though. Instead, important BBEGs and powerful monsters get a specified list of "legendary actions". For example, here's the list of legendary actions available to an adult dragon, from the 5e SRD:
Other BBEGs might get the ability to cast some lower level spells, or similar. This mechanic lets the BBEG intersperse some actions with the turns of the PCs, that will hopefully make the fight a bit more dynamic. Particularly ones like the Wing Attack above are liable to make the fight more interesting by changing conditions in the middle. Say, at the end of the rogue's turn the dragon does a wing attack, and suddenly half the party is prone and the dragon isn't standing right in front of the barbarian any more. It'll keep the party on its toes.Legendary Actions
The dragon can take 3 legendary actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action option can be used at a time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The dragon regains spent legendary actions at the start of its turn.
Detect. The dragon makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.
Tail Attack. The dragon makes a tail attack.
Wing Attack (Costs 2 Actions). The dragon beats its wings. Each creature within 15 feet of the dragon must succeed on a DC 23 Dexterity saving throw or take 15 (2d6 + 8) bludgeoning damage and be knocked prone. The dragon can then fly up to half its flying speed.
That's pretty neat.. I like the idea of taking away the predictability of when the monster will take its extra actions. And at the same time limiting the scope of those extra actions to something that's not completely game-breaking.
With the Agile template, once the monster gets back-to-back turns, it can for example spend a turn to move around the PCs formation and then full attack casters, with no chance for the players to adjust. Which is too much of a good thing.
Not all grognards are created equal. Our group isn't using point buy. The GM is using using such a system that each player gets roughly average (but high) stats. The players have played enough not to optimize or powergame/minmax. Yet we have an Oracle with Leadership with a cleric minion. The GM plays his GMNPC and it is a Summoner-Synthesist. He doesn't go overboard with it. However he has been the group's meat-shield though our Fighter trip specialist is also a meat-shield.
But yes, it all depends on the group. Our group works perfectly. If you handed the same character types to other people, they may well have turned them into a steam rolling machine. A newbie group wouldn't have known what to do with them.
Even with 7, plus NPCs, we have had a favorite NPC killed.
Of note: our group has chosen to not take the side quests when we have gotten the chances.