Gino Cocolo's page

Gino Cocolo wrote:

Hi, I've recently decided to GM again and I'm running Rise of the Runelords with some friends. They are a THW summoner, a magus and a THW paladin. The other one wanted to try in Pathfinder one of his favourite class from 3.5, the Artificer. He found the class converted to Pathfinder, and I said ok. They are lvl 8, and are now about to assault Fort Rannick, and I think it's been easier than it should be for them. The paladin deals the "normal" amount of damage with smite (if normal means almost one-shotting a boss), the magus and the summoner aren't that far from him. But I think the real problem is the Artificer. He does nothing during combat, except using CLW wands if needed (it's been a while since he had the need to do that), but crafting their gear and every wand they could need, I think is unbalancing the game, since they don't have to care for their health nor during combat or after, and it's cheaper.

I haven't GM'ed a long campaign before, and as a player I didn't see this kind of problems, but I don't know what to do to balance things before the battles become more boring.
All suggestions are welcome, thanks in advance

I remember playing that AP not that long ago. At 8th level we were not challenged either and we had a rogue, wizard, fighter, Oracle/Barbarian. That didn't last. Let the players have their time in the sun. I got the feeling that around level 8 it was just exercise in leveling up so you fight the tough guys later in the AP.

Having run many APs I find level 8 is where you are in book 3, that is the book that seems to be about getting the party treasure as up to that point the AP has been lean. So you get loot and XP with connective story that is full of easy encounters. Then book 4 things start getting hard again and the treasure drops off again. Usually lots to sell but nothing usable till you get to a place to sell all the +1 weapons you found and hopefully buy some new stuff. In RotRL lack of wealth was never an issue, access to buy magic items...

I read the rest of book 3 and book 4, and it seems that things will get interesting. The artificer can salvage the magic items they find and make new ones with them, but I don't think he'll have that much time to craft, so that balances it out.

Your first mistake was allowing a 3.5 class. Fortunately your problem can be addressed. Start increasing the APL of your PCs by +1 and increase the CR of your encounters accordingly. If the combats are still too easy, continue to increase your APL by +1 until things even out. If everything I just typed is gibberish, then you need to research how to accomplish this. I recommend reading Alex Augunas' Guide to Creating Challenging Encounters.

Wow, I didn't know there was a guide like that, it's going to make my life easier, thanks for the info

I'm GMing this AP as well (anniversary edition), and my party is overpowered too.

There are several reasons for that:
- There are usually 5 to 7 players around the table, clearly more than expected by the book.
- Some of them know how to optimize well and give good advices to those who can't.
- I've been too nice at character creation (25 pt buy, roll two HD/level and keep best).

Now I also think that some fights are just not hard enough.
It is obvious that many fights are there just to eat up party's ressources in order to make boss fights harder.

I'm balancing this all out by buffing the opposition. Basically, every opponent has most of its stats buffed up to a +2 (att, dmg, saves and so on) and I also max their HD.

Also, you must really prepare ahead of time and imagine the best tactics possible in order to play the opponents efficiently.

Last but not least, for meaningful fights, I allow myself to simply rewrite them.
If you google the named opponents, you will often find revamped versions online that provide much better opposition.
Don't hesitate to add minions when needed.

Ye, I'm running Anniversary Edition too, I'll start doing that, it's true that some bosses feel weak, I'll rethink the strategy and modify the encounters. I don't have much time for that because of college, but if some of them are revamped online and I like those, less work for me, ty for the idea

Halek wrote:

He can take 10 on crafting checks and he should be in the autosuceed range for any items he wants to craft. What chance of failure is there?

Accelerated work and each missed requirement add +5 to the DC.

With all his bonuses and stuff, it's almost impossible for him to fail. The only thing that keeps him from crafting more is time

How did you port over the artificer class, out of curiosity? RotRL is infamously low wealth (like a lot of Paizo APs actually), so even with 3.5's craft discount feats he shouldn't be able to craft much of anything for most of book 1.

You didn't turn the crafting pool that was supposed to be a 3.5e XP mitigator into free item crafting, did you? That would be a major issue in an AP balanced around super poor PCs for the most part.

Aside from that, I would add a few simpler encounters to drain smites and magus spells a bit. Maybe up the boss HP just a bit (except on Nualia). Otherwise, RotRL is designed for pre-buff fighters and rogues (and paizo's vision of spellcasters), so it's easy for competently-built paladins and magi to run roughslod through it.

https://sites.google.com/site/eberronpathfinder/conversion-info/classes/art ificer

Hi, I've recently decided to GM again and I'm running Rise of the Runelords with some friends. They are a THW summoner, a magus and a THW paladin. The other one wanted to try in Pathfinder one of his favourite class from 3.5, the Artificer. He found the class converted to Pathfinder, and I said ok. They are lvl 8, and are now about to assault Fort Rannick, and I think it's been easier than it should be for them. The paladin deals the "normal" amount of damage with smite (if normal means almost one-shotting a boss), the magus and the summoner aren't that far from him. But I think the real problem is the Artificer. He does nothing during combat, except using CLW wands if needed (it's been a while since he had the need to do that), but crafting their gear and every wand they could need, I think is unbalancing the game, since they don't have to care for their health nor during combat or after, and it's cheaper.
I haven't GM'ed a long campaign before, and as a player I didn't see this kind of problems, but I don't know what to do to balance things before the battles become more boring.
All suggestions are welcome, thanks in advance