MaartenDF's page

I played through #0-01 Silent Tide today for a group of six first level characters, and I came across a problem. All of the encounters were way too easy for my group of players.

I know the later scenarios were balanced for six players, and that they have notes on how to make it a bit easier if the group only counts four. The earlier scenarios were balanced for four characters, however, am I right?

Can I make the encounters a little bit more challenging? How much leeway do I have? I would hate for a character to die in an encounter that I did not run as written, but, well.. these characters were only level 1. If they had been level 2, the encounters would've been even easier.

Does it have something to do with the scenario being written for D&D 3.5?

I've just discovered Pathfinder Society, and have been reading up on it. I'm contemplating using it as a means to structure our home games. Is this a good idea?

Pros:
- Anybody can be a DM sometime
- It doesn't matter much if someone can't play one evening
- We can have a larger group of regular players
- Shorter stories, with endings

Cons
- More bookkeeping
- Less freedom
- No long stories (not sure to what extent this is true)

Some more information about us:
- We don't go to cons (there are none around where we live, in Belgium)
- We plan to keep our games private
- There are, I'm guessing, about 12 players in our group who could play more or less regularly. Three or four of those are capable of being the DM.
- A significant amount of players are newbies. As such, I have concerns about PFS being too hardcore.

My gripe with playing an Adventure Path is that the same 4 or 5 players need to be present to be able to play. We can't have someone in the group who can only play once a month, and it becomes a big problem when one of the regulars isn't available.

If we start at Season 1, will we experience some sort of overarching story, or do all scenarios stand on their own? Do you suggest we start in a later season? Should we just play a couple scenarios in each season, and then go to the next season? Should we coordinate with each other as DM's, so that we only pick scenarios from the same season? When we're in season 3, is it possible to still play scenarios from earlier years? I'd like for the whole thing to have a sort of "campaigny" feel, like everything is happening in the same world...

Are there specific places you suggest I start reading? Do you know some specific scenarios which I could maybe read up on? I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

I tried searching these forums, and have found a lot of help, but I feel like I could use some more info. Thank you in advance.