sithious's page

Yeah, I went through the entire thing again and It all makes sense looking at it again. More so from the way the last few fights went in the last chapter of Burnt Offerings.
Thanks for clearing all of that up and I'm sure I'll be back before you all know it with more basic questions when they come up in our campaign (as I'm sure they will).

Thanks again!

Ouch, seems I've botched that up hard... I'm still unsure I fully understand how the wizard spells work in this case. I'll look into it and see what's what.

EDIT:
I see so in Table 3-16 It says he gets 4(0lvl spells), 3(1st lvl spells) and 1(2nd lvl spell). So these are the only spell levels he can cast? What abou Table 1-3 which says that he gets another extra 3rd lvl spell and another extra 4th lvl spell? Does that come into effect only once he gets those spells on the wizard spell list table?

I have to say the rules on this aren't as clear as I feel they should be on this... Especially for new players. It made sense that a 4th lvl wizard can cast 4th lvl spells...

This wasn't much of an issue up untill we finished Burnt offerings. Now I'm a new GM, so this might be my missinterpretation of the rules, but as far as I understood, the wizard gets a spell slot for his school per level?
Our wizard is was lvl4 when they fought Nualia and with him also having 18int, he was able to save up his Bison (summon monser IV) for that fight.
Now I don't know If that damage was taken into account for this fight but between the fighter the bison and my wizards flaming sphere, she was dust in hardly any time...

Is this to be expected and will the difficulty ramp up with The Skinsaw Murrders or have I just been interpreting the wizard spell's per day wrong?

Well my players all come from a video game background so while I have explained the concept of metagaming, I still need to regularly remind them of It telling them to RP what their characters know.
Its also hard to get them to interact with the world intimately describing actions more picturesque like as opposed i open the door I use my shortbow, I charge...
I'm trying hard to make it a story like experience and I suppose that comes with time and comfort.

Some good pointers there. Far be it from the fighter always getting his way in our game. As you said I have used several methods to try to cripple him and give the others some shining chance. As said I abused Erilium for her will affecting spells and that encounter ended up being a blast. I also threw entangle at their feet making Gogmurt interesting and warchanters did their part.
In retrospect some of the meaningfull enemies however never got much of a chance (granted a lot of the time the wizard was responsible for the CC which then allowed the fighter to tear the encounter into nothing). Korvus for example got Dazed or color sprayed (cant remember) and was imidiatley reduced to nothing. Tsuto was similar however he did manage to knock the dwarf out in two rounds at the time so that wasn't as easy.
They also went for the Bunyip in the sea cave and that was just hilarious. The fighter went down the hole first and as the other two made their way down (the wizard falling and barley catching himself by the dawrfs beard) He crited the bunyip before the others even got gown the rope...

I guess all is well accept when the game gives me pointless monsters like goblins and goblin dogs to work with. No matter the amount of those I throw at the party they are just pointless XP and gear bags. I need to take some extra time and learn some CMB moves that will help those with at least giving a hint of challenge as opposed to a cheap hack and slash fight. I know my lack of experience in describing these fights might not benefit the situation either as I'm sure a lot of It can be substituted with good RP.

Ok thanks for all the replies. I've had a brief chat with one of my group (the fighter) and we both agree some slight changes to balance need to be made to keep things smooth and changing.
What I've decided was to knock their exp back to where the AP assumes them to be (hitting lvl 3 at the beginning of thistletop)and follow the items and gold presented in the book to a T. So far we've had plenty of fun and the with the information I had been given here, I believe the difficulty curve should start rising as we move along.

One of the great things about this game is that as a Gm, I'm given plenty of flexibility as to how I lead the encounters and can ramp the difficulty up not by fudging but by taking some extra time and playing smarter and to the teams weakness (and at the same time if things get hard present solutions that will help the players along without holding their hand to the point where It's pointless).

Again, thanks for the help and I do think I might return here If or rather when I need some more help from some experienced GMs.

Thanks for some of these suggestions.
As far as the gold is concerned, If I understood correctly,the character wealth per level in the Core should be ignored in the AP as they are nothing alike (Item value included)?

The point buys and the exp totals, I am still unsure of. Where exactly does It state that the AP assumes a 15 point buy system and will nerfing them to 20 point buy really solve my problem? On this dilema, I would really like to get more feedback and make the best call I can as It will surely impact my whole game for the duration.

Thanks for the suggestions, give me a few more if possible.

So this is as much a Rotrl question thread, as well as It encompasses some core rule book issues within it. Since this is my first time GMing, aswell as my groups first time playing, I have run into some issues, I'd like some help solving with the help of the community here.

1- Instead of running it with a 4 member party, we have one that consists of 3 players. Since this was our first group, I wanted to mitigate the lack of experience as well as the lack of one member, by using the 25 point buy system as opposed to the standard 20 point buy.
As the game moved along (we are currently at Thisletop) I kept giving them the experience total divided by 3 (as they are 3 players), however soon realized they were finding the encounters too simple and decided to switch to dividing it by 4 to mitigate the obvious advantage I'd given them with the 25 point buy.
Here is where I realize my lack of experience GMing can lead me in to an extremely unbalanced game. I now have a few options I'd like some help with to put my situation back on track:
-Either I nerf them down to the 20 point buy system and deal with a complete character rebuild this far into the game and then accumulate the exp and give them the total divided by 3.
-Or I keep the stats as they are and nerf their exp back down to lvl 3 (they are now at the beginning of Thisletop, however they will soon reach lvl 4) and treat them as a full 4 member party.
Other suggestions would be much appreciated.

2- The second issue If one I've found with gold. Now we've kept as good of track of the items and gold drops as well as the rewards, as we possibly could and no matter how you look at it (gold+ drops included) the total Is always far below the character wealth per level given in the Core Rule Book. Thus I've been throwing extra gold at them to bring them up to the total given there.
Our lvl 3 fighter and cleric both have a heavy suit of armor already and hardly get hit by anything at this point (except spells obviously).

3- The third is probably an issue connected directly to the first and second but our fighter just seems Over powered compared to the other two. He seems to one-shot almost everything other than the big bosses which he 2shots. The result is the other party members feel a bit underwhelming. The wizard is a closley followed build to that of treantmonk's summoner/control. And the cleric is a healer/combat heavy armor wearing dwarf of Abadar.

4- I'm sure I've found that the rules for wands state the one using it, needs to be able to cast the spell in order for no penalties to apply, however I cant find that rule in the Core. Can anyone tell me what page it is on?

I know this thread is exhausting so I appreciate any help I may get from all of you. Please help me fix my game :)