Hey, everyone.
This is my first post here, so I'll just give a brief backstory. I've been playing D&D for a few years now, with a small group of my friends who are all pretty much as addicted to the game as I am. We often switch-up DMing during our campaigns, although at the moment we're trying to take on the Shackled City adventure path, run by one of the members of the group by himself.
I got a subscription to Dungeon last year because I don't think I'm all that great at coming up with detailed adventures, and so far it's helped out immensely. I've had my subscription since before the Age of Worms began, and so I've got all of the issues- although it didn't really interest me much. Until this last issue (issue 130) came out. I glanced over the adventure, and upon reading little bits of it, I was hooked. Any campaign that shows itself to be of epic proportions, complete with references to other adventures I (and the players) are familiar with, as well as the possible integration of multiple artifacts, is right up my alley. I got out all of my back-issues with AoW adventures, and after reading all the way through the Whispering Cairn, I'm loving it. I just finished the Three Faces of Evil, and despite reading about several errors in its writing (some of which I may change, others I may not), I still think it's a great adventure too. So far, so good.
The problem I'm seeing is with my players. You see, I plan on running the Adventure Path- either after it's finished, or sometime shortly before, depending on what the players want to do- but so far, including myself (who would be the sole DM), there's only four of us that I'm positive will reliably be able to play. We started the Shackled City a couple months ago, and we were able to get three other players- which was great, but we're currently on a short hiatus because one of the members stopped showing up, and another one won't be able to play for a month or so. So we might start it up again, and we might not.
Anyway, back on track, at the moment I can only see us reliably having three players, and from the sounds of it, this Adventure Path is just as deadly as the last. Has anyone out there played any or all of the Age of Worms thus far with a small group? Does anyone have any sort of tips I could use to make things easier for the players (yet not too easy)? Typically, our groups are somewhat high-powered- we usually play with one or two bonus feats at first level (which help flesh-out characters more, allowing players to actually achieve their character goals), two extra skill points per level (which encourages roleplaying), and we usually roll two or three sets of stats, choosing whichever the player prefers (as I, personally, ALWAYS roll terribly, and I hate it when one player just gets lucky and ends up way better than someone else, with no chances for fixing it). I have no problem with players being a bit powerful, as long as there's still fear of failure. We've considered doing a gestalt game at times, but nothing really has picked up. I'd prefer not to have players keep more than one character, although I don't know what will be necessary.
Can anyone out there give any tips for running the Age of Worms with less players?
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I've been running it with four players (warrior/cleric/rogue/wizard) with no problems. No deaths, not even Death's Door yet, but I up-front had the dwarven cleric in possession of a wand of CLW with 13 charges to start. You should only need to have one additional NPC to work with the PCs. Knowing what the upcoming scenario is, have Allustan/Smenk/Eligos/Tenser/Zagyg/Whoever pair the PCs up with an NPC that will help them the most. Either run the NPC yourself, or have the player's run the additional NPC, rotating the character sheet from session to session so it's not one person's burden.
Sure, Mona ran the original game with 8 PCs. A lot of other DMs have had big parties. Normally I do too. This is the first time I've run a game for four players as per the design of the adventures and I must say the playability is fine and very enjoyable. Use your intuition to drop goodies to help the PCs when you think they'll need it. Make the wand of shatter labelled so the PCs will know to use it against the Wind Warriors, etc. At most, you'll just need to reduce monster numbers a little. Filge has two troglodyte zombies instead of three. The adult owlbear is hurt more. Less cultists, grimlocks, kenku, lizard men, doppelgangers, etc.
You'll do fine. Have fun!
And always avail yourself to the Archives of this board via the Search line. You're not alone in toning down the adventure for two/three players and other people have already made good suggestions. I suggest "scaling down" in your search.
I'm currently running it with only 3 PC's
At 1st level:
1 Human Cleric of Boccob (will multiclass Wiz)
1 Half-Orc Pit Fighter (Urban Barbarian from City Works)
1 Halfling Rogue
I created a NPC to tag along with the party. He's a Human FIghter Str 18, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 7, Wis 9, Cha 9 or the like.
He'll provide the muscle the part needs and is my spot for comedic relief. I gave him a couple of flaws/traits that make him slow and unresponsive. He pretty much does whatever the Pit Fighter tells him to do, and has no real personal initiative.
The party had some problems with the beetlw swarm since they had minimal offensive magic and no alchemists fire. I reccomend swapping the elven armband with 1 or 2 alchemists fires.
For my Shackled City campaign I had all the characters start with second level characters, but with first level XP (0) and money, that way they had some extra punch to survive, but would be the correct level once they got over the lvl 1 hump. Also, we're using Action Points for UA. If I were in your situation I'd probably give them an NPC to fill in any gaps.
~Qualidar~
Yeah, NPCs are good.
Of course, some may quit or die and lose a level.
Lets just say the actions of neutral PCs can make a paladin
retire from adventuring and a hostage get murdered.
I do not recommend allowing anyone to roll up a half dragon.
I tried having them start at 1st level with only 1/3 of
their half dragon traits, but they still quickly became
overpowerful.
They seem to like to kill the bad guys and strip the dungeon
so I am going to add more large monsters.
The Kabold sorcerer from the figure sets has worked out well.
He has become neutral but is still an NPC.
He now has a character sheet and more levels.
I'm currently running the Age of Worms with only three players. My PCs are a half-daelkyr dread necromancer (from Heroes of Horror), a changeling urban druid (from Dragon Magazine) and a psiforged psion. The game is set in Eberron, so the PCs have action points, which help out a lot.
I was a little worried about the mortality rates that I had been reading about on these boards, so I ran the gang through an introductory adventure, designed to let them reach 3/4 of the way to 2nd level. We're about halfway through The Whispering Cairn, and all is well so far. My players are very resourceful, so they're doing much better than I expected, even given the fact that they almost immediately made their way to the True Tomb before exploring the lower levels of the Cairn.
The biggest drawback to my party is their lack of a trap-finder. Thus far, they've managed to trigger most of the traps thanks to the urban druid's companion which is an animated chair named Bill (I have an incredibly creative lady playing the urban druid). The party's scout is actually the psion's psicrystal, which has the highest Spot and Listen score of the party and is appropriately named Spot.
We're also using the Death and Dying rules from Unearthed Arcana, since they're in use in our other Eberron campaign. The Age of Worms campaign is running simultaneously with the original Eberron campaign (in which the PCs just hit 13th level) and the lower level characters have already had some guest stars from the other campaign drop in as NPCs. The players, so they tell me, are having a blast.
Rhen
Have you ever considered using the point buy method for rolling up stats. In my group we use the 32 point buy method. It puts everyone on an even keel, and allows for better customization. With 32 points (versus 28) you get a slightly tougher character.
Gestalting with a small party is not a bad idea, we use gestalt normaly cause the party totals three. However, we will not be for the AoW, the party may have potentialy seven players and a definate five.
Speaking of point buy you can help your players get more powerful (and therefore more survivable) characters by simply using a bigger point buy. A 36 point buy is pretty close to the same thing as having an extra level. Also hand out a couple of cure light wound poitions for each player at start. That will probably see them through the worst of it - after a certian number of adventures they should pretty much morph to be roughly the right power level for the dungeon at hand. For one thing they would be splitting the experience among only 3 of them. Thats a lot of experience - they'll start shooting up levels pretty fast with that much experience.
Probably more than anything else the most important thing is to have the right character classes. For a three person party this means multiclassing. With the new Practiced Spellcaster Feats the Mystic Theurge is a viable option.
In small parties there is a much better chance that anyone will have to get involved in Melee, so EK and some of the fighter/mage PRCs are good. When I run a party like this I usually choose a theme, i.e. all of them are Clerics of Deity X, but one is a fighter/cleric, one is a mystic Theurge, and one is a theif/cleric.
One other useful rounding option is the Arcane Schooling feat in the FR which lets the PC use wizard spell completion Magic Items like wands, etc...
Use magic device is also good because by around 12th level the character should have almost no failure rate.
Also tell your PCs to never underestimate the powers of cheap situation specific magic items like scrolls and potions.
The other thing I would do is start the PCs at 2nd level.
For the most part the earlier levels are much harder with three PCs but at higher levels it might actually be an advantage! When the PCs head into the level 10 adventures they could be as high as 12th level, and have more magic than usual for characters of those levels because they are splitting it up amongst only three characters, and they will have spells to boot that the adventure doesn't taking into account them having.
When I started the campaign I insisted only on the background.
They had to all be fugitives from Keoland.
By the way I hate the Keoland area of Living Grayhawk.
They were allowed to have a certain value of gear they grabbed
on the way out. I allowed 2 of them to play half dragons.
The other half was elf. They started at 1st level with 1/3
their half dragon powers. I also came up with 2 NPCs.
One was a miner who was sick of working the mine.
The other was the halfling being kicked around in the background text. He was a paladin who's Holy Sword had been thrown into the trash by the thugs. That sword was all the gear he started with. A lot of work and the 2 half dragons drove him away with their bad behavior.
I overdid it, but rewarding well done character backgrounds
and filling gaps with NPCs will make a viable party.
If the campaign leads into Keoland, It's going to get very
very ugly.