Me and my fellow players are about to start the Age of Worms campaign. I will be the DM, and I'm thinking about a way to balance the fact that the party will consist only of three characters, a gnome rogue, an elven fighter (future tempest) and the last one is still uncertain but will be a human paladin, druid or wizard. Has someone played the adventures with only 3 characters? Any suggestions? I'm thinking in playing it by the book, without changes, and perhaps the extra xp will make them gain levels fast and it will balance by itself, but perhaps I should scale the CRs of the encounters... What do you think?
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Since we've only just begun, I can't speak to the long-term workability, but our three-player group is composed of gestalt characters: a Changeling Fighter-Rogue (finesse-fighter, as you might guess); Changeling Wizard-Bard; and Half-Orc Druid-Barbarian. They're hoping to use subtlety and generous amounts of summoned allies to sponge up much of the front-line damage, and wands for the greatest share of their healing magics.
Gestalt characer rules can be found in full here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm
Me and my fellow players are about to start the Age of Worms campaign. I will be the DM, and I'm thinking about a way to balance the fact that the party will consist only of three characters, a gnome rogue, an elven fighter (future tempest) and the last one is still uncertain but will be a human paladin, druid or wizard. Has someone played the adventures with only 3 characters? Any suggestions? I'm thinking in playing it by the book, without changes, and perhaps the extra xp will make them gain levels fast and it will balance by itself, but perhaps I should scale the CRs of the encounters... What do you think?
My group only has three players. I did two things. They start a level or so higher than required and I gave them a cohort. It has worked pretty good no far, but they are a good group too.
I've also just started a AOW campaign with 3 (f Elf Druid; m Human Fighter; m Human Bard) I felt there was no way that they were going to be balanced enough to go through as written so I've allowed them to hire NPC (for shares). They (actually the Bard, since he is the instigator of the party) selected a Earth Genasi Wizard (Delfin's apprentice), a Thefling Rogue, and a Dwarven Barbarian.
I just don't think that you can do AOW as written without at least four. When I have a look at the encounters you really need meat shields and good magic items seem a little on the light side until later on in the arc (IIRC)
My goal was to impress upon them that these were hirelings, not non-player characters (I'm not sure that they have quite grasped that yet ... but we'll see)
I think ideally I love to get it so that they view thier characters as 'the core' and that they just sub additional missing elements in and out at various times depending on what they perceive as thier needs at the time.
The way I see it Daggerford is full of desperate people just looking to glom onto a way out (some 'diamonds in the rough' some just big lumps of coal...)
.nb
BTW - We have just one session under our belts and they have just decended the elevator after releasing the mad slasher and swarm (which I horriblly mishandled in the PC's favor) and are in the workers quarters
so we'll have to see how it goes as we continue
In my games, we usually only have three PCs anyway, and because I always enjoy playing as well as DMing, I usually throw in an NPC to help balance out the party. For AoW, I used a Scro Warmage who was eventually going to pick up a version of the Holocaust Warrior from Dungeon 100 (I do believe it was 100...the Incurison issue). He brought the needed arcane back-up to a group with a human rogue (with incarnum feats), a human ranger/psion (apprentice level), and the human artificer (the same one who chucked a torch into the brown mold *sigh*). The game went very well until that moment. Healing was being supplemented by scrolls and a wand, the ranger was a pseudo-tank, and the warmage played a decent back-up tank (with a 20 str, and ac of 18, and 10 hp, who wouldn't?).
All of these ideas work well for a small group. If you don't like adding to the party, then you'll have to subtract from the encounters...which means *alot* of work for you. Or at least alot more than usual.