I've started losing players over the last month. We started the adventure with 4 gestalt players at level 1. They are now level 4 and just fought the gnoll cleric. They had their asses handed to them. I mean it wasn't even close. Now I've lost another player and we are down to three. Does anyone have any ideas of how we should continue? Any help would be appreciated. I was thinking of a few things.
1. Scale the adventure back to match the EL/CR of the group.
2. Increase the level of the players to match the EL's of the hardest encounters.
3. Add another NPC to the group (a healer since none of them are).
Thanks guys.
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I've started losing players over the last month. We started the adventure with 4 gestalt players at level 1. They are now level 4 and just fought the gnoll cleric. They had their asses handed to them. I mean it wasn't even close. Now I've lost another player and we are down to three. Does anyone have any ideas of how we should continue? Any help would be appreciated. I was thinking of a few things.
1. Scale the adventure back to match the EL/CR of the group.
2. Increase the level of the players to match the EL's of the hardest encounters.
3. Add another NPC to the group (a healer since none of them are).
Thanks guys.
put the game on hold for a month and try to find two more players is my first suggestion.
In my experiences, it doesn't matter how powerful or if the PCs are gestalt characters. If the adventures are set for 6 characters (as the SCAP is), it is manageable if a PC or even 2 fall unconscious or incapacitated during a combat as 4 or 5 can manage to survive. If there's only 3 PCs, it gets exponentially tougher as soon as one character goes down. Even for Gestalt characters with a lot of abilities etc, there just isn't enough actions and attacks in a round to go around when there's only 2. The next thing that happens is another character is now threatened to go down and it just keeps steamrolling.
Robert
Two characters each is a possibility if your players are focused. If they are chatty or easily distracted it will bog the game down fatally. I have seen two-characters play work successfully with up to 4-5 players, but at that point the group coordinator (whether it's a GM or a player) has to really work to keep things moving.
You could alternatively consider level-raising them substantially. A party of three rather than six would suggest two levels; three might be better.
I agree that making the PCs gestalts doesn't do it. We have gestalt PCs for our AoW campaign. At low levels the lethality was still too high; at high levels having so many spellcasters able to do buff casting tilts things the other way; it never quite did what we hoped (increase survivability without a huge increase in power).
Mary
I had a similar situation but at a later stage. I had a 9 player pool from the beginning and had an average of 6 players turn up for every game (once all 9 turned up!) right up to Test of the Smoking Eye. By the end of that adventure I had only 3 players – the 3 core players that turned up every game. Almost done Lords of Oblivion and it has been going fine. This is what I did:
1. I made it clear to the players that the module was for SIX characters and that I wouldn’t be scaling anything. This made the players figure out their own solutions – Leadership feats, Dragon Cohort feat, building much better characters, buying healing wands, pots etc. etc. It also made them very cautious. Always making sure they had escape routes (teleport made this easy once they got it).
2. I introduced Action Points which really gives a benefit to the party.
3. I let Zarik Dhor join the party early on as he has a bond with one of my players and she wants to take him as a cohort. However I make the players play Zarik and he doesn’t have the half-dragon template.
4. I gave everyone a Destiny Card. Basically a one shot item that lets them get out of ANY situation once. So if they get killed they can play the card and say the attack missed.
All those measures allowed the party some breathing space for the XP to roll in. See if the group can survive they are going to be getting treasure and xp for 6 characters. This will more than make up the deficiency in numbers. They just need that initial breathing space. And they MUST have a cleric and a fighter type. That’s key to surviving during the weak stage. I also gave extra XP if needed to make sure they met the minimum level of every adventure.
I wouldn’t scale the adventure at all as you will end up having to do that for every module (which is a lot of work) and the characters will never catch up. Hope those ideas help.
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I had a similar situation but at a later stage. I had a 9 player pool from the beginning and had an average of 6 players turn up for every game (once all 9 turned up!)...
Nine players...wow! Sounds like the old days when modules were designed for up to nine players...
I couldn't find nine players over the age of 25 in this town if my life depended on it...I miss the old days...well, not really;)
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I had a similar situation but at a later stage. I had a 9 player pool from the beginning and had an average of 6 players turn up for every game (once all 9 turned up!)...Nine players...wow! Sounds like the old days when modules were designed for up to nine players...
I couldn't find nine players over the age of 25 in this town if my life depended on it...I miss the old days...well, not really;)
Theres nothing stating you cant have a few 18-24 year olds play, too.
Robert