Hi Guys,
Was just wondering. Most of the published adventures assume that there are four members in one's adventuring party. There are times wherein we have less than four players during our game. Which do you normally adjust - the adventure's level or the character levels? If so, how do you guys do such adjustments?
Thanks
MV
Several options exist.
1. Alter the adventure.
2. Have an NPC that sticks to the sidelines. Bard or something similar for example.
3. Have the PCs play more than one character.
4. Go Gelestalt. That is where one character has two classes.
5. Have the PCs take leadership and have companions.
6. Have one of the PCs play a Druid. They have an animal companion that kicks some serios tail!
Good luck!
Thanks! I'll take those into consideration. One of the players though suggest simply increasing the levels of the characters by 1 per lacking player. (Thus, for a game for four 5th level characters, three charaters of 6th level should suffice). What do you guys think? Is that balance for the players/safe for the game?
Again, Thanks.
MV
Several options exist.
1. Alter the adventure.
2. Have an NPC that sticks to the sidelines. Bard or something similar for example.
3. Have the PCs play more than one character.
4. Go Gelestalt. That is where one character has two classes.
5. Have the PCs take leadership and have companions.
6. Have one of the PCs play a Druid. They have an animal companion that kicks some serios tail!Good luck!
That... sometimes works. The trouble is, with fewer players, they can be overwelmed easier. Or if you make them too powerful, they can overwhelm the adventure. Talk to the players about other ideas, but upping them by a level may work. Good luck.
Also, do not go more than a level or two above the requirements. Sometimes there are other reasons for having those level requirements.
To also add a few point... Alow them to use diplomacy and negotation to bypass some encounters and give them exp for that. Remind them that not every fight should be fought!
Depending on how powerful the builds of your PCs are, you can add one or two NPCs. I run a two-men party, with two very well-balanced PCs. I sometimes have one or two NPCs join them. The players usually take semi-control of the NPCs, especially in combat (I think the DM have enough to handle in combat as it is).
Make the NPCs one (or two) level(s) lower than the PCs, so they don't weigh too heavily in combat.
The advantage of using NPCs is that you can tie them in with the current adventure. They alos prevent the PCs from getting too much loot (since they have to share).
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I play for years now with sometimes only two players (presently three).
I can tell you there is no one functioning rule to get along with too less players.
Two things which are very important and should be checked for every encounter (doing example fights for yourself beforehand).
1. Two players have only two actions worth to do something against an opponent! That's two actions less than the encounter is written for. This sometimes gets a heavy problem! Gestalt PC don't do away with this!
2. Saving throws. If an opponent has an attack with which he can "deactivate" one of your pcs if that one just don't make his save, than there's only one left. I normally try to NOT USE these abilities, or come up with something else to make the opponent a memorable one. Remember - your players normally don't realize the opponent is giving up a special attack against them!
I once had a medusa petrifying almost all soldiers of the city watch team which hired the pcs to help them out. This gave my players the feeling of the nastiness of the encounter without needing me to use it against them.
Am npc class I found VERY HELPFULL to fill up a party with less than 4 players is the Factotum (from Dungeonscape)!!! Not a good pc class, but when used as an npc...great!!!
I have 3 players and they need some help from timeto time:)
1. as previously posted; make him/her 2levels under the pc's or make him start out in a NPC class. (specialist is a good one - lots of skillpts.
2. Later give him levels in fighter, maybe a rogue (spellcasting is for PC's, and it simplifies things + the HP's help keep him alive:))
3. make him a "friend of the family" or a relative of one of the PC's ( so that they dont use him for bait all the time)
4. make him good at max 2 things that the PC's need( skills and/ or 1 combat function - ranged or melee etc. so the PC's will need him from time to time , but not overshadow them.
5. make him a stereotype - and give him one major flaw; like 7gambling/drunkenness/stealing/cowardly( for ease of roleplaying - you can let the other players control him when you're busy - the flaw will give him some "flavour".
6 make him likeable - if he's ment to last.
Dryder's observations are good ones. I've run with three players for the Age of Worms, from about level 5 to level 18, then down to 2 players to almost level 20 now. One player was keen on Leadership, which helps get the "number of activations per round" sorted, and also the players used multi-classing to make sure the three main PC's covered all the main bases required. I let the main PC's be 1-2 levels ahead of the adventure as written to help make up, as spell casters are especially disadvantaged by being multi-classed.
I have found that as things got higher and higher level, the frailty of the three PC party is noticed more - as Dryder says, it's easier for one PC to get taken out and the rest of the group is toast (unless they can quickly get that PC back into action). With only two players, I've re-worked it so there's two followers, so it's still a 4 character party, otherwise I'm sure they would not survive (the players always control the NPC's, not me). So we have two PC's at one or two levels above the adventure, and two followers around one level below (I've fudged the leadership rules here, as at high levels the follower's levels flatten off and they max out at 17th which is not high enough for my guys party composition).
Ultimately though, a lot of it comes down to how good your players are, as good players with good character builds can make up for a lot, so as DM you can see how they go and adjust future adventures as you see how they go in the current one.