I know leading up to the release of this campaign people were quite concerned about the advantage Undead Hunters are going to have. Now that almost all of the books are out, I thought I would revisit this issue.
It seems to me like a party is going to be highly rewarded if they do their absolute best at outfitting themselves to be undead killers.
Book 1
The primary monsters are ghosts, skeletons, zombies and haunts.
Book 2
The primary monsters are definitely golems, but even here we still see a healthy dose of wraiths, ghouls, wights and zombies.
Book 3
The first half is definitely werewolves, but then in the second half we're suddenly up against cultists and skeletons and other undead.
Book 4
The primary monsters are definitely cultists and abberations. We see a couple of undead, but this is the first book where they're almost non-existant. Almost.
Book 5
You're going to be hardpressed to find enemies in here that aren't undead. There are a few, about as many in here as there are undead in Book 4. Not much.
Book 6
Fighting necromancers and their unnatural monstrosities. I'm guessing undead are going to be fairly prevalent in here.
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This isn't a criticism of Paizo. They've apparently had fairly oddball monsters in other adventure paths (such as Serpent's Skull allegedly. This is the first AP I've read). I cannot fault them on the thematic opponents in the AP. It looks like it's going to be a blast.
However it is VERY undead heavy. It also signals fairly early on that undead are going to be the primary enemies the PCs will face. So it makes sense for the players to optimise around killing undead. Ustalav definitely has an undead problem and the locals are well aware of it. It makes sense for major citites to have quite a bit of tools on hand for the PCs to purchase to combat undead.
My only concern is that the PCs are all going to pick up bane undead weapons, the paladin will optimise around killing undead, the other players will take equipment and spells that work well against undead. This is a concern because it seems to me like such a party is going to be able to work their way through the combats rather easily.
When a party optimises against undead, they will have an easier time against undead foes. We find Pathfinder Society to be fun, but ultimately quite easy. We are never in risk of getting TPK'd in combats and it's rare that one of us runs the risk of dying (I can recount times where I've taken 0 damage throughout entire modules).
What has been people's experience thus far? Has Paizo taken into account that PCs will optimise against undead and so have they amped up the difficulty? Have DM's had their players optimise against undead? If so how did they go?
The more I read about this adventure path the more excited I get. But I am concerned about the difficulty level. We're currently playing Council of Thieves and we've found combats to be ludicrously easy, until all of a sudden we face an extremely powerful opponent we're hardpressed to survive against. There isn't much middle ground, it's just the two extremes. I'm concerned this may be true for Carrion Crown as well (and I'm a new GM to 3.5e so I'm less equipped to alter the adventure to take that into account).
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The burst healing of the clerics isn't gonna be that much of a dent except in 1-2 HD skeletons early on, and later is basically a weaker than a fireball fireball that undead get a will 1/2 on. Remember, a wizard deals 10d6 fireballs at level 10, while a cleric deals 10d6 channels at level 19, and the cleric's save will probably be lower than the wizard's (since CHA is a secondary stat for clerics).
Paladins can be a destroyer of undead, but they only get smite a few times a day. If the party is automatically resting after the pal smites, toss some sleepy time encounters at them. Ideally, the party should retreat / rest after all of them have burned most of their resources, not just after the pal has shot his daily cannon once or twice.
Undead bane weapons can be a pain, yes, but that 9000gp has other, more useful uses, than +2 to-hit and +2d6 damage. 2x +2 stat items, a +2 stat ioun stone, +3 bracers of armor / cloaks of resist. If they're burning all their liquid assets in one area, they're neglecting another, and it will eventually catch up to them.
Also, as a GM, you don't have to make +1 Undead Bane Longswords avaiable at every town big enough to sell them. "Oh, Lepidstadt only has 1 undead bane weapon, and its a short spear." YOU'RE the master of the game world's economy, exploit that power if you feel the party is over-looting toward one side. worse comes to worst, and the clr picks up craft arms and armor (detracting from an undead optimized feat), and now they have to spend 9 days at a time doing nothing while the cleric makes each of them fancy new undead mashers.