Since Paizo announced at GenCon a revision and update of Rise of the Runelords as a hardcover compilation, I'd like to make a request. I encourage others to add their own to this thread. As the release is at least 9 months away, I would hope that there would be room for additions to the plan if the company got enough support for such an idea.
I was getting set to run a RotRL campaign with a new group. However, as I was re-reading the first volume of the AP, I listened to the Know Direction podcast where the announcement was played. As the release would be timed to come out next summer with the miniatures, I decided to change my plan and run Legacy of Fire for this group, and in June, pick up the hardcover RotRL and either start it then and there, or wait til we finish LoF and put RotRL in the queue.
I've run two AP volumes shoe-horned into another campaign, and found some issues with the module as written. Most of these issues centered on the fact that I had 7 20-point characters playing the AP (I hadn't made the char-gen rules, I took over from another GM who needed a break), which resulted in the party steamrolling over most the adventure which ought to have been over their heads.
Now I'm looking at my new AP group rather suspiciously. I gave them a 15-point build, but I have had 8 players sign on to play. While I'll take my lessons learned from the previous AP and buff up Legacy of Fire as I run it, I would really like to see this reprint of Rise of the Runelords include helpful information on running the AP for large parties. Perhaps there could be a chapter detailing what groups of monsters to raise the number of, and which to individually buff up to make a good challenge. I would also like to see options for additional treasure and opportunities for XP (more PCs leads to slower advancement, as there are more shares to divide by).
Ideally this information could be included as a sidebar in each encounter, or perhaps a box at the bottom of the encounter stat block entitled "For Large Parties," which could include additional monsters and treasure the party could be challenged with.
This was the first thing that occurred to me as something I'd like to see in a reprint, and I hope that it's been brought up in planning for the product. As I think of more suggestions, I may add them here. Until then, I offer my thanks to Paizo for thinking this product was a good idea. I can't wait for the figures and the hardcover to come out.
EDIT: Plussing the posts with requests might be a good way for the company to evaluate demand for a feature, rather than sifting through replies.
Creative Director
|
Providing information on an encounter-by-encounter basis on how to rebuild the encounter for a large party, a higher point-buy, or both, would, at my best guess, add at minimum a paragraph of text to each encounter. That would either force us to cut dozens and dozens and dozens of encounters from the Hardcover OR it would force us to increase the size of the book significantly—it would also make adapting the adventures to Pathfinder twice as difficult (and thus take twice as long) AND would set a precedent that we should do the same thing for our current Adventure Path products.
Any one of those reasons is strong enough on their own to not do this, but all of them together make it, to me, not even a remote option.
I understand that some folks run larger groups or more powerful characters... but to those groups I ask them to realize we also have GMs who run small groups (even groups consisting of only one player character) or who also run 10 point buy characters.
By setting up the APs to focus at a midpoint (15 point buy and 4 characters) we make it easier for ALL GMs running an AP to adapt the adventures to their play style. And since 4 characters/15 point buy is the breakdown we assume from the very start of the core rulebook, it makes sense we'd assume the same for our adventures.
When you're preparing to run a double-sized group with stronger PCs overall, your absolute best bet is to go to that adventure's forum here at paizo.com and look for advice from other GMs, or just to ask that advice. And look at how things have gone before; learn from your own experience and adjust Runelords in the same ways you realized in hindsight you should have adjusted previous games.
Or break that group into two groups and run them side by side. That's what I did when my own group of 9 players with 20 point buys got to be too much for me to handle (although that's more of a "too many players at the table mean each player's turn and overall time to take their turns is way too low" situation for me).
By general advice for running unusually huge groups of powerful PCs is to simply add more "mooks" to each fight to keep the group busy, have neighboring encounters bleed in as nearby monsters are attracted to and join fights in progress, and really REALLY work hard to build a game where the players don't fall into the habit of the 15-minute-adventuring day. By forcing a group to spread out its resources, you can challenge even a huge group.
But putting encounter by encounter, or even adventure by adventure, bits of advice on how to adjust the encounter for small or large or weak or powerful parties is, unfortunately, not part of the plan or even the possibilities for the Runelords hardcover.