Help putting together small (three PC) Jade Regent party....

[grandpoobah]

I'm going to start running Jade Regent for my wife and I, but we'll only have three PCs.

To keep them a little tougher, I've gone with 25 point buy (so PCs can have 14's in tertiary stats to be good at additional skills - like an INT 14 sorceror).

So far the party is shaping up to be

- human Tien sorceror (meastro/geisha), best friend of Ameiko
- human Ulfen barbarian/monk martial artist, caravan guard
- human Varisian inquisitor, family friend of Koya

Right now it's the Inquisitor I'm worried about, as he's essentially fulfilling the roll of Tank (high AC) and healer (only divine caster).

Any thoughts on bulding the Inquisitor? I was thinking Preacher/Witch Hunter of Erastil with the Growth Domain, and picking up Heavy Armor Proficiency soon. That will make him reasonably good at those roles.

And with Koya in the caravan, I assume any serious out-of-combat Divine spells can be handled by her (does she level up during the adventure, cause someone needs to be able to cast Raise Dead, since it's not on the INQ list).

[Haldrick]

I only have experience of running an inquisitor at low levels (1-4th). However as time goes on I am becoming more and more impressed with the class. I do not have any specific build advice, but the party looks viable to me.

As DM you will have to make adjustment for any 3 PC party. Certainly some of the more powerfull divine spells may be a problem. Koya could use scrolls which are added for that purpose etc.

[ElyasRavenwood]

Might i suggest the Gestalt Rules? They allow a small group say around 3 characters to better cover the bases.

I have been running a Kingmaker Campaign with 3 players, their characters are a 1/2 orc cleric/ bard of Desna, an Alchemist/ Sorcerer (gold dragon blood line) who is an escapee from Hermia, and a Paladin/ Cavalier (order of the dragon). They work out pretty well.

[grandpoobah]

ElyasRavenwood wrote:

Might i suggest the Gestalt Rules? They allow a small group say around 3 characters to better cover the bases.

I have been running a Kingmaker Campaign with 3 players, their characters are a 1/2 orc cleric/ bard of Desna, an Alchemist/ Sorcerer (gold dragon blood line) who is an escapee from Hermia, and a Paladin/ Cavalier (order of the dragon). They work out pretty well.

Thanks for the inputs. I'm not a fan of the Gestalt rules myself. I think things will work out OK. I'm going to change one of the NPCs to a Druid (the party meets a second NPC Cleric later), so that there's a spread of spellcasting in the Caravan.

There also appears to be a Maguffin that casts Raise Dead on the party (so no need for Koya to level up anytime soon). The NPCs do level up eventually later, so they can periodically step in for an emergency.

The Inquisitor stayed with Erastil, but moved to the Animal domain - that nets an Animal Companion into the group at Level 4 (and it's a full Animal Companion at level 5 with the Boon Companion Feat).

A few other minor changes might help later. Once thing I saw in Serpent's Skull was ad-hoc character benefits like permanent +1 to CMD from training, etc. I might do this to help flesh out weaknesses as appropriate (i.e. you're constant tutoring by Koya has given you Knowledge Nature as a class skill, or a Specialization in Perception from hunting with the elf).

[KCWM]

If it's a question of healing, provide the players with a CL1 wand of Cure Light Wounds. It won't help with healing in battle, but it will help afterward.

[Peanuts]

I am currently GMing a 3 PC (2 players, same as you) party through Jade Regent. Some things we did:

Party Composition:
Half-Elf Ranger/Fighter - Frontline tank type and main damage dealer. Sword and Board.
Human Oracle of Time - Healer and Buffs with a few other nifty things.
Goblin Wizard - High Dex for good AC and good to hit (with weapon finesse obviously). In desperate need of combat casting however, which he will be taking at 8th with his first level of Eldritch Knight :p (dipped a level of Samurai for roleplay. He has a hopeless crush on Ameiko)

25 point buy. You already got this one.

Characters started at level 2. The section on average party level states that with 3 pcs you actually subtract 1 from APL when determining CRs, so having the PCs a level ahead of where they should be has worked out alright from me. We just finished the second module and the PCs are 2-3k shy of level 8.

If your characters can all survive until the end of book 1 then they'll all be able to be resurrected 1/month... with a slight risk involved (story, not mechanical).

Add some healing items to Book 2. Seriously. The oracle was fine keeping us healed, until we got to the final dungeon, and we realized there hadn't been a single piece of healing gear in the entire book.

You'll also want to tweak the caravan rules. There's a post by Jason Nelson which offers a pretty good suggestion, otherwise for the monster encounters the damage and attacks ramp up far too fast and the caravans can barely survive a single combat. Post quoted below (from the Concerned about the Caravan thread)

Jason Nelson wrote:

The attack, damage, and hit point values for the various caravan encounters, at least in the Hungry Storm, were derived based on average monster values in the Bestiary for monsters of the same CR. Given that it seems to be the case that caravan values don't really measure up combat-wise in the same way that PCs would (unless you go absolutely all-in for combat, and even then not definitely), it seems likely that some adjustment is in order. As James said, it's far easier to adjust monster values (which are unknown to the players) than to have them rejigger their entire caravan plan, especially for those already well along in the campaign.

You could still run it as is, if you want to emphasize that crossing the pole is hellaciously dangerous and difficult.

If you want to make it easier for PCs to feel successful, however, my wholly unofficial seat-of-the-pants workaround suggestion might be to drop the encounter attack bonuses by -5 and have their attacks in cause half the listed damage. I don't think I'd cut the monster hp, though, because otherwise the encounters might be over too quickly; if I did cut them, it might only be like 20 or 25% rather than in half.

It's a simple solution that still conveys a sense of danger without making caravan encounters regularly overwhelming. Nothing grand and glorious in terms of design, but if it works... :)

There's also some discussion about increasing the caravan damage as well in the same thread. I went for a bit of both.

Hope this helps. I'm not a terribly experienced GM though, so YMMV :)

[Bog]

grandpoobah wrote:

The Inquisitor stayed with Erastil, but moved to the Animal domain - that nets an Animal Companion into the group at Level 4 (and it's a full Animal Companion at level 5 with the Boon Companion Feat).

NO! I see this usage of the Boon Companion feat a lot on these messageboards. However, this is not how this feat works! Learning the Boon Companion feat would gain your inquisitor no benefit in this situation.

The feat is listed in Pathfinder Chronicles: Seekers of Secrets and everyone would do themself a favor to read the full description, instead of picking from a list of feats with just short summaries. (And checking sources in general)

No offense intended. This is just something that irks me and my OCD ;)