I am running a Kingmaker game. Because of the large group (7 players at last count consisting of a gunslinger, druid, cleric, rogue, ranger and two sorcerers (one arcane, one draconic)) I have been using the 6 player conversions up on the forum, and adding a little extra to the stats, perhaps an extra 10%HP overall to the monsters HP and +1 or so to attacks etc.
However, the group seems to almost walk through many of the encounters that they come across in the game. The Kobold Tribe for example was a diplomatic encounter for them, and with a a sorcerer who took charge of negotiations and was rolling epically, they soon wiped out the BBEG of the lair.
The mites were a little trickier, but only because I judged that all the tunnels imposed the squeezing condition on the players and so they had to work a little harder for the victory. Slaughtered them to a man (or mite?) and with only minor casualties. The Barrow in the second book caused them more trouble, and only then because I also threw a willow wisp at them which proceeded to nearly kill two of the players.
Because of the large group size, splitting the party is not a tactic I wish to use particularly. It would mean too much downtime for the part of the party that is not playing in my opinion.
So, why do I want help with this party? Most combat encounters either seem to be cakewalks for them, or are almost overbearingly powerful. The best case is that of the scythe tree whereby it very nearly killed two of the party in as many rounds. It was only through some very lucky channels and the gunslinger using alchemical cartridges of fire that the party survived that one.
I need help with the party, as on the one hand I want to keep up a fairly lethal game, but on the other hand, so far there have been no actual fatalities in the game, but a lot of knocking out of people. One of the players has managed to be turned into a lycanthrope, although thanks to cloaks of resistance that the arcane blood sorcerer has crafted, the will save is pitiful for him to make now.
I need help in two ways really.
1) How to make encounters difficult for the party without overwhelming them?
2) How to get them to actually want to do some of the kingdom building stages. Allegedly they are all interested in the mechanics of it, but with the same token, they seem to be purely interested in doing the exploration side of the books, and not actually settling down to make something of the kingdom.
Help?
|
You should not be trying to kill your players. You should only be trying to get them close enough to keep the fear of that possibility alive. On this front, it sounds like you're already doing fine. If people are getting knocked out here and there, but no-one's actually dying, you're in a good spot. Eventually someone will do something stupid and get themselves killed, but that happens.
I refer you to an adage I follow when I DM: "The DM does not kill players. Players kill players."
In other words: Your goal should never be to kill players, but rather to always leave them close enough that a couple stupid moves (or a lot of bad luck) on their part will cause their death.
TL;DR - You're fine.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
|
1) That is very difficult with a large party, but it should be doable. My first suggestion is to play the enemies smarter. Use more ambushes, combat maneuvers, have bad guys aid each other to gain an extra +2 to hit or armor, and allow the bad guys to take advantage of terrain.
I would also add in more dangers to the terrain.
Additionally, you can add in more non-combat encounters. Have a few that really annoy the party and reduce their resources. For example, have them be robbed by stealthy bandit or something. You could also have a few environmental challenges, as you should be using the weather chart with this game. Add in a couple extreme weather conditions, like flooding or tornados, that they have deal with.
2) I honestly felt that the kingdom building was good and fun, but was lacking something in the events department. You might want to consider picking up "Guide to the River Kingdoms." It is a 3pp supplement that combines the wilderness exploration, kingdom building, and army rules into one place and then expands on them a little bit.
You could also look into expanding the events so that they are a bit more roleplay centered. You could have it so, depending on how they are handled, there are good and bad consequences.
Lastly, I would suggest that kingdom building be done in the beginning of the play session, not in the middle or the end. This way it is out of the way and non-intrusive to the game and story. You should also try to find something for everyone to do in kingdom building. And encourage everyone to eventually found their own city. This way, they will each have an invested interest in kingdom building and feel like they have a say in how it is built.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would advise- be careful with crafting. With infinite downtime and a miniscule feat tax between 7 players to get the crafting feats between them, they can easily double WBL with RAW craftin- this will make it even harder to tune encounters to them and create further work for you.
Caleb, I rather like your idea of each of the players running their own city, will certainly pitch it to the players in the next session.
I have been attempting to steer them towards non combat encounters, and have have done pretty well. There have been several sessions where there have been few if any encounters.
As of yet they have been good about the crafting, not abusing it in any sense, but certainly it is something that I will be looking into.
In addition to this all, I have actually kept them to wealth by level of a 3rd party group despite being 5th level, throwing fairly normal treasure at them, but the headache is still rather large for me at times.
I'm playing Kingmaker right now, and our party is a little ahead of yours.
1) Stomping the combat encounters - I have two suggestions. First, if your players are fairly narrativist, just run the fights by ear. Make them a bit harder as you go, just to keep them interesting.
Second, change the "explore a hex" mechanic to require NPCs. One thing that's very odd about Kingmaker so far is that the party rarely has more than one fight per day. That allows them to dump all of their best resources on a single encounter, essentially making the party quite bit more powerful. It would be great to have 2-4 encounters per day, but why, after having "the" encounter in a hex, would the party move on to the next one and leave the current one unexplored?
If it took the PCs to do a quick scouting run (Roll perception, have encounter, move on), then a team of NPC cartographers a week to "settle and claim" the hex, the players could get more done in an adventuring day.
2) Kingdom Building loses interestIt's really hard to involve 7 people in the kingdom building decisions. I suggest polling your players to find out who's interested in taking on that area.
I have been more or less ignoring Monster HP till I feel that they have had a decent fight. The worrying thing is that a single will-o-wisp can almost wipe out the sorcerers abilities as the other characters seem to have a curse on their dice when I use them. I have never seen so many 1's, 2's and 3's rolled in my life before.
The poll idea is tempting. I rather like it.
I would advise- be careful with crafting. With infinite downtime and a miniscule feat tax between 7 players to get the crafting feats between them, they can easily double WBL with RAW craftin- this will make it even harder to tune encounters to them and create further work for you.
Not double, but close enough. I wish the devs would give us some hard clarifications about how item creation is intended to affect WBL.