First time GM with 2 first time players

[insanimal]

Hi all

TL;DR - First time GM with 2 first time players looking for advice on 1st adventure and how to adjust it

I and a couple of friends have recently been playing a bit of old-school WarhammerQuest - if you're not familiar with it it's one of those very hack-and-slash boardgames with dungeons and encounters generated by a deck of cards. While I've never actually played a "proper" RPG, I've always been interested in the culture and have always wanted to give it a try. Now seems like the time to give Pathfinder a try. As such I'm looking to run a game with these friends as 2 PCs.

I'd really love opinions on which adventures would be suitable, and how to adjust them for 2 players.
I had the idea of adjusting down a simple 1st- level adventure, both to introduce them to the game, and to get them to advance a couple of levels, and then perhaps embark on a longer campaign that's designed to be started by 4 or so 1st level characters, which would hopefully need less modification if started with only 2 PCs but of 2nd or 3rd level.
Does anyone have any experience of this working in practice? Or is it just a terrible idea?

I've had a brief look over Crypt of the Everflame as a possibility for the initial adventure, and just wondering how much tinkering is needed - I'm thinking of leaving encounters with a CR of 1 or 2 alone, and reducing any CRs above that by one. Or do I need to alter them all including 1s and 2s?

Am I right in thinking that to reduce a CR by 1 would, at the most basic level, mean reducing the number of enemies by 1/3, i.e have 2 enemies in place of 3? What should I do where there are 4 enemies, or only 1?

Sorry for all the questions and thanks for any answers I may get!
Sam

[MacGurcules]

CR is a tricky thing at low levels. Relative party survivability is going to depend highly on HP and AC. A level 1 sorcerer will fall to a single lucky longsword blow but a high-Con barbarian can take several.

And at that level, a little can go a long way. You may actually find that you can get away with leaving most of the encounters as they are and giving your PCs each a +1 weapon or a couple of points of extra AC.

You can always start it out as is and if it starts getting to be too much, just pull your punches a little. Give all of the badguys -1 to hit or cut back on their HP a little. Going by feel is probably more valuable than trying to math it up at this level.

[Robespierre]

Shoot low before you shoot high. It's better for your party to crush for the first encounter than for you to tpk them.

[ub3r_n3rd]

I would even go so far as to allow your PCs to roll 5d6 instead of 4d6 and toss out the two lowest scores. Try to give them more "heroic" characters and allow them to assign their points as they see fit. Run some 1-shot adventures and see what kind of character they like to play before going into an actual campaign. As the others have said it's always better to err on the side of caution in regards to NPCs they will be fighting, go lower and then gradually ramp up the challenges as you all get better at the mechanics of the game.

[Robespierre]

Do point buy.

[Mr. Shiny]

It depends on what your players choose to play, but one thing we've done with small groups of beginners is to give them a 'band-aid,' either a wand of cure light wounds (if someone can cast that spell and therefore use the wand without a problem) or just have them followed by a NPC Adept who carries the wand and heals them in between fights (or sometimes during particularly harrowing encounters). That way, even if there's a Cleric player, they can devote what little spells they get at first level to other (more fun?) stuff.

I'd also throw my recommendation behind running either 'Master of the Fallen Fortress' or 'To Delve the Dungeon Deep' - both are 'free trials' of Pathfinder adventures (one a module, one part of the PFS play) that give a little bit of everything to a beginner player (and GM) interested in a dungeon-crawl style of game.