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If you're one of my players, stay out! :)
It looks likely that I will only have 3 players for my KingMaker campaign. The characters are an Illusionist, an Animal Oracle with a horse companion, and a Barbarian. I've had them make their characters with a 20 point buy.
For those of you with experience running this AP, what adjustments do you think I'll need to make in the first chapter, Stolen Land?
Right now my thought is to advise the party to avoid harder undertakings in the beginning (like taking on the bandit camp) until they can gain some experience and levels by exploring and doing some of the easier quests. Since there are three characters instead of four, they should level a little more quickly than the AP intends. Do you think this party will be able to handle the encounters as is, if they focus on easier things until they gain a level or two?
I've also thought that I'll monitor their progress, and if they really seem to be struggling, I could help them by providing a magic item or two, or giving them some easier random encounters to allow them to level.
What are your thoughts? I'd really like to avoid having to doctor every single encounter if possible, so if something simple would work, like letting the party get a level ahead, or handing out a few minor magic items, that would be preferable.
Thanks in advance for your input.
A lot of Kingmaker encounters are relatively easy to handle for a standard party, so you shouldn't have much trouble except with the tough encounters like the Stag Lord.
Having horses or dogs should be useful early on -- they give you an additional buffer for combat. If all else fails, maybe they can hire mercenaries or something. After a few encounters you should be getting a feel for what you need to do.
Greetings, fellow travellers.
You could also aim for some kind of sponsor (Jhod or Oleg) to guide them gently through the Stolen Lands - problem might be, that the sandbox feeling gets lost.
Depending on how the encounters go, I would adjust reactions of the more intelligent/humanoid opponents accordingly and have them flee if 1/2 or 3/4 of their comrades are killed.
Adjust the number of monsters by 1 (minimum of 1, of course).
Apart from that, I do not see much problems, since your group seems well balanced around the usual suspects (arcane, divine and martial). Rogue is missing, but than again, from experience with my group, there are not that many traps to be encountered.
Ruyan.
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Having an NPC like Jhod or Kesten tag along isn't too bad of an idea. Just let the PCs take the lead, and let the NPC give advice when asked for it. I do this all the time in my games:
"I don't mean to tell you how to do things, but a head on attack of that Fort sounds like suicide. There's more than a dozen of them inside, and one or two might be formidable enough to take us all on at once. If you want to fight this out the old fashioned way I'll have your back, but I didn't get to be captain of a guard company by running head first into a pike line sir." - Kesten
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Dudemeister: Brilliant quote from Kesten! :)
Looking through the book, the possible problem encounters would seem to be:
The bandit camp (if enough time has passed for all of the bandits to be there)
The Stag Lord's keep.
Also, the random encounters of the trolls, shambling mound, and wil-o'-wisp are pretty tough--I'll save those for later levels.
Are there any I'm missing that may be a problem for a party of 3?
I'm thinking I'll try to distract them away from the bandit camp until they're 2nd level, and try to discourage them attacking the keep until they're 4th or even 5th. Does this sound about right?
They're kind of supposed to go after the bandit camp immediately. Have Oleg or someone recommend that they use good tactics, e.g. sneaking up for a dawn attack. You can use this to foreshadow how hard the Stag Lord's keep might be.
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I don't think they're necessarily supposed to go the the bandit camp early. The book says that after they fight the bandits at Oleg's, Oleg will tell them he believes the bandits are cowards and won't show their faces again for at least a few days, hopefully by then his reinforcements from Brevoy will have shown up. As the GM, we know this is true. The reinforcements show up within a couple days.
I plan to use this to discourage them from immediately going after the camp. Oleg will point out that it's only logical to assume the camp will be guarded and fortified, and that there will be more bandits there than what came to the keep. Also, Oleg is quite intimidated by their leader (the woman with the hatchets, can't remember her name), so he'll suggest they be careful when facing her. Hopefully this will be enough to impress on the players they should wait without me having to tell them.
The only consequence of the PCs waiting to go after the bandits is that after 3 days, there will be 8 bandits at the camp instead of 4 (by memory here, but the numbers are close if not exact). Tracking the bandits is not a big deal as the tracks left are extremely easy DC and only increase by +1 DC per day (although I would rule they would be much harder to follow after it rains). Even if the tracks are gone, the camp is only 2 hexes away and will be found by exploration anyway.
My one concern here is if the players decide to "scout out" the camp (perhaps in fear they'll lose the tracks) without engaging the bandits. If they try this, I think there's a pretty good chance (at 1st level) that they'll be spotted and have to engage the bandits whether they want to or not.
As the bandits are only 1st level, facing 8 of them at 2nd or 3rd level may be significantly easier than facing 4 of them at 1st, as the PCs will have more hit points, attack bonus, etc.
What changes would I make for three characters and a 20-point build? None at all. Seriously, the first chapter of Pathfinder APs are deliberately 'easy' in order to ease players in to them. Second chapters too, to a lesser extent.
I don't just mean the encounters are low CR, I mean individually they are very much on the 'low lethality' end of their CR - a few weak opponents rather than one strong one, and frequently some sort of terrain, condition or situation smart players can take advantage of to split up the weak foes even further. You'll see four skeletons with broken & rusty shields (lest the DM felt inclined to make use of their second claw attack) rather than one Orc Barbarian with power attack and a falchion (where one confirmed crit cuts a PC in half). Encounters designed to nickle-and-dime the PCs to death if (and only if!) they're too foolish to run away when they get into trouble.
Truthfully, any half-way competent group of players can successfully complete chapter one of any AP with four 15-point NPC class characters. (True, they'll have to run away from two or three fights, or maybe hit-and-run away, but they can certainly successfully complete the adventure even if they can't kill every single monster.)
Playing with a core group of three people now. Occasionally we can manage to coordinate and get all four players together, but for the most part, when we've been playing, it's usually a three player group*. We're doing just fine, too. We opened the campaign with a brilliant ambush at Oleg's and massacred the bandits in just two rounds. Due to rather poor tactics, the bandit camp did not go quite as smoothly, but we still won. It's the random encounters that have been near wipes. A pack of 4 trolls is not a survivable encounter for 3 level 1 characters. A single troll was a major challenge for our full group at level 2.
In summary, don't worry about the planned encounters, and give your players a chance to run from the random encounters.
*One of the characters (mine) is a master summoner, though.
Diplomacy works great as well. if they make friends with say the kobolds and fey they can get tips. "We saw this HUGE, as in even bigger than you guys, pile of plants walking around to the north. Old Sparks says that it is bad news and just leave it alone."
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I thought I would post an update in case any other GMs decide to run KingMaker for 3 players.
My KingMaker campaign finally started last week. Things were complicated further as one of my 3 players didn't even show up. So with great trepidation, I began the game with 2. I haven't modified any of the encounters.
Luckily for my players, they were as aware of the frailty of their party as I am. The party consists of an elf illusionist and a human oracle. There is also an elf ranger who wasn't present. In the hopes of avoiding a TPK due to small party size, I gave my players a heads-up on the game before starting. I told them that KM may have a higher lethality than some campaigns they may be used to. I told them that due to the sandbox nature of the campaign, just because they came across something doesn't mean they are capable of defeating it. There will be times they should run for their lives. I told them there have been numerous TPKs which, in my opinion, resulted from players charging in and engaging encounters because they assumed anything they encountered would be CR appropriate. Luckily, the players took these warnings to heart. I also told them the AP was designed for 4 players, and that I wasn't planning on scaling down the encounters.
The initial battle at Oleg's went beautifully for the players. They came up with a quite creative plan which involved the illusionist disguising himself as Svetlana (with the help of magic and a really good disguise roll). This allowed him to get close enough to the bandits while they were loading up their horses to get off a color spray.
The bandits don't have great will saves, and I rolled very poorly, so all the bandits hit (3) were affected by the color spray. This left one standing. The (animal mystery) oracle and her animal companion (horse) were able to take care of the remaining bandit while the illusionist and Oleg (who'd been apprised of the plan and had a club stashed near-by) performed coup de grace on the unconscious bandits. One of the bandits lived to regain consciousness only to be slain.
This went very well for the PCs with little damage taken on their part. It really should have. This fight is really stacked in the PCs' favor, and with the smallest amount of planning shouldn't be too rough. However I was really worried about there only being 2 PCs. I briefly considered toning the fight down to only Happs and 2 bandits, but now I'm glad I didn't. I did allow the PCs to use diplomacy to convince Oleg to participate in the fight a little more than he was going to as written. It's some of the other encounters (the bandit camp, mite lair, and Stag Lord's fortress) that I'm concerned about.
After the battle concluded, the players decided to explore the hexes near Oleg's, as they were still a man short. They found the radish patch and handled the kobolds there easily enough.
They also encountered a hunter on his way to Oleg's. He was in a surly mood, but after some diplomacy on the oracle's part, they were able to get him to talk. He told him of some strange happenings in the forest near-by--strange lights at night, moaning, screams, laughter, etc. He's convinced the forest is haunted. After a sleepless hunting expedition, he's on his way back to Brevoy.
The party then traveled to the hex with the fairy dragon nest. Before they were able to find the nest, they made camp for the night. Their campfire attracted the attention of a group of 3 bandits in the area. The bandits decided to attack them and steal all their stuff.
The illusionist was on watch and unfortunately failed his perception check to notice the bandits approaching the camp. The bandits got surprise, which was bad. Luckily for the PCs, the bandits didn't consider one skinny, un-armored elf and one sleeping woman a threat, so while two of them went to subdue the elf, the third attempted to steal the horses. Unfortunately for him, he chose the oracle's companion to try to mount (as it was by far the nicest looking horse). The companion was having none of this, which resulted in a couple rounds of opposed CMB/CMD rolls as the bandit tried to mount the horse.
Meanwhile, the other two bandits beat the elf illusionist into bleeding unconsciousness without him being able to get a spell off (he failed his concentration check). Luckily for the illusionist, by then the oracle had been roused and took the fight to the bandits. She killed one of them easily enough. By then, the bandit messing with the horse gave up his attempts and moved to flank the oracle. The oracle and her horse were able to kill a second bandit and injure the third, at which point he decided discretion was the better part of valor and ran for his life.
In the end, the encounter with the 3 bandits in the woods was much scarier if only because they got a surprise round. This week the ranger should be there, so things will go much more smoothly. I think the first couple levels will be the roughest. Levels 1 and 2 are really squishy. After then, though, hopefully the slightly faster advancement and higher WBL of a 3 person party will at least partially compensate for less people.
I am currently running a Kingmaker with 3 people: a ranger (spell-less variant from 3PP), a rogue/fighter (finesse combatant, looking towards Duelist), and a shaman (also 3PP - similar to druid, though maybe a bit more castery [at least, by her build], gets a spirit companion [which helps a lot]).
I told them at the start, they were going to receive a few boosts, and then I was going to run it as written. I gave them 25 point buy, 3 traits instead of 2, and a feat at 2nd level. I also have already given the rogue a +1 weapon, at level 2 (because he uses an Aldori dueling sword [meaning he won't see one of those turn up], and I made Kressle turn out to be his sister who went into the Stolen Lands years ago and was reported dead [who recently escaped from her prison in Restov and will be a recurring villain, though there's some enchantment going on there from Nyrissa and her minions]. I intend to offer them a little bit of a magic bonus, as well, in terms of items.
So far, because they're pretty clever players, they haven't had an issue in the story encounters except once (Kressle made a preemptive strike against Oleg when they were out exploring, and the party rushed in to save him while they were torturing him to find out the party's plans), in which the rogue went down after trading blows with Kressle, who was also modified to be a CR 3. Obviously, they did win, and no one died.
The random encounter list is rough. They encountered a werewolf that did kill the shaman, though they got a little weak divine intervention from Erastil and got her reincarnated from a human to a halfling. Incidentally, this throws out a number of my plans, because her story was that she is an ex-bandit and has enemies looking for her, so what I had planned kinda flew out the window. They took down the giant whiptail centipede from the mite layer at level 1, though they struggled through that and retreated immediately.
Overall, I would say that what I've done has been fine. It still is a very lethal campaign, and one wrong step might land them in a TPK (which has been closer than you think), but overall, they are standing on that line between being heroic/powerful and fearing for their character's lives.
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My only tip would be to peruse the Obituary thread and scan for any recurring encounters that are likely to lead to TPKs. There are a few encounters that are particularly lethal if the entire party fails their saves, and these you might give a smaller party some item that grants immunity for one person. It is harder to fail 5 saves than 3, so they might need some help through a few of these.