... Giving a bit of extra hint at the start seems very appropriate ...
HA! Some of my guys (and myself come to think of it) can't catch a hint from a baseball bat!
But I get your meaning and will see how it pans out.
Yes if you throw both the paladin and halfling under the bus the rest of the party can safely retreat.
Halfling has low-light vision and bonuses to hide, it's *dusk in a forest*, he has shot at getting away and/or hiding.
Paladin... not so much. Paladin's best shot is to do the Paladinly thing and sacrifice himself covering the others' escape. Probably he dies; good death for a Paladin, if it helps his friends get away. He's got a good CHA, though; if the DM is feeling kind, insane axe lady may have him captured for later recreational torture, giving his friends a chance to come up with a rescue plan.
First of all the 90gp thing really hurt.
When we played it we were 4 players, human switch hitter ranger (me), human battle cleric of Iomidae, human rogue and gnome summoner. We did get into the camp late so there were 8 bandits but by going late we have a little more gp that we spend for equipment (but we were still 1st level).
The ranger and the rogue scouted ahead, saw the first sentry but he also saw us (stupid high perception roll on the DM's part here) but we take him out before he sounds the alarm. We scout ahead, see the other sentries and the rest of the bandit camp without being seen, signal off the other two party members to attack and engage the enemy, buffed eidolon jumps into the fray along the cleric, the ranger starts raining death on the sentries, the summoner moves a little closer to the fray and starts summoning eagles to provide flanking for the rogue to sneak attack.
End result?
All of the bandits dead and the dual weilding chick taken prisoner.
What you did wrong?
Well, assuming no stupid die rolls on either side, the underequipped party meeting too many overequiped bandits.
Also not having good party composition for this encounter (very little stealth and very little range), in addition there were a few tactical errors on your part (we kill the sentries, we don't make them laugh).
Keep up, the Kingmaker isn't a hard AP (i might call an easy AP) but it's a very good one (although at times it might become a little grindy).
PS. tell you DM to ban the crafting feats, this is serious, it can very easily ruin your game. Also tell him to ban taking money from the kingdom.
I consider it an asset of Pathfinder (and the systems it grew out of) that running away is difficult at low levels. If it weren't, then there'd be a possibility to look at every encounter with the option to flee a legitimate tactical consideration - and let's face it, that isn't very heroic.
I've been in some meat-grinder adventures (converted AD&D stuff, mostly) where, due to poor party composition, our standard procedure became a) move slowly ahead until we are jumped by bad guys; b) survive long enough to evaluate their tactics; c) retreat, regroup, return with a successful plan. It worked, since we started at higher level, but it wasn't very fun for this to become the norm.
At low levels, it is a nice change of pace to come up against something really deadly and have to tactically withdraw, though. Especially since it would stretch suspension of disbelief for relatively inexperienced adventurers to always come out on top.
The skew of the rules against running away just requires some thinking outside the box - headlong flight isn't (and in my opinion shouldn't be) an option. Some examples:
1) Skill characters - find some cover/concealment, withdraw/tumble away and make a stealth check as part of movement into the terrain. Likely take -5 due to moving over half your speed, but between skill and distance modifiers you've still got good odds. As the bandits pursue your warriors and casters, snipe at them from cover. You're likely in the middle of a patch of difficult terrain, so they can't charge you (and would have to eat an AoO from your teammate to do so anyway). Once you've bought some breathing room for your buddies to pull out, melt into the shadows.
2) Combat characters - disarm / trip / bull rush if you're skilled in it and only in melee with a single enemy, then move away with less chance of reprisal; find a bottleneck, move into it, fight defensively / total defense while your party members get behind you and toss offense over your shoulder; in addition to either of the above, find some cover - this stops you from provoking AoOs, allowing you to potentially run the following turn. Unfortunately, the tactical withdrawal is hardest for these guys.
3) Casters - try to keep at least a few utility spells available to help your party retreat if things go sour. Even at low levels, there are a lot of standouts here...
Bard / Sorcerer / Wizard: daze, cause fear, charm person (all these on the nearest pursuit), expeditious retreat, grease (between party and pursuit), silent image (of a scary monster along the path between your party and the pursuing bad guys, or at least an opaque barrier they can't see through to shoot), sleep
Cleric: obscuring mist (along your path of retreat, but hide to the left and right of the obvious lane - as long as you keep 1 empty square of fog between yourself and the pursuit, they will never see you), sanctuary (and then clog a choke point like the combat guy - or just put it on him in the first place)
Druid: entangle, longstrider, obscuring mist, pass without trace (though honestly, if you need this last one, those are the most dogged bandits I've ever seen in my life)
All of the above spells can help you escape, 100% RAW (except maybe the silent image, but if your GM fiats a bunch of bandits pursuing you through a big scary monster you just "summoned" from thin air...).
Remember that Perception takes -1 for every intervening 10 feet, so if you can get some cover or concealment between you and the pursuit, you don't even have to get too far away for their chances to catch up to you (at least in significant numbers) to approach zero - even for those unskilled in stealth / with high armor check penalties.
I generally attribute much of that "no running" attitude to attacks of opportunity and (on rare occasion) to abilities like pounce... stuff about removing AoO, etc...First thing you did wrong was assume you were invincible and fought against superior odds. When the camp was alerted you should have withdrawn, fled the scene, and came back later, or spied on the camp and snipered easy victims until you had a better chance at victory.
The BIGGEST flaw of the game when 3.0 came out was create this idea of balance, that the players are always expected to win no matter what. I remember in 1st edition walking in a manor at first level and being hit with vampires and demons in the very first room because we looked at the wrong paintings! We had around 5 or so TPKs in that module before we got through the first level!
It never ceases to amaze me. Several times I have thrown a party up against an impossible to beat challenge, and every single time the players never even think once to run away. I have had them ask several times how they were supposed to have beaten it and lived. I always replied with you should have run away and come back later when you were better prepared for it.
Just remember this... if a TPK happens and the players never even once attempt to run away then really it is their fault.
Been playing since 1981. Running away has always been exceedingly rare, no matter how badly outnumbered or outgunned a party is.
Though some wise players have run over the years, they are usually stuck in place backing up the unwise players, who make up about 90% of the gamer population, and who refuse to run or just never think of it.
Since the phenomena predates the complicated withdraw and AoO rules of 3.5, I hardly think they are the cause of it. Countless conversations over the matter across three decades tells me that players either:
1. Assume every encounter is strictly beatable in a stand-up fight because "why else would they be there?"
or
2. Similarly, assume the GM would not actively attempt to kill their characters, and so will back down at some point.
Though a good GM will not kill his PCs to prove a point, the players must remember that a verisimilitudinous game world contains dangers that will actively try to kill PCs, and the GM must fairly play these if there is to be any challenge.
But, long story short, not running? Always been around. Why? Nothing to do with rules, everything to do with player perceptions of an RPG being like a board game, with everybody always on an even level. And that just isn't the way it is.
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I generally attribute much of that "no running" attitude to attacks of opportunity and (on rare occasion) to abilities like pounce... stuff about removing AoO, etc...First thing you did wrong was assume you were invincible and fought against superior odds. When the camp was alerted you should have withdrawn, fled the scene, and came back later, or spied on the camp and snipered easy victims until you had a better chance at victory.
The BIGGEST flaw of the game when 3.0 came out was create this idea of balance, that the players are always expected to win no matter what. I remember in 1st edition walking in a manor at first level and being hit with vampires and demons in the very first room because we looked at the wrong paintings! We had around 5 or so TPKs in that module before we got through the first level!
It never ceases to amaze me. Several times I have thrown a party up against an impossible to beat challenge, and every single time the players never even think once to run away. I have had them ask several times how they were supposed to have beaten it and lived. I always replied with you should have run away and come back later when you were better prepared for it.
Just remember this... if a TPK happens and the players never even once attempt to run away then really it is their fault.
Been playing since 1981. Running away has always been exceedingly rare, no matter how badly outnumbered or outgunned a party is.
Though some wise players have run over the years, they are usually stuck in place backing up the unwise players, who make up about 90% of the gamer population, and who refuse to run or just never think of it.
Since the phenomena predates the complicated withdraw and AoO rules of 3.5, I hardly think they are the cause of it. Countless conversations over the matter across three decades tells me that players either:
1. Assume every encounter is strictly beatable in a stand-up fight because "why else would they be there?"...
It may not be the sole cause of it, but it certainly doesn't help.
There have been several times where I brought up the possibility of fleeing only to realize that the attack of opportunity would almost certainly kill me (or multiple attacks of opportunity, in some cases). Even playing with high acrobatics I've found that to be a problem. The only time it isn't is when I play a caster and warp my way out.
That said, it would be interesting to see a psychological study to see if merely reframing the situation would change how people tended to react. I could easily see something as simple as a different descriptive style influencing this a lot.
I see the problem here. King Maker is an open sandbox and at 1st level this is really tough fight. It's much easier if you are second level. My player had similiar party just swap the fighter for a ranger and the bard for a rogue. I think if my players had hit the bandit camp at 1st level they would done about as well as you did. But since they were 2nd level the fight was almost easy.
This the way things are in KM, be prepared to run. You can use a bit common assumptions too. Dark wooded areas hide more danger than open grasslands. So if you have open grasslands to explore that's good place to start before tacking the woods.
Several things here. First, the idea of GM trust. It sounds like you can trust your GM. It was a really tough fight, your group was not the best equipped or had the best tactics, and yet everybody lived. There may have been some fudging to allow that. (I am totally for GM fudging, btw. And it sounds like this group would be okay with it too.)
On running away. Running away in the woods, at night, when you have low-light vision and the enemies don't should be fairly easy. If one of the other characters can guide the paladin that should give him enough of an edge that he can run away too. Comparing just move speed and assuming that a bow can always target running characters regardless of terrain totally ignores that this is a role-playing game and not a board game. The same with assuming that a cowardly bandit would rush into the dark forest after dangerous enemies.
For spells, there were some great suggestion given above. At some point it was mentioned that the sorcerer cast 3 magic missiles. Image how different things would have been if s/he cast 3 sleep spells instead!
Stick with it. Kingmaker is a great module for a RP heavy group. Especially once you get into the kingdom building.