Sometime next month I plan on kicking off S&S with a group of six friends via Skype. Exactly who they'll be and who they'll be playing are up in the air, as I currently have more prospective players than I'm willing to take on at once.
My question is: will a slightly-larger-than-average party mitigate the adventure path's notorious fatality? I know that you can't overcome every hazard by ganging up on it, but at least it raises the odds of someone having the particular spell/skill/misc to prevent a tragic death.
If that's not enough, I've also considered giving the characters 25-point beginning builds, though I'm very cautious about doing so. 20 points always seemed like just the right amount to me.
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I ran my first two sessions of S&S with 6 players, and I find that it only requires a few adjustments. 25 point buy isn't necessary. My biggest suggestion is to create a couple of different sheets to e-mail out to each player.
One should have all of the daily tasks and night tasks, including jobs, as well as the checks required for each (without the DCs of course).
Another sheet should have a list of most of the major NPCs, especially the crew members, with a short blurb about them, and a place to put that player's relationship with the NPC on the sheet.
I also recommend a sheet where you can write down everyone's starting gear, so that you can have a consolidated location of it until they retain it, especially if they recover it piecemeal.
Some other suggestions to help adjust for 6 people:
I recommend having 3 people be swabs, 2 be riggers, and 1 be the cook's assistant. So have the top two folks with the climb test be the riggers.
Add at least 1 more pirate for "Laying Down the Law", possibly Tam Narwhal Tate, and maybe 2 (Maheem?) depending on how tough you think your party is.
For "Something in the Bilges" I would change 1, maybe two of the rats into "alpha rats", by giving them the advanced template. Adding more rats is troublesome given how crowded the bilges is.
Add another Reefclaw for "Trouble in the Sun."
Also, for the Man's Promise, I would add another Rahadoumi sailor for every encounter.
You will want to throw in another encounter or two during this time to help them gain XP, unless you are going to do that automatically.
That should cover you for a bit. By the time your folks are on the Man's Promise you should have a good idea on how to adjust for everything.
One last note: if several of your people are really good at the Influence checks, then they will quickly switch most of the crew over to their side. I would consider adding a few more crew, and make sure to have a few Rahadoumi sailors end up on the Man's Promise under Plugg. Also, you may want to have Plugg and/or Scourge have a chance to flip crew back to their sides at various points.
Good luck!
things can still get deadly,
And larger groups in the grindylow caves will usually mean the encounters blending into each other more, which will lead to huge and complicated fights with characters in a very disadvantageous battlefield.
Certain single monsters like the Moray Eel can still prove very deadly to single characters, especially small ones.
Larger groups may also hamper progress, leaving the characters much weaker in the final fights.
Hmm... I think enabling Hero Points might be the best way to keep them out of Pharasma's grasp; I might even restrict its use to Cheat Death.
spoilers about bulking up encounters
I think I'll wait and see how they do with a few unmodified encounters first. If things are too easy, then I'll ramp things up.
spoilers about deadliness
I'll keep all of that in mind. I've been considering cutting out the swarms and representing the botfly menace purely through disease; depends on how capable the PCs are of dealing with that kind of thing.
As for XP, they'll get some extra when the adventure path calls for a level-up.
Thanks for the advice and encouragement.
All of those crew and officer positions; I downloaded the S&S player's guide but I can't find them listed anywhere. What am I missing?
All of those crew and officer positions; I downloaded the S&S player's guide but I can't find them listed anywhere. What am I missing?
They are listed in AP-1 under "piraty activities"