a party with no arcaine caster

[The Saltmarsh 6]

Hi all just started the haunting of harrowstone and our party has no arcane caster are we screwed ?

[magnuskn]

Not having a Cleric is much more crippling in the particular AP, but having someone who can do decent damage vs. Incorporeals also is quite helpful. But, mostly make sure you have a Cleric.

[MurphysParadox]

Yeah, it really depends on party make-up than any one class. My group lacks a cleric (we have an inquisitor) and it makes things a bit tough at times but it has yet to kill them (they are just about to finish book 3).

[Victor Zajic]

Not having a cleric actually makes HoH more fun, assuming you're playing Carrion Crown because you enjoy the Gothic Horror genre, and not because you want to have an easy time beating up all the bad guys.

Fighting ghosts that are almost impossible to hurt in an abandoned, haunted prison? It's almost like that's a scary place to be. Blowing up everything with channel positive? Yawn.

You're not screwed if you don't have an arcane caster.

[badpixie]

I agree with Victor: I recently ran Part 1 ('Shadows Over Ustalav' on Obsidian Portal) amd the party were a Druid, a Bard, A Barbarian and a Ranger. I gave them a choice of Cleric or Witch as a support npc and they took the witch: very useful but not really an aggressive caster at 1st or 2nd level. The only change I made was to increase the number of available Haunt siphons from 5 to 8.

Apart from the Marauder all the bad guy combats were challenging, but with a Cleric it would just have been "Pop. Bad guys (mostly)dead".

Better without. The witch was primarily useful in generating potions and skills no-one else had.

Everyone ended at second level (I ramped down the xp and will
adjust future challenges accordingly-approx 1/lvl per book) and the Ranger dualled to Inquisitor (at my suggestion as it fitted his background), as I want to give the Mace in Part 4 to one pc, and I can mod. it for Inquisitor.

[Victor Zajic]

That's going to take A LOT of modifier in the later books. But an interesting take.

[badpixie]

The general rule after book one is simply "reduce villain stats by half" (probably only by 1/3 in book 2).

As the players don't know the stats anyway its hardly difficult.

The players would probably want to play their characters onwards beyond CC, and if they re L15 -16 thats rather tricky.

I know its just personal/ player preference but I just don't like the rapid progression in any of the AP s, and would always tend to tone it down beyond book 1 to allow a more extended character/ campaign life.

[Trinite]

Not having an arcane caster means that you'll have to work harder to find creative, non-spell solutions to problems. If you've got a good, flexible GM, this could be a ton of fun!

[Lumiere Dawnbringer]

a party can do without an arcanist in the beginning, but they will eventually require one.

2 roles every party requires around level 5ish and after

Divine Full Caster

Arcane Full Caster

the roles that are easier to replace

skill monkey? int based arcane caster can cover most of the gaps, also replaceable by certain martially oriented classes such as ranger, or inquisitor

martial? replaceable with a martially inclined divine caster, or a 3/4 bab 2/3 casting class.