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Here's my 2 cents
1. 25 point buy is fine, but you're right, it does skew the expected xp for the AP. I would suggest leaving them as they are and using ditching the accumulation of xp. Just follow the guidelines in the book and tell your players when they should level. This cuts down on some of the math of trying to stay fair while dividing by three vs four.
A second option would be to slow them down a track, from fast to medium or medium to slow, but I'm not sure if this will fix the issue. you'd have to crunch the numbers to see.
2. Especially with 25 point builds and players splitting treasure three ways instead of four, I wouldn't bump up their treasure. Too much gear is the easiest way to have a game run away from you. When that happens you need to start rewriting baddies to keep up with the arms race. Their enhanced abilities should see them through until the cash starts falling.
3. A well built fighter is always like that at low levels. For the climactic fights, I would fudge things a little to keep your main villains alive for a few rounds. Double hit points and/or +2 to attacks/damage/DCs and/or +2 to AC/saves are an easy way to keep things a little more on par without changing an encounter drastically.
4. This is correct as far as I know, but i don't have books in front of me to find the reference.
Good Luck!
marvin_bishop has covered everything I wanted to say to the first three points.
4] It's in the skill-description for Use Magic Device, p.109. Also available here, on the PRD. The spell has to be on your class list for you to use a wand without issue, but you don't actually have to be able to cast that particular spell.
Hi there, it could be something to do with this:
1)AP's are designed for 4 players at 15 ponit build not 20. I'm running skull and shackles with 3 players so I gave them 20 point buy and having no problems with it. (its the fault of the designers for stating this anywhere in the books so new players and GM's often make this mistake).
2)Gold and wealth is taken into account with the encounters and loot,so you need to take in to account that player wealth also includes armour, weapons, magic items etc they find not just gold.
3)You may need to ave a look at the sheets and make sure everything is correct (skill point allocation, feats, attack mods) but this could be tied in with 1 above and 2 as you may be giving out too much gold and they are buying better equipment and have higher ability scores than they would noramly have.
4)I think maybe that you mean the use magic device skill decription under use wand/staff or item? If you have the skill you can use the item without knowing the spell. If you don't have it then you need to know the spell to use it.
Hope this helps
1- Instead of running it with a 4 member party, we have one that consists of 3 players... using the 25 point buy system.
I don't think a 25-point buy will be a major issue as you get farther along in the campaign. By the end of Module 2, and especially in Module 3, I get the feeling the PCs are going to need the extra levels just to survive. Obviously, it depends on your players, but I don't worry if the first module is "too easy" as long as I'm fairly sure things will get harder later.
2- The second issue If one I've found with gold. Now we've kept as good of track of the items and gold drops as well as the rewards, as we possibly could and no matter how you look at it (gold+ drops included) the total Is always far below the character wealth per level given in the Core Rule Book. Thus I've been throwing extra gold at them to bring them up to the total given there.
Our lvl 3 fighter and cleric both have a heavy suit of armor already and hardly get hit by anything at this point (except spells obviously).
HERE'S your problem! The character wealth per level given in the Core Rule Book is a pipe dream designed by players who hate their GMs. Those money totals are ridiculous. If you've been supplementing their gold so they have the gear according to that table, it's no wonder they're finding the encounters such walkovers. I strongly encourage you to stick with the AP's money. Speaking as a GM, giving away too much money and gear makes the AP encounters waaay too easy. Speaking as a player in Carrion Crown, where my poor 7th-level fighter has a total wealth of only 8500 g.p., playing in a low-wealth campaign is much more mentally challenging, as you have to figure, "What do I REALLY need next?" Seriously, I've got a 7th-level fighter who's got +1 chainmail and a +1 greatsword, and he's happy to have those! Give me the 23,500 I'm 'supposed' to have and I'm suddenly running around in mithral platemail with a Ghost Touch sword, obliterating my enemies.
IF you're playing an AP and not a home-brewed campaign, the PC wealth by level table will make every fight a walkover. You either have to give them less wealth, or up the power of every single encounter.
3- The third is probably an issue connected directly to the first and second but our fighter just seems Over powered compared to the other two.
I've found that a barbarian or fighter wielding a two-handed weapon is just an insane damage machine that has that effect. As spellcasters get 3rd and 4th level spells, it gets better, but up to at least level 5 the fighter's going to embarrass everyone else.
And 4 has already been addressed.
EDIT: Getting off my high horse for a moment (and before James Jacobs yells at me), most of the APs are designed to match PC wealth by level, but *at certain points of the AP*. In RotRL, the PCs don't get their first big payoff until *after* Thistletop, allowing the goblins to be actual threats. Similarly, they don't get any real money in Module 2 until *after* a big fight, at which point they'll easily surpass expected wealth-by-level. If you give them the treasure early, the encounters won't be well-balanced for them. Two characters in full plate and shields will make a mockery of Thistletop, even though that's theoretically within their PC wealth range.
Stick to giving money when the AP says to give money, or many encounters will be too easy.
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Welcome to the hobby! Hopefully you and your friends are having a good amount of fun. That's how you know your playing the game right after all. ;)
So your running an adventure path to open up, and the big one at that given it's new book. There is quite a lot to go through here so I hope we can be at least some help to you.
Alright so you've obviously come to realize that things are getting a bit off given the high amount of wealth and stats given to your players. From what you've written is sounds like they're noticing it to when it comes to combats.
Now at low levels a fighter, especially one with a high strength score and a two handed weapon, is going to one shot a lot of low level monsters. Even with only a 14 strength a character with a greatsword can knock down a goblin in one blow on anything but a minimum damage roll. That kind of thing is normal for the game.
The first problem you should resolve with your group through dialog. Simply explain to them that you think you overdid things a bit with wealth and player power and hopefully, assuming you have reasonable friends, they'll agree and you can as a group audit things down to a more reasonable level so they can get challenged a bit more. It's important to remember that you're all on the same team after all.
The Wealth by Level table is something that exists as a loose guideline for a campaign and that total should be the sum of a character's Wealth not simply their liquid currency. The combination of all their property, money and so forth. Even after that traditionally in most Adventure Paths don't tend to stick with as an even distribution. When you come to running your own adventures it's a nice tool to look at but it should never be the deciding factor to add more or less cash into the pool.
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Thistletop is where only having 3 players will show as a weakness. I personally wouldn't worry if they get the extra xp or loot, so long as it will remain a 3 person party the whole way.
They are going to need to be above level and loot to compete with what is designed for 4 players later on. Perhaps even in some parts of thistletop.
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Well one thing I can tell you is that you're fighter isn't having his weaknesses punished enough if he is getting to run around one-shotting everything. Fighters have a specific scalpel niche in the battlefield, and any creature used to fighting is familiar with what a physically overpowering foe looks like. I have a barbarian doing 11-20 damage a swing in my campaign, but I managed to keep my party on their toes through the Catacombs of Wrath and Thistletop by keeping a few things in mind.
1) The front-liner usually has a weak will save. This means that goblin warchanters, yeth hounds, Lyrie, and other curve balls you can choose to throw in can sometimes dismantle the front-liner with a daze or fear effect. The yeth hounds howling and natural flight ability is INSANELY potent, as it can send the muscle-bound murder machine running and crying (Dropping their weapon in the process) while the demon dogs glide after them with brutal charge attacks or trips. In the Catacombs of Wrath, you can have Erylium hit them with a suggestion to dive into her pool, then cast her Sleep Hex on them. That puts them in mortal danger, and usually takes away the next 2-3 turns of whoever decides to jump in and save them from drowning. Then you cast sleep on that person :P
2) They are weapon dependent. Don't be afraid to abuse disarm or spells like Shatter in order to cut their effectiveness. Remember that your monsters and bad guys aren't just XP Pinatas: They are fighting for their lives, and depriving their enemy of a weapon capable of splitting two of them in half every few seconds can often be a risk worth taking.
3) They tend to do high MELEE damage. It's not a crime for a GM to use the tools at his monsters' disposal. For example Gogmurt the goblin druid in particular can be an INCREDIBLY deadly encounter. The players should already be crouching in the Thistle Tunnels, reducing their speed by half. If they don't surprise Gogmurt first, chances are he or his firepelt cougar should hear them fighting with the group of ten desperate starving goblin refugees. If Gogmurt opens this encounter with an Entangle spell in the center of the party, their speed is cut in half again (For most characters, half of half speed rounds down to 5 feet per move action) which when combined with intermittent entanglement is devastating to melee effectiveness. Gogmurt is as well leveled as he is for a reason: He's killed a lot of longshanks, and these would-be invaders should be no different in his eyes until his spells are exhausted and he is surrounded. Keep in mind he can walk through the walls of the thorny tunnels without being impeded due to his woodland stride, so cornering him is nearly impossible. The same goes for Ripnugget, Lyrie, Orik, and Nualia. Ripnugget can cling to his Gecko as it walks up walls and ceilings. Lyrie can grease a hall and snipe with her magic missiles. Nualia does such incredible damage in her first six turns that she can break or often destroy a weapon with one sunder attempt, and still make a nasty claw attack at the rube holding the now worthless hunk of wood or metal.
4) Like NobodysHome says above, the character wealth per level is a campaign building guideline, but it does well serve you to stick to what Rise of the Runelords says your players find. Controlling player economy is a big deal, and strictly speaking it behooves you to keep your players relatively destitute. This serves two purposes: 1) You want a reasonable price offered for a job to be an effective carrot on a stick. I try to think of every gold piece as the rough equivalent of $20, which means 500 gold pieces as a bounty is the rough equivalent of $10,000. This should make players below 10th level salivate, because it's rare a small town like Sandpoint could offer much more than this out of its coffers (This is if you are in a situation like mine where they need additional monetary incentive). 2) You want to keep your assumed CRs relevant. Balancing encounters gets very difficult if you have to crunch the chances on all the raw numbers. If you don't have the NPC Codex yet, I highly recommend getting it, as the characters provided within all show very good benchmarks of where a character's magical gear should be (It's also an invaluable tool for creating and running encounters with rival adventuring parties.)
In closing, I don't think you are having your monsters do their jobs. There's a reason regular people don't want to go to war or play point man: Being in the fray sucks. It sucks very badly. You get flanked. You get tripped. You get focused.
You are the GM. There's a reason every party needs their spellcasters and ranged attacks. Make that reason stick and burn.
Sometimes those things happen, but in many cases you can use unexpected happenstance to develop things further.
The cleric in my party accidentally killed Tsuto with a little touch attack fire bolt crit (She was trying to burn him for interrogation purposes, but she was standing at the other side of the room and he was merely grappled, not bound, so she accidentally shot the flame bolt into his mouth and exploded his skull).
This same cleric also threatened the jealous diva Allishanda when the girl tripped her on stage during a performance of The Harpy's Curse at the Sandpoint Theater (She was filling in for an AWOL performer and had gotten more flowers and attention from the audience the previous night) and was accused by Jubrayl Vhiski (The Sczarni Gang leader) of sending some filthy miscreant to beat him half to death in an alleyway after a date she had with Jubrayl ended badly (In fact this was a jealous Aldern Foxglove after spying on her, still slowly succumbing to the ghoul fever that will eventually turn him into the Skinsaw Man).
Both occurrences will help to fuel a criminal indictment for Tsuto's unlawful murder, a charge that could potentially allow me to introduce Justice Ironbriar early in the form of a feigned sympathetic duty-bound official who later turns out to be the leader of a cult of vicious killers (Not to mention my eventual plans to have Xanesha manipulate or kill Allishanda, repurposing her as an Envyspawn Bard).
My point is, don't always go strictly by the book. The world is a mess, and killing people can make it even messier. Expand on those hurt feelings and vengeful motivations. That's your role in running an adventure path. Make it your own. Each facet of Karzoug's forces seems generally isolated enough that a little extra flavor and improvisation won't jeopardize the flow of ROTRL
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On XP.
A lot of AP running GMs don't track XP.
I just level-up my PCs at moments which are appropriate to the story and match the advice in the AP.
It means my players always level up after a serious encounter (big boss fight or life-threatening close call).
It also means I don't have to worry about extraneous maths.
Oh and as for the goblins, they are primarily meant for comic relief which makes them far from pointless. Warchief Ripnugget watching the mock-raid over and over was incredibly funny because my party managed to sneak up on them and heard the whole thing, strolling into the room after all the goblins playing their characters had "died" and saying "I remember it differently, Warchief!"
Ripnugget himself is incredibly wily. Stickfoot's speed let him maneuver quickly out of harms way, or put himself in situations where he can fight the PCs one at a time. Another underrated fact is that he can often move with impunity, since his mounted combat feat can negate attacks against stickfoot.
That's also good advice for XP too. There are a lot of merits to scrapping it and calling level-ups when they are appropriate, but this does take away some sense of accomplishment from the players. Any time they have to overcome a challenge with little to no monetary reward, it makes it feel somewhat pointless.
In the practice of scrapping XP, you should probably at least use Hero Points in place of monetary gain when a tough encounter yields little. A destiny changing boost can be a very fun alternative reward to gold. Mind you this shouldn't happen often, as players having a bank of Hero Points can get ludicrous.
There is not a whole lot I can add that ha snot been said already but I will offer up my advice form having run this (at least this leg of the game)twice now.
1. 3 people is a fine way to do it but I would recommend only giving them a 20 point build, especially since your players sound like they are following guides and doing at least a little bit of optimizing. One thing that my party did on both occasions was spare the life of Orik Vancaskerkin and recruit him using leadership which greatly helped them out. You could consider having him follow them around even without leadership if you think 3 players will be a big problem.
2. The gold issue is in no way an issue(in my opinion). Finding large amounts of expensive treasure start happening in part 3 (as well as the hefty cash bounties payed for the masks and the outing of Justice Ironbriar in part two). Eventually, somewhere around part 4 and 5, your wizard will feel like a kid in a candy store with all the spell books and wizard themed items dropping in most encounters.
3. Fighters are overpowered at early levels, but that is your greatest strength at higher levels when it comes to providing a challenge. A first level fighter can cut down a goblin in one hit, but a 5th level one should have a bit of trouble doing the same to an ogre or troll and the confidence they feel in those first few levels can carry on into higher ones and lead directly to a fighter charging head on at an ogre and taking far more damage than he realizes.
I hope this helps!
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That's also good advice for XP too. There are a lot of merits to scrapping it and calling level-ups when they are appropriate, but this does take away some sense of accomplishment from the players. Any time they have to overcome a challenge with little to no monetary reward, it makes it feel somewhat pointless.
In the practice of scrapping XP, you should probably at least use Hero Points in place of monetary gain when a tough encounter yields little. A destiny changing boost can be a very fun alternative reward to gold. Mind you this shouldn't happen often, as players having a bank of Hero Points can get ludicrous.
I'm not sure if players need a tangible reward for every encounter.
If your PCs have got to know the people of Sandpoint then the reward for victory in Thistletop is knowing that they have protected Sandpoint.
XP is not a reward, it is a way of tracking your character's growing experience and ability.
Adventuring for XP is too meta-game for my taste.