Which AP for annual gaming weekend?

[Dingleberry]

Once a year, 8 college buddies and I get together for a long weekend to roll dice. I DM this group, and after 4 years, we're finally finishing up Red Hand of Doom (3.5E) this year. Next year we're planning to switch to Pathfinder and play one of the adventure paths - but which one?

Factors:
- The party will be 8 PCs (with a DM PC as needed), but figure we have 0-3 people unable to attend any given year. I know I'll have to put in some serious work scaling the AP as written.
- We all have 20+ years RPG experience. 5 of us play an online Pathfinder game regularly (Rise of the Runelords), but the others will be completely new to Pathfinder, and this may be the only time they roll dice all year.
- I'd prefer to limit to Core and APG, just to keep the options from overwhelming for the new folks, and to help keep the PF regulars from dominating the game with optimized builds.
- I'm inclined to start in the second book of whichever AP we choose, simply because spending a year or more at levels 1-3 will be frustrating for everybody. An option is to run L1-3 with the existing online group, then have the others join in starting in the second book.

RotR is out because many of us are already playing it. Kingmaker would be a blast with this large of a group, but I don't think it works when we're playing so infrequently. I've read through most of Serpent's Skull, but I'm not very familiar with the remaining APs.

Looking for some collective experience and wisdom here - thanks!

[Corcus]

I finished Jade Regent a while ago, while the -Hungry Storm- installment was kinda a bust for my party, they absolutely loved the story and the setting.

I've recently started to run the newest AP which is the Snows of Summer, and so far it is an amazing AP that my PC's are quickly finding is not just a walk in the park for 90% of the encounters.

[Wyrd_Wik]

Though its 3.5 Curse of the Crimson Throne is probably the best of the APs though I'd not recommend skipping Book 1 as it does a very good job of establishing the setting and the city.

Otherwise Carrion Crown is another I'd recommend and would be easy to truncate the inciting incident of Book 1 into Book 2

[Jadeite]

How about playing the Dragon's Demand? It's a "mini AP' that's supposed to span levels 1 to 6, so you might be able to finish it on one weekend.

[notabot]

Some of the APs have quickish 1st books. Skull and shackles book 1 only took my group 7 hours to get through. Legacy of fire was also a quick play for book 1, it is 3.5 so if you don't want to move away from 3.5 yet it is a good option.

[Dingleberry]

Thanks, all. Very good points on CotCT and LoF still being 3.5!

Another factor is linear vs sandbox - given the long gap between sessions that can hurt immersion, what APs have the clearest path for the PCs? It looks like Skull and Shackles would certainly start that way, but I don't know how it works after the first book.

[AndIMustMask]

Serpent's Skull if you want them to hate you forever unless they're playing a paladin (my group has dubbed the first book "oregon trail: the PnP RPG")

Jade Regent and Kingmaker have been a total blast as far as I've seen.

[notabot]

Skull and shackles and kingmaker have huge sandbox mode portions.

Legacy of Fire and Shattered star are extremely linear. Legacy of Fire actually has a very tight window where most of the adventure happens in and is easily the most linear (large portions take place away from towns and have rail shooter feel to it). Shattered Star is basically a dungeon crawl AP where you have to assemble an artifact. Lots more chances for town and wilderness things.

[Story Archer]

Skull and Shackles was the most fun I've ever had playing through any campaign much less an AP and its flexible enough that you can let certain players 'star' in one encounter or another while those who are missing 'stay with the ship'. I've also done an extensive re-write that will allow it to be used for Good characters if that might be an issue.

[Dingleberry]

Thanks again, all! Any thoughts on easiest AP to scale to 8 PCs? In scaling up Red Hand of Doom, I knew I'd have to modify/add enemies, but I was surprised how much I needed to expand the maps to prevent every fight from being ridiculously cramped.

[notabot]

LoF uses 1sq=10 feet for much of the dungeons. And those dungeons are quite huge even then. Most of the combats are multiple enemy type encounters, so scaling for larger parties is just adding a few more. The Solo fights are solved by just adding some lieutenants (a pair of boss-2CR creatures will raise the encounter by 2 total CR, which is enough to offset the double sized party exactly) I'm not a huge fan of just adding levels because the real problem with large parties is the action advantage, which adding levels doesn't address.

Shattered Star uses quite a few bestiary 2-3 monsters (and NPCs have advanced classes including use of archetypes), but the above applies to it too.