I recently picked up the anniversary edition of Rise of the Runelords for my group. Unfortunately some of my players have difficulty developing characters that fit within a setting. Lately I've taken to making pre-gens to help sidestep any potential pitfalls and help provide a more seamless transition into the story line. I was hoping to hear from players and GMs alike who have played trough this adventure path and would like to share class suggestions or general campaign advice.
Might want to stick this in the RotR message board, but I'll put my 2 cp in.
It's very fun to run the first part of the adventure with the iconic character pre-gens. I used a party of Valeros, Kyra, Seoni, and Merisiel.
I've found that there are some tough "boss fights" in the first part (Burnt Offerings) so if you have a party that seems to be having a lot of trouble with some particular encounters, you might want to throw them a bone. Or let them suffer through it until they start to think of other creative ways to 'beat' the encounter.
I'll let you know when I've gone a little further, so far we're sticking with the iconics since the players are all new to RPGs. A little friendly GM advice can go a long way.
Most classes should work pretty well, excepting probably the anti paladin. Or any other evil characters in general. The adventure path assumes that the players will want to help out the town of sandpoint and generally be heroic people, so you may want to steer a player or two to that mindset, or at least make sure the whole party isn't a bunch of selfish mercenary people who won't lift a finger for another.
First off, have your players read the players guide.
One of the first things in the book are campaign specific traits, which are designed to help a PC get a background that will help hook them into the adventure. If they aren't too keen on those, or have favorites already picked out, let them have a bonus trait that has to be a campaign trait.
For general campaign advice, be sure to check out the community stuff thread in the runelords forum. There's lots of handouts etc in it, often in easier to access form than the book provides. As I recall, there's speeches from some of the NPC's for the festival in there that the book only provides a guideline of, for instance.
One thing I wish I'd done more in my game would be to expand a bit on the swallowtail festival. My players played a lot of games, but I wished I'd been more familiar with sandpoints many NPC's to introduce more than I did during that time.
The first part has some difficult fights. My party had trouble with Erylium in the catacombs of wrath when the bad guys got inconvenient reinforcements and at a few different points in thistletop, especially malfeshnekor. Don't be afraid to let them convince an NPC in sandpoint to help them out. There's a couple retired paladins who may be up for one more adventure with a decent diplomacy check, for instance. My party brought along Naffer Vosk with them on their second trip into the catacombs; he was a great help, and he enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame in town, especially when the party brought him to the pixies kitten on their dime afterwards. There's also local hero Shalelu and Innkeeper Ameiko Kaijitsu. Ameiko gets fully statted up in the Jade Regent adventure path if you have it or look it up.