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I have a party of three and they want me to host a rise of the runelords adventure path but will three players be enough for this adventure path. The players are not min-maxers they are in a half half between min-max and roleplaying so they do not always have the strongest characters. The party they want to run is a cleric with the plant and good domains a human monk and the third player is not decided yet. Is their a way I can help the players so they do not die during one of the earlier encounters?
If they stay ahead about 1 level of the usual curve they should be fine, perhaps giving a minor magic item to start with might help early on, maybe 3 traits instead of 2, a slightly generous pointbuy and full hp for the first 2 levels are all things that might help.
A 20 point buy is a nice early level boost, but will hardly be noticeable by around the end of the second chapter. Giving them extra money early on help as well. My DM gave us bounties we could turn in on goblins in the first chapter. A pair of goblin ears was worth 10gp, a hobgoblin's ears were worth 100gp, and the goblin champions were wroth 5000gp for each of their heads. Another thing your could do is sell items for 60-70% value instead of 50%. Giving them a support NPC that's a level lower helps as well (my group has a cleric named Jeeves).
A completely different route would be using gestalt characters. A monk would struggle to protect his caster friends. A fighter/monk? Not so much. And suddenly that cleric is a cleric/sorcerer, which provides either blasting or 'save or suck/die' along with the buffing and area control options. That leaves the third person to be whatever they'd like, and you'd *still* have a decently rounded party.
Gestalt characters still suffer in terms of actions per round, but creating a well rounded party with few characters becomes much easier.
A completely different route would be using gestalt characters. A monk would struggle to protect his caster friends. A fighter/monk? Not so much. And suddenly that cleric is a cleric/sorcerer, which provides either blasting or 'save or suck/die' along with the buffing and area control options. That leaves the third person to be whatever they'd like, and you'd *still* have a decently rounded party.
Gestalt characters still suffer in terms of actions per round, but creating a well rounded party with few characters becomes much easier.
Hmm that is a problem with my group they have a huge problem with multi-classing they see it as a wasted level. The cleric confirmed he wanted to be a buffing cleric to the now fighter and monk in the party. I see a huge focus on fighting without much spell castings and I do not want to be rude and tell them to become a different type of class for party balance.
If no one wants to play a divine caster, you could have a healbot NPC join the group. Fairly easy to play as the GM and it will siphon off a share of the loot.
Or you could let the PCs hire henchmen like in 1st ed. DnD.
Or do nothing, and tell your players to be cautious/cunning, because they won't be able to win every encounter by fighting fairly. This is probably the best option for power gamers.
Otherwise, recommend "pet" classes like Druid and Summoner where you get 2 for 1. Ankylosaurus can make a great tank with it's insanely high natural armor.
I'd recommend to your PCs to get the "Torchbearer" feat (from Knights of the Inner Sea), which is essentially an early Leadership feat. I personally find it far preferable to a DMPC or anything similar.
Combine that with a higher point-buy (25 pts would sound good). The advice about pet classes is also a sound one.
I've played the RotRL through in a party of three. I played a human fighter/rogue/shadowdancer, and the others played a half-elf cleric of Sarenrae and a halfling ranger (with a shocker lizard as a companion).
Back then there were no bonus traits, we rolled the stats 4d6 (everybody had them above average) and once in a while GM gave us some bonus xp/magic items.
It really depends whether you want to run the game as a roleplaying game or a tactical board game, because GM is ultimately the god of the game. It really doesn't matter what type of characters people are playing, as long as everybody are having a good time
There was another thread discussing Gestalt characters, in which one person said gave a few class combinations that were banned for being too powerful. Fighter/monk was one of them. Making the Monk a full BAB class while giving it more HP and a bunch of extra feats doesn't just fix the flaws of the class, it creates the D&D version of Chuck Norris.
My Runelords game is a three-player game. I compensated by starting everyone out at 2nd level and by running an NPC Thief with the auto-detect trap feature to cope with GM knowledge. It's worked fairly well so far. (We've a solo-class Barbarian, a Bard/Cleric who is sticking with Cleric (1 level of Bard, that's it), and a Ranger/Wizard (2 levels of Ranger, everything else in Wizard) who's going to go for the Eldritch Knight Prestige class. And the NPC thief/wizard, who I'm working toward the Arcane Trickster Prestige class.)
We actually just gained a fourth player (solo-class Sorcerer) but she's not formally joined the group yet (still building her character).
It works out nicely because the NPC thief with the auto-detect lets me check for traps naturally without worrying about it in the game... and the group is diverse enough otherwise (that and a Barbarian wielding a two-handed weapon is... nasty in combat, so multiple front-line warriors isn't needed).
So yeah. Just add an NPC into the mix and you should be golden.
The best recommendation I can make is 1) have a halfling archeologist in town (perhaps replacing Broderick Quint) who can serve as both a way to feed them information and an occasional tag-a-long to deal with traps and locks and whatnot, but not much of a combatant, 2) allow them to build their characters with a 25 point attribute buy and try to keep them 1 level ahead of whatever progression the AP outlines. You should be fine with that.
Add a few side quests to bump up the XP and loot a bit. And expect a few deaths. But you will feel the lack of an arcane caster badly.
My Runelords game is a three-player game. I compensated by starting everyone out at 2nd level and by running an NPC Thief with the auto-detect trap feature to cope with GM knowledge. It's worked fairly well so far. (We've a solo-class Barbarian, a Bard/Cleric who is sticking with Cleric (1 level of Bard, that's it), and a Ranger/Wizard (2 levels of Ranger, everything else in Wizard) who's going to go for the Eldritch Knight Prestige class. And the NPC thief/wizard, who I'm working toward the Arcane Trickster Prestige class.)
Ever consider an Evangelist? I'm running an insane Dwarven Evangelist with the Madness domain who is an epic blast to play.
She's not my character, so it's not up to me. I'm also unfamiliar with the Evangelist Prestige class; seeing this player uses the PRDs for her information, if it's not in a main rulebook then she's not familiar with it.
It's not that necessary though. She's having a blast with the cleric.