If I want to GM an AP with just three players, what should I do to make it work? What I thought about was to give them 20 or even 25 instead of 15 point buy. And in addition to that (or instead) use the fast XP track. But I do not want to overcompensate too much.
With APs that are on track in regards to wealth by level they should get some more by being only three and still high enough with the fast track I guess.
I could allow the squire feat (which turns into the leadership feat later).
When it comes to material I'll probably allowing every PF class except summoner and every PF race except drow noble (drow becoming noble through feats is ok) and dhampir.*
Other suggestions?
And are there APs better suited to doing this?
I know two APs, Kingmaker and CC. Two of the players know kingmaker and I did not like CC so I'd not want to GM it. There are more than enough threads which generally deal with which APs are best. I'm especially looking for input about things special to small groups.
*there have been enough flames about me not liking or allowing dhampirs in the past so please refrain from doing so.
Have them build slightly more optimized characters than normal. Have them cover their bases (one arcane caster, one martial and one divine caster, then have one of them use a class which also is a skill monkey, i.e. Inquisitor, Oracle, Wizard). Remind them that party buffs can make the difference between harrowing fights and easy wins. That's it. AP's can be hard until the third module, after that it should be smooth sailing.
You don't have to go overboard with the buffs, the system itself takes care of high level threats.
It's more work for the GM, but what I do is make an NPC and play it as part of the party. I've done it twice now and it seems to work.
It's more work for the GM, but what I do is make an NPC and play it as part of the party. I've done it twice now and it seems to work.
I have too often seen GMs grab the spotlight by doing so. Because of that I'd rather not do that.
To help the group with choosing classes with synergy will help, sure. As will not having too narrowly focused classes like rogue and fighter.
It's more work for the GM, but what I do is make an NPC and play it as part of the party. I've done it twice now and it seems to work.I have too often seen GMs grab the spotlight by doing so. Because of that I'd rather not do that.
It is difficult because I love all the characters I make, but I try not be the face, don't do the most damage, definitely don't have a catch phrase.
At the same time, don't be a drain on the party and don't take any loot. If they decide to give you loot, great, if not, who cares? That's not what you're there for.In that vein, healers, buffers, debuffers, and controllers make the best GM party members IMHO.
ap is based on 15 point builds, give the 3 players 20 point builds and you should be fine as is. Just monitor it as you play, if it's getting too tough just change the encounters.
Im running s&s for 3 and on book 4, I have not had to tailor any of the encounters, we also us hero points which help.
Give them something to buff them a level prior to the AP and then use the fast track (if it's a medium track XP AP) to give them an XP boost during the AP.
Even with that, depending on the group, you may want to tailor a few of the fights (especially a BBEG or so in the beginning) back so it doesn't end in a TPK.
I think the Jade Reagent AP sounds like an excellent choice. It even has some halfway decent NPC's built right into the plot that you can use for the occasional helping hand. (I haven't read the whole think so it could change later.)
Need to know a bit more about the players to give much specific advice.
Are they experienced at RPG's in general and/or PF in particular?
Do they play PFS?
Are they reasonably decent at building characters or do they just slap something together that sounds good in 5 minutes?
Are they the 'extreme roleplayers' that feel they need to severely gimp their characters to make them memorable?
Do they work together as a team?
Do they make plans or just charge in every time?
Have them read some of the guides. Start with The Forge of Combat (should be mandatory for fairly new players and even most experienced players).
Suggest they design their party as a team. Not each person show up with a character designed in isolation. "Oops, we have a zen archer, a paladin smite archer, and a gunslinger musket master."
Suggest they avoid characters that are too tightly focused or only have one role they can do well. A fighter that concentrates on mounted combat and dumped mental stats, may find it difficult to contribute in a lot of situations.
Inquisitors on the other hand have pretty darn good combat utility, monster knowledges, plus other nifty abilities.
Summoners/druids have the potential for a combat pet, decent casting, and some skills for out of combat.
Combat rogues tend to rely on flanking. The fewer characters the harder that is to set up.
If the players are experienced and organized, pet classes can be especially good.
Squishy characters may find it difficult to survive with fewer people to protect them from the bad guys.
Suggest everyone have at least one useful out of combat role.
Examples. Hammer martial with knowledge local and sense motive. Anvil caster with social skills and a familiar to scout. Etc...
They should give extra consideration to the teamwork feats.
An item to watch out for is too much concentration on combat capability. A small group may be worried about combat and so they will really concentrate on taking care of that. You end up with 3 combat machines. But then the group can't handle any of the social or investigating aspects of the campaign.
Ask them to post their planned builds here and ask for advice.
Most GM's feel the need to re-write most/many combat encounters to challenge experienced players. You probably won't need to do that. At least not as much.
I would not use 25 points or fast track. Certainly not both. The AP's are written assuming 15 point buy, pretty inexperienced players, with rather poor optimization.
Fast track will have them too high level later on.
I would use 20 point buy.
Don't give xp's. Just advance their levels based on their point in the plot. The AP's say things like "The party should be level X by the time they reach Y." Make them level X+1 when they get to Y.
Count cites shops as 1 category higher when figuring out how many magic items could be there, so they have a little better selection.
If you have 5 more point buy, +1 level, and don't upscale the combats you should be fine for most groups of 3 players.
Finally, use the Hero Point system for an occasional get out of death free card.
That's the situation with my current gaming group. We solved it by having each player run two characters. While that almost inverts the issues (since you'll have 6 characters instead of 3), it does allow for more flexibility. The power loss with only 3 characters instead of 4 is MUCH worse than from 5 down to 4. Many encounters just can't be rebalanced effectively for only 3 characters.
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A lot of the APs have a number of NPCs that can help the party on a full time or part time basis. So you don't need to make a full GMPC character.
Also there is leadership at level 7 as well as the various pet classes that help balance out the players.
As for specific APs, Skull and Shackles would work well with only three players. The players have their own ship and crew, so it can give the players a host of specific lower level NPCs to fill in needed roles from time to time.
From my experience, what will make or break the party is how well the players actually coordinate. Three PCs with a good number of synergies can easily do more than 4 random PCs minimal coordination.
Need to know a bit more about the players to give much specific advice.
Are they experienced at RPG's in general and/or PF in particular?
Do they play PFS?
Are they reasonably decent at building characters or do they just slap something together that sounds good in 5 minutes?
Are they the 'extreme roleplayers' that feel they need to severely gimp their characters to make them memorable?
Do they work together as a team?
Do they make plans or just charge in every time?
One is very experienced in RPGs but not so much in D&D or PF. He played part 1 of kingmaker and took over the gm seat after that but we had only 2 sessions since then. With another group he GMed some other short beginners adventures.
The second is the first's fiancé. I don't know too much about her past rpg experiences but she has some and already build several PCs without much help.The third is a bit special, no grasp of the rules, depended fully on me for his two PF chars (1 unplayed) and is a bit on the childish power-hungry side. Has a short attention span and is a little unpredictable.
None of us has any PFS experience.
What I think I'm going to do is let them build at 20BP, give them toughness for free to make them more survivable and give them a bit more starting money (not sure how much, probably less than the rich parents traits would give them). What do you think about that?
But before I start an AP I'll be playing some other adventures with them. Hollow's last hope and crown of the kobold kings will be the first. So I still have some time to decide what to do and which AP to play. And time for more good advice.
Thanks to the ideas so far.
Just play it - they'll end up slightly higher level than a 4 person party (about 1 higher most of the time). Good ability score generation can help avoid accidental TPKs.
We played a whole AP with 2 bards and a monk (one bard might have been more of a paladin, and we might have gotten a ranger halfway through, but still!)
As for specific APs, Skull and Shackles would work well with only three players. The players have their own ship and crew, so it can give the players a host of specific lower level NPCs to fill in needed roles from time to time.
I'll take a look at that one. I like pirate settings but every time I tried to GM one it didn't go well because the PCs were just too nice or too timid to be pirates. But that was in shadowrun. Perhaps it would be different in PF.
If I want to GM an AP with just three players, what should I do to make it work? What I thought about was to give them 20 or even 25 instead of 15 point buy. And in addition to that (or instead) use the fast XP track. But I do not want to overcompensate too much.
With APs that are on track in regards to wealth by level they should get some more by being only three and still high enough with the fast track I guess.
I could allow the squire feat (which turns into the leadership feat later).
When it comes to material I'll probably allowing every PF class except summoner and every PF race except drow noble (drow becoming noble through feats is ok) and dhampir.*Other suggestions?
And are there APs better suited to doing this?I know two APs, Kingmaker and CC. Two of the players know kingmaker and I did not like CC so I'd not want to GM it. There are more than enough threads which generally deal with which APs are best. I'm especially looking for input about things special to small groups.
*there have been enough flames about me not liking or allowing dhampirs in the past so please refrain from doing so.
I've done this. I handled it in 2 relatively easy ways.
1. Reconsider your position on the summoner. I get it has issues, is easily exploited and easy to make mistakes. But a small party is probably where the class belongs. I would strongly encourage my players to create multi role flexible and powerful characters. If you have a summoner and a druid (reasonably optimized), you probably have to do very little to be able to run published adventures. Other classes that are good here are paladins, rangers, magi, bards, inquisitors, alchemists. The ones that cover more then one base. Clerics who can fight are also good here.
2. Give them something extra besides straight power. Alot of people go with higher point buys, more treasure or higher levels to deal with small parties. I recommend giving abilities. Specifically, I gave everyone a free 'archetype' from the rogue genius games 'archetype' products, on the condition that whichever archetype you chose didnt match your class' main focus. IE a fighter type didnt take a martial archetype, an arcane caster didnt take an arcane archetype etc. This expanded their abilities and upped their power a bit, but didnt throw off the overall math of the system.
With these two things combined (in particular with a pet or other action economy boosting character) a 3 person party worked just fine with published adventures.
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One is very experienced in RPGs but not so much in D&D or PF. He played part 1 of kingmaker and took over the gm seat after that but we had only 2 sessions since then. With another group he GMed some other short beginners adventures.
The second is the first's fiancé. I don't know too much about her past rpg experiences but she has some and already build several PCs without much help.
The third is a bit special, no grasp of the rules, depended fully on me for his two PF chars (1 unplayed) and is a bit on the childish power-hungry side. Has a short attention span and is a little unpredictable.None of us has any PFS experience.
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Ok, based on that, I wouldn't recommend any of the real complex classes or multiclass builds. Those are likely to confuse anyone without loads of experience. So would NOT suggest alchemist, druid, or summoner. People screw those up constantly. The ranger/sorc/dragon disciple/eldritch knight is probably also a poor choice. A gish character in general is kinda hard to play because there are so many things to learn and remember.
I would go single class or just maybe a 1-2 level dip in another class if really needed.
Ranger, lore warden fighter, sage sorc, and lore oracle would be good choices. The experienced player could probably handle inquisitor just fine if he wants to try it.
Those will give them skill ranks, class skills, scouting, social skills, and combat capabilities without overloading them.
I would suggest 'The third' play a switch hitting ranger (check the guides) with some scouting capability and ranks in sense motive to use in social situations. maybe an archtype that loses the spells if you don't think he will take the time to learn them.
Note: I suggest spontaneous casters so that they don't have to learn how a bazillion spells work. Just be a bit generous on allowing them to retrain the spells when they find something isn't working out the way they thought it would.
If they make their party as a group and you help them come up with a balanced team that has the major functions covered, they should be fine. You should give them some tactical pointers every so often when something would be helpful that they haven't considered before.
Second vote for Jade Regent. The NPCs are both omnipresent and flavorful in that one, and it's not uncommon for a player to end up playing one of the NPCs in the event that their PC dies. Bumping them up to not-quite-PC status wouldn't be much extra work as the GM should have already devoted some time developing their personas.
Serpent's Skull has some NPCs at the beginning that could be used similarly, though they're not quite as well developed.
That's if you actually go the GMPC route. Gestalt, hero points, or maybe mythic is another route you could take to increase PC survivability and flexibility.
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I agree with the 'let them run multiples' advice. Either characters of their own, or prominent NPCs. I'd suggest, though, a table rule where players have full control of their primary PC only, and that a table consensus can override control of a secondary character. That way if someone goes way off the rails, the group can rein them back in.
I have sometimes allowed multiple PC's in the past. Results were mixed.
However, these are relatively inexperienced players. I would expect them to have enough troubles handling just the 1 PC. I think having inexperienced players try to run 2 PC's is just asking for confusion and more mistakes.
But it's not impossible if that's what you really want to do and you think they (and you) can handle it.
If the players are one level ahead of what the AP would suggest, you would be fine, this also leaves the option of a 4th member more open than a 20/25 point buy. Ps 3 players is really nice to play. More place for the players to be active, more individual focus options for the GM.
If one of the players does not mind, allow them to run a 2nd PC, but do not force them to take the leadership feat.
You can also scale back the encounters by 1 CR.
Let them take the leadership feat, and pull in cohorts to assist when they reach appropriate levels. There's a big difference between 3xLvl7 and 3xLvl7+3Lvl5. You'll also be gaining XP faster as a 3 member party than as 4 or 5.
In fact, if you look at APL values:
3 x Lvl-7 = APL 6
4 x Lvl-7 = APL 7
3 x Lvl-7 & 3 x Lvl-5 = APL 7
If I allow Leadership then only as an upgrade from the squire feat with those limitations. At least when it comes to class choice.
A squire can only take levels in a class that grants proficiency with all martial weapons as a class feature, such as paladin, gunslinger, cavalier, or fighter. She cannot multiclass, though she may take any archetype she qualifies for.
If I allow Leadership then only as an upgrade from the squire feat with those limitations. At least when it comes to class choice.
A squire can only take levels in a class that grants proficiency with all martial weapons as a class feature, such as paladin, gunslinger, cavalier, or fighter. She cannot multiclass, though she may take any archetype she qualifies for.
You can restrict it with that rule, or simply restrict it by role playing. A cohort follows the master by respect, not by hiring, therefore, I'm not really sure the player should have that much control over who he can find, especially mid-adventure. I think they should start as a DM created NPC, and then be taken over by the character for future advancement. I see no reason why they wouldn't be able to, say in the instance of a wizard PC, multiclass levels of wizard after starting following the master, as they emulate and learn from them. Conversely, it might make sense for a minor spellcaster to follow a full spellcaster, so perhaps have a 5th level magus glom onto your 7th level wizard PC to hone their arcane talents.
It would also suck for your rogue PC to end up with a cavalier or fighter cohort, that would be unable to follow him on stealth excursions.
To be honest, I had forgotten about the Squire feat, and that may actually be a earlier help to the party, as it is available at 3rd level, instead of having to wait to 7th for Leadership. It would also only be available for perhaps one of the party members, which might allow the assistance to grow more gradually over time. So as the party reaches 3rd, they bring in a 1st level fighter or paladin to assist them, whi grows in levels with the party (always staying 2 levels behind the master), that squire would naturally become the fighter's cohort when the feat automatically converts to the leadership feat at 7th level.
Great suggestions overall. :-)
I admit I only glanced over some of the replies, but has anyone considered possibly allowing gestalt builds?
I think just throwing more stat points out than you usually would, and making sure they have a well-balanced party is all you need to do. The extra 33% more experience and loot per PC they end up with not having to split things 4 ways is going to make a really noticable difference, no need to speed it up past that.
I think I'm right that 3 PCs getting 4 PCs' worth of XP, and Fast Track on a Medium Track adventure, would typically put the PCs at +2 Levels? That ought to be plenty I'd think.
Three players can go pretty much bog-standard, in my opinion. Our Carrion Crown campaign is on hiatus at the moment because one of the players has moved to a different town for university, but he comes back during holidays and we play then.
However, we've gotten (so far) to halfway through the fourth CC instalment, and my biggest problem is that they're *overpowered* and keep blasting through encounters too easily. The only change I allowed was a 25-point buy, and I introduced Mythic rules towards the end of the third instalment (Broken Moon - players/GMs of that adventure will know where! :) ). But to compensate for the Mythic level, I've essentially held them back a level (I'm levelling them where appropriate, rather than doling out XP) and made anything above enemy mooks mythic characters/monsters as well.
STILL, they're getting through largely unscathed!
So, if you have a group who know what they're doing and have optimised their characters for the campaign (we have a half-orc cavalier/oracle, a dhampir inquisitor and a human ranger/rogue), I don't think you'll have any problems with them getting through most adventure paths!
In my opinion if the PCs are moderetely optimized then you could pretty much go on as normal, the higher wealth (because they will be splitting treasure 3 ways instead of 4) will be more than enough to buff them, APs tend to be that easy.
So my suggestion is for them to be careful with the characters they make and party composition, 1 melee martial, 1 full divine caster (preferably someone who can fight at melee) and 1 full arcane should do the trick, give them 15 point buy and level them up when the AP tells you to do so. If you are overly concerned you can also start them at 2nd level and have them be 1 higher level than the AP tells you.