Challenges for high power.

[Blackstorm]

So, next saturday I'll start 2nd session of Kingmaker. In the 1st the group meet themselves and goes through a random encounter while they were heading to Oleg's outpost. In the next session they'll start to face the stolen lands bandits and similar.

Now, as the vast majority of my players wanted to roll stats, and I let them did it, now I have an above average party of 5. I'm still using the awesome 6 players conversion I found on this forum, but I feel it's not enough. I generally don't have problem with really high scores (I have no need to hold the blows, I can hit hard), but I never mastered a module, I've always GMed self made adventures and campaign, sometimes taking ideas from existing adventures. So, I'd like, this time, to stick to the campaign, and I think I need suggestions to keep up the challenges.

Actually, the group is:
Ranger archer, straight
Monk, future monk/druid
Rogue, straight
Rogue that want to go into arcane trickster
Monk, straight.

There's actually 2 pc/npc, a couple of frieds that want to play sometimes, a second ranger archer and a wiz.

Yes, no healing power, for now.

Aside them (next session the only additional pc will be the wiz), do you think I need to further adjust the 6-players conversion? If yes, can you give me some suggestion?

[pennywit]

Several suggestions to start off Stolen Lands:

First, up the frequency of random encounters. Kingmaker's very susceptible to the fifteen-minute workday: "Enter hex, kill stuff, sleep." Make it very possible for your players to encounter more than one set of beasties during the day.

Second, pump up Tuskgutter and the bear at the templse even more than the 6-player conversion. Those are meant to be two memorable encounters, and your players will remember them better if they are tough buggers. My players are at the end of RRR now, and they still joke about Tuskgutter Jr. coming to get them.

Third, make the bandits Active Bad Guys. In the module as written, Staggie stays in his keep, which is fine. He's very much a drunk Achilles in his tent. But after the players have been running around the Greenbelt for a month or more, Dovan and Akiros at least should be quite aware of bandit-hunters on the move. One of these two ought to lead a bandit group out to stop the PCs. And remember the bandits don't play fair. Instead of a pitched battle, they ought to ambush your players in the middle of the night, lead a group away from camp ... and then a second, smaller bandit group could sneak in and steal the PCs' horses.

Somebody on the board (don't remember who) created a hunter-type who worked for the Stag Lord and bedeviled his players. You might want to add somebody like this to the bandits in your game.

Fourth, don't forget the weather. The weather is less of a factor during kingdom-building turns, but when your players are exploring the wilderness in SL, the daily weather ought to be a HUGE factor. If you poke through d20pfsrd.org, you'll find a very nice weather generator that you can use to give yourself two or three months of weather. Use this weather ... and put the effects into play.

Fifth, don't forget the Ride rules. Feel free to use them when a tatzlwyrm suddenly bits into your player from the underbrush.

Sixth, change up the diplomatic challenges a little. Rather than run diplomatic challenges as a single skill roll, I do skill challenges a la D&D 4E where my players have to get several successes before getting a couple failures.

Seventh, consider revising Tartuk into a summoner rather than a sorcerer, with Sharptooth as his Eidolon. A properly build Sharptooth and an invisible Tartuk made life hell for my party when they encountered them.

Eighth, (forgive the self-promotion) you might try this scenario late in SL. I ran it with my group, and my tactical-oriented players had a field day. You can modify it pretty easily to incorporate kobolds, mites and/or bandits.

[Blackstorm]

Wow, thank you. Those are really nice suggestion. And I forgive you for the self promotion :)

I still need to attune to my pcs power, but I was thinkink, could even a simple template like advanced be a good idea?

[pennywit]

The advanced template is a great idea, and it's the most common tool in the 6-player conversions. You also ought to look at adding more critters to encounters. The action economy means that your players will have a more difficult time against four 1st level kobolds than one 4th level kobold.

[Blackstorm]

Yep. I already put an eye to action economy. In the random encounter they had, they met a bunch of gnoll with two hyenas... They had a hard time. They seem to be not so much optimized, and I'd like to not push too hard, because the lack of healing power. I'll give them some backup for sure, anyway. do you think I could add the advanced template to already advanced template monsters of the conversion?

[pennywit]

I wouldn't go with an advanced advanced template; I'd look for other ways to make the fights more interesting or more threatening. For example ... mites have the ability vermin empathy. This opens up a lot of interesting territory. For example ... a mite cavalier riding a whiptail centipede ...

[Philip Knowsley]

Comment on the healing power...don't worry too much...
My players also started out with not much on those lines (yes, they had
a Druid, but that was it.)

Just add in a potion of cure light or whatever into each encounter, this
will mean that they have healing, but it's not overpowering on the 'loot'
front, because all it's actually doing is replacing the cleric they don't have...

[redcelt32]

I recommend some recurring villians that the party will not openly confront for 3-5 levels to keep things interesting. You can use either a race, a faction in Brevoy or elsewhere, or a powerful NPC in the Stolen Lands.

A good example might be a greenhag witch who originally could care less about the PCs. Her weakest minions bumps up against the party a few at very low levels, something like mites or goblins. If the party interferes, harasses, or kills them, she sends a more powerful minion out to deal with them, say a large tatzlwyrm or something. If they thwart that one, now they have the witches attention. For a long time after that, have her monitor and harass the party. This lets you throw encounters at your party at the worst possible times for them, either when they are weakened from other encounters, asleep, separated, etc.

A few good things come from this:

1- The party starts to be more wary and less likely to shoot all their big guns on every battle.
2- You challenge stronger parties with back to back encounters.
3- You now have a recurring villain storyline and can use this to piggyback other NPCs, side quests, etc off of this main story.

[pennywit]

Redcelt has great ideas.

From my end, I think random encounters can be flavorful if you play them differently from a standard "kill 'em, then move on" encounter. If you roll, for example, bandits, the bandits might hit at the group during the day, then fade away ... only to attack again in the evening ... or drive a herd of elk at the campsite as a distraction.

Did you roll two trolls for an encounter? Maybe the trolls are fishing at the banks of the river.

[Blackstorm]

All really good suggestions, thanks, you're all useful. But I'd like to focus a bit more on the single encounter, especially those Frome the ap itself. You all suggest me to pump up even beyond the 6 players conversion, and I tend to agree, but the main question is: have you any idea on how to bump the encounters without rebuild every single of them? Unfortunately I don't have too much free time to spend on rebuilding encounters (too much work, too low time for fun :(), so any "fast adaptation" suggestions are welcome. I'll use the ideas you wrote here for sure, but it would be great if I can adjust the ap encounter with minimum effort...

[redcelt32]

If its a solo creature give it a couple minions. If its already got minions, either make it two creatures or add a couple of class levels to it. If its already got class levels or is two and has minions, give it a terrain advantage.

That's pretty much the most advice you can give without more specific examples. I use a version of this on steroids for my 9 man adventure group.

[Blackstorm]

9 players? Man, you're crazy. Anyway, good catch. I cannot give you specific examples, because it's a problem that regard all the campaign. For now, next encounter will be the bandits at the outpost, I don't think they go too far tomorrow to bother with next listed encounter. If you have any advice I'll be glad to see :)

[pennywit]

I suggest picking a few encounters to be particularly epic, then leaving the rest at the usual 6-player conversion level. Not every fight has to be a nailbiter.

[Blackstorm]

pennywit wrote:

I suggest picking a few encounters to be particularly epic, then leaving the rest at the usual 6-player conversion level. Not every fight has to be a nailbiter.

Hmmm. Good point. I tend to be agree. Just for some advice, what encounter do you think should be Epic? I'd say the Stag Lord for sure, and the Bear/Druid temple. What else?

[pennywit]

In Stolen Lands:

a) One of the following: Tartuk, Chief Grabbles, or Sootscale. This will be your players' first foray into diplomacy and forging alliances in the Greenbelt. If they're going to earn an ally, make them work for it.

b) Stag Lord: This is an oddball one. Staggy can be pretty damn tough ... but he's also an alcoholic, and smart players are going to be sneaky. My players gave him his alcohol, then stabbed him while he was unconscious. I kept the tension up by making the party roll extra Bluff and Disguise skill checks.

c) Tuskgutter. As soon as my players got this quest card, they oriented on it and really wanted to take on Tuskgutter. I see this boar as a "Big Dog of the Forest" type. I say, epic encounter.

[pennywit]

This is going a bit beyond the scope of your original question, but I encourage you to browse the boards to get some other ideas for making Kingmaker as a whole challenging.

Redcelt has put together a magnificent thread called "Redcelt's Game of Thrones." A great read if you want your campaign to focus on political intrigue instead of faeries.

Dudemeister's put out some really great stuff, including Hargulka's Monster Kingdom and Irovetti's Clockwork Kingdom.

Orthos has put out some great ideas. T.A.U. did a nice bit with prophecy in a thread called "Mythic Ascension at the Temple of the Elk."

My own contribution (self-promoting again) is the Spring Feast.

Kingmaker really is what you make of it.

[Blackstorm]

Wow. Lot of reading. Thank you all, I'm really happy to find all this stuff.... You guys are awesome.

[pennywit]

Feel free to post how things go in your game if you use these scenarios. One of the great things about Kingmaker is that it's so sandboxy that games can go in a million directions.

[redcelt32]

I have a couple more suggestions, though related, they are along the lines of "stuff not asked about". There is a thread here on the message boards about "ambient encounters". I thought this thread was brilliant and I took the idea and ran with it in my own game with great success. It involves adding encounters that are non-standard, ie- noises in the night, footprints, evidence of things that happened or are happening, weather, etc. To this day, my players (who are 9th) still have no idea what makes this haunting whistling song along the Thorn River (tatzywyrm mating calls).