My group is about to start the Serpent's Skull AP, with me as GM, and they've all agreed that they want it to be a tough game. As one of them put it, "my character should be on his knees with tears in his eyes, voice choked with gratitude as he thanks the gods for the dirt he found to suck on for nourishment."
So, I need to make this pretty hardcore, without guaranteeing a TPK. I'd like the difficulty increase to be mostly environmental rather than just more or harder fights, such as decreased supplies or recovery items. There will be a divine caster who will likely take create water as an orison, so water won't be an issue.
Any suggestions are welcome, and I appreciate the help.
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what is your party composition? rolled stats? how many players any given game night?
off the top best thing to make things harder, advanced templates work great, and diseases are every where in the jungle, use them:) heat of the jungle is an awesome resource for environmental hazards (especially diseases and afflictions and parasites)
for the record the assumed baseline for APs is an antiquated 15 point buy (i say that because even PFS uses 20 points for their baseline) and a well rounded party of four, anything above will need adjustments, especially if you have a bigger party add more monsters as action economy will make single enemies easier to defeat:)
Yeah. 4 pc's @ 15 points should be the challenge default.
Using this some should die.......parts mod 1 and parts mod 3 where the death points in our AP
A lot of daily saves in part one that can wear you down
I'm not sure if it is sustainable to spend lots of the adventure on your knees
The first adventure is already pretty hardcore. Stranded on an island and scraping to get supplies. That shouldn't need too much adjustment.
I don't have my books on-hand at the moment, but a lot of the rest of the plot takes place deep in the jungle, in ruins, on various islands, and in the underground. Make it hard for them to get equipment, food, etc. Don't let the casters take item-crafting feats. Be strict with what they can do with magic. Pay very close attention to rules on weather, heat, and environment; get yourself a random weather rolling chart or base the effects off a real-world place's weather where things are similar. Fighting in the rain, in storms, in high winds, or in non-advantageous terrain can become very difficult very quickly.
Rolled stats, 4d6 drop the lowest, so stats will be above average. 3 players, one ninja, one brawler fighter, and one undecided divine caster. I plan on abusing the diseases when possible, and with that in mind I was considering removing or reducing the number of remove disease and lesser restoration options they find, or possibly making it more costly/difficult to acquire them. I thought of doing the same for any rations found, but the survival check for finding food is fairly easy.
Great idea on the weather Orthos, I hadn't thought of that. As to the crafting, this set of players wouldn't even attempt to craft anything not realistically craftable in the circumstances they'll be in, so that won't be an issue.
If you use diseases, don't tell them that they have something nasty brewing until they make a heal check themselves or successfully identify a beast that spreads said disease. If you want to keep them in the dark completely, you'll need to keep track of a lot of their stats and so forth though.
Got bitten by a rat? No biggie, it's just 2 hp damage. -> Filth fever takes effect later...
And for experienced players that already know about the generic diseases, get creative! You can just rename a disease to throw them off. Filth fever is all the sudden called hermit pox for example.
I'm the only one of the group who has read and memorized a lot of material, so fudging names shouldn't be necessary, and I'm already planning on keeping a basic stat sheet for the party. I did just have a 4th player sign up though, and this one is very experienced with tough games, though mostly in AD&D. I'll have to get creative.
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I've found the best way to make a game Hard Mode is to strictly enforce the rules for encumbrance, food, environmental effects, disease and poison.
If the players want to play hardcore, then strictly enforce 15 point buy with no point return for stats below 10. This forces the players to deal with unoptimized characters.
Audit treasures, reduce the amount of scrolls and spellbooks they find, Wizards, Witches and Maguses are top-tier classes and they get that way because they can learn so many darn spells. On top of that strictly enforce the amount of time it takes to add a scroll to the spellbook.
Ban Crafting. Players will play with the toys they are given, and if they want for example a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, they'll need to buy one. Once they're out in the jungle (book 3 onwards), they'll need to be extra precious with those wand charges. Alternatively house-rule that Wands have infinite charges, but can only function 3/day. This prevents an exchange of GP for hp.
Then you can more-or-less run the modules as written.
Update for anyone interested, finished Souls for Smuggler's Shiv today, and the players were very satisfied with the difficulty. The ninja, especially, had a hellish time with his low fortitude saves as a result of all the poison and disease, and spent most of the adventure nursing varying amounts of strength damage, and the high-damage fighter caused some serious damage at the end from having a sub-par will save.
Most of the "difficulty" was a result of bad decisions or bad rolls at convenient times, such as deciding to trade blows face to face with zombies at level 1, or staying out adventuring longer than the normal day (fatigue, running out of spells, increased chance of disease exposure from lack of shelter.)The most significant factor beyond that was the lack of equipment; starting them with drastically reduced gear and refusing any crafting that wouldn't realistically be possible in a jungle shelter forced the players to focus more on their character abilities and skills rather than on amassing wealth and powerful items.
Overall very fun, felt like a success, and I feel that it sharpened my GM skills. The players, two of whom are new to Pathfinder, got a solid feel for the characters they chose, and I think the variety of situations really helped their grasp of the system.