Hey there! Thanks for stopping by :)
Anywho, I'm trying to set up my first game of pathfinder as the DM. I've been the GM/DM of many, many games in other systems so I'm confident in my sandbox story telling, and world building. Still, I'm still fairly new to pathfinder (few months) and it will be the first game of the system for all of the players.
My biggest concern is in making the opposition balanced. I'm reading charts of CR, but I'm not sure how it pans out (my own GM was throwing dragons at us at level 4, and I don't see THAT anywhere yet). I don't want the wandering monsters to one shot the party (see: DRAGON) or the town guard being so inept you can do anything without them ever noticing, guaranteed. I need my porridge just right, to use the phrase.
I've yet to set a level for the game; I want to keep it low, and was thinking level 1. Still, from my initial talking to the prospective players, I'm looking at having a team with a Paladin and two wizards (this isn't set in stone yet, and a potential 4th member is still on fence). I know wizards become god (which will be it's own challenge later) but at level 1 they're a tad... well, squishy.
Bottom line is, I'm looking for ideas on how to make things 'level appropriate' and still fun for a new group. I trust the advice given on here, so I thought I'd try asking here, see what comes up.
Anywho, thanks for giving your time to read all this. Much appreciated!
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Action economy. Make baddies that can do many things on their turn. Remember, baddies don't have to be optimized to be memorable. So things like 2 weapon fighting, monk's Flurry of Blows, and natural attackers make for some great martial fighters. Maybe a cleric that has quick channel. Maybe a bard that can inspire and call up a spell. Spell casters that can summon.
Also look for team synergy and variance. Use teamwork feat against the party. Use buffs, debuffs, and heals. Use the terrain to your advantage. Make the party walk into a trap. Or make the trap so obvious that they party chooses plan B, and that's where your ambush is.
Also remember that not every encounter has to be won in combat. Give them an escape route. Give them a chance to non-combat resolve it. If the encounter is not supposed to fought (say against an above level baddie), give them obvious clues that they should leave.
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When in doubt, take it easy. Better for the players to have a couple of too-easy fights in the beginning while you figure things out, than to kill the PCs before the game has truly gotten going.
You could try some PFS scenarios, most of those are easy to medium difficulty. Early seasons are written with a 4-player party in mind. Try out a few of those as an example of what Paizo thinks is a normal way to play the game.
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There's two main concepts involved in the difficulty of the game.
Action Economy - how many actions are the PCs taking, vs. how many actions is the enemy taking. Three NPCs vs. a lot of NPCs means the NPCs are doing much more every turn, which could be dangerous. Conversely, a lot of PCs vs. a single boss means that either the boss has to be very strong, or he's just gonna get overrun.
You're in a good position here, because you have a small party. We all like the idea of a good boss fight, but most people play in a larger group than you do. And then the boss is so outnumbered, that he's probably going down too easily, and that's not satisfying to anyone.
So then you can do two things: make the boss stronger, or give him minions. A stronger boss will last longer, but it'll be frustrating. He's got a high chance of hurting PCs badly, and PCs have a hard time hurting him.
Minions are a better solution. If there's many PCs, give the boss many bodyguards. Those draw away some of the PCs' numerical advantage, making the fight more even, without making the boss himself to strong to face.
The other issue is the Adventuring Day. The basic idea in PF is that at some point in the adventure, you're going to be having a really exciting day. You're going into a dungeon, or storm a castle, or something like that. One day with multiple combats. For example, to reach the treasury, you'll have to fight (or sneak or magic) your way past several groups of guards. To rescue the princess you first need to kill the kobold guards protecting the entrance to the dragon's lair, then face the dragon himself. To kill the orc chieftain, first you have to deal with his army's scouts, then find a way to get to the middle of his army and kill him.
This is different from some of the other days. Some days you're travelling through the forest, and some bandits jump out. You deal with them, and that's the only fight that day.
Now, many classes have a limited amount of "resources" per day: spells prepared, HP, Smite Evil uses, Lay on Hands uses and so forth. Some classes can unload those really fast to do a lot of damage in a short time, but after that they're spent and can't achieve much the rest of the day. Basically, they need to dose it out carefully; not waste spells in the first fight that they don't really need to win, because they might need them to tip the balance in the second fight.
Pathfinder's game balance, especially between classes, is built on the idea that on the day that actually matters (when you go into the dungeon), you have multiple encounters, not just one big one. One big encounter favors some classes much more than others.
As a GM you should be paying attention to how much resources your players are using. Don't send in another hard encounter if they're already exhausted. However, don't let the players count on that too much. They shouldn't be able to say "well, this is encounter #4, so this is the last one and we can spend all our remaining resources now, because there's never a #5."
At lower levels Pathfinder seems really balanced so if you can figure out the Average Party Level of your group, then all you have to do is match it up to an appropriate CR. Easy encounters are lower CR. Medium encounters are equal CR and hard encounters are usually APL+1.
When in doubt - start with an official level 1 module or adventure path until you get a feel for how Pathfinder works.
If you have decent rapport with your group you could spend a night calibrating your difficulty. Prep what you think are a few dificulty levels of encounters for your chosen level of game (easy, standard and boss level maybe), and run mock combats with them all. Would have the side effect of letting the players work out the kinks in their characters and group tactic as well. Wi what you say about your background you should do okay with scaling the game as they level up, once you have the starting point and ideas down.