I am going to run Rise for a group of five people. Four of which are new. My first question is, would it be a bad idea if the ranger took goblins as his first favored enemy, then just did not improve it? Secondly, would switching to the medium experience track be the best way to incorporate adventures of my own design? Thank you in advance.
Yes to both :-)
After part one Goblins don't come published much (if at all)
Nohwear - I'm doing almost exactly what you've described. RotR with 5 players, 1 is new to pathfinder but familiar with 3.X, 2 are new to pathfinder/3.x entirely, and 1 is new to gaming. I'm adding a fair bit of side content along with bonus XP for motivational purposes (see below). We've been going strong for about 7 months, just finished Skinsaw / starting Hook Mountain tonight.
Overall, i'd say it's been working pretty well.
The group lags behind the published AP guidelines by roughly 1 level, and that works ( remember the AP was designed for 4). The challenges so far have matched up well. I've been careful to keep that in check with my side content so they don't level too fast. As they have gotten more familiar with the system the extra man has helped a lot in some encounters, and they continue to get better and better as they play.
A suggestion that has worked great for my group: Hero Points work out very well for new players. It gives them a trump card if they make a poor decision for lack of system knowledge. My experienced players rarely use them, and my new players have used them to dodge death about a half a dozen times.(Elyrium, Ripnugget, hermit crab, Xanesha, Scarecrow)
Another thing that for me has worked out well: In addition to learning the system rules, learning the nuances of Golarion lore really helps the setting come alive. In my experience, players hate reading pages and pages of wall-o-text. I've got one that has read the inner sea guide, and everyone else knows virtually nothing. Since we use Obsidian Portal for an adventure log, I add entries to a running forum post little Varisian factoids that most characters would know (What are Shoanti? What's Riddleport? What's the Storval Plateau?). Then later, each log entry comes with a quick question about the world and the answer is always somewhere in one of the posts. First to reply gets a bit of XP/gold/bonus hero points/etc - something good enough to matter but not so much to break the game. At first, I didn't think it would work but it has taken off and now most of them are competing to be the first to respond.
Hope some of this helps. Best of luck!
Not much to say beyond Yes to both, except... You might want to consider leveling by milestone instead of by xp. You can shift to medium track to allow for incorporating additional material but then you're committing to adding additional material throughout the AP to keep the players at the expected level. If you use the milestone method you can add material where you want to and fall back to the "native AP" whenever you don't.
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First question: Yes, especially helpful at low-levels where survivability can be an issue.
Second question: I run RotRL without XP, leveling by milestone as Latrecis mentioned. It's much easier and you don't have to worry about fiddling with XP. There's an "advancement track" at the beginning of every chapter that gives you the milestones.
-Skeld
IMHO Rangers do not need to take goblins as a favored enemy, ever. They can already beat goblins without the favored enemy bonus. Far better to take something like giants or undead as a favored enemy, because they may well need those few extra bonus points very much!
The only time they would ever need that bonus vs goblins would be if the DM were in the habit of having lots of goblinoid foes with character levels.
Regarding experience, despite all the arguments against experience points, I still use em. Why? Simply put, my players, who cut their RPG teeth on various versions of D&D, are *addicted* to experience points, and love marking them down and adding them up.
So I see xp as a way to keep track of partial level advancement. And when necessary, I use the DM fudge bar to award them the extra xp necessary to reach a given level. Since we take 2-3 6-hour sessions to advance a level, having a partial level award marker is important for giving the players that feeling of being rewarded.
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On the Matter of XP:
It really depends on your group. I've vacillated between counting XP (3.5), not counting XP (4E), and back again. I think you have to in 3.0/3.5, especially if you have a caster who uses the magic item crafting rules. As a result, I pretty much always counted the XP.
I've only run one campaign under 4E rules (the Scales of War AP), and it only got a few levels into Paragon before it folded. Still, about halfway through the second adventure, I realized that the AP was handbuilt to level your PCs, and if you included anything, then you'd be making them stronger than the adventure expects. XP was basically meaningless, and I asked my players if they didn't mind me dropping the XP totals, and just telling them when they level up. Nobody complained, and it worked out fine.
Skip ahead to my Runelords game. I actually reinstituted XP, partially because I realized that this group actually enjoyed tracking it. Also, it helps give the players the feeling like they're actually getting closer to the next power bump - something that GM Fiat Leveling doesn't do.
Since that went well, I decided to use XP in my Iron Gods game as well. This group, however, hates XP with a passion, and it was abolished after the first session.
In short, it completely depends upon your group.
I believe he was referring to playing 3.5 I could be mistaken but that's what I gathered from it :-)