I'm running a Kingmaker game on the boards (which means it's slow, which is part of the problem) with the following party: support bard, archer ranger, control-focused witch, dex-based magus, and mounted paladin of Erastil (medium sized). We've just spent nearly a month (real-time) in the mites' lair and immediately headed to the kobold warrens to return Sharptooth and deal with Tartuk. This, coupled with a few overland fights with dense undercover and lots of trees, has made it so the paladin can't shine (bad rolls certainly made it worse) while the magus has bee able to fight to his fullest potential in nearly every combat. The magus has become very dominant in terms of damage output, and the paladin is feeling like the magus is basically soloing everything. The other party members are (at least to me) getting enough opportunities to do their things, so it's really a problem of the paladin being left out.
My concerns are twofold. First, I want to give the paladin an opportunity to do his thing, but I also don't want to impose OOC restrictions on the magus. That leaves me with the random encounters, the hexes in the south and west of the map, and the Stag Lord's Fort to make a mounted paladin really perform, using terrain, enemy types, etc.
So, my two-part question...
1) What do I need to do to make the random encounters work better for the paladin?
2) What changes need to be made to the Stag Lord's Fort to make it more mount-friendly while still being an interesting, chaotic fight (assuming a fight instead of an assassination)?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
What is it about the random encounters that isn't working for the mounted paladin? There should be some good potential for charges and mounted combat. Make sure you start encounters at a reasonable spotting distance and not dungeon-scale distances.
I think the paladin is going to have to recognize that there are times a mounted charge won't be of much help, but he should be able to engage in mounted combat in the open areas of the fort.
The problem is that between cover, difficult terrain, and probably scale, I think I've designed the random encounters poorly. I'm trying to go about fixing them so they'll work. Most of my maps are offline at the moment, but I could probably throw together a google drawing of what I've used in the past and what the enemy type was, if that'd help.
EDIT: These maps are a couple of the encounters I used. The first was the pre-built one with the kobolds at the radish patch. I placed the kobolds arrayed in front of the little pond (in relation to the party) and on the rocks. Here, iirc, the paladin was able to get an attack in and disable a kobold before the witch cast Sleep on the entire battlefield, shutting combat down. Some of my mistakes were allowing the paladin to be placed late in marching order so he had to maneuver rather than charge properly and not spreading my kobolds out well enough.
The second map was a random encounter with 1d4 (3) boars. I placed the party along a narrow-ish path along the Thorn River, with difficult thorns and impassible thick trees on either side. It was meant to be a fight against boars in their natural environment, which unfortunately crippled the paladin. He also acted late in initiative, so the battlefield was very crowded ahead of him.
I've had several other maps as well, but I can't find them. I've been hesitant to eliminate cover/difficult terrain, but might have to. I've also been hesitant to blow up the scale to the point that the paladin dominates while the magus falls behind (the archer ranger will do fine either way), but I may have to do that in my random encounters just so the paladin doesn't feel as non-contributing during the set-pieces.
Don't remove cover or difficult terrain when they're reasonable to be there. But do expand the range when it makes sense to. If the magus wants to contribute, he can darn well buy a bow for goodness's sake. The Core Rulebook suggests spotting distances in Chapter 13's wilderness section, and it looks like the maps you've posted aren't far from them, but don't be shy of picking higher numbers off the random range. The magus will figure out a way to contribute (and hopefully your paladin won't outrun his support so often that it gets himself killed).
As far as the paladin being behind in the marching order, that's the PCs' problem. Let them figure it out. You may want to remind them that, unless they're on a narrow trail (which happens sometimes), they don't have to be marching in a file at all.
It's good that you're thinking of ways to give spotlight to all of your players, but they kind of need to work with you too. If they aren't learning anything or asking questions or seeking the means of upping their hero time, go ahead and advise, but try not to spoon-feed them too much. It's much more satisfying if they figure stuff out on their own.
As far as feeling like he isn't contributing to set pieces, he's got smite doesn't he? That's nothing to sneeze at. And he could make a pretty good bulwark for the rest of the party in close quarters if he's investing in a shield and good armor - which he probably should be doing.
|
First off, you are going to have to deal with the nova aspect of the game in Kingmaker to some degree or another. Paladins and magus should both be quite fearsome and do some major damage (smite becomes very very good once a few levels are added on) if they have a 10 min workday every time. I have heard quite a few GMs complain that a magus in their game just novas every encounter and destroys the opponents because they don't have to hold anything back (1/encounter a day). However I have heard the same thing about players with mounted paladins doing radiant charges, etc and hitting for hundreds of points of damage... so it may just be your players and not their classes.
Several other GMs have had this problem, so search for nova, 10 min workday in this forum and see what you find. I would link the threads if I recalled their names, but it is a common problem. Some of the GMs (myself included) tend to stack encounters in the same day and then have several quiet days, rather than have 1/day. So if the party fights a set encounter, try throwing in a wandering monster that same day. This will also show the value of the witch and her hexes, which otherwise tends to go to waste in a 1/day encounter game.
Second, did everyone start out with combat trained horses? They are rather expensive for a low level party. Remember to make everyone do ride checks every time there is combat. This makes the paladin more formidable right away, assuming he took a bonded mount. It was so rough on a fullplate wearing, low-stat oracle of healing in our game that his first action every combat was to dismount, as otherwise he started off most battles prone from being tossed off. Getting some war trained mounts under everyone was a major coup in the early days of our game, and they had to send off to Restov for them and wait two weeks for them to come in.
2) The Stag Lord's fort won't be mount friendly period. That's just not the design of it. I would suggest not reworking it, but rather let some of the other set encounters or wandering encounters give the paladin his moments to shine while mounted.
Some encounter ideas for the paladn....
Consider throwing out some encounters where the party sees the opponent like 500 yards away. This gives archers and mounted characters a chance to take advantage of their movement and range. After all, much of the Greenbelt is wide open hills and plains with grass, so PCs with a good perception should be able to see others approaching quite a distance away.
Specifically a mounted RP type encounter- you might consider throwing in a small band of say neutral mongol/nomadic type horseman. They have complete disdain for anyone not equally experienced and knowledgeable about horses. This could lead to some great RP with the paladin, possibly some early game allies, etc. Perhaps the band's leader takes a shine to the paladin, and tries to get him drunk on fermented yak's milk all the time ("Are you insulting us by refusing to drink with us?"). Perhaps the paladin of Erastil will keep trying to get these nomads to settle down with wives and give up their nomadic ways. In fact, you could replace Kesten and his group with this band, which might make things interesting as far all of the party working with them on a regular basis :)
Okay that's all I got, hope some of this was helpful :)
@ Bill Dunn: They figured out the marching order pretty quickly, but there's still the paladin's low initiative meaning he gets passed up by the party and then has to weave his way around (I think that happened in the boar fight). Thanks for the chapter number for wilderness spotting ranges; that'll be quite helpful, I think. And yes, he does have Smite, but it's been a somewhat typical low-level problem where the damage is so high nothing stays alive long enough for him to get more than a swing or two in. I think Grabbles and Tickleback (and 5 mites) died in two or three rounds while the paladin was cut off by the centipede chasm and unable to get to the fight (that was mostly my mistake; I wanted to inject a feeling a desperation in the party-members that were on the enemy's side of the chasm, and instead the magus blew everything up).
@Redcelt: I've been rolling the random encounters, which has made stacking them more difficult. Perhaps not rolling them would be better in terms of setting up those kinds of situations. As for mounts, I believe he's got a combat-trained but the rest of the party certainly doesn't. It could be that we just haven't had enough wilderness encounters for that to make a difference, though. The horseman RP would be a great idea, though. I've set up Iobaria as a sort of Russia-esque place, so I could probably work in something like the cossacks.
@pennywit: All the players are interested in combat, and they've all got roles to play within it (in theory). The trouble with setting up RP situations is that the paladin feels that most of his very limited skill points should be going into mount and handle animal, so he doesn't have the skills to do well there. I think it's been less an issue of the RP, though, than of not being able to contribute in combat like he wants to be able to.